MSQ

[wereotter]

I have to admit, the MSQ does seem to have a lot of "filler" in it. I'm still plugging away at ARR part two.


What is a filler quest?


Talk to this character in one city who tells you to meet up with him in another city. Travel to that city and he tells you to now go to a third place to meet up with who they intend to rendezvous with.


How about just cut out Point B and just go from A to C?


I know it's favour, but it gets really repetitive.

Filler quests do include needing that intermediate step, but they include other things too. I mentioned earlier, but a good example was a cut series of quests that occur shortly after completing the two 8-man dungeons. You're sent off to locate Minfilia's mother and bring her back to the Waking Sands to convince her that it's okay to relocate the Scions to Revenant's Toll. But before her mother agrees to come with you to speak to Minfilia, she insisted that you first help her create a bottle of the perfume she wears. This questline involved going and tracking down flowers, getting fresh spring water, and a seemingly endless number of pointless tasks before she finally agrees to come with you to speak to her daughter.

Now, as soon as you find her mother, she tells you that she was in the area trying to locate another bottle of her favorite perfume, but then tells you not to worry about it and that she'll purchase a new bottle of it and meet you in Vesper Bay, cutting out a large number of irrelevant quests that were only there to pad out the play time.

[TheMightyMollusk]

They also cut one required dungeon run out of the MSQ. When the Scions move to Revenant's Toll, there used to be a quest to get a magic stone from the Sunken Temple of Qarn to help shore up the Toll's defenses. That's been dropped entirely.

Of course, they also now require players to complete the Crystal Tower quests, so it's a trade-off.

[Iscah]

If anything I'm kinda regretful they cut that one quest where we go to pray at Azeyma's stone. (It was indeed pointless at that time, unfortunately).

Oh, they removed that? It was a nice quiet moment, though "hike across the map for a single objective" does put it in the firing line.

It could have been converted to a sidequest from the Azyeman priest guy.

Of course, they also now require players to complete the Crystal Tower quests, so it's a trade-off.

Definitely a worthwhile trade, though.

[TheMightyMollusk]

In terms of relevance to the plot? Sure. In terms of time spent? Ehh. At least having Alliance Roulette unlocked is useful for leveling alt jobs.

[TaleraRistain]

But seriously, if you all think that 80 level 50 quests are necessary before being able to get out of ARR, your tolerance for tedium is greater than mine, and I played Everquest at release (actually before that, in EQ's stress beta), and watched a stump for a ground spawn for days.

Edited Note: Or perhaps my intolerance for tedium is grounded in my EQ experience.

...how long did you play? Because tedium here has nothing on tedium there. EQ didn't have instanced dungeons (until LDoN) or roulettes (which maybe they've added at some point since it's still getting new content). Plus we don't have to stand in front of an NPC /saying 20 combinations of a phrase until we find the right one to start a quest. A little filler here and there is nothing, and they have gotten better at reducing fetch quests and making what we do engaging.

Also, there are things that seem to be side items that become incredibly relevant to the story later on. I want to avoid spoilers, but there is something in the current MSQ related to Alisaie that is like that. CT was like that, before it was made required. Shadowbringers has all kinds of this sort of thing. We may not understand the significance when we first see it, but they often wind back around to those subtle little threads they put out early on in the game. So this "filler" cannot be a sidequest.

[Snowdove]

At least in my feeling, maybe some of these "filler" quests might be more tolerable if there wasn't such a looooong time between doing something interesting.


Meaning all too often I spend 15/20 minutes reading quest text, watching a cut scene, running here and there, all before I get to spend a whole 15 second shooting something.


The ratio, at least in ARR, between waiting and action is waaay off and is likely what chases a lot of people away.

[Kozh]

While I understand people got frustrated with arr filler quests (even I feel a bit frustrated too back then), I think they also forgot that 2.1-2.5 is 2 years worth of content. Each patch drop, then wait for 3 months before the next came. Of course it will be much more bearable. Now that people are complaining about how long it is, our current patch only got 10 short quests, which can be done in less than a day.

[SturmChurro]

The reason to trim ARR, and the reason they DID trim ARR, was to increase new player retention of people going through that. New players are probably less likely to buy skips anyway compared to people with alts who don't want to bother with it anymore.

Whether ARR 'needs' any further trimming after what they did, I don't know. I haven't gone back to replay it.

But if you get a player to buy a boost, okay that's a one time purchase. If ARR makes someone quit however, and making changes would have gotten them to stick around, you keep getting money from them longer term.

Yep, a player's first impression is the most important. Many new players probably don't like the idea of paying for the game then having to spend even more money on boosts to skip said game. A good new player experience would retain more players, and players are payers in the long run.

[VelKallor]

Of course, they also now require players to complete the Crystal Tower quests, so it's a trade-off.

Tower relates directly to later content, so thats not "filler". When that became mandatory, I understood the reasoning.

[Arkevorkhat]

Tower relates directly to later content, so thats not "filler". When that became mandatory, I understood the reasoning.

Does it now? I know there's a crystal tower on the first, and that catboy jesus is associated with it in some way, but I glossed over that entire part of the story, just wasn't at all compelling.