Blue + Quest Troubles & Suggestions

Now that I've gotten to level 80 and 60+ on multiple classes, I wanted to call out something from my new player experience; the Blue +Quests. As a new player it's difficult to discern what they are for and why they are important. You know they do something for you, but rarely compelling enough to pull you away from the MSQ leveling experience. Only after reaching 80 and completing the MSQ did I realize the mistakes I'd been making.

There are two core reasons for this:

1.) It's very easy to skip or miss them when focusing on the MSQ, as there's very little tying them in or making them feel needed.

2.) Once you've skipped a lot of them, it feels daunting to try and go back and finish them all. This is due to having no way to prioritize them or know what you missed. Additionally, they are very difficult to differentiate.

Some examples of rookie mistakes:
- I completely missed the materia quest at level 19 and got all the way to 80 before I thought about looking up how to equip materia. I never felt like I needed more "power" to complete a task, so it never felt important until max level.
- I missed a number of dunegons, raids and alliance raids in ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood & Stormbringer. For example, in ARR, you are required to go through the alliance raid before you can progress in the story. In the later expansions you are not.
- There was a cut scene with Cid when Alexander wakes up. I looked everywhere for Cid, but couldn't find him and just moved on. After level 80, I was curious about it and low and behold, the starting quest for that was from a completely different NPC than I perceived at the time.
- I skipped a ton of the +quests for flying, as flying doesn't feel all that important when focused on the MSQ; you're not in an individual zone for very long.


I have two suggestions as a result of my experiences:

1) It would be great if there were additional colors that shed light on what they were for. As an example:

- Red +Quest = Dungeon/Raids
- Purple +Quest = New System
- Blue +Quest = Navigation Quests (ie. for flying)

2) Have an in-game menu that displays all of the +quests you have completed/not completed and sort them out in buckets by what they do for you.

The simple rule is: do everything, except ones that are obviously job unlocks you don't want.

The more complex rule is that if it's out in a small village or field zone (other than Mor Dhona) and it doesn't have an aether current as a reward, especially if it leads on from a quest that did give you a current, it's probably unlocking side content that you can leave for now.

But generally, do everything.

Yeah that's kind of my point though... you don't realize this until you've already blown past it. Veteran players know this, players who've made this mistake now know this. How do you prevent this for new incoming players? I think they could really clean this up for a better new player experience.

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Originally Posted by RuJamali

Yeah that's kind of my point though... you don't realize this until you've already blown past it. Veteran players know this, players who've made this mistake now know this. How do you prevent this for new incoming players? I think they could really clean this up for a better new player experience.

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You can't prevent it when the new player insists on skipping through everything in a rush to get to an end game that isn't the game's focus.

It's up to the new player to check their expectations and pay attention to what the game is telling them. The game isn't randomly interrupting the main story with distinctive grey information windows to be a nuisance. It's interrupting because those are important game play features to know.

I do like your idea about having different colors for different content unlocks. They wouldn't be able to use red since that is already in use for when your character doesn't currently meet requirements to do the quest. I would also add in a separate color for beast tribe unlocks since those are a lengthy time commitment.

Beyond that, there's not much that can be done. Most of the unlock quests are best done as you go because they'll only take a couple of minutes to complete. Those that require a duty completion can always be left active in the player's Journal for when they have more time.

Yeah, when someone asks about this I usually direct them to a list of what each + quest unlocks organized by level so they can see what they can unlock when and where. It definitely feels pretty arbitrary, especially early in the game where you can have important features and content hidden by what feel like completely random quests. Later in the game it almost entirely boils down to either Aethercurrent or Harder Version Of Something, and it's pretty obvious which is which (and even if you're not sure you can see the Aethercurrent shown as a reward before you even accept the quest.

Some form of different icon, or icons, would be nice for sure.