[dev1134] Combine all instead of spliting?!

[Reika]

I can see that with the new guildleve system coming in 1.19, a person can actually take a break from the game and not lose on the amount of guildleves they can do, which is a very good thing. Granted it may take them froever to do all their leves, especially after taking a long break.

However, I remember the general peoples wanting fieldcraft leves split off from the regional leves section like local leves currently are. But instead, local leves will be combined into the leve total. I for one am totally against this combination. Fieldcraft (Gathering), Battle, and Local(Crafting) leves should have all had their own categories a long time ago. It was brought up time and time again that Fieldcraft shouldn't be in the same category as battlecraft. What is with this change?

Also, the total number of leves doable in a 36 hour period from the adventurers guild will be reduced from 16 to 12. What about the people that dont take a break from the game ever. Those people will have less to do per day than the people that take breaks. People wanted more to do per day, not less. One could say this would be good for those who only do one type of guildleve per reset, but where do you find 12 gathering leve of the same type? there are only 6 of each rank for each class. And unless there are plans to add a ton of new gather and local leves for each rank, this isn't going to do any good.

I also know there are plans to add companies guildleves as well, but is there any need to reduce the amount of adventure leves doable, and/or to combine locals into the total count? I don't think so.

[Konachibi]

There were a lot of long words in the dev post so it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me XD

However I do agree with Reika, it's nice that we can pick up leve's more often, but it's still a reduction in how many we can do, and I personally was hoping for an increase, or for the reset time to be reduced to 24 hours instead of the current 36, as I tend to do all my leve's in one day then the next day I have nothing to do.

Seperating leves efficiently would make better sense, many of us like to do battle, gathering and crafting all on one character, and with these new restrictions it's going to be incredibly tough/incredibly confusing as to which leves to accept, because choosing one set of leves is only going to slow down a different aspect of your character (taking crafting leve means no SP for your battle class for the next 12 hours unless you want to kill dodos, etc.)

Now if we could do 4 of each per every 12 hours (4 battle, 4 crafting, 4 gathering) that'd be much better, especially since with the addition of riding chocobos running from one city to another will be more enjoyable and less of a chore.

[zerrith]

I too like the reduction in the leve cycle time, but I think 4 leves is too little. I think the 4 of each type per cycle is better.

[Kilgore_Trout]

Having only 4 leves combined every 12 hours is pretty silly. The accrual aspect of this new system is fine for players that take long breaks, but for those of us with multiple jobs, we need better accessibility and organization. Also, are the "allowances" being accrued, or are the leves themselves being accrued? In other words, when a new allowance is issued after twelve hours, would I need to log in and accept new leves to add to my journal? Or if I am out of the game long enough for three resets, would I then be entitled to pick-up 12 leves upon entering the game?

The simplistic leves currently available would not take 12 hours to complete. Therefore, even the most dedicated players are spending time doing nothing! This is one of the biggest complaints of the game currently--lack of action and engaging options.

I completely agree with some of the other posters that we need to split-out regional, factional, local, and now even Grand Companies or Guildleves. Combining everything is a horrible idea and a definite step backwards for this game. The current system would even be better than this. "Local" leves should also be renamed to "Crafting" or "Disciple of Hand" Leves. Please do more to reduce the vague categories. Just stick to something basic, but strong like: Storyline, Battlecraft, Fieldcraft, Factional, Crafting, etc.

As an aside, my personal opinion is that the current mode of display for leves is a bit lacking in terms of information and usefulness. In the journal, I would like to see additional columns of data such as: location (Limsa Lominsa, Gridania, etc), job type (MIN,ARM,etc for Disciple of Hand/Land jobs), and even a quick link for the related map location. I don't think this would add too much clutter, and surely this information can be pulled rather easily upon demand. It is a nuisance to be required to open each leve to see where the leve is, and get other basic data. Streamlining this data would help a lot and reduce the need to dig around in menus or even use a piece of scrap paper.

All in all, this change is not progressive for the game overall. Please spend more time creating engaging leve quests that will actually make the player feel as if he or she is a part of something--as if the game and leves are building up to something bigger. Everything seems so flat nowadays: go here, kill/make this, get gil/XP. Repeat 4,000,000 times to gain a rank of 40. This new development for patch 1.19 exposes the assumption that Square Enix has not spent time developing more leves or content. I see this as a means to further slow-down each player.

Engage! Entertain! Bring us into the game, and make us reluctant to leave! We want to be a part of FFXIV, but there's very little meat in this soup at the moment. Gaining ranks through performance of interesting quests would be so much more enjoyable than GRINDING! This game is all about grinding, and then, oh yeah!, I'll do a few quests...and then back to grinding. The players in this game are experienced RPG'ers and we are still playing this game because we love what it could become and have such high hopes for this evolving online world. Wouldn't you guys actually like to start charging for this game? And be able to rework a marketing campaign to increase sales based on solid gameplay, storyline, user interface, and other key ingredients? I can't recommend this game to many friends because when I'm asked what I do in the game, my response is usually, "Well, I grinded for experience points over a 5 hour period. Since I'm past rank 25 I may not even increase rank in that period either. I guess I will need to start grinding for 7 hours every time I play." Not very cool.

[LittleLala]

Really...this is where you want to take this game? I honestly don't know who's coming up with some of the ideas over there but I have to say it feels like a string of misses are being thrown your end! Why on earth would it be a good thing to reduce ALL of the leves to 4!? It's madness. I was just thinking - hey you know what we could do with, more leves and then you go and do this? :/ Really it feels like you're blatently trying to slow people down so they don't acheive rank 50 and shoot off your game before you have time to expand. But! You are taking away a lot of the enjoyment of everyone by constantly handicapping us Now people will get bored faster and end up logging off more - how do you think that's going to improve the constantly growing depopulation of servers? Bad move s.e bad move indeed!

[Kilgore_Trout]

Really...this is where you want to take this game? I honestly don't know who's coming up with some of the ideas over there but I have to say it feels like a string of misses are being thrown your end! Why on earth would it be a good thing to reduce ALL of the leves to 4!? It's madness. I was just thinking - hey you know what we could do with, more leves and then you go and do this? :/ Really it feels like you're blatently trying to slow people down so they don't acheive rank 50 and shoot off your game before you have time to expand. But! You are taking away a lot of the enjoyment of everyone by constantly handicapping us Now people will get bored faster and end up logging off more - how do you think that's going to improve the constantly growing depopulation of servers? Bad move s.e bad move indeed!

I think SE should also keep in mind that we are voicing the concerns of many many players--this is not just a handful of us speaking-out about this issue. Many other players in my linkshell have the same complaints about the current system. Most players I chat with have echoed your sentiments exactly: we need more leve content and better availability of quests. I generally do not post on the forums because I have gained a bit of optimism due to the pace of updates and upcoming fixes/additions in the game. This, however, is a handicap to the very backbone of the game.

[Holland]

I think you guys are seeing this from the wrong point of view. All these changes are not to fix issues now, but in the long term of the game.

Leves are no longer the main theme of the game. By the time they start charging for the game enough content should be there for anyone who starts to almost have no time at all to do leves.

For the current players, sure, its not enough if they are playing constantly, but really nothing in the game right now is enough. Try and think about when the game is ready for fees if you really will complain about four leves every twelve hours. Leves are no longer for the hardcore, but specifically for the casual player who will log in after a days work and most surely just log in to the leves, maybe two or three before continuing on to do events or any other type of content.

All changes done to the game are thinking ahead when other content will be more important than leves and you will be logging in today to do raids and quests, tomorrow to do primal battles and large scale PVE and days after tomorrow, sure lets do leves, wow, you now have like 24 leves to do !

[Kilgore_Trout]

I think you guys are seeing this from the wrong point of view. All these changes are not to fix issues now, but in the long term of the game.

Leves are no longer the main theme of the game. By the time they start charging for the game enough content should be there for anyone who starts to almost have no time at all to do leves.

For the current players, sure, its not enough if they are playing constantly, but really nothing in the game right now is enough. Try and think about when the game is ready for fees if you really will complain about four leves every twelve hours. Leves are no longer for the hardcore, but specifically for the casual player who will log in after a days work and most surely just log in to the leves, maybe two or three before continuing on to do events or any other type of content.

All changes done to the game are thinking ahead when other content will be more important than leves and you will be logging in today to do raids and quests, tomorrow to do primal battles and large scale PVE and days after tomorrow, sure lets do leves, wow, you now have like 24 leves to do !

Actually, thanks for the positive spin on this. I think the leve system could (and possibly "should") be more robust, but you do make a good point about considering the additional content to come--especially for those primarily geared towards DoW or DoM. Disciples of Land and Hand, however, seem to need to rely too much on grinding at the moment.

This may be a far-reaching implementation, but the selfish side of me wants more content. Now!

Thanks for your post. Is there anyone that can tie this into something long-term from other news releases? I do trust this game will mature nicely in time.

[Zenaku]

ok if you get 4 every 12hours then wait 24hours like we been doing and you have 8 o.o or wait more days and you have more. I don't see a issue with this at all or there something i'm missing here?

But i agree DOL should not be with DOW leves.

[Estellios]

Just remember that this patch is also going to be making enemy grinding and dungeon runs a lot more rewarding, so you will have less leves to do but you will also have those avenues for getting XP if you have more time on your hands and can play more often. Being able to focus solely on 1 type of leve is a welcome trade off to being able to do more of them but split up, IMO.