A request to improve quests.

[Azurymber]

One of the great things about final fantasys are their stories + rp elements. They often pull you into a deep complex world and make you feel immersed in wonder.

Sadly, FFXIV has failed to do this. With its launch, FFXIV was slowly going in the right direction. The main story-line was pretty good and could be completed by those choosing not to battle. Further, many (not all) of the class quests had engaging unique stories with equally unique goals.

However, I would argue that the introduction of sidequests not only diminished the appeal of this game, but damaged its future. Sidequests are small quests where for the most part you talk to an NPC about something fairly meaningless, walk around for 40min or so, kill a few things for 5 seconds, and walk back. While they provide useful side-information about the game world, they do not engage players in the story or make people connect to the characters involved in the quest. They are for the most part short in dialogue, and often about boring things like running around a city giving npc's cake. They have lackluster awards, do not help to develop any characters in the game, do not immerse players, and in general, kind of suck.

Now i realize some people really like those kinds of "run here for 40 min, run back" quests. But honestly, FFXI had really amazing immersive quests with re-occurring characters, and they were -successful-. They really pulled you into the game world, covering important issues like the political relationships between nations, the internal societies and cultures of vana'diel, coming-of-age stories, etc.

The problem i see with these quests is that when the game is re-launched, these will be the quests flooding the world. And a lot of new players will think the game is outdated, rushed, boring, etc, due to its large (60+ now i believe) number of meaningless sidequests. Even if new, more-immersive and more cutscene based quests are added, they will be drowned out by all the old fail-quests. As such, the game will seem like a grind-fest rather than an MMORPG.

I can really see these quests hurting the games ratings in the future, and as someone who doesn't ever intend to quit, I'd really love to see the game do well.

If you would like to see better, more emotional, more meaningful quests, where you can actually connect with the NPCs, where there is actually some semblance of a story, please post your support or like the thread.

[Ark_mage2]

I disagree. While the initial quests were pretty basic. With each subsequent patch they have been getting better and better. The latest ones even have cutscenes. Yoshi-P said that he wants to have a lot of involving and expansive quests, but right now there are almost no quests in the game. He wants to fill the world with a bunch of quests. and over time add more and more complex ones. I think this is a right way to go.

[OminousAnonymous]

I agree. Even WoW. A 6 year old MMO has better story driven quests, and ALOT more of them too.
Which is sad that a game nowadays would be so lacking.. overall1.18 is great, and I see good things for this game in the future. But I cannot get myself to touch any of the quests in ffxiv except for main story, and an occasional side quest with a decent item reward.

Edit: Maybe for the future I'd like to see less "Hi, I like cake, get me 20" and more with lore/scenery etc. Also, I think it's a good idea to add ITEMS to each quest, it just feels more rewarding, and people might be more interested to delve further in hopes of getting somthing cool.

[Azurymber]

um... the new quests do -not- have cutscenes. I've completed every side quest and not a single one has had a cutscene.

If you are talking about company quests those are not sidequests. Sidequests are ones you get from talking to people around cities with a ! above their head.

And there are like 50 or 60+ quests in the game.... thats a lot of npcs...

[Ark_mage2]

um... the new quests do -not- have cutscenes. I've completed every side quest and not a single one has had a cutscene.

If you are talking about company quests those are not sidequests. Sidequests are ones you get from talking to people around cities with a ! above their head.

And there are like 50 or 60+ quests in the game.... thats a lot of npcs...

There is a quest I did in the Musketeers Guild today that had a cutscene...

[Azurymber]

There is a quest I did in the Musketeers Guild today that had a cutscene...

Ahh ok yeah but that wasn`t like a real cutscene or anything, that was like a 30 second flashback. And it didn`t really show much or anything. I mean like real couple minute long cutscenes. and honestly in this day and age there should be voices as well.

[Misha]

Ahh ok yeah but that wasn`t like a real cutscene or anything, that was like a 30 second flashback. And it didn`t really show much or anything. I mean like real couple minute long cutscenes. and honestly in this day and age there should be voices as well.

Impractical where SE currently is standing with this game and overall, unless you have resources out the wazoo like bioware with the upcoming SWTOR Hehe Voice acting/implementation is alot more pricey and harder than you think ... even though if you read waaay back, we were suppose to get waaaay more VA'ing for this game than we actually ended up with >.<

[Nipa]

At a given level, the xp/time ratio of a quest (including the travel time !) should be roughly the same for every quest.

Here we have the main line quests that give a lot of xp, and everything else that give basically nothing. This need to be balanced.

And it would be quite an smart move to balance them toward the higher rewards. In my opinion a quest reward ratio (xp/time) should be at least superior to solo-grinding mobs, maybe equivalent to grinding in a small pary of 2-3 players.

[madolyn]

i just wish the rewards were more substantial. i don't like to use anima all the time so running to coerthas and back for an hour then going back out of town to kill something and running back for a measly 2k sp is hardly worth the time.

[SuzakuCMX]

I like 'em fine. They're easy, usually tell you something good about what's about to happen, and the SP reward is good considering how many of them there are.

Main storyline quests are more involved and take a bit more effort, so it's understandable that they give a ton of SP.