Quest Progression Graphical Help

OK so this was mentioned in the (in my opinion, downright SILLY "People who don't use wiki" thread, but it gave me an idea), FFXI is indeed, OBSCURE (emphasis) when it comes to who and what you need to do to further progress with any quest. To alleviate this i propose a graphical change of some sort over, around, by, close to, in some proximity to or a blip on the map that represents npc's to whom you need to speak in order to continue with a quest, or start a quest.

Some suggestions:
There is currently an 'unused' tab under markers. I realize that the map markers use these for certain things for new characters, and you can 'mark' where certain NPC's and such are, but if you don't know where they are initially, you run around asking people etc. Anyway, the point is, we could use these markers to go from one NPC to another, so you start a quest, they tell you to go talk to this or that NPC, and when you enter the zone that npc is in, it puts a symbol on your map, a dot, a ?, a tiny Q, ANYTHING that says 'HEY! LISTEN! You need to talk to this npc for whatever reason'. One example, you can start the AF quest at level 40, I'll use bst for an example. How are you supposed to know that you can do that? He doesn't say anything unless you talk to him on bst.... how many people actually run around randomly talking to npc's to find out you can or can not get a quest from them? What if when you walked by him, he had a Q over his head? Meaning he has a quest that you are qualified to undertake, or if you pull up your map up Upper Jueno, there is a Q where Brutus is.

^-- I know you can find all this on wiki, but some people are not good at finding these things for various reasons, and few people are courteous and helpful these days and if you really have no idea what you're doing 'look it up' wont help you much.

Now, I've been playing this game for a very long time, this thread is not for ME, i'm not mentioning it for my sake, i am stating this as someone who has answered the questions "Where do i go now?" and "Who do i talk to now?" about a billion (hyperbole) times. If players had a graphical representation to go by, questing would be a lot more enjoyable for a lot of people. It would also make the game more enjoyable and less confusing for new or returning people.

It really wouldn't do much. Just getting in the right zone as the NPC for a lot of quests or qualifying for them is, by itself, not easy to accomplish if you have no general idea those quests exist.

Finding the NPC also isn't really that hard compared to the rest of the quests. Look at the description for Whence Blows the Wind:

"Your innate limits can be pushed further by collecting the crests of the Orcs, the Quadav, and the Yagudo."

Now, assuming a person is totally unfamiliar with the quest, there are at least three potential areas where where each crest can be in, if you assume it must be in an area predominately inhabited by Orcs, Quadav, and Yagudo. Even if the location was clearly marked on the map, that still doesn't help. Two areas aren't accessible without items from a mission (although you don't have to be the one that got them, but if you have help from someone with those items, they probably know how to do the quest anyways) and one area requires doing a quest that you can't get until you fail to enter the area you need to get to. Again, someone else can use their item, but it defeats the idea that someone else isn't telling them explicitly how to do the quest. This quest also requires going to a location that is specifically not placed on the map at all.

Relatively speaking, that's one of the simpler examples because at least you can somewhat infer where they are supposed to be. In the grand scheme of things, "Where's Maat" or "Maat has a quest" isn't going to help people to the point many people are going to complete the quest unassisted outside complete luck.

The problem with this is that a vast majority of quests simply require you to zone into an area for a CS. Besides perhaps a directional pointer on the compass, there's not much they can add graphically to help you in this regard. I do like the idea of a symbol next to an NPC's name to denote available quests. Have like a green "?" next to their name for new quests and a red "?" for a quest in progress. It just gives you a quick reference as to who you should be speaking to.

Also this is as good a place as any to reiterate that the help text on most missions/quests is horrendous and really needs to be expanded with more specific data relating to what exactly you have to do. I know someone mentioned in the other thread that the help text for the "Three Paths" mission was only a sentence long which, as anyone who has completed this mission will tell you, is comical.