These quests suck.

[Mintyflo]

Oh lawd the grind... @ _@ Why did I have to spend weeks grinding rep to just be able to do a big avatar fight. Oh XI how I don't miss you so.

(Back on the XIV track)
Honestly just a pinch of a little less text walls while doing a quest would be great.
Or just a tiny bit more of why yes kill these ten dodo's then go fight the dodo boss would be fantastic.
Oh and sometimes those like 30 second instances are soo annoying, rather pointless and I can not understand why they are there.
Those are just some of my tiny gripes about XIV quests.

[viion]

TERA's quest system drove me far far away from that game, shame really, i had high hopes for it.

[Niqote]

I do agree the walls of text could be condensed.. but there are some that are amusing such as the monkey love one

[Urthdigger]

Dialogue/text or cutscenes do not make a good quest. They could simply have you unlock those cutscenes at a certain level. The quests themselves are a "bowl of snot". They are really that bad.

Umm... what the hell do you expect them to do? Make every single quest in the game challenge the way you see the game and have you using your various abilities in new and varied ways that are utterly unique to that quest? You won't be happy unless every single little sidequest in the game is mindblowing in it's gameplay, a defiance to what MMOs have been over the past 10 years? Seriously, what do you want? Because fetch quests and kill X of Y monster are pretty much the bread and butter of MMO quests, just dressed up differently for variety. Saying the quests are all terrible because they're one of those two is like complaining that all you do in a FPS is shoot people. Out of every single MMO I have ever played (And I've at least dabbled in quite a few), only ONE MMO ever had quests that didn't boil down to this, and actually did have unique gameplay elements and using existing elements in new ways in each quest (Well, most quests, some newbie quests were indeed standard fare). That game was RuneScape, and the quality of their quests is kinda their selling point, and the engine they use makes it a lot more feasible (A lot of the effects that made RuneScape quests unique would be difficult, if not impossible, to do with FFXIV's engine). If the standard MMO quests are so bad for you, maybe you should go play that instead.

[GreyJorildyn]

Well, i think people are still looking at aspects like this with rose-colored glasses. The sidequests in this game are very, very bad. I'll give my reasonings below:

1) Bad flow: in other mmos you're led from place to place along some path or tether. The first quests you take are level 1 then they rise with you at a generally predictable rate. In ffxiv, quests do not do this at all. There are no "rails" to set yourself on. Sidequest givers are as spread throughout cities as the leve people are. They are scattered, with no rhyme or reason. The first quests you find aren't necessarily for your level range. There's just no hop, skip, jump like you'd expect from a typical mmo where questing is used to level.

2) Poor rewards: when they bumped up exp rewards for leves, they might have considered making sidequest xp worthwhile too. Quite frankly they are a huge waste of time and you could grind xp a crapload faster. The item rewards are even worse. They are not even class-appropriate, nor is there a choice to pick this or that. It all seems fairly arbitrary what quest gives what, and as such it is terribad. The gil rewards are equally as underwhelming.

3) No motivation: other than the meta-game "completionist" stuff like achievements, there are no reasons to ever do this "content". It does not enhance your character whatsoever. There is no higher goal nor connection between the quest and you as a person. Why should I go kill those dodos exactly? Do I really care of it's not progressive? Vast majority of players (ie. not the people who will subsequently post here to disagree with me) will not because it does nothing to further their level(s).

Sidequests are more-or-less designed as poorly as leves still are. It's just something thrown in to make us feel like there's something to do. Just like how we had to spend anima porting around the world to unlock the achievement categories. Just one inconvenience after another but we can do ourselves a favor by just ignoring them entirely anyway

[viion]

Some people should look at how GW2 does it, and see that ArenaNet know how to improve a system where as SE just put in something typical, generic and non creative.

[SirOleas]

Some people should look at how GW2 does it, and see that ArenaNet know how to improve a system where as SE just put in something typical, generic and non creative.

Eh...I wouldn't go touting systems of MMO's that aren't out yet.
I am hopeful for GW2 though...

[GreyJorildyn]

SE hasn't even been fully up to the challenge of looking at what's already out there. Let's not delude ourselves in a hope that they will see the new stuff coming out in a few months. They should be doing both, and if they are, this build currently is way behind 2012 expectations yet.

[SirOleas]

SE hasn't even been fully up to the challenge of looking at what's already out there. Let's not delude ourselves in a hope that they will see the new stuff coming out in a few months. They should be doing both, and if they are, this build currently is way behind 2012 expectations yet.

Since we are not supposed to be deluding ourselves.
What are 2012 expectations?
Might as well define them since SE reads the threads on their forums.

[Duuude007]

interactive sidequests would be neat.

As in, you dont pay attention, you could flub a step, and get a degraded reward.