Leve quest allowances are horribly outdated and could use a rework

[smirk45]

Leve quests are a relic of the 1.0 era and were a primary source of gaining experience for your jobs. They carried over into the 2.0+ era and have become extremely outdated in their use as experience tools with all of the new ways to gain exp for both combat and for DOH/DOL such as the Firmament and Crystarium/Sharlayan side content.

All players in the game fall into one of the following four categories when it comes to leves.

1. Players that are aiming for the 5000 of each type achievements
2. Players that use the allowances for some slow, consistent money making such as the biscuit shuffle from Shadowbringers
3. Players that use leves once per expansion to level up their DOH/DOL jobs quickly
4. Players that have no idea leves exist or don't level DOH/DOL and sit at 100 allowances none the wiser

I personally am in group 1. I'm an achievement hunter, and I'm currently on pace to have completed every available achievement in the game before the release of Dawntrail EXCEPT for the 5000 leve achievements entirely because of the allowance acquisition timer. It is extremely disheartening to be so close to 100% and be blocked entirely because I only started my achievement grind in 5.2.

To break down the insane amount of time that these achievements take to earn:

• You gain 3 allowances every 12 hours, or 6 per day
• 5000 allowances would require 834 days or a little bit over two and a quarter YEARS
• There are THREE of these achievements, PLUS THREE 500 leve achievements for each Grand Company
• The grand total of 16500 leves for all 6 of these achievements takes you SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS of purely waiting

Now, one could argue that it's alright to have these types of achievements based solely on timers. I would agree that they are acceptable. The custom delivery achievements for 150 turn-ins are essentially the same thing. However, these each take only 25 WEEKS of waiting. A far cry from the two and a quarter YEARS for the 5000 leves. It’s hard to argue that ANY achievement should require over a year of waiting for timers in any reasonable sense, especially when the achievements require absolutely no skill to complete. Battle leves are 2-3 minutes each of flying to their spot and one-shotting a few mobs and then teleporting back to turn them in. An infinite amount of allowances would still require a massive 250 hours of work to finish JUST the battle leves achievement.

[smirk45]

I have three suggested changes to the allowance system, and each would effect each of the 4 types of players differently.

1. Multiply the amount of allowances per 12 hour period by 2-4 times
2. Add in a vendor that sells allowances for a gil amount that is higher than the amount of gil that would be rewarded for finishing a leve with the maximum bonuses such as HQ turn-ins or speed/acquisition for the DOL side
3. You can continue to run leves infinitely to receive credit for achievements, but once you are out of allowances, you no longer receive any exp, gil, or items (idea by Selene Amaris @ Siren)

Option 1 would allow player type 1 to finish at a much more reasonable 3.75-1.8 years based on the increase at the cost of having to work harder to keep allowances from capping out. Player type 2 would gain a nominally higher amount of gil per set period which could be argued to add to the already horrific inflation that plagues the game as a negative. Player type 3 would basically be able to finish their DOH jobs a couple days faster, as it generally takes ~140 or so leves to finish all 8 jobs, and player type 4 is not affected by either change.

Option 2 would allow players of type 1 with large sums of gil to speed up the process of these achievements at their own pace, and the other 3 types of players would be unaffected because of the cost or general apathy to the system as a whole.

Option 3 would obviously only benefit players of type 1, as the rewards are why normal players would interact with the system in the first place.

Personally, I think that option 3 is clearly the best, as it would have no tangible effect on the largest number of people. Option 2 would be the second best option to take, as it has essentially no negatives to the current state of the game, and could potentially help remove more gil from the game, even if only from a tiny subsection of the playerbase.

This is entirely a selfish request, I will admit. You could argue that the players that do already have these achievements will feel cheated because they spent the time waiting and never letting their allowances hit the cap over such a long period of time, but does it really matter in the end? These achievements have absolutely no skill involved other than patience, and are far from the most offensive achievements in the game, numbers wise. Hell, the THREE 1000 wins in pvp for each grand company assuming a 33% win rate over time would take you nearly 94 DAYS of playtime alone. Can we please make leves so much less of a wall to completion. One of my greatest gaming fears is that somehow FFXIV shuts down before I’m able to attain true 100% because of these achievements.

[Zairava]

I actually kind of agree that it would be a decent gil-sink if we were able to do that, and the fact it would cost gil to begin with would make sure that it isn't abusable to make gil from levequests. In essence it really would only benefit achievement hunters and people speed leveling their crafters.

I personally view the lack of battle leves as an issue as well, while we're on the topic of levequests. I'm not entirely sure by what scale it would make the open world more lively, but I think it would be nice to have those as a source of exp on alt jobs.

[Kleeya]

For option 1 that would most likely come with a big nerf to all the money gained (like the cofee biscuits leve already nerfed in the past), and that would just make the players not caring about the achievements angry. The problem being that they are surely more numerous than the players wanting long term achievements.

Options 2 and 3 are awful. "Oh, you did spend many years dedicating yourself to the game to get these achievements ? Well, now we are gonna change them so that people cheating with boting add-ons can complete them in less than a week being afk, please understand and don't be angry". Kinda shows how hard being a good game designer is, and how "wait, if i do that how will players try to abuse it ?" is an important question to answer before making changes to a game, if you don't want to end with even more threads like When will SE acknowledge there is a BIG cheating problem? on the official forums.

[smirk45]

I don't disagree that it is a bit of a spit in the face for people that did stick around and wait out the huge timer. All the same, methods change and improve over time. PotD solo was made possible from a basically impossible state with the addition of sustaining potions, and then became even more accessible when the Shadowbringers MCH rework came around. Does that devalue the efforts and work that people who cleared before Shadowbringers? Maybe a little bit, but that achievement still requires effort and skill to obtain. It didn't become free with the changes over time. Old ultimates also become easier as they age because of potency inflation and ilvl syncing quirks.

I personally don't think that being subbed and handing over a small stack of items once a week for 3 years is really something that you can devalue the efforts of by making a system that a good portion of the player base interacts with once an expansion or never at all be more accessible. There's also the fact that these achievements don't come with any rewards beyond the points like a title or a mount, so while people would definitely do so, there really aren't that many people that would care enough to do it. Botting and cheating are definitely a huge problem in game, but Leves is not a place where I would expect to see much, if at all, mostly because there would be no positive gil/item reward for doing it with option 2 or 3.