Side Quests should rhave increased XP rewards to be efficient for alt jobs

[Shurrikhan]

Better solution: Just greatly reduce the MSQ exp and then reduce the required per level from 81-90 by the same total.

[kejakalope]

I've been some some sidequests for mostly lore, and yeah, the exp from them is piss poor.

Strangely, FATEs are too - though I've been grinding them for gems, they are just terrible exp.

SE wants to funnel people super hard into dungeons and roulettes, I guess.

Well, yeah. The game's health hinges on keeping the roulettes packed so people have short queues.

That said, it does suck that I have done zero sidequests this expansion without an aethercurrent riding on them, because the XP is abysmal. I would like a reason to do the quests other than "roll the dice to see if this one had a good writer."

[kejakalope]

Right now the only way on God's earth anyone would think sidequests are an efficient use of time is if they're skipping all the cutscenes and speed-clicking through the quest text. If I wanted to do that, cutscenes would not be my method of choice for leveling a job.

[Risvertasashi]

Well, yeah. The game's health hinges on keeping the roulettes packed so people have short queues.

That said, it does suck that I have done zero sidequests this expansion without an aethercurrent riding on them, because the XP is abysmal. I would like a reason to do the quests other than "roll the dice to see if this one had a good writer."

That argument works for fates, I guess.

But not so much for sidequests. They are one time only; once done, they're done. So even the most avid sidequest aficionado will still end up queuing for roulettes.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

They should.

Make it easier to level jobs on the side would be great

[Seraphor]

see but thats the problem, even in the most optimistic of circumstances , when a quest gives you 150k exp you might aswell join a fate group, lots of fates won't take longer than a minute either and offer you 190k-240k~ depending on level with a chance getting 400k or more experience with some bonusses/bigger fates

yes, you will do closer to 1 fate per 5 minutes than one per minute obviously but it's also not like you just jump into a single quest hub, take 10 quests all taking a minute each and than are done in 10 (+2 for the initial time investment) minutes. not to mention even "regular" fating is like half the speed of going into zadnor.

Edit: furthermore, as someone else pointed out, if you just skip through all the text and try to "speedrun" quests than theres no reason to actually do quests instead of anything else, realistically actually reading through them is pretty much the only reason to do them so even that 40 second walking simulator will take you 2 minutes.

I don't see why quests should hive more exp than FATEs. And if quests were a more efficient way to gain exp, nearly everyone would just skip through them to get them over with, instead of playing them for their own sake. People may well be pressured into skipping through sidequests to level up quick, missing out on the story.

[kaynide]

Just my humble opinion, but I think sidequests should be the absolute juiciest thing outside of MSQ for xp. Even if super fast, I think they should give closer to double what the current beast tribe reward is. Something like a full level per zone I feel is reasonable (we are only talking a total of 6 levels).

My reasons are pretty simple:
1) You can only do them once, unlike beast tribes, roulettes etc.
2) I would think the devs would encourage us to do the sidequests. Personally I didn’t do 90% of sidequests until shadowbringers, and my only goal was to clean up my map so I could see new quests pop up easier. There are some good stories in there, but I was not motivated to do them when I had better options for xp.
3) Kinda the same as 2, but it would help the player base have a better understanding of lore and goings on by engaging the story instead of the same exact beast quest they’ve done all week.

Regarding skipping the story to speed run, yeah…but people do that regardless of the xp, I honestly sped through the Ruby Sea because I was just uninterested in the area and had been deep into shadowbringers by that point.

For me I guess better to encourage more people to do the zone quests and allow people to get good xp and skip than not do them.

If a few of those people came for the xp, but got invested in the story, that’s a win.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

This game is primarily an RPG, so having normal quests give this low XP is odd. Some of them have rather lengthy cutscenes, too, which makes me scratch my head; they obviously spent a lot of time and effort creating something nobody does because it's such a low reward activity.
They shouldn't ignore the way the human brain is wired; doing side quests when you could do a roulette feels like a "waste of time".
Doing them while queued for a roulette is difficult, because the queue can pop in the middle of a cutscene, which you can not watch in NG+, because side quest, and throwing away the queue spot is a) a waste again and b) leads to a penalty strike, so you can't commit to quests and roulette at the same time, and if given the choice, roulettes are more rewarding to such a degree that it's very unlikely anyone would ever choose the quest over the roulette.
FATEs have a similar problem: if you beam to a roulette in the middle of a FATE, your share of progress is lost.
Now we also have escort quests, so you can't just do a FATE on your way between quest objectives either.

[Akiudo]

I don't see why quests should hive more exp than FATEs.

1. they are limited in their quantity.
2. they require at least a little more personal interaction compared to fates which mostly can be done by joining a group, flying to the fate and pressing a single AoE.
3. Even fates are FAR from the best time->Experience rate unless you count zadnor.

this also isn't necessarely about turning side quests into the best way to gain experience (which is when people would actually be encouraged to rush through them if they want to level), right now however they are pretty much the worst while taking a comparatively large amount of work, and yes, all things considered this even includes the "40 second walking simulator" side quests.

[Legion88]

Side quests EXP is certainly a bit too low, yeah. A max-rank Pixe quest gives you 330k EXP at lv80+, which is x2 of what a side quest offers.



Also, I read that if you only do MSQ, you won't have enough exp to continue due to oversight. They plan to fix this soon.


Personally, I think MSQ exp in EW should be 700k EXP/quest, and side quests should be at least 350k. Better than doing a non-bonus EXP FATE.

Did Endwalker, only did MSQ, aethercurrent quests and role quest, every dungeon and Trial on the way only once and I was level blocked only once at level 89 MSQ because I missed a fifth of my Exp to level up. Did a single Trust dungeon to catch up and continue the MSQ.
In comparsion with that:
In HW I completed every single sidequest and run dungeons multiple times because I was stopped by a red MSQ marker multiple times.
SB was no problem with leveling because Raubahn Ex sent me farming FATES while I waited for the queue to subside, so I effectively started SB at level 65.
In ShB I had to run the 75 dungeon multiple times to catch up with the MSQ level while I already ran every dungeon twice to keep up with the MSQ and not have to deal with sidequests beside aethercurrents.

In conclusion, they hit the pacing of MSQ Exp pretty well this time, not perfect but way better then every other expansion before. Maybe a raise of ~10% should make any other source of Exp unneeded for MSQ progression.