
Originally Posted by
GreyJorildyn
Yes well, DIRECTION is what people need. Personally I love quest chain levelling. This is a concept SE should have known was part of the modern mmorpg. Anyone with a brain who hasn't played only XI knows this. You cannot simply login with a weapon after a cutscene, do onr quest, and thrust players out into the world. To do what exactly? Make their own adventure? I'll let you in on a little secret--that sounds really appealing on paper or as an advertising scheme, but majority players do not want that. They want to be told where to go. They want to follow a road to a quest hub, do 10 quests to levelup, to unlock new quests, the last of which sends then ahead to the next quest hub. Sure XIV has quests, but they are scattered with zero direction. The whole "quest design" of this game has you boomeranging back to town everytime. It's like you're tethered to cities and it sucks. People want to move forward, not in circles.
Trust me, that is what players want. More theme park, less sandbox. Six Flags is way more fun than the local park, right? After playing so many mmos over the past 10 years, I can confidently say all these things. Of course, there's need to be some light at the end of that road and so end game is important. However, getting there is also important and is the reason why these open world, mob-grinding, lack-of-quest models do not survive in the current mmo world.
Hopefully they have realized this and will fix it. A lot transparency will be needed too and that's something they're improving on, but are still light years behind the competition with.