Stop it with the forced stealth

[Sani2341]

There was a grand total of like one of these stealth follow quests this Expansion that felt like it made sense.

Every other time I was like 'just let me beat the evil npc up for the info instead of following them.'

[Ranaku]

Now i want another "In from the cold" quest in Dawntrail just to see people cry here over it.

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't know if this has been already said before but stop it with the stealth already, it was bad in endwalker and is bad in Dawntrail, this is not a stealth game, nobody plays this game for the stealth and it doesn't matter how much you improve it is never going to be good, the quests are annoying and tedious. If you are going to keep those quests then stop forcing them on us in the MSQ and the aether current quests.

IMO, the problem is it doesn't feel like a "stealth" event, it feels like a "follow behind" as opposed to "lead a NPC around like a lost puppy", while I don't really care for either of these, I think the implementation just isn't very good for both.

For "X NPC is now following you", please, no more instructions about how to find them if you lose them. Put that in the journal log, cause it's making me click several times while I roll my eyes at seeing the instructions for the nth time. For the Stealth, actually make it more fun please. Like carry a box or a shrub or something to hide in. Most of these sequences feel like "follow behind just outside the white glow" now, and seem to serve no actual purpose but to make you slowly walk to the next area.

I am a believer in the "don't mix genres" . I want to play a MMORPG that has a good story. I don't want to have to suddenly play a no-stakes minigame that suddenly slows the pace down.

[CottonC]

I mean, the follow thing is a bit tedious. Still I get it that if they don't do it, people do tend to complain "Why is it always talk to npc, talk to npc, kill a mob, talk to npc." Granted, talking to the npc usually is not a problem since story is so good.

This said, and putting aside cost effectiveness, obviously it'd be a lot more fun to have enemy encampment to sneak into - due to whatever reason, perhaps they have a hostage and you can't go in 'guns blazing'. In some situations it feels natural to follow someone, in others... honestly, a stare from a butcher like WoL (who did kill a lot of Garlemald soldiers and defeated quite a lot of beasts of all sorts) could be enough to make someone talk and solve the information gathering in much faster fashion - but the problem that they have is that it's too specific, giving WoL too much character and so they become less of a blank slate.

Lastly, while I am by no means a fan of 'stealth' in FF XIV, the DT iteration of it felt cleaner in execution than Endwalkers, there was less random 360 spins in middle of nowhere, with no cover after game said "stay close" so it was not nearly as annoying.

[Dyvid]

Yea, I'm not a fan of this. It's annoying to be near the end then have DF ready goes off and end up having to redo the entire walk again...

Only joy I get is using Namazu Party Float, making as much noise as possible.

[Granyala]

Don't forget when we just take a step forward menacingly when the bad guys take a hostage for the 4987th time instead of ignoring cover/rescue/Bahamut conveniently located on our hotbar.

....
Bahamut

You do realize we're supposed to PROTECT/RESCUE the hostage ... not atomize it. :'D

BTW: you'd be surprised about how often police is condemned to do the "menacing stare" in real life in order to not endanger hostages in such situations.

What pisses me off infinitely more is that my Kitten, supposedly a powerful and gifted White Mage, always just stands there like a derp whenever some NPC is wounded while Alphinaud etc. get to do the actual healing. UGH.

[Kes13a]

....
Bahamut

You do realize we're supposed to PROTECT/RESCUE the hostage ... not atomize it. :'D

BTW: you'd be surprised about how often police is condemned to do the "menacing stare" in real life in order to not endanger hostages in such situations.

What pisses me off infinitely more is that my Kitten, supposedly a powerful and gifted White Mage, always just stands there like a derp whenever some NPC is wounded while Alphinaud etc. get to do the actual healing. UGH.

yeah, that healing things has been ongoing since Heavenward.. yep, your dying.. if ONLY there was a healer standing right there that could do something... if ONLY someone could rez you.. oh well... bye.. been nice knowing you...

its like I wear a white dress just to prove my laundry detergent is superior or something.

[HighlanderClone]

I don't think any of it was that bad this expansion.

The Urianger one at Lv84 was 100% the worst one though. You tail him and at the end he literally tells you he is glad that you followed him. What. ?????

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/L..._to_Old_Tricks

The story justification for these stealth quests are hilariously bad.

I actually personally like the mechanics of these quests but man, they don't know how to fit these into the story.

[Asari5]

I wouldn't mind it once or maybe twice an expansion. But almost every instance feels ham-fisted and like it's being used as padding.

to be fair its only every instance because everything else are cutscenes

[BakoolJaJa]

For "X NPC is now following you", please, no more instructions about how to find them if you lose them. Put that in the journal log, cause it's making me click several times while I roll my eyes at seeing the instructions for the nth time. For the Stealth, actually make it more fun please. Like carry a box or a shrub or something to hide in. Most of these sequences feel like "follow behind just outside the white glow" now, and seem to serve no actual purpose but to make you slowly walk to the next area.

Square Enix, or maybe specifically CBU3, do not understand what accessibility is or how it works. So they just put check marks on an arbitrary accessibility features checklist. People who struggle with figuring out the following quests will NOT be helped by a wall of text detailing how to find an NPC again. The reason why people messed up on stealth quests is NOT because the NPCs weren't surrounded by flashing, blinking, blinking spinning things. It was because the stealth logic, detection distance, etc, do not intuitively make sense. Because the devs also don't know how stealth works. But in the end they just throw random changes at the wall and hope they stick. Meanwhile we have to suffer these ridiculous, eye cancer innovations.

I wonder, does the dev team ever think about how come other games never have these issues? Why Elden Ring does not need to put an orange "danger zone" circle around the bosses? Why games like Last of Us that received a million awards for accessibility features do NOT have any of this nonsense, and instead have actual accessibility features developed by actual experts, who did actual user testing to ensure their solutions SOLVE problems instead of add more?

Probably not. And until the devs properly sit down and think about what is actually wrong with their "stealth" quest implementation, nothing will change.