What Tera taught me about the quest plans for ARR.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

Tera isn't that terribad, lol story wise is ok, quest can get bored with it's such function not really what yoou can expect, (WoW's quest is much2 better than any MMO game period)

Tera still nice to play since we do kind of PT and kill stuff.. depend on the community really. :\ not sure about US community, i only can play on EU :P

[HiirNoivl]

TL;DR: SE really should be very careful about how they approach this whole 'you'll be able to quest-grind all your classes to 50' thing.

This is true. However, Tera does not have the Fate system, it's lore and storylines are pretty standard and uninteresting. It's NPCs don't say much interesting and the vast majority of people end up spamming enter-Key through the dialogue so that the meaning of the quest is lost and it just feels like regular grinding and mob camping.

But I like the quest oriented system of BAMs and NMs are always tied to a story and are not just wandering around for no reason. I think the most reason people think Tera quest grinding is boring is because they don't really pay attention to the quest and all that's left is the grind.

So since FFXIV: ARR has better in the way of story, the F.A.T.E system to break up the monotony, and hopefully better lore.......

I'm not too worried about it.

[Soukyuu]

Tera isn't that terribad, lol story wise is ok, quest can get bored with it's such function not really what yoou can expect

Yeah, it isn't terrible, but it's not good enough to warrant a sub... which is why they're going f2p. Also, the European publisher keeps pushing the limits of inability, reminding me of another publisher with a similar behavior and fate... and they're both from the same country... did they change the name? lol

[Atoli]

I'd rather wait for a time when a great part of the content is revealed already, like maybe by the time open beta comes around, to judge ARR's leveling system.
To be honest, I always loved the 1.0 approach of "just grind your way to the few quests which have great stories" rather than the " we throw 40.000 quests at you but they are all the same and basically just go and kill xy" which is common in most MMOs.
At the same time, I can't even put my anger and frustration into words which I felt after sitting in Ul'dah for 3 hours, shouting for people to join my exp party and not finding ANY.
Or the horribly slow pace when I tried going solo instead.

Also, I always thought that the intervalls between great quests are way too big. Like..you need to have that kind of stuff at least once per level on every class. Not every 5-15 levels and only on the first class.

Basically, those grind quests are not a bad thing.
For ~3 days, I can even enoy them. I miss the social part about it, but let's face it, not every Ant/Raptor/Nathalan party we joined was super talkative and social either. So for those days you just want to go for it by yourself a bit, it's nicer than guild leves (annoyance of my life -.-) and way more rewarding than normal solo grinding. You even get a 'bit' of story to it and maybe there will be something like a reputation you can build up with NPCs in a certain area by completing tasks for them.
So there ARE interesting sides to quest grinding.
I just think all the possibilities should be kept like..having the same amount of exp as a reward in the same amount of time.
By making quest leveling the central way of leveling, it means dumbing down other ways and I don't like that.

This kind of balancing stuff and intervalls between "real" quests aka storyline quests are things we can't judge yet since Alpha as well as the first beta stages didn't have/won't have most of the content yet.
Let's see how it plays out first when we can actually judge it


Something else I just remembered:
TONS of sidequests are not only typical for MMOs but for the FF franchise as well.
I'll explain on the example of FFXII Revenant Wings because it's the last one I played.
You have the main storyline with the Judge of Wings an everything, and then there are also a giant amount of sidequests you don't have to do but they are fun because they are welldone.
They have very different objectives ('rescue Ryuks friends', 'sneak into Ruin XY', 'kill off some bandits', 'gather food after airship crash' etc.) and they always fit in very well with the main storyline and the whole world you are in.
If quest based leveling in ARR had such a wide range of different quest objectives and the story to them were deepening the bond to the world and the main story, I wouldn't mind them at all.

TL;DR
Judge when we can actually see the whole picture.
Quest grinding isn't generally 'bad'; if it's done right and balanced right with other forms of leveling, it can be quite enjoyable and enhance gameplay for everyone

[Seirra_Lanzce]

actually it needs to be captivating, SWTOR quest is kind of nice, but very expensive <_<

[trep]

As long as they give us the choice on how we want to spend our time leveling. Some will like quest grind better, others exps parties, grinding instances, etc. I don't see anything wrong with an overwhelming number of quests since there are many classes to get up to 50. The more options we have, the less grindy it will feel in my opinion (cause at the end, leveling will always involve a bit of grind).

[yukikaze_yanagi]

i'm not worried, tera have one of the worst iterations of quest-based mmo ever, i tried it in beta and got bored after just 1 hour <_< the game has been watered down by gameforge for the western launch too, one of the worst mmo publisher ever. Not very strange they failed

[Warlock]

TERA is now a FFXIV:ARR-clone pulling off a 2.0 re-release and giving "legacy" status XD

[Rane]

I enjoyed the battle portion of Tera, but like you I thought the quests were really bland. I'm not against questing systems: in fact, I like them! But it seems like little effort was made to make quests interesting in Tera. I remember one NPC asking me to kill 10 of something because the mobs annoyed him. I believe the quest text itself was around four sentences long.

"The number of XXX has been increasing of late. They now regularly encroach upon our camp. They annoy me. Go thin their numbers."

Luckily, I think we can safely say that there is no way XIV quests will be that bland. Story has always been a central component of Final Fantasy games, and I don't think that's about to change. But the OP is right: the devs will have to work hard to make quests interesting while also ensuring that there are enough of them out there.

[Xatsh]

I agree with the op.

I quit tera as well because of the endless quest grind. Seems like I hit this wall with most quest based mmos. I hit the lvl 30-40 level mark the newness of the mmo goes away and end up quitting because I am sick of solo questing. For me at least quest leveling in mainstream mmos is harder then leveling in old XI. Simply because it gets unbearable for me.

Interaction is the key to a successful mmo. Without it you are paying to play a solo player game which is absurd.