Regarding Stormblood sidequests

[Risvertasashi]

Back at the time of Heavensward, this appeared in an interview:

So you thought about completely removing the experience reward from sidequests?

Y: Even though sidequests are based around story, if you want to progress through the game quickly you can click your way through them without reading anything. Because our questing system is not all that elaborate, the tasks themselves are limited to a small number of variations like "Kill X of that monster" or "bring this thing to that person". Of course we are working on including more varied tasks, and we are also working on main the story itself interesting. Still, we had to ask whether a system that allows you to earn experience just by clicking things was really needed at this point from a game design perspective.

So you had that conversation in the development team?

Y: In the team as well, there were people asking "can't we just remove them already?", but we were worried that if we only allowed players to level through group activities like dungeons and hunting open-world mobs, then we wouldn't be able to provide for those people who want to experience all aspects of the game on their own. There were arguments in favor of both sides, but in the end we felt having experience rewards from the main quest wasn't hurting the game in any way, so we decided to add side quests as originally planned.

How have players reacted to this?

Y: I was expecting a few more comments like "We're sick of them" or "There are too many errands", but I think we were able to make the story interesting enough to cover for the monotony of the activity itself. In the end, expect for one particular set of quests, we didn't receive that many complaints. I think this is thanks to our writing team's efforts.

More recently - Stormblood era - there was another interview commenting about how the development team has received positive feedback regarding the story quality in sidequests. I want to say that I do agree the writing quality in sidequests is high. If I find myself doing a sidequest chain I didn't think I was going to do, I'm often surprised at how good the writing is.

That said, I quoted this old interview for a reason. From a writing standpoint, they're good. From a gameplay standpoint, sidequests still kinda suck: They're bland and repetitive.

So to any developers that might read this: Please do not keep drowning us in massive amounts of sidequests. I would be quite content if 5.0 halved the number of sidequests. Please do keep up the storytelling efforts, but also please focus more of the gameplay design efforts on other, more interesting content.

I hope I'm not alone in feeling this way. I realize many in the lore forums may enjoy that very lore expositioned in these quests but I ask - how do you feel about the gameplay behind them?

[ObsidianFire]

I don't really care about the game play. And by that, I mean that the gameplay is fine. I'd rather the quests stay as they are with us going around in the world doing gameplay things then they just become a series of text boxes we have to read through to get to the world-building stuff in them. Some of us players "fill in the gaps" of the gameplay so that, in our heads, it's not just us clicking buttons on a screen or defeating enemies, but actually doing what the quests say we are doing. Losing any indication of when that happens on-screen would be a loss. It helps the WoL feel like they're doing something in the world that isn't just the MSQ.

There's also the point of view that it helps with leveling other jobs. The MSQ is for my main job and I usually save most of the side-quests for my alts. Having gameplay in them gives me an opportunity to play around with that job's skills in a no-stress zone that's not as boring as a training dummy. I'd rather do that kind of experimentation in Side-Quests then in dungeons where other people depend on me to know what I'm doing.

[Wyssahtyn]

They're sidequests. They're going to be bland and repetitive, so I don't carry many expectations. I'm more interested in the story told by the sidequests, which is often times interesting. I'm severely disappointed that they've tossed journal entries out the window though. I enjoyed going back through them.

[Balipu]

They're sidequests. They're going to be bland and repetitive, so I don't carry many expectations. I'm more interested in the story told by the sidequests, which is often times interesting. I'm severely disappointed that they've tossed journal entries out the window though. I enjoyed going back through them.

This. They won't just hide new interesting mechanics in sidequests you might totally ignore.

You know what, Risv? By your logic we should remove dungeon. I mean what's their point? Cool new mechanics, and awesome background music come from trials and raids. Interesting lore is usually tied to endgame trials and raids. For XP grinding the best way is deep dungeons and main scenario quests. Important story battles are done more often with solo duties. Gear can be crafted or bought with tomestone.

[Bright-Flower]

Side quests are nice to flesh out little details or tell side stories not important enough to be in the MSQ.

I don't know what they could really add to them? The core of this game is combat. What can they really add that isn't 'kill this' or 'click on that thing' or 'talk to this NPC?' Even that kind of falls under 'click this thing.' I don't really see what they could add to side quests to make them more interesting gameplay wise.

[LineageRazor]

Side quests are nice to flesh out little details or tell side stories not important enough to be in the MSQ.

I don't know what they could really add to them? The core of this game is combat. What can they really add that isn't 'kill this' or 'click on that thing' or 'talk to this NPC?' Even that kind of falls under 'click this thing.' I don't really see what they could add to side quests to make them more interesting gameplay wise.

This is an odd thing to say. This is a Final Fantasy game - and that means, the core of the game is STORY, not combat. This is Final Fantasy as an MMO, which means they took a story and they overlayed a MMO-style combat system on top of that base. They didn't develop a combat system, and then drape a story around it. In fact, that's one of the reasons 1.0 failed so hard - they developed a gorgeous, immersive world, and then threw together a half-assed combat system that was torn between good gameplay and Final-Fantasy-ish gameplay. 2.0 corrected this basically by cribbing heavily from combat systems from other MMOs.

As a story-oriented MMO, I'm all in favor of MORE Sidequests, not less. More opportunity to flesh out the world and story. Quests that actually tell us something about the world, not just getting meat to feed somebody's face.

[Bright-Flower]

This is an odd thing to say. This is a Final Fantasy game - and that means, the core of the game is STORY, not combat. This is Final Fantasy as an MMO, which means they took a story and they overlayed a MMO-style combat system on top of that base. They didn't develop a combat system, and then drape a story around it. In fact, that's one of the reasons 1.0 failed so hard - they developed a gorgeous, immersive world, and then threw together a half-assed combat system that was torn between good gameplay and Final-Fantasy-ish gameplay. 2.0 corrected this basically by cribbing heavily from combat systems from other MMOs.

As a story-oriented MMO, I'm all in favor of MORE Sidequests, not less. More opportunity to flesh out the world and story. Quests that actually tell us something about the world, not just getting meat to feed somebody's face.

I'm all for more story in side quests, I was just asking what people would want/expect from them on the gameplay side of things. If 'kill x' and 'click on y' are too repetitive what would people want to see instead on the gameplay side?

[Risvertasashi]

As a story-oriented MMO, I'm all in favor of MORE Sidequests, not less. More opportunity to flesh out the world and story. Quests that actually tell us something about the world, not just getting meat to feed somebody's face.

Well we already get nearly 300* per expac launch, and then more in followup patches. In my mind this is too many... I'd be content with, say, 150 of them and perhaps double the exp rewards, and I don't think lore quality would take a hit for it.

But I am curious. What is your ideal target number? 400, 500, 600?

*This does not include MSQ and job/class quests, which obviously push the number quite a bit higher.

I'm all for more story in side quests, I was just asking what people would want/expect from them on the gameplay side of things. If 'kill x' and 'click on y' are too repetitive what would people want to see instead on the gameplay side?

Same question to you: Just how many hundreds do you think SE should put in per expac?

IMO the quantity is too high for too low quality, but I'm curious around what number the community would find ideal...

[Bright-Flower]

Well we already get nearly 300* per expac launch, and then more in followup patches. In my mind this is too many... I'd be content with, say, 150 of them and perhaps double the exp rewards, and I don't think lore quality would take a hit for it.

But I am curious. What is your ideal target number? 400, 500, 600?

*This does not include MSQ and job/class quests, which obviously push the number quite a bit higher.



Same question to you: Just how many hundreds do you think SE should put in per expac?

IMO the quantity is too high for too low quality, but I'm curious around what number the community would find ideal...

I don't particularly care how many are added.

[Rocl]

I would imagine the idea would be that they contain more instanced fights? But that feels like a lot of dev time for what they are. (Optional quests meant to bridge EXP gaps when you take a break from doing the other leveling things with some world building.)

The other thing I might see is, like, Parley? But dear god NO, DO NOT BRING BACK PARLEY.