Guildleves Reform info up

[Victor]

The problem is that I don't disagree. This does look like it is going to be an unfortunate mess.

[Rentahamster]

It's not a mess. The necessary groundwork is being laid to bring balance.

[VydarrTyr]

Well said, Lucian.

There's a reason that players have all congregated in one city. It's because it makes the game more enjoyable for the players. It's a way that players have minimized many of the game's problems. If we didn't like being in one place, we wouldn't have all moved to the same place.

1) No Means of Travel. As Lucian said, the regeneration rate for anima is already painfully slow, compared to the amount of anima players use daily. Spreading people out throughout the world is going to make this problem worse. Players are going to be forced to spend more of their game time running -- which everyone hates -- rather than fighting, gathering, or crafting -- which are the reasons we play the game.

2) Market Wards. Buyers and sellers like having everyone in Uldah because it's one market where everyone can go. You don't need to travel to 3 different cities just to see if someone is selling one item. Having everyone in Uldah gives us the benefit of a central, worldwide market ward, even though one is not in the game currently.

So forcing everyone to divide into 3 different cities is going to hurt the economy and make it more difficult to buy and sell goods.

3) Party Diversity. Increasing class uniqueness is one of the stated goals of the new battle system. Ideally, every party would be made up of a variety of classes.

But under the new leve system, different classes are going to want to do different leves. Conj/Lnc/Arc in Gridania; Thm/Pug/Glad in Uldah; Mar in LL.

It's going to be difficult to find tanks to do leves in Grid. It's going to be difficult to find melee DPS in Uldah. And it's going to be difficult to find anyone except Mars in LL.

So parties are going to be made up of the same limited classes. That's going to discourage party diversity.

4) Social Aspects. Currently, one of the biggest benefits to having everyone in one city is that there are usually people on to socialize and interact with. The drop in the number of active players is going to be much more noticeable if we're forced to spread out through 3 different regions.

5) No Mailboxes. There's currently no way to give someone else items unless you're standing right next to that person. Forcing us to spread throughout the world is going to make it much more difficult to give items to other players.

Someone from my LS is trying to level Leatherworking, and I've got dodo skins to spare? Sorry, man. You're in Gridania, and I'm working on Blacksmith in LL. I want to help, but not so much that I'm willing to run for a hour just to trade you some skins.

I don't mean this to be a doom and gloom post. I understand that it's going to take time to implement everything that's going to make this game whole. I'm just not sure that dividing players and spreading them out throughout the world is going to be good for anything right now (except maybe server load).

[Kiara]

3) Party Diversity. Increasing class uniqueness is one of the stated goals of the new battle system. Ideally, every party would be made up of a variety of classes.

But under the new leve system, different classes are going to want to do different leves. Conj/Lnc/Arc in Gridania; Thm/Pug/Glad in Uldah; Mar in LL.

It's going to be difficult to find tanks to do leves in Grid. It's going to be difficult to find melee DPS in Uldah. And it's going to be difficult to find anyone except Mars in LL.

So parties are going to be made up of the same limited classes. That's going to discourage party diversity.

I don't mean this to be a doom and gloom post. I understand that it's going to take time to implement everything that's going to make this game whole. I'm just not sure that dividing players and spreading them out throughout the world is going to be good for anything right now (except maybe server load).

Hi Vydarr,

You bring up some great points. I agree with most of them, but a few things to consider:

Re: Party Diversity - At first I was thinking of this as well, but remember one key thing Yoshida-san said - that Guildleves are going to be Solo-focused - there isn't going to be a need for Guildleve Parties the way we're used to, now.

So it's not going to be as much of an issue for Party Diversity for Guildleves, because they're going to be refocused to be more Solo activities.

In addition, people will get to a point where they don't need / want Guild Marks any more for their class. At that point, if they want to still do Leves with friends, they can go wherever suits them (but again it's more of a Solo activity now).

So for SP Parties (out in the open world), we can still have parties as they are and diversified just fine.


Re: the other changes and spreading the players out, I agree that right now, it's tough (with low populations), but at the same time, *something* needs to change. The game is stagnating, there are 2 entire Nations (LL, Gridania) that are ghost towns and abandoned, wasting away.

It'll be good to get some traffic and incentivize people to move about.

The status quo of everyone on the server sitting, crowded in Ul'dah all day and going to Broken Water only is making for a stagnant, boring and dying gameplay experience (even with its many conveniences).

[Airget]

I parsed some questions from throughout the thread and brought them up to the team. Without further ado...

We'll be making it so utilizing guardian's aspect will grant you a bonus at the time of defeating an enemy and also upon completion.

I know this is most likely off topic be speaking of what has been quoted I have a question about guardian aspect and guardian's in general. Guardian's had the opportunity to create a unique development in making a customized character yet it became nothing more then just some random deity that you wanted to fall under. During beta I had imagined that they were hiding the true aspect of guardians until release, but upon release guardians were nothing more then flavor text.

Now I hope you haven't forgotten about the whole guardian concept and actually create a use to make them useful, it was mentioned that you would be able to switch your guardian if you wished if I'm correct, and if that's the case the whole concept of guardians just open a wide array of customization and content for players to enjoy.

Dark Ages was a game that used deities though you could only fall under one, but upon praising and practicing the morals of the deity you obtained a higher rank and abilites from them.

Basically what I'm getting at is, there's a huge opportunity to create content around guardians in which you can obtain unique guardian aspects, abilities and traits when you are assigned to that deity. You are free to switch between your faith but you can only use the abilities when you are on the proper guardian. It's a simple enough idea and opens up the door to more customization.

On the case of guardian aspect, what was the whole point of calling it guardian aspect, it might as well have been called Skill Boost since that's all it does lol. Are there any plans to expand on the guardian aspect, when I first saw it I imagined you would be given the opportunity to increase xp gains, attributes, possibly enfeeble the foe or other things that would enhance your chances to win. Or even on the flip side maybe have guardian aspects that enhance the mob in certain ways to increase the reward for the extra threat imposed on the enemy, unlike the star rank concept the specific boost could influence drop rates or unlock hidden leves.

Seriously just look at the game you have on hand, while I know you are focusing on changing the core, if you don't take the time to realize what you have to work with and how you can expand it you're just gonna turn XIV into a cliche MMO. There are a lot of things going for XIV that if you focus the team on expanding concepts rather then using up resources to change the game completely you might find yourself able to create more content at a quicker place rather then having to rebalanced everything because you changed the game completely.

Granted the last paragraph is a bit of a rant but I just wish the team could set up a plan on how to expand and evolve concepts rather then take huge steps back and rebalance everything because they are changing the game completely. I''ll definitely be giving the game another shot once the next patch comes out to see how the changes work and hope that they do work for the game but I am concerned that if it doesn't work you might find that the time spent using up those resources was a waste lol.

[Reinheart]

We may see some more surprises in 1.18 so gonna wait to see if its doom and gloom or subligar heaven.
Why release all the fun info before the actual patch

[Kafeen]

In regards to 36 hour refresh time, the development team is looking into increasing the refresh time. In doing so, there may be the sense that there won't be anything to do, so they are considering possibly increasing the amount of leves you can hold at once. However, there are a lot of elements this would affect, so please let us know your thoughts and opinions.

I'd much rather see the limit on how many leves you can do dropped completely.

[Lienn]

I parsed some questions from throughout the thread and brought them up to the team. Without further ado...

We'll be making it so utilizing guardian's aspect will grant you a bonus at the time of defeating an enemy and also upon completion.

You will not receive the stored SP bonus if you fail to complete the levequest. For crafting local leves, if you need to succeed 4 times but only succeed 3 times and run out of materials you will not receive a bonus since the requirements were not met.

In regards to 36 hour refresh time, the development team is looking into increasing the refresh time. In doing so, there may be the sense that there won't be anything to do, so they are considering possibly increasing the amount of leves you can hold at once. However, there are a lot of elements this would affect, so please let us know your thoughts and opinions.

Liking alot the info regarding levequests ^^ Today the community reps were specially fortunate regarding the news quality ^^ Keep the good work you guys ^^

[tachikoma]

People seem really nervous that the ability to get party SP is gone since we assumedly can't spam the same dunes/rr/levin/(toads) over and over for easy spammage SP. If you look at the last letter from the producer about Yoshi's level grind strategy:

The ideal image is one where if you play every day for 2 hours or so, you will be able to reach the max cap on one class in about 3-4 months.

This about sums up the changes to leve's, as right now it takes 5-6 weeks to get from 1-50. And this is only playing for 2 hours 5 days a week.

There are many places to level but the sp is just no where near the speed we have been getting used to with the leve failers set. I think this change was way overdue. In the 20-30 range you can grind in that dungeon south of bentbranch tam tara? Supports 2-3 parties I would think. Some areas of coerthas would be good for mid range as well.

By spreading out the population forcing ppl who want to grind to search out and explore for party spots I see this as a mandatory change for FFXIV to succeed. Imagine a player starts a new game for the first time in Grid and finds the world empty why would he bother trying to find Ul dah if no one is logged in his starting city? If they do a good job with this company quests I could see this further spreading out the populations.

[jwang]

In regards to 36 hour refresh time, the development team is looking into increasing the refresh time. In doing so, there may be the sense that there won't be anything to do, so they are considering possibly increasing the amount of leves you can hold at once. However, there are a lot of elements this would affect, so please let us know your thoughts and opinions.

I'm all for being able to carry more leves, even if it was just by one. Keep the current leve reset timer, 36 hours is long enough for when I don't feel like commiting more than a few hour a day to do all my leves before reset is up, yet not too long where I'm constantly waiting for reset (as opposed to the 24 hr/1 week reset timers for Warcraft). Ideally, you give us a separate carrying category for fieldcraft and double the locals capacity. Faction leves can be fit into either battlecraft or fieldcraft categories, depending on their objectives.