Levequests... what's your opinion?

[Reika]

I want to be able to link/share Local leves....

[Kirith]

Hate it. They need to have a LOT more variety and have a certain amount of variability every time you do one. The issue for now is that leves are something you have to do a lot of times. You do a quest once and forget about it, but you do the same leves at every reset. They need to be procedural. Meaning every time you run one it's somewhat different from how it was before. The mobs aren't in the same position, they aren't the same mobs and/or they behave differently.

They could make leves procedurally generated dungeons or instances, its not like you interact with players outside your party while doing a timed leve anyway. Add a random chance of unexpected events happening in the instance.

For example:
You kill weak imps camouflaged as sheep. The sheep would be much stronger than imps if they were real. The game keeps track of your rank. If your rank is high enough there is a chance one of the sheep is actually real and a trick by the imps, so you get both attacked by the angered sheep and the imps. Another time, killing imps causes an Imp King to pop out and attack you with abilities normal imps don't have. Another time, the fake sheep attract wolves, but since the sheep are actually imps camouflaged the imps would run away and you would be left fighting wolves instead. Etcetera. You can even change the reward based on what happened during the leve to add even more interest...

[Loony_BoB]

I like battle levequests. The only bad thing about them is just how much sp you earn compared to normal. It makes it feel like you have to keep doing levequests, which I suppose in a good way makes you want to party up with more people. But still, I like them overall.

I like the other levequests as well, but feel that you should be able to get more. You can't help other people with crafting levequests, so it's much more difficult to level your crafter than it is your fighter. Likewise gathering - sure, you CAN combine leves there, but is it worth it? It would make sense if it increased the amount of work you have to do depending on the 'difficulty' but instead you just end up with the leve being done in a very fast timeframe and having to go back to the very slow grind.

So basically, leave battle as it is, increase the number of gathering/crafting leves you can have. This would require moving gathering leves out of the regional levequest area, but I don't know why they are grouped together like that in the first place.

I have to say, though, I'd not mind if they did away with levequests altogether. Most people just constantly do leves and then stop playing for 36 hours instead of grinding. Nobody likes doing a grind after a good solid leve-session because everything slows down too much. Again, this mostly affects gatherers and crafters.

[Betelgeuzah]

You can't help other people with crafting levequests, so it's much more difficult to level your crafter than it is your fighter.

I may be wrong here, but I feel that the purpose for doing it this way is because the crafting and gathering leves are, unlike the combat leves, a supplementary method of progressing. And by this I mean, that crafters and gatherers are supposed to participate in the economy and supply ingredients and finished items to the market. Leves are an addition to that which give crafters a way to make progress without being required to participate in the economic life.

The combat leves on the other hand are the primary method of progression for combat classes, which is why there are the leve-link and leve-share options available. However, the system needs to work in a way that allows for combat classes to actually be able to do as many leves as they want to, with the limitation being that if you want to do more than eight, you need to participate in group-based content to do so. It does not differ from XI aside from giving the players more leeway if needed, right now at least.

But as long as players are unable to progress at their own pace (with the limitation in mind), the system needs tweaking. Right now it seems that the largest problems are the superiority of leve-linking compared to leve-sharing, the lack of people playing and the lack of mutual interest for groups to look for members and players to look for groups. Once those are dealt with, SE can start expanding the system further (since one of the complaints is that the leves are repetitive). Correct me if I am wrong.

[Loony_BoB]

From what I understand, the game is supposed to be laid out in a way that you could progress through the entire story without ever using a combat class. I don't know WHY, but...

[Betelgeuzah]

It's because the game is laid out in a way that you can progress by not fighting at all if you choose (crafting, gathering). Although it would do them well to either combine the two so that fighting isn't compromised for the other disciples to be able to complete the content or remove them from the main scenario quests altogether. They'll still have their own class quests and content either way.

[Karbine]

I hate that leve failing is the most efficient way to do leves. We should be able to choose the ones we want and they should all be worthwhile and have their own little benefits of why I would want to do this one over the other one on a certain occasion so we aren't doing dunesfolk fails non-stop.

Allowing us to pick our leves and adjusting rewards/SP available in each accordingly would make it so everyones not failing them to keep the same ones and not always doing the holy Dunesfolk, Levinshower, Ranine, Cracked Up etc.

[Loony_BoB]

Wait, how is levefailing efficient? =o

[Reika]

Wait, how is levefailing efficient? =o

Instead of hoping you would get the best leves again next reset, you fail it so you keep it and it refreshes on reset, so you can do it again. so people eventually have like, Dunesfolk, Riveries, and All Cracked up each reset.

[Kafeen]

I like them as an alternative to fighting random mobs, more as replacement for Fields of Valor than a quest system but I think it needs some changes.

Drop the 8 leve limit. Accepting 8 at a time is okay, but once they're complete / failed, you should be able to accept more.

Mobs are currently too easy for their levels. Yesterday I pulled both level 20 Guildleve mobs and a level 13 regular mob with an AOE spell. The level 13 mob was more difficult. They need either higher HP or more DEF or something.

They're much too short, some of this could be remedied by making the mobs more difficult but maybe the number of mobs / drops needed in the levequest needs adjusted too.

Needs more variety. There's very few types of quest at the moment. Even if you're not repeating the same levequest, you're often doing the same thing as a different quest anyway. Attack mob X until imps appear, kill mob Y until there's 1 left so it runs away, etc.