I actually wrote this in another thread that got pushed back.. But I wrote it actually a little less then an hour after this thread was made.

Careful, it's a long read.

Quote Originally Posted by SniperRifle
Edited

Quote Originally Posted by Kittra View Post
Less hunting and fetch quests/useless dialog from quest NPCs. MORE depth and multi-tiered quests!

Anyone who's done a quest in this game knows where I'm going with this... All the quests are the same, they send you out into the world to slaughter rat-monster-things, bring back their nuts, and repeat this formula with almost every quest, maybe changing the rat-monster-things you need to kill to evil-shocking-flies.

The only differences are the quests that send you from point A to point B, then to point C, which sends you back to point A, which sends you back to point C, which sends you to point B to complete the quest, and then to point A to receive your reward. While all this has taken place, the only thing you've done is listen to 3 NPCs talk about absolutely nothing to do with the quest.

I seriously find myself just pressing the enter key most of the time, rather than read something I know is going to be of no consequence to me if I DON'T read it.

What I'd like instead? More depth, and more multi-tiered quests.

The depth of the quest would be the "mini" story-line, that doesn't necessarily need cut-scenes to make me interested in it, all it really needs is for the NPCs to talk about something that actually has to DO with the quest and in such a way that the
players feel drawn in and WANT to know more.

Multi-tiered is where the players need to complete quest #1 (albeit an extremely involving and interesting quest) to move onto
quest #2, #3 and so on, but they need to be built around the basis that this is something that will draw the players in so much that they WANT to do each phase of the quest because they want to know what happens next, like in a good series of books.
Cliffnotes (for my post)The way Skyrim did quests was right. Had Skyrims quests been w/ Final Fantasy characters, w/ the Final Fantasy title, with Final Fantasy spells/monsters/cities... Then we would have the quest-section of our game complete and ready to suck in millions of players. Also apologies for any typos and grammatical errors or if something doesn't make sense. I didn't proof read.

To go along with this, and I use Skyrim as an example way too many times but, it truley did what it was well. If Skyrim wasn't dragons and middle-earthy w/ Castles, and took place in Eorzea, as an MMO, w/ primal summons instead of Atronachs, using key FF franchise characters to replace key Skyrim characters (Astrid, Bynjolf and Mercer Frey, Farkas and Aela the Huntress)... Dark Brotherhood n Thievery not your stuff? Do the College of Winterhold questline, become the Archmage of Winterholde. This stuff isn't even the main quest yet it feels so, I really had a tough time deciphering wtf was the main quest and what wasn't everything was just that dynamic.

I was thinking look at RoZ, CoP, and the 3 city states R1-10 missions and whatever else you liked about FFXI's story, and make every little quest in FFXIV exactly like that (with voice acting obvi). It's been done already by the franchise, just literally copy the formula for every little quest in FF14, and THEN make the big storyline quests even more/same level of atmosphere. Remeber Cid, Lioness, Prince Trione, Roagrimm? The little pale demon kid from AAx5? Hell, even the ZM8 guy had his own seductive badass thing going on. Characters like Sepheroth, Shantotto, Kefka and every other character you grew attached to… They need to be in every quest (this is also why we need voice acting, and get the cute/seductive/comforting voices to play the characters we want to succeed or learn more about).

Can't grow attached to a wall of txt anymore. (irony of this post, i know)

Back to the Skyrim ideaology where you do a dynamic quest, stumble upon many things that benefit your character(level, loot, secrets), including more quests. These quests help explain the lore of the lands,

Ex. Why there is a little girl crying in the corner of some random building? (was going to uncaps this, but I think it adds some much needed dramatic effect)

ITS CAUSE THE LITTLE GIRLS LIL BRO IS MISSING N HES GOT HER COOKIES N THEIR MOTHER IS WORRIED N U HAVE TO TRAVEL THROUGH SOME NASTY EVIL MONSTER RIDDLED FOREST TO KILL WAVES OF A FEROCIOUS FIENDS OF A TREMENDOUS VARIETY TO FIND OUT THE DUDE U NEVER EXPECTED (some dude u ran into one time at the adventurers guild within 2 days of playing) HAD CAPTURED THE KID BECAUSE HIS YOUTH WAS NEEDED TO MAKE THE BAD GUY LIVE FOREVER!!!!!

This kind stuff. We need it. For every quest...

Do you know how hard I would gasm for stuff like this?

Just make up new quests as you (x# months release y# quests) go. If somewhere down the line you contradict the quest story line no one will care cause its just a side quest(line) and all they will remember is the awesome time they had doing it, the friends they did it with. Or continue to make more NPCs/areas to ensure you don't cross storylines. Hell, leave a flaw in the storyline, more Easter eggs to discover the better.

This is a hard task to manage because quests scaled to your level in Skyrim and don't in this game, however, people can do 1-50 relatively quick you could just make, for instance;

(These numbers are just guesstimates)

1000 quests 1-50,
and 1000 quests at 50.

So you could make the assumption that 50% of the quests are from 1-50, and 50% is at 50.

Plus by doing nothing but adventuring and questlines you could still hit 50 before completing all 1000 quests (from 1-50). Uh oh, and some players don't like doing quests that have a small sense of accomplishment (cause they are 40lvls above recommended quest level), with only decent rewards, when they could be doing the Lv50 quests, right?

(caps time)

SO THEN U LVL A NEW CLASS AND ENJOY THE GAME AS THAT CLASS N SEE THE QUESTS YOU MISSED!!!! (AKA REPLAY VALUE)

and then continue the Lv1-50 process on that class. Didn't do the College of Winterholde on your first playthrough? No problem. You still have your Arcanist to level up.

Take the numbers/class system/replay value with a grain of salt. This is all just off the top of my head.

It took me like 100-120 hours of gameplay to do 150 quests/questline/mainquestline/sidequests on Skyrim. Playing like a minimum of 16 hours a day for like 7 days. If the game kept coming out w/ more dynamic questlines, and was an MMO, with addicting long-lasting end game content. You'd never have to play another game again.

With this wall of txt I have left you all with + the OPs... Keep in mind this is JUST the quests, thats all I wanted to talk about. I too never thought of quests as fun and exciting (thanks to my WoW/FFXI days), but Skyrim was a fine example where EVERY little NPC did serve a purpose, and not just /faceplain How are you today? /continues standing still.

The Guards in Skyrim were probably the least dynamic w/ overused 1 liners, and even they had the laughable arrow in the knee line, plus you could pick pocket them. Get caught? They send you to jail. Don’t want to go? Bribe, Persuade, or Fight your way out of the situation. Every little thing matters I guess and it holds true to something being as strong as its weakest link. Sure the Moogle battle is nice, but it's completely overshadowed by every flaw that the game has... Day2 of Patch1.20 there were more threads about the exploit then about the quality of the fight.