Open World and Quests

Since stormblood is drawing near, i figured i would go and explorer the areas of heavensward. Since being able to fly, i really haven't seen most of the areas. Even having completed the sightseeing log, i basically just flew to the points dropped down for half a second and left, without noticing anything around me.

With Stormblood and being able to swim, i imagine much of the same will happen where i ignore a good deal of the cool areas that were put in, because if there like heavensward, i really won't have any reason to go there.

So after checking each area and discovering all the awesome sights that fill the world, a thought occurred to me.

What if we had a harder more challenging series of quests, that would take us to these awesome places. But in order to do them you would be restricted from flying (for w/e reason, eneimes will see you coming, dragons shoot you down.)

These wouldnt be like the boring run of the mill leveling quests, where you go from point a to point b, c, d, e to get xp. But something much more interesting i would hope.

They would be savage quests, they could also throw in some decent midcore content that might help bridge the player skill gap between i have no idea what a rotation is and max dps raiders, that we currently have going on right now.


What be your thoughts?

The playerbase has shown time and again that they hate open world content.

We have open world mob spawns, bosses, NPC's you have to protect, escort missions, towns to protect... Lots of different things, and people hate all of it because it has a purple icon.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

We have open world mob spawns, bosses, NPC's you have to protect, escort missions, towns to protect... Lots of different things, and people hate all of it because it has a purple icon.

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FATEs with interesting stories/movements/interactions = cool, any FATE purely based on the basic combat = high chance to be, imo, imbalanced and not that interesting. Similar reason for hunts, which I feel are tuned way too open and thus vary from super easy and thoughtless to impossible depending on the day (a variable I don't enjoy, would rather personal hunt leves or something).

Like the mini besieged FATE in the shroud area.

So imo, I'd give FATEs a far bigger prop if there were less generic dynamic combat events and specifically use the dynamic combat events for their interesting set pieces/story telling through action. unfortunately there are some interesting combat interactions in some FATEs, like this one in the hinterlands where they petrify and claw each other out while you fight in the middle, but at any point that the content is actually relevant the whole strategy and interesting combat nuance vanishes. The combat FATEs imo would be better in a revamped leve system (leve have issues, but imo could be more appealing, after a few changes to how rewards and intervals work).

There is nothing preventing you from exploring areas when you see fit. How it's the game's fault that you choose not too?

I agree with Shou. That one fate in heavensward forgot where with the dragons is amazing. The 3 part fate battle is awesome.

I would love to see gather fates every now and then, added in the mix. There's now the "gather items" variety but that's still geared for combat classes. Having odd one out where you actually need to mine or botany would be welcome change.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

There is nothing preventing you from exploring areas when you see fit. How it's the game's fault that you choose not too?

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Didn't say it was the games fault, just said there was no real reason too.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

The playerbase has shown time and again that they hate open world content.

We have open world mob spawns, bosses, NPC's you have to protect, escort missions, towns to protect... Lots of different things, and people hate all of it because it has a purple icon.

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Besides treasure hunts, I'd say most of the open world stuff is just brainless fights where mob rush beats all.

More like people hate it (myself included) because it is always silly and very annoyingly dull fetch quests. And i love open world games.
They just need to change it up or get someone new to work on quests and make it at least somewhat exciting.
I am hoping Eureka will be something very new and perhaps can include content not just tied to Relics

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Originally Posted by Maero

More like people hate it (myself included) because it is always silly and very annoyingly dull fetch quests. And i love open world games.
They just need to change it up or get someone new to work on quests and make it at least somewhat exciting.
I am hoping Eureka will be something very new and perhaps can include content not just tied to Relics

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Yes this. I finally started doing the best tribe quests for my relic and I flipping hate them because the are boring fetch quest. I wish they were a little more engaging. All you do is fly here, pick up this item or kill this monster.

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Originally Posted by Molic

Since stormblood is drawing near, i figured i would go and explorer the areas of heavensward. Since being able to fly, i really haven't seen most of the areas. Even having completed the sightseeing log, i basically just flew to the points dropped down for half a second and left, without noticing anything around me.

With Stormblood and being able to swim, i imagine much of the same will happen where i ignore a good deal of the cool areas that were put in, because if there like heavensward, i really won't have any reason to go there.

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Level up DoH classes?
There is a scene of underwater mining in the benchmark

As oppossed to what exactly? Fly here use cannons to shoot mobs? Fly here and carry an item to a place without getting hit? All those quests suck. Quests in general suck for most people for various reasons. Everyone knows what they don't want but noone knows what they DO want. The answer is always the same "Something different than what we have but make it fun"

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Originally Posted by Daranion

As oppossed to what exactly? Fly here use cannons to shoot mobs? Fly here and carry an item to a place without getting hit? All those quests suck. Quests in general suck for most people for various reasons. Everyone knows what they don't want but noone knows what they DO want. The answer is always the same "Something different than what we have but make it fun"

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I actually would like the quest to be a little more interactive. Like the instances quest but in the open world. The instances quests are a little more engaging to me. I feel like more apart of the quest and not just running to click a button. I hope that makes sense.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

The playerbase has shown time and again that they hate open world content.

We have open world mob spawns, bosses, NPC's you have to protect, escort missions, towns to protect... Lots of different things, and people hate all of it because it has a purple icon.

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people don't hate FATEs by default. they hate the boring ones that don't have good rewards. people flocked to Odin and Behemoth when they still wanted those items.

most people rather enjoyed the Attack on Highbridge and Svara chain of FATES at least the first time they see it.

SB can definitely have more of those. and i thought HW should have had more of those.

Loth ast Gnath was disappointing, that should have been a lot more hive-like and you weren't able to just fly into it. those kinds of open world locations can do with chains of FATEs to access so that you can actually sync with the arena.

also link some of those to better rewards and Hunt spawn conditions.

Their isn't really any incentive beyond using them to level and the reward structure in this game even less appealing. Know I would like to see improvements, but everyone had different take on how that would be. I would like some kind of rank/fame system for each zone the more you make NPC or keep doing fate in the zone better the rewards consumable/food <insert reward>, that helps even at end game content that my take though. /shrug

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Originally Posted by Daranion

Everyone knows what they don't want but noone knows what they DO want. The answer is always the same "Something different than what we have but make it fun"

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I've already suggested a few things I did like that FFXIV has in place, and I could do more- although something different is a popular thing to say yes lol. Would you like the basic fetch quest with unbalance-able combat? "Something different please..." lol.

I like the FATEs that don't rely on combat to be exciting, because at least as a resident of a full server, the combat element of FATEs is constantly ruined and so bad/unreliable - it is, imo, no fun and, again due to large server experience, shouldn't be relied on to make compelling content (shouldn't rely on basic combat in a dynamic party environment). Small server experience may vary, the size difference is so large that a small server's busy time on patch day probably feels like Balmung's down time in the middle of content drought lol.

So any dynamic content needs something beyond combat or I'll probably consider it uninteresting and not a content I really like. I also made example of this where I was in the hinterlands all alone because the content wasn't really relevant at the time and I was doing this FATE where bears and those one eyed demon dogs were attacking each other.. They were clawing (conal channeled ability) and petrifying (also channeled conal "eye" ability) each other and it was fun to get in the middle as a tank and have them be beating each other up as you dodged all the aoes (unfortunately that wouldn't be possible so easily if I wasn't massively overgearing the content lol, but the idea was still some what fun and relying on basic combat). However, the instant you get more than two people that FATE would lose all nuance as it couldn't scale well/fast enough, it would become another mindless bash the buttons to get Gold ranking. Gold ranking being far more important than doing anything interesting, and because everything dies so fast even if you tried you can't really do it (something interesting, getting gold is do able - especially easy on tank / healer). I made an example of a FATE that had less to do with the combat and more about the set piece/movement (not literal movement, but that interaction with the world / with it), like the RedBelly Hive FATE or three set piece dragon FATE as JisKing98 mentioned.

I think revamping and adjusting the leve system's breadth and interaction would help here (or at least working with ideas like it). For example you see on your map this new icon type and you get there and initiate a personal "FATE" (it's not dynamic content, if you have a party it will scale a little bit but it wont dynamically morph and it wont allow dynamic interaction, if you started it with four people that is how many can interact with the monsters.. and that is it - this allows for better balancing of the content). To add onto the less dynamic FATE bit, they could add feature somewhere to join parties for a content and so if for example you're running around doing these personal leve FATEs (less dynamic content = better for basic combat) that it will bring in people looking for group until the group is say 4 people. That way people can still have that sudden party experience but also the combat can be actually designed with expectation and be interesting (basically an auto/easy party finder button, even though party finder is pretty easy to use already, but maybe for newer players it running itself would be helpful).

A thing I really miss from WoW that's not really present in FFXIV is drop from enemy quests, picking up an item that leads into a quest - some of these were really big quests too that took you all over on quite an adventure you'd never expect to take. Also sometimes NPC would follow up with mail for another reward, just for fun, or more quest.. that was a really cool touch imo.

That game actually has a few quests that don't break the mold in terms of what you do (no flying helicopter dropping bombs and then doing a drag race) but just feel interesting because of the story and experience that felt like a mini-main quest (except less wordy lol). Most of those are non-repeatable though lol (if people want I can grab a few examples of, imo, abnormally unique quests). They also have a lot of joke/hidden secrets so there is an element of being on the toes just because of that. I remember finding an NPC in a zone while I was dead and being confused, later found out there was this big "A link to the past" quest chain that earned me the master sword (like from Zelda), that was cool~ I've not played GW2 as much so while I am aware of a few nice examples I couldn't really example all the great quest moments it is able to do.