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Final Fantasy XIV: Guildleve Reforms
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week developers announced that the guildleve system in Final Fantasy XIV would be overhauled. A new developer blog has shown up on the Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone that lays out the details of exactly what that 'reform' means.
Regional Levequests
The skill point bonus will be abolished for battlecraft leves. The amount of skill points awarded for slaying individual enemies will be reduced, but this will be offset by the inclusion of skill points as a reward for leve completion. To accommodate this change, factors such as recommended/actual rank disparity, completion time, and partial participation will be made to influence the amount of points yielded. In addition, leve linking and sharing bonuses will be reduced, while the maximum number of linkable leves will be raised.
Read more on the Final Fantasy XIV.
Comments
I still think the biggest problem with Guildleves is the reset timer. Only being able to accept 16 every 36 hours was a terrible decision that shackled their "heart of gameplay" from the beginning. Add to that the risk of instantly failing the leve if anything happens to your connection with no way to recover just makes the whole system even more terrible.
Ugh, this is really quoted out of context in a way....
Your snippet forgets to mention they are removing the 8 levequest limitation, and are orienting the levequest system more for the casual solo players who only have an hour or so per day to play.
Edit: Just checked the patch notes, no mention of the levequest limitations being removed. This was mentioned however in a Developer's log / journal or whatnot.
Got this game for £5 last week because I plan to play it once they finish fixing it. It's a gorgeous looking game.
I haven't been playing much lately, just watch the Lodestone for developer letters & patch notes. I figure when the PS3 version is released, that is when SE feels like the game is ready.
I felt like they actually need a real relaunch of the title when all the updates are done. Like call it XIV-2 or something, not a PS3 launch. Cuz judging from the milestone letters the game will be a whole lot different from what it is now, especially with all the class changes, stories and battle dynamics.
A real relaunch like APB will give it more attention, and perhaps make more ppl willing to try it.
The new director has said that leves were teh wrong way to go. He's going in a different direction. Leves will be primarily for casual players. I think he's going the STory/Quest/Dungeon route for content.
I cam back a month ago and loving some of the subtle changes. But to be honest, if the new class design and combat system don't "hook me in" I'm going to SWTOR and GW2 (yes both since only one requires a sub).
Agreed, it's a very poorly designed system. Not fun at all.
I'm afraid so many people were turned off by their first experience of FF XIV—probably in beta or early release—that the game lost its appeal like, forever.
Even if they're somehow great at making it up for us as we speak, it's too little too late: we're alienated, because not only do we not recognize Square in the latest installments of the series (XIII, XIV…), we now firmly doubt their vision of gaming is even one we seek as (western) players.
More and more, it seems that Square doesn't just fail at making the games they want (they certainly struggle with development these days, but that's not all), they fail at making the games WE want. Which are two very different things. XIV is wrong on the form, but FF is wrong on content in general.
What I mean is that the name FF may rather play 'against' than 'for' those games from now on, at least for some people. Many of us who've known FF for a long time will be rather suspicious than enthusiastic when the next one comes out. And we're very doubtful they can turn XIV around in time—before it definitely turns into a lost battle for 50 or 60k players.
Though I admire the courage displayed by its team, the whole idea of re-making XIV is as bold as it's uncertain. The MMO demand will soon be met by TOR and GW2, much touted as "real-AAA" titles—as opposed to "shallow-big-budgets". Let's compare with the movies: how much do you want the "director's cut" of a shallow blockbuster (say, Batman Forever, or FF: The Spirit Within) when real AAA quality is about to come out? Would you rater buy the remake of Transformers, or the theatrical (original) version of Inception?
Back to our trade, how much do you want—do you need—Aion, Tera even Rift or DC Universe when GW2, TOR and the next Blizzard are on the tracks? What does FF XIV have to reply to those games? As it was developed without even considering its past or future competitors, in a bubble cut off reality, is it even possible that it answers players' expectations?
I, for one, very much doubt that the answer to those questions will favor FF or Square-Enix, and the more time passes by, the worse their situation seems to be.
[note: this is not to say FF does not make money, nor Squeenix as a giant of entertainment. it's just an acknowledgement of their utter failure in the specific market of AAA-MMOs]