The chocobo license quest stands out as very archaic in its structure now that virtually everything else has been streamlined. My brother is joining FFXI next month, and I know he's not going to react positively to this quest. And anyone who's tried to explain this quest to a noob knows that it's frustrating. And right now, I'm working on it for a mule. If you somehow forgot how ridiculous and convuluted the quest is, read this link.
Issues
- "Chocobo on the Loose!": players are forced to flag this quest when they approach the stables. This is misleading and confusing. The ONLY way to know that this is not the chocobo license quest is if you're following a walkthrough or if a veteran is explaining it to you. This early in the game, not many players are following FFXI wikis like they're the Bible, so this is very misleading and inconvenient. Even after it's flagged, dialogue for this quest prevents the flagging for the license quest unless you talk to Brutus multiple times in a row.
- The quest takes a minimum of 6 game days (6+ hours) to complete. Noobs have trouble making it back to Jeuno, and if they set it as their home point, they have trouble making it back to their home nations. Forcing them to either dink around in Jeuno this many hours on such an inconvenient and uneventful quest or forcing them to chug along at a wamouracampa's pace without a chocobo because they don't want to stay in Jeuno for 6 hours is like begging noobs to unsubscribe from the game.
- Gausebit Grass is classified as a weapon in the auction house. No noob in the history of noobdom has ever figured out on his own that he should look in the weapons category of the AH for freaking grass. Also, it has a tendency to be sold out or prohibitively (by new players' standards) overpriced.
Modern-day FFXI Solutions
- Make completion of "Chocobo's Wounds" required before "Chocobo on the Loose!" can start. Players who flag the quest before the update can complete it normally, but after the update, the cutscene should only activate for players who already have a chocobo license.
- This is the WORST-case scenario, but the minimum required to make it reasonable: Remove the two days from the quest that the chocobo refuses your grass. Make the rest of the trades once per GAME hour. For example, Noobynoobnoob could trade at 3:53 VT, 4:01 VT, 5:30 VT, and 6:02 VT, where VT = Vana'diel Time. Or better yet, cut down the required trading even more.
- Add Gausebit Grass to the nearby chocobo shop NPC.
Please?