With all the HM and Extreme Primals and dungeons, can we get some "HM" quests as well?
I don't mean make mobs harder to kill, but more of side quests that requires players to be more immerse in the game and actually think and try to figure out what to do, like in the old days of gaming. Quests that tells a story, gives you only a hint of what where you need to go or what you need to do, but that's it. No map queues, no specifics, those are for the players to find out. Quests that requires the player to search all of Eorzea to find what they need, that requires players to read and re-read the quest for hints, to talk to everyone in town for little gossips that might give hints to the next part, maybe even misleading information causing players to run around in circles for hours only to have the NPC laugh at the player for falling their tricks. Quests that one spends hours attempting only to discover that it is no job for only 1 person alone. Quests that start with gossips like "I heard there's a new warrior in town" and it is up to the player to find who and where this new warrior is. Quests that have the player chugging down beer at the bar just to catch the hearsay of the NPC's around them, NPC's shouldn't be perfect and shouldn't give all the information, or the same information just because you ask them. As we've seen in game, the NPC's do talk among themselves, and this could be valuable info, or it can be flat out usless. Secrets only to those with keen ears and a smooth mouth to find what has no markers (no ! to tell you there's a quest here, or nothing to tell you that you've actually finished the quest..you just have to figure it out). Quests that makes you USE YOUR THINK! (word puzzles, word play, jumping timeline of events one must make sense of, figuring out what's false and what’s not, piecing together secrets).
ie: i remember stuff in the past where you have to talk to the npc 100's of times (okay, maybe not that many), before they 'give up' and tell you the information you needed.
ie: an npc might complain that his sword is broken, and it is the players job to think for themselves that "we should fix this sword" and then figuring out who, what, where, and how, to go about it. There are only so many blacksmith NPC's in game, or maybe it requires a blacksmith PC to repair? but these are things for the player to figure out, not the quest giver to tell the Player exactly what to do.
I feel like with all the shortcuts, map icons and other what not's design to make questing easy for everyone, it's hard not to just skip reading the quest and rush straight to the red circles on your mini map to get things done. Create some long chain side quests that make the players who spent weeks gathering information feel accomplished because they were able to solve things on their own without the system telling them where to go and what to do next. We have an amazing story team working behind the scenes for this game, and I feel like it's all going to waste as most people (me included) just rushes through the contents and do not take much time to read the story, or are not given the chance to figure out things on their own.
Also, quests like this should not give progression gear, but should only novelty items. Players shouldn't be punish for being unable to figure it out, and giving out key upgrade gear in these quests would only result in players searching the internet for guides to finish them because it has become a "required" quest due to gear upgrades. I would feel more accomplish spending weeks figuring out a quest for a fun hat or some random fun item than I would for a gear that will simply get replace or is no better than my current gear.
And a long quest that takes MONTHS to figure out is content for folks to do once they are done farming tomes for the week. Let's face it, the way things are right now, a hardcore player will finish all their farming Monday night and complain about nothing to do for the rest of the week >.>