Eorzean Escapades Part 2: Guildleves and Questing

Last time on Eorzean Escapades…

We made a character!

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We fought a flaily arm thing!

We had very little idea of what to do or how to do it!

Spending some more time with the game revealed an interesting and unique quest delivery system. Called “Guildleves,” these compartmentalized activities provide you some direction and purpose, which is great, cause I still have mostly no idea what I’m doing.

First, you have to accept a guildleve from an NPC. These range from WoW-centric “Kill five rats” type quests to more eccentric crafting or resource gathering tasks. The leve will tell you when accepting what sort of skills will be required to complete it.

Then you have to travel to the quest hub for that leve. Since I picked a tutorial leve, it was just  a short trot outside.

High-fiving the aetherite crystal floating in the middle of camp not only “binds” me to this location (to borrow a bit of WoW verbeage), but it also adds this location to a “teleport” list. In FFXIV, you can teleport to any crystal you’ve touched before, but teleporting consumes “anima,” a resource that only recharges with the passage of time. Basically put, you can teleport anywhere you’ve been before, but you can only do it so many times.

So now it’s time to kill some rats moles. Each leve has multiple difficulty levels which implies support for both soloing and partying. I presume higher difficulties yield greater experience / gil rewards, but I’ll have to fully test that. Activating the leve starts a time limit and enables you to interact with the objective of that leve. In my case, activating the leve allowed me to attack the moles I had to kill for the quest.

Accepting a leve even puts a giant glowing spot on the map of where you need to go to complete the quest. In this way, leves are kinda sorta like instances that run inside the full game. Activating the leve allows you to sidestep the general game population, giving you unencumbered access to the junk you need. Ideally this will prevent all the Chinese gold farmers from harvesting all the trash mobs and resource collection spots at the beginning of the game.

Because I’m awesome (and not because it was just a tutorial level), stomping moles was no problem at all. Finishing the leve produced a jingle anyone seasoned in Final Fantasy will recognize.

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Finishing a leve even summons up a handy puff of magic you can use to turn in the quest and teleport back to your crystal of origin.

This system has a lot of potential. Since they’re offered from a centralized NPC, Square can update with unique and fresh quests. One week could offer a challenging monster kill while another encourages more crafting in a particular area of the game that might be lacking.

Of course, the efficacy of this system is something that will need more time to judge. We’ll have more information on this system pending more experience with it.

But now, it’s time to check in on the ongoing drama of catgirls and dudes wearing tiny anime glasses.

The flower I was handed in the intro cutscene was apparently worth some money.

Someone’s father was killed by the wobbly-arm thing. The kid is now sad and angry at the magic dude that let it go.

This tiny thing has a curly moustache.

The kid is still sad.

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I fought in a coliseum per Final Fantasy regulations.

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And, as promised, I listened to a Catgirl sing and got in an emote duel with her.

There’s a central narrative developing in the main quest line, and also per Final Fantasy regulations it is very cutscene heavy. The story is basic, but the cinematic camera angles are a nice change of pace for MMOs that usually rely on nothing but boxes of text (though the dialogue is just boxes of text).

I finished up the first main quest line, and though I expected one to, another one did not take its place. It’s possible that this game follows a structure similar to Final Fantasy XI: occasional cutscene-based quest strings will pop up at certain player level graduations to develop a semi-interesting story. The story so far is more interesting than that of FFXI’s, which is to say it is more interesting than a cardboard box.

And finally, another quick word on the game’s visuals. Jesus god does this game look good.

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Since part 1, I even had to partake in a cross-country quest to meet up with another player for a linkshell invitation. As in FFXI, the world is huge and your character may as well be perpetually under the Slow spell. It took me about 50 minutes to travel on foot from one of the game’s three main cities to another.

Personally, I enjoyed the trip thanks to the following sights:

But I’ve found I’m traditionally more patient than most gamers. Travel, like the rest of Final Fantasy XIV even down to the interface, is slow to the point of unresponsive. As I play, I’m getting the growing impression that FFXIV will appeal to gamers that are ok with not always doing what they want, or really not always doing something exciting or interesting. Merely being must be enough – and it won’t be for everyone. I did ride a boat though:

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So that’s it for this entry. Make sure to check back next time for

HITTING ROCKS!

Summary so far (5 hours played):

- Still looks great

- Leve system full of potential

- Story ho-hum

- Still not sure what I’m doing most of the time