Quest Hubs issues

Yesterday I started Ruby Sea and did everything in the zone. It took me from morning to night, and it felt like I passed the entire day without really playing, so today I kept track of things.

Data
Yanxia, all quests (and aetheric currents) up to the last MSQ rewarding an aetheric current and excluding what that quest unlocks.
I was asked to kill a grand total of 12 mobs + 3 of a very weak type that took as much effort as a single normal mob. There was also a sort of "mini boss fight", which took quite a bit of time.

Combat time: 7 minutes.
Mini boss-fight: 5 minutes.
Travel + spam click to skip all dialogues for non MSQ stuff + read/watch everything MSQ related + non killing quests (i.e. interact-with-object, probably around 1 or 2 minutes total): 168 minutes.

To sum up, I barely used my character skills at all (12 minutes in 180, and half of that just because of the very special event "mini boss-fight").
Most of the time is spent walking around (and I try to optimize my pathing), skipping dialogues (I have not enough time to read through all that stuff), and watching/reading MSQ.


Issues
1. Only the dev can run a proper statistic, but I have the feeling most people skip through side quests dialogues, which make for wasted dev effort (since it's a MMORPG, thus many wants to reach max level fast - MSQ constraints already make FFXIV a game where such objective takes very long, compared to modern day average).
2. The quest hubs focus too much on non-combat quests. We barely get to actually play the game when going through the levelling experience.
3. It's not as bad as HW, but it still really feels as whoever designed the quests is trying to waste the player time by making the ratio of Travel-to-(Combat/DoQuestStuff) too skewed toward Travel.


Suggestions (for new content)
1. Reduce the Traveling needs before someone raeches flight/proper land mount movement speed.
2. Instead of having 2-3 non combat side quest per each combat side quest, use the opposite trend.

My only comparison (due to the road-to-60 effect), are the first couple of zones in ARR. They were better, as I spent more time playing and less time doing nothing but spam click or walk around.

I disagree.

1. I read all sidequest dialogue.
2. I enjoy the non combat quests and find many of them more interesting than killing a trash mob. I would love to see more creative quests (like a more difficult version of the find the area in the picture ones, or the one where you had to find the item based on the directions three Namazu pointed you towards) in the future.
Alternatively I would enjoy more combat focused quests if there were less trash enemies though I'm not sure how to make them more interesting while still being soloable by every job.
3. I feel like quest variety has been steadily improving since ARR. But like I've said I consider the non-combat quests to be playing the game as much as the combat ones.

I also disagree.
Your points of contention are a matter of preference. Everyone is different.
ARR Was very small (In comparison to HW/SB) - everything was easy to reach - HW made that longer and harder - SB far more so.
There are some nuances that make it....difficult - but that's part of the game.

I personally enjoyed the dialogue and stories - I starve for it even now. But I'm not you....everyone is different.

ALL Final Fantasy games have this "Traveling" aspect..... it wouldn't be FF without it.

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Originally Posted by NephthysVasudan

I also disagree.
Your points of contention are a matter of preference. Everyone is different.
ARR Was very small (In comparison to HW/SB) - everything was easy to reach - HW made that longer and harder - SB far more so.
There are some nuances that make it....difficult - but that's part of the game.

I personally enjoyed the dialogue and stories - I starve for it even now. But I'm not you....everyone is different.

ALL Final Fantasy games have this "Traveling" aspect..... it wouldn't be FF without it.

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I am fine with everybody having their own taste, and I'm fine with the game having to feel like a FFXIV game. But I disagree that "having to spend a lot of time just walking from A to B" is a defining feature of FF.
I can agree in single player games having a story related reasons to have you move around, but anything more it's plain bad design or disrespect for the player time.
Also note that the "too much traveling for no good reason" I am referring to, is not really specific to the FFXIV SB locations I've played through. Many MMORPGS have it, and I think it's not by chance, but that's another topic.


I understand some people want to read, but others want to get to end game and enjoy the game (as in playing with mechanics rather than reading a (sort of) book). I'm not saying there's no value in your way to enjoy the game, or that it's wrong. What I'm saying is that there should be ways to skip through it faster for someone that has other priorities due to taste, time contraints or whatnot.
Let me re-formulate my suggestions:
1. What would improve both of our gaming experiences is less time wasted traveling, as that's not playing.
2. I am not saying having non killing quests is bad. It's actually very refreshing once in a while. But while there's been some very interesting kind of them, like the "you are the merchant, sell stuff" in Reunion, and the "MSQ sleep dart" in Yanxia, all the non killing quests that I did in those 3 hours were of the "go click on the interactive object over there".
This kind of quest does not add any interesting or unique mechanics, as the two examples I made, nor does it leverage the existing ones (combat), so from the playing perspective they are not very engaging.
It is fine to have this kind of quests too, of course. The issue is when they are the majority, as they are not engaging as all the other possibilities since the only mechanic they use is "click once and then wait a bit", which is not an entertaining mechanic given that what you click on is not even moving (as there are games based on clicking, but they are based on the ability/timing of clicking at the right time and right point on the screen, when things you need to click on are not static).
3. Add a quickskip button to avoid lengthy dialogues in side quests for those that wish to skip them.

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Originally Posted by Dirich

but others want to get to end game and enjoy the game

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Shot in the dark here but did you buy a jump potion to 60? TBH the SB quests are rather tame compared to HW/2.0-2.55. Those were even more annoying. i.e Putting quest givers up on a cliff when you have no flying and having to go all the way around.

Though I will say the quests you are talking about aren't aimed at "gotta go fast" players. That's why they are sidequests, yellow ones are mostly optional if all you care about is getting to the end. You can skip a large portion of them if you don't care. You just have to do ones that advance the story. Just run a dungeon or roulettes to make up the exp loss if combat is more engaging, that is another option.

Why are you doing the side quests if you don't like them?

Quests are there for story. Dungeons are for leveling. There is zero reason to use quests for leveling unless you don't want to party at all.

Go do the dungeons, the roulettes, the beast tribe quests or PvP. Those are the things that offer experience. You will never come even close to the amount of experience in X time from side quests as you would from doing these things. This is made that way ON PURPOSE, so that people do not feel forced to do side-quests...and simply because there are so many jobs to level that making quests the way to level would simply kill the game. And as such, quests are NOT for leveling. If you level by doing quests...you choose the single worst possible option (other than just grinding on world maps mobs without any quest at all, that is).

Using the above, you can get multiple levels in few hours of gameplay at any point in the game. Using quests, you will be hard-pressed to get ONE level in an entire day. So yeah...

It feels like give me lvl 70 now kind of person, why rush to 70? enjoy the stuff. Its only when you are leveling like your 4th or more character that you really dont feel like doing all those quests yet another time

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

It feels like give me lvl 70 now kind of person, why rush to 70? enjoy the stuff. Its only when you are leveling like your 4th or more character that you really dont feel like doing all those quests yet another time

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Agreed....the whole concept/idea behind Final Fantasy is just being "tossed out the window' with this "hurry up and skip content" mindset. Yes..to each their own - but its just sad.

I agree there's a slight lack of combat. I remember I started SB with a rank 7 chocobo. Kept the chocobo out permenently. Ended 4.1 with a rank 7 chocobo.

Not saying we should be swimming in kill quests, but a little bit of variety might be nice. Currently the inbetween-story padding is mostly travelling from point A to B.

While I don't mind (most) traveling quests, I do think it would massively improve the flow of the game if you could simply be teleported to the next NPC to talk to, if the current NPC you're talking to is going to be at your destination anyway.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Shot in the dark here but did you buy a jump potion to 60? TBH the SB quests are rather tame compared to HW/2.0-2.55. Those were even more annoying. i.e Putting quest givers up on a cliff when you have no flying and having to go all the way around.

Though I will say the quests you are talking about aren't aimed at "gotta go fast" players. That's why they are sidequests, yellow ones are mostly optional if all you care about is getting to the end. You can skip a large portion of them if you don't care. You just have to do ones that advance the story. Just run a dungeon or roulettes to make up the exp loss if combat is more engaging, that is another option.

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I did MSQ and side up to lvl 20 (pretty much 2 starting zones), then only MSQ. I finished ARR I was 60, so I only did MSQ in HW too. I was 64 at beginning of SB, so I burned through MSQ until far east, where I thought that only doing MSQ would leave me underlevelled due to lack of road-to-60 bonus. Which made side quests a necessity.

Thanks for the suggestion of alternative approaches, but the issue here is not what I can do now to sidestep the problem, but a suggestion to the devs to avoid it in future content. :)

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Originally Posted by NephthysVasudan

Agreed....the whole concept/idea behind Final Fantasy is just being "tossed out the window' with this "hurry up and skip content" mindset. Yes..to each their own - but its just sad.

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As a note, it's an MMORPG, and the game starts at max level. Unless you wish to play it as a single player, which is also fine, in which case you might enjoy being lower level too. But being max level is also important if you want to play with your friends on content they care about. That is, without forcing them to do pointless content, which is something they might not enjoy, albeit they'd do it just to play with you. It's literally in the game genre (unless you go back to pre WOW when MMORPGS were only levelling).

But this is really beyond the point of the thread. And many, not just you, have misunderstood the topic.
The topic has nothing to do with how you like the game or what we can do now to level fast. It's about feedback on things that I deem to be bad design decision, so that they don't do it again the next time.

Everybody, regardless of play style and taste (rush-to-70 or not), are affected by too much travel time and excessive use of point-and-click type quests (quests not using any interesting mechanic, be it the combat one or some special non-combat one, like the "zoom + search + sleep dart the target").

Everybody that wishes to play FFXIV as a MMORPG (rush-70) is affected by the lack of a skip option for text dialogue that allows to skip the -very long- dialogues and the -very long- pauses caused by emotes (even when performed by other characters). This is mainly an issue for the first job, as you are forced to go through MSQ to unlock content (albeit, personally, I'd use it on the side quests only, many I know would use it on MSQ too, since they don't care about the story at all).

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Originally Posted by Dirich

As a note, it's an MMORPG, and the game starts at max level. Unless you wish to play it as a single player, which is also fine, in which case you might enjoy being lower level too. But being max level is also important if you want to play with your friends on content they care about. That is, without forcing them to do pointless content, which is something they might not enjoy, albeit they'd do it just to play with you. It's literally in the game genre (unless you go back to pre WOW when MMORPGS were only levelling).

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I actually find that the game ends at max level. You run out of max level content to do very quickly. The majority of this game is in its story quests.

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Originally Posted by Dirich

I did MSQ and side up to lvl 20 (pretty much 2 starting zones), then only MSQ. I finished ARR I was 60, so I only did MSQ in HW too. I was 64 at beginning of SB, so I burned through MSQ until far east, where I thought that only doing MSQ would leave me underlevelled due to lack of road-to-60 bonus. Which made side quests a necessity.

Thanks for the suggestion of alternative approaches, but the issue here is not what I can do now to sidestep the problem, but a suggestion to the devs to avoid it in future content. :)

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That's the thing though. Other people might prefer the opposite (like some of the people in this thread don't mind the quests). Forcing them to change them so 75% of them are just fighting trash mobs (I find fighting them kind of dull since they usually aren't even a threat, it's like killing a striking dummy with maybe a circle or cone telegraph to dodge) is somewhat removing options or variety from people.

So maybe they can bring the ratio to 1:1, but there is already content that is geared toward killing things if efficiency isn't the problem but I suspect it is most of the problem.

Hunts which are somewhat what you are asking for basically skipping the bs and just killing mobs, so that is there as well, there is no text to skip, just tells you to kill a bunch of stuff for EXP. There are FATEs where a lot of them is literally just kill stuff, don't even have to read anything.

There is quite a bit of stuff that is for people that just want to kill things already. I just don't see the point in taking a hatchet to non combat content that other people like in the game just to add more stuff where you kill trash mobs that are almost no threat when there are already FATEs, hunts and tons of dungeons, trials, etc you can do.

I wouldn't care if they added a skip option but I personally don't find that it takes too long now just to spam through the text.

I like sidequests the way they are. The combat portion I do not care about at all. As an astrologian it takes forever to kill stuff, and doing that by spamming a single button is far from being fun.

Sidequests are supposed to be related to lore and help players getting a "feel" for an area, in case they are interested in learning more. If combat is what you are looking for, nothing stops you from just killing enemies. There is plenty of them around in every region. Also there is an entire FATE system catered towards players who like "sidequesting" with a focus on combat. There is no need to adapt a portion of the game to combat as well, that is mostly there for those who like to learn more about the world.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

That's the thing though. Other people might prefer the opposite (like some of the people in this thread don't mind the quests). Forcing them to change them so 75% of them are just fighting trash mobs (I find fighting them kind of dull since they usually aren't even a threat, it's like killing a striking dummy with maybe a circle or cone telegraph to dodge) is somewhat removing options or variety from people.

So maybe they can bring the ratio to 1:1, but there is already content that is geared toward killing things if efficiency isn't the problem but I suspect it is most of the problem.

Hunts which are somewhat what you are asking for basically skipping the bs and just killing mobs, so that is there as well, there is no text to skip, just tells you to kill a bunch of stuff for EXP. There are FATEs where a lot of them is literally just kill stuff, don't even have to read anything.

There is quite a bit of stuff that is for people that just want to kill things already. I just don't see the point in taking a hatchet to non combat content that other people like in the game just to add more stuff where you kill trash mobs that are almost no threat when there are already FATEs, hunts and tons of dungeons, trials, etc you can do.

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I am not skipping hunts and FATEs. Also, I'm not suggesting to go back to the "grind your way through 70 levels" that was the standard in the old games.


I'm saying that the majority of the quests I had to go through had dull mechanics (point and click to immobile object). The devs should either use some cool or unique mechanic (like the examples I made previously, or card battle or whatever other mini game is already available in the game) or use the main game mechanics (combat). Moreover, since combat is the main game mechanics, you can't use it just once every 10 quests, or it's not the main mechanic anymore (the exact ratio, 1:1 or 2:3, is not particularly relevant in this context, as long as it is fairly balanced and not 10 to 1).

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Originally Posted by Vaer

I wouldn't care if they added a skip option but I personally don't find that it takes too long now just to spam through the text.

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You are talking qualitatively, saying that it doesn't take too long. I gave numbers: I played 3 hours, of which less than 15 minutes were combat, the rest was all running around and clicking on non-moving stuff or clicking through dialogues (or watching/reading MSQ stuff).

We can discuss if reading MSQ text is "playing" as it is a necessity for the story to advance (I'd rather not though, as it is a bit out of topic), but the fact that a major activity is "waiting for character to move from A to B" is an issue regardless of it.
The fact that "skipping text I don't want to read" is another not irrelevant part of the time, is another issue, albeit it only affects part of the player base. How much of it, only a proper statistic by the devs can tell.
In my experience in MMORPGS, though, the majority rushes max level without reading, a minority either reads everything immediately or rushes first and then goes back and reads the side quests (maybe on an alt). If your experience differs -and you don't have the habit to be in an roleplay or lore-geek community- then count me surprised. Regardless, neither yours nor mine are proper statistics unless we back them with numbers and proper sources.

I started SB on 60 and was 70 before I got to the Peaks/Lochs. Never once did I have to grind fates or extra dungeons for XP, and I didn't touch a single side quest. I did my levelling roulette daily, that was it. And I never had Road-To-60.

Sidequests are unnecessary, and if for whatever reason they become necessary, the 1/3 of a level or whatever that you might need to get is better found elsewhere. Leave the side quests for the people who want a more nuanced story; there are plenty of quick-hit grindfests in the game that can serve your purpose. Honestly, I think getting your actual class levels is probably the easiest thing in the game.

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

I like sidequests the way they are. The combat portion I do not care about at all. As an astrologian it takes forever to kill stuff, and doing that by spamming a single button is far from being fun.

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So you wish to have the following:
1. one side quest in each corner of the map, requiring 30 minutes of walking (but without the chance to leave the character on autorun). So time for quest completition is 30 minutes (walk) + 5 minutes (read) + 30 seconds (actually doing the quest).
2. all the quests require to click on immovable objects. No fun mechanics like card games or minion battles, no challeng like a "click on something that's moving". You ABSOLUTELY do not want quests to involve fun unique mechanics like minion combat, card game, or the ton of mini-game available in the other parts of this game.
I'd fire anybody presenting to me this design, but it's your taste and you are entitled to have it.
If you say this is not what you want, then you are agreeing with me on my main points, beside the balance of "combat to non-combat" quests. In which case, read the next part of this post.


As a note, your problem with combat not being fun is a design issue.
You are 100% right that for 50 levels it's "spam 1 button" for many classes, especially healers. FFXIV suck big time in this regard. WoW had the same issues in the beginning, then each class was given a way to specialize in damage that allowed for an effective solo levelling experience, even if its "iconic role" was tank or healer. Moreover, each class gets pretty soon the majority of its main no-cd skills, which allow to have a non-monotonous gaming experience.
The way WoW improved is because people gave feedback and the devs listened. Which is what I'm trying to do, and it is what you should be doing, if you feel that playing the game (beyond the story-reading experience) is not fun.

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Originally Posted by InkstainedGwyn

I started SB on 60 and was 70 before I got to the Peaks/Lochs. Never once did I have to grind fates or extra dungeons for XP, and I didn't touch a single side quest. I did my levelling roulette daily, that was it. And I never had Road-To-60.

Sidequests are unnecessary, and if for whatever reason they become necessary, the 1/3 of a level or whatever that you might need to get is better found elsewhere. Leave the side quests for the people who want a more nuanced story; there are plenty of quick-hit grindfests in the game that can serve your purpose. Honestly, I think getting your actual class levels is probably the easiest thing in the game.

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I started at level 63 in Far East (switched from the main class that was 64) I did almost all the side quests in the 3 Far East zones, I never did the roulette (I had 3 free days in a row and I just focused on getting to 70, so I could have done 3 days' worth of roulettes), I did hunts whenever I wasn't blocked by some cutscene and boss fates when they were near me. I had "rested bonus XP" all the time. Still, I was only ~10% of the level away from 70 when the last MSQ of the first SB chain became available.

How many days exactly did it take you to go from 60 to 70? That is, how many roulettes have you done?
Please don't answer that I shouldn't rush, because I've got friends that are at max level, and forcing them to play old content they don't care about gets old pretty fast.

P.S.
road-to-60 doesn't really matter since we are talking about 60 -> 70.

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Originally Posted by Dirich

I am not skipping hunts and FATEs. Also, I'm not suggesting to go back to the "grind your way through 70 levels" that was the standard in the old games.


I'm saying that the majority of the quests I had to go through had dull mechanics (point and click to immobile object). The devs should either use some cool or unique mechanic (like the examples I made previously, or card battle or whatever other mini game is already available in the game) or use the main game mechanics (combat). Moreover, since combat is the main game mechanics, you can't use it just once every 10 quests, or it's not the main mechanic anymore (the exact ratio, 1:1 or 2:3, is not particularly relevant in this context, as long as it is fairly balanced and not 10 to 1).

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We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I didn't even say the quests were even engaging. My point was that there is plenty of combat related things to do, and that quests are there to expand on lore and flesh out the story while mostly being entirely optional and sometimes combat just doesn't fit depending on what it is trying to portray. I personally find fighting trash mobs super dull, adding more of it wouldn't make it more engaging to me, just more annoying. But that's really just a difference in opinion.

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Originally Posted by Dirich

You are talking qualitatively, saying that it doesn't take too long. I gave numbers: I played 3 hours, of which less than 15 minutes were combat, the rest was all running around and clicking on non-moving stuff or clicking through dialogues (or watching/reading MSQ stuff).

We can discuss if reading MSQ text is "playing" as it is a necessity for the story to advance (I'd rather not though, as it is a bit out of topic), but the fact that a major activity is "waiting for character to move from A to B" is an issue regardless of it.
The fact that "skipping text I don't want to read" is another not irrelevant part of the time, is another issue, albeit it only affects part of the player base. How much of it, only a proper statistic by the devs can tell.
In my experience in MMORPGS, though, the majority rushes max level without reading, a minority either reads everything immediately or rushes first and then goes back and reads the side quests (maybe on an alt). If your experience differs -and you don't have the habit to be in an roleplay or lore-geek community- then count me surprised. Regardless, neither yours nor mine are proper statistics unless we back them with numbers and proper sources.

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I was saying it doesn't take me that long to spam through text. Your travel distance and clicking on things has nothing to do with mashing through text. Unless you're going to tell me it takes you 30 seconds to mash through 5 bubbles of text since the contention here is that you want an auto skip which is what I was responding to in that quote.

And on the topic of SE numbers and stats, the sidequests before SB were even more annoying and spaced out like I said before. (They even commented on the stupid moogle quests that everyone hated and they cut a lot of the filler from future MSQ due to 2.0-2.55) I'm surprised you didn't run into this problem before SB, (actually the main complaint was 2.0-2.55, which is why they added the jump potion) I'm guessing that is due to road to 60? If people weren't doing these quests they wouldn't have bothered even adding them in volume again in SB.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I didn't even say the quests were even engaging. My point was that there is plenty of combat related things to do, and that quests are there to expand on lore and flesh out the story while mostly being entirely optional and sometimes combat just doesn't fit depending on what it is trying to portray. I personally find fighting trash mobs super dull, adding more of it wouldn't make it more engaging to me, just more annoying. But that's really just a difference in opinion.



I was saying it doesn't take me that long to spam through text. Your travel distance and clicking on things has nothing to do with mashing through text. Unless you're going to tell me it takes you 30 seconds to mash through 5 bubbles of text since the contention here is that you want an auto skip which is what I was responding to in that quote.

And on the topic of SE numbers and stats, the sidequests before SB were even more annoying and spaced out like I said before. (They even commented on the stupid moogle quests that everyone hated and they cut a lot of the filler from future MSQ due to 2.0-2.55) I'm surprised you didn't run into this problem before SB, (actually the main complaint was 2.0-2.55, which is why they added the jump potion) I'm guessing that is due to road to 60? If people weren't doing these quests they wouldn't have bothered even adding them in volume again in SB.

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Skipping the quest text should be 1 click. Instead you have to mash (and the skip speed is far inferior to anybody's mash speed too...). Up to here it's bereable.
The issue is the emotes, that block everything regardless of who performs it. Hence even the mashing through text takes time: every emote takes 2 to 5 seconds (I'm including stuff like "npc turns and walks toward the sunset" in the "emote" category).

I didn't run into the problem before SB because I reached 64 and end of HW by only doing MSQ, thanks to road-to-60. As you correctly guessed.
I did the first 20 levels in the first 2 zones out of Ul'dah though, and there the pathing wasn't too horrible and there was no excess of dull point-and-click quests (albeit, to be fair, they were almost all mob grind quests).
What I really don't undestand is that there are like tons of mini games available throughout the game, and only a couple are used in side quests...