Thread: What is Missing in 2.0 - Ways to Level classes

I'm a new player that's started a week or two ago and so far I'm level 32. Leveling hasn't been all that painful. Mainly I've just been doing leves, sidequests, the storyline, and whatever class quests etc are available. Here are my thoughts on what leveling up in FFXIV is currently like:

Leves - I hate to say this, but I have been thinking about WoW and something they do really well is breadcrumb the player. You go from one hub to the next doing quests that teach the player about the people and the lore of the world. I get that most of the quests are essentially the same, go kill 10 xyz things. In XIV you just repeat leves, behest, and dungeons over and over. At lease Blizzard covers up their grind with new locations enemies and lore as the player progresses through to highest level. WoW has thousands of quests and XIV has maybe 100. I am not saying that questing is going to fix XIV's leveling. I guess I just want more variety in how we level.

I agree with this. Leves don't need to be thrown away or anything, but some quests at each settlement would help advance the player as well as develop the world and lore, giving various zones some more unique personality. It doesn't have to be to the extent of WoW or games like it, but having both leves and a small quest hub element would give the game a lot more variety to playing and depth to the world. Quality>Quantity, as long as there are a few of a them I think it'd go a long way. This would also help a ton with making people feel more connected to the world.

Sidequests - A joke if you consider them a way to level your classes, you can only do them once and it seems like are more about getting some gear for free and to teach you some lore. All in all they seem like a waste of time.

I think these were pretty decent, though they could be better made and more interesting. I agree that it's more about getting some free gear, but the exp is a nice perk. I wouldn't count it out as it does diversify the leveling experience and provide a good lore and immersion element. One main point is that you cannot do these again, so trying to level a second class will be extremely boring. I think this is a problem that could be rectified somehow, atm the main solution is powerleveling.

Behest - Super grindy and seem pointless, I haven't done in months and months

Agreed, these are pretty pointless. There's a good idea here, but at the moment they aren't robust enough to bother with. There at least needs to be more incentive to do these. I also think content where you have to wait around for it to start is problematic because people don't want to wait or bother to check if they have to wait.

I think a problem is that you have to sign up beforehand. It should just start on it's own and you can join in whenever you want. None of this invisible monster crap where if you didn't sign up you can't see anything.

Dungeons - More low level dungeons would be nice. All we have is 1 R15 and 1 R25.

Agreed. To be honest the dungeons feel a little dinky, so they either should be beefed up a bit or add a few more. Personally I think you need to impress players early on, so having a pretty nice dungeon for low levels wouldn't hurt, I don't think Sposhae can really cut it for a lot of people. There could also be more quests added as a reason to visit each dungeon, perhaps as side missions. Like for Sposhae, maybe a quest to kill the crab boss, etc.

Caravan Escort - I have only done this to grind company seals at R50, so no leveling here. I know I could do the lower level one maybe to get seals and level.

Haven't done these yet. Personally I think the problem with these types of content are that you have to wait around for them to start. People don't want to wait around when they can just keep grinding and be more efficient. Otherwise the idea of content that anyone can join in on is nice.

I'll also just add that Grand Company leves are painfully bad. They need to either be improved, have the reward upped a bit, or just removed because they make the game feel bad. Preferably improve them, as it's a good reason to visit world dungeons, and they could also make them feel a little more dungeon like rather than just subzones.

One more note, the storyline is great and makes leveling a lot more enjoyable, but at the same time too much and it can start to feel like you're out of touch with other players.

TL;DR
-Add a small but robust quest hub element to add variety to leveling, flavor to the world, and story to each settlement. Quality>Quantity. This is not to dominate or totally drive the leveling experience, but to diversify it.
-More dungeons, with more quests for them, with improved quality to impress players early on.
-People are just going to skip over behests because of the timed increments and not being impressive enough. Guild Wars 2 is doing something like this but will have bosses whose difficulty will scale to however many people are participating. I think that's the direction FFXIV should go with this.

One more thing - just saying "in FFXIV you use parties to play" is a cop-out. You can do that in any game, and just killing new monsters in a new environment isn't going to convince people to pay a monthly fee. Overall though, the leveling experience for me has actually been pretty good and diverse. It just needs that extra oomph and some fixes, adjustments, and fine tuning.