Comprehensive list of problems with the Guildleve system

[solracht]

I'd like to start by thanking Square Enix for opening these forums. Hopefully through them and with the help of the new development we can lead Eorzea towards a brighter future.

I'm going to say it now: English is not my first language. Feel free to point out any funny sentences or if there's any part that needs clarification. Also, feel free to disagree with this post and please add your personal views.


The list (jump to point 4 if you don't care enough to read a long post):

1) Experience/skill point rewards: Currently, experience points are awarded for killing mobs in guildleves. Anyone who is playing can see what this has lead into: most players look for the guildleves with the highest number of enemies and purposedly fail the guildleve at the end so they can renew it on the next reset.

Personally I feel that for as long as we don't want to complete the guildleve (how many people here want the necrologos page to drop, which is the objective of the guildleve?), the system is failing. Gameplay based around (and rewarding) failure in guildleves is akin to how the old skill up system was - backwards - and will hopefully be seen as a problem.

The way experience/skill points are awarded also leads to a lot of guildleves being completely ignored, and will cement the failure of any future guildleves that aren't about finding necrologos pages pages or killing countless waves of enemies.


--My solution (and I'm sure there are a lot) could be giving all guildleves a set "pool" of experience points that will be rewarded at the end:

Every time you kill an enemy in a guildleve, the experience gained from killing the enemy is removed from the pool. At the end of the guildleve, the remaining experience points in the pool are awarded. This pool should be the same across all guildleves of a level range, and big enough so that only being really unlucky in getting drops would make the pool reach 0.

This would make most guildleves equal, except for the completition time. However, The difference between the time needed to complete two different guildleves, barring being really unlucky with some necrologos/drop ones, is minimal.

While some people would prefer to do fast guildleves with this change, those that simply did any guildleve that was offered would only waste 20-25 minutes per leve reset compared to them, instead of "losing" up to 50k skill points for taking this approach. There's also the option of shortening or lengthening the really long/short guildleves.



2) The leve-linking system: The leve-linking system as it is now hurts the freedom that the system was sold with, as there is a really big disparity between doing leves by yourself or doing them with people, and you can only pick one of the two.

Don't get me wrong, as I am not saying that playing with others should be less rewarding or even as rewarding as playing solo: the problem is the fact that if you choose to do your guildleves solo, you lock yourself out of partying for the reset, which is ridiculously better. To put this into FFXI terms, imagine if soloing experience points in FFXI meant you couldn't join a party for the day.

I do not have any easy or short solutions that would completely take care of the problem without fundamentally reworking the system. I think I would advocate for guardian's favor not being usable after having x party members as a quick bandaid, but I don't think this really takes care of much.

In the end, and as things are now, I feel that the guildleve system is anything but solo-friendly, unless you don't care about advancing your character at all.

Personally, on the days where I don't have much time to play, I feel inclined to party up (and subsequently, spend longer logged on) to do my guildleves, as doing them solo feels simply a waste. I think this conflicts with what Yoshida just said on his last letter about the guildleve system.

The only reason why I think that this is a problem is because the guildleve system keeps on being advertised as solo-friendly, as something for players to do casually when they only have a short time to play. However, the system itself makes me feel like I shouldn't do them solo.

This problem might get taken care of by itself when more camping grounds are found for all level ranges, so I do not think it's an important one.



3) The Lockout: Let me start by saying that I am not against (although I am not for, either) limiting how many guildleves we can do.

However, as someone who might not log on everyday, but might have a lot of time on specific days of the week, I feel that guildleve system has failed me. Missing a lockout means missing leves that will never be able to be made up for.

This means that the system can be casual if you play in the time frame Square Enix has set for us, which is at least once every day and a half. I feel that the guildleve system could be more enjoyable for everyone if at least one week worth of lockouts could be "saved". For those familiar with FFXI, think of the keys in Assault. You didn't feel inclined to spend them every day, did you?

I could log in every day and a half and do my guildleves as I am now - or I could do 24 leves if I missed 3 resets until I could play again. This would require a reworking of the system (such as possibly applying the fix to the first problem listed), however, as there aren't 24 guildleves that are worth doing as things stand.

This fix touches on point two - I would be more likely to wait until I have time to group for guildleves if they were saved.



4) The feel of the system, or the TLDR: Ultimately, I think the guildleve system is not fit as a leveling system in its current implementation. There are too many limitations, too many losses for not jumping through the right hoops (see the other points). The system is simply too "complex" for something as silly as leveling up is. I do not care about how you change, but I sincerely hope there are changes coming.

Ever since taking on guildleves during the second beta, I've felt that the guildleve system could be a good endgame system, but it falls short as a leveling one. Guildleves are a resource that's too precious, and as anything that's too precious, you try to get the best use out of it.

As such, you fail guildleves to get the good ones, and you always party up rather than soloing.

Don't get me wrong, I am a min/maxer. However, I do not feel that min/maxing should be so present while leveling if you want to aim for a broad audience. If you were advertising this game for a hardcore, for the FFXI audience, or as a party-heavy game - this post would not exist right now.


In closing...

A lot of these things probably don't feel as problems to us, as we've found workarounds, fixes or have been lucky enough to be in the right places within the game. However, ask yourself one question: Would you recommend the guildleve system to a friend that is either interested in playing, or that you want to get into the game?

Unfortunately, for me, as things stand, the answer is no.


From now on, and when responding to other threads, please think of the masses. Think of people who are playing FFXI, think of people who are playing other MMOs, think of people that aren't playing any MMO. We need all of them to survive. If that means "dumbing down" the game to meet today's standards, then that'll have to do.



Thank you for reading.

[solracht]

Bumping this once before letting it fall to oblivion, as it was posted yesterday at a bad time

[Vasch]

I think it isn't without its problems, but I disagree about what the problems may be. I personally use Guildleves not as a way of leveling, but as a means of income; I do them for gil and to change up from the standard grinding. I do however feel we need more variety in Guildleves, as they all boil down to "Kill x amount of enemies." There are all sorts of different leves they could do, like perhaps a racing leve where you race an NPC from camp to town, or finding an item based on a set of clues about the surrounding area it's in, etc. Just something different.

[Betelgeuzah]

the problem is the fact that if you choose to do your guildleves solo, you lock yourself out of partying for the reset, which is ridiculously better.

I don't think this is the case. You can still leve-share, and it should be mentioned that you should always leve-share if possible, because it gives you +100% SP over-all instead of +50% or so from a single link. If you have the time, you're better off doing the same leve twice.

While I agree with most of your suggestions, I think that what we need are more varied leves and more ways to customize them, as well as a better party search system.

Although to be frank, I would think that changing the system into something more Nyzul Isle-like may go a long way in making the feature more enjoyable. Instead of having few different objectives and certain fixed layouts with certain fixed monster types, they could mix them up randomly and keep implementing more layouts and objectives in the updates, that adds to the system as a whole, instead of only piling more leves on top of the existing ones. Whenever they add a new objective or a monster type or a leve layout, the whole system is affected by it.

[solracht]

I don't think this is the case. You can still leve-share, and it should be mentioned that you should always leve-share if possible, because it gives you +100% SP over-all instead of +50% or so from a single link. If you have the time, you're better off doing the same leve twice.

You can still leve share as long as you find a group that's willing to let you "leech". I feel that suggesting that partying for leves is still possible even when you have none yourself is somewhat close to saying partying in FFXI was possible naked. Yes, both are possible, but...

I was tempted to remove the second point anyways, as I was worried it would take attention from the other three and like I mentioned at the end, I don't think it's an important one and it could potentially fix itself as more methods to advance are added/found.

Appreciate the comments either way.

[Rentahamster]

I don't think this is the case. You can still leve-share, and it should be mentioned that you should always leve-share if possible, because it gives you +100% SP over-all instead of +50% or so from a single link. If you have the time, you're better off doing the same leve twice.

While your overall SP gained might go up, your SP/hour turns to crap. Plus, it's a waste of Guardian's Favor. It's better to spend 10 minutes doing a leve, linking 3 times, and getting aspect once, than it is to spend 40 minutes repeating the same boring leve 4 times and getting aspect 4(a waste) times.

Never linking your leves is a waste of time.

[Betelgeuzah]

You can still leve share as long as you find a group that's willing to let you "leech".

I don't see why they wouldn't, if it's not for some JP mentality or something like that. I mean, you can raise the difficulty and not really lose anything in the process, I think.