What Tera taught me about the quest plans for ARR.

[Yolteotl]

Main reason I prefer quest-based levelling is that it's an exploit counter-measure by luring ppl away from AFK leeching by diminishing the efficiency of grinding, which is what ALOT of ppl did in FFXIV 1.0 and what so many ppl cry about in FFXI dealing w Abyssea. AND although you will have congestion of different players going after the same mobs for the same quests, they will be separated by (at least) 3 points of origin depending on their class they are leveling and the only reason the players would 'get in each other's way' on objectives is because they are refusing to team-up even though they share objectives aka YOUR OWN FAULT.

Instead of acting like your leveling process should mandate social interaction, I'd rather have more pertinent content that forced groupings; after all your leveling experience is just a time sink no matter what RPG you have ever played. Don't get me wrong, it should always be more enjoybale for groupings (or just don't play MMOs) but not necessary for leveling efficiency.

Actually that brings up a whole other point, the different classes have specific objectives based on their home nation, therefore making it even more important to not have grinding a preferred method because the balanced party that you need is either split up between the 3 different nations or ignoring their content for the sake of the grind.

[Solace]

Eve Wow has some good ideas in regards to leveling..
I saw my gf playing it and there was a quest, she ended up using trebuchets and different interfaces to beat mobs..
That's the kind of stuff we need. More interfaces, more mini games, more fun.
I mean we used to end up in submarines or fighting ultimate weapons in FF.. We need to get back to our roots imo.

As for playing with random people.. That's what an MMO is for.. Jebuss. If you log into an mmo and decide you don't want to meet people. You are seriously playing the wrong kind of game..lol
I can't imagine how miserable I'd of been, had I not taken the time to shout and make parties, to use the search function and everything I could, to meet new people, to make things happen.
I would of never beaten every primal and Van Darnus, that's for sure..
Would of never met My A-Team.. Great people btw...

I use to play with JP players all the time in ffxi..
In ffxiv though they were much less willing to party with Westerners.. Makes me a bit sad. I was friends with some of them.
We'd talk in translate.. It's so easy to be prejudice. But seriously we are all the same..
Party with them a few times and talk to them and you would see it..
I loved JP parties.. Those fellas were not about the nonsense.. It's go time when you got into one of their parties..
Not only that but they made sure you used your abilities properly.

[Coyohma]

There will be. I highly doubt there will not be any kind of group quests as stand-alones or part of quest chains, and dungeons and raids will definantly not be solo and require interactions. The FATE system was described as something that gets people together to tackle the objective. There are plenty of things in the game that cant be soloed, but they want it so that leveling up is not one of those things that you must do in a group. Thats the conveniance quest based leveling has over monster grind leveling.

The fact that group quests may exist doesn't mean that it's a substancial portion of the game, or one's EXP. Will "group" quests give a higher rate of EXP than if you were to do solo ones? If the difference is not obvious, most people will stick to soloing their way to the cap.

Referencing FATE and raiding is getting off track -of course endgame will require people to team up. But there are two points to be made. One, a lot of players don't get to endgame, or don't do much of it even if they are able to. Two, the social aspect was only one of five advantages I gave to open world leveling.

To go from 85 to 90 in a grind party takes about 12 hours in WoW if you do it with quests/dungeons you will take about 50-60 hours of gameplay or 2 weeks playing casually a few hours a day.

I seriously doubt that people could EXP nearly five times as fast by simply killing open world mobs, but choose not to. If that's the case there must be some other very significant incentive to do quests/dungeons.

[Elexia]

lol you guys sure love to cling to things

All you're doing is clinging onto shit lol. You're even to the point you would fight against what Yoshi says, the guy you're praising non-stop.

I can't wait till Beta comes so I can stop being so darn tight lipped. :/

It is quite hard isn't it?

Even in wow a quest based game lvling off monsters is still faster some of the first people to get lvl 90 in MoP got it off grinding mobs. Just because yoshi said standing in one spot killing mobs

His words was grinding on mobs, as in monster grinding, not "standing in one spot", the act of grinding on monsters at all is inefficient and the primary and most efficient means of progression is Quest based.

Devs can never be 100% sure whats effective or not, even if they intended it a certain way (NIN XI).

By devs you mean players. The developers are the one making the game. They're the ones who set the rules. You state the Ninja example in XI but you didn't elaborate to try to keep a base in your argument, let's elaborate:

Ninja they designed to do the following:

1. steady DoT (Physical)
2. Elemental shifting - Spinning the wheel grants resistance changes to the enemy thus giving your mages advantages over enemies who may be very strong against ice for example.
3. Pulling - Has access to Guns, Throwing weapons
4. Powerful debuffs (at the time), their slow and paralyze were actually more potent than the spells for awhile.
5. Avoid taking damage in the case they drew hate.

#5 is why their role changed around NA release by players. SE later tried to help the playerbase out by making updates and gear additions to Ninja to help with tanking. That doesn't state the developers "doesn't know what's efficient", it states perfectly clear that what they intend doesn't always end up the way PLAYERS DECIDE TO UTILIZE SOMETHING, however when the developers flatout state you can't progress by grinding on monsters as it's inefficient in comparison. that means BY DESIGN you cannot do that. It simply doesn't work. You can't circumvent it nor can you go against it. if SE decides every "trash mob/roaming monster" gives less than 100 exp even in a party, yet quests net you 450-7000 xp a pop for sometimes just talking to an npc and not even fighting, you're only hurting yourself by doing the other option.

Until SE states otherwise, we may have options, but one of those options is inefficient compared to the rest. It doesn't take a "purist" (which is ironic, because of all the purists in this topic alone vanguarding Quest chaining) to know that when 1 works better than the other, there's a problem.

Thus the point of the topic, if they're going the direction of Quest Chaining, the quality as seen in pretty much every other MMO with it has never been the best. This may be a final fantasy game, but that doesn't mean SE will make 300-400 unique action packed dripping with oodles of story and lore quests to level on..it's impossible for them to keep the quality high in every single one.

SWTOR lost quality the further you got into it and not in the usual "reaching the climax" kind of way, it literally lost quality in every realm of the word as you reached completion of yours. MoP from WoW was used as example because people had to relevel and catch alts up but by design Blizzard never stated you wouldn't be able to progress by grinding on monsters, that's the key difference here. So once again, until SE states otherwise, the last word is you have options set before you but Quests are the key leveling system.

[Zetsubou]

Then why allowing the possibilities of being able to grind party and acknowledging that you still can level through that method. Yet, they aren't trying to make it an equal method of level. It seems to me that they are forcing everyone by just trying to optimize one method as much as possible.

Yes, I know you can even just kill mobs solo for no particle reason till you hit the max level, but since they aren't trying to make that method an effective as the others, no one will attempt of doing so. Same goes for grinding parties, if they aren't trying to making it as effective as quests, no one will attempt doing it.

[Kirito]

Its not commonly known that in WoW grinding is the fastest way to level. Is it a pain in the ass to find people around your level to make a grind party yes it is. I know for a fact in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria world firsts and most server first level 85 and 90 were obtained by grind parties. Doing that takes a level of coordination that most people in WoW do not want to deal with which is why quests/dungeons are the popular way to level, not many people at all are willing to grind it takes making your own group and finding specific roles. To go from 85 to 90 in a grind party takes about 12 hours in WoW if you do it with quests/dungeons you will take about 50-60 hours of gameplay or 2 weeks playing casually a few hours a day.

Not having to find a lot of people to make a party despite it taking much longer to quest shows that people will take solo and auto group over making an actual party.

WoW shows people won't go for whats fastest but whats easiest. In hardcore guilds people were making grind parties so they could cap faster to do the new raids

I am sure you could still make a grind party in a linkshell and get more exp faster then you can with quests, player skill how fast you can pull kill mobs plays a big deal in your exp rate.

Yeah finding grind parties is a pain, I did my first natalan party by pure chance and don't ever think I saw another group form up in my linkshell. SE did say, I think, that exp will be earned mostly for quests. They could add leve quests to the content finder to make it easier to find leve quest parties...

[Warlock]

All you're doing is clinging onto shit lol. You're even to the point you would fight against what Yoshi says, the guy you're praising non-stop.

There you go again not make sense >_> ...

[Solace]

Yeah finding grind parties is a pain, I did my first natalan party by pure chance and don't ever think I saw another group form up in my linkshell. SE did say, I think, that exp will be earned mostly for quests. They could add leve quests to the content finder to make it easier to find leve quest parties...

I have always liked that part.
It may take a while and people come and go, trying to fill the pt.
But for the most part, in the end you'd have a group of people, willing to hang in through the hard times, to get the job done.
Those were the people I stayed in contact with. Not the ones who joined and dropped.

I almost felt like it was a way for me to find the people, who weren't willing to just throw in the towel, when faced with a difficult task.
Those are the kinds of people you go to primals with.

[schism]

Well said man.

I have always liked that part.
It may take a while and people come and go, trying to fill the pt.
But for the most part, in the end you'd have a group of people, willing to hang in through the hard times, to get the job done.
Those were the people I stayed in contact with. Not the ones who joined and dropped.

I almost felt like it was a way for me to find the people, who weren't willing to just throw in the towel, when faced with a difficult task.
Those are the kinds of people you go to primals with.

[schism]

Finding much of anything is a pain in the current game lol. And there is too many ppl bringing up that they experienced ppl going afk in a exp pt. Yep im pretty sure they will do the same in a slow meaningless quest. And WoW is easy mode get over it already. So yea we dont want anything blizzard does. I hope we get casual and hardcore servers down the road because I would hate playing with most of you.