Progression path: Grinding VS Questing

[Onidemon]

Introduction

When playing an MMORPG one of the main goals is to get your character from lvl. 1 to the max lvl. How you do this is different from game to game. Some focus on one aspect and others on multiple options.

Asian MMOS will frequently be grindfests, where you grind monster either solo or with a party for hours to level up. Western MMOs like WOW take the questing approach(It did change for WOW a bit with the dungeon system where that's pretty much all players do now to level)Which is better? I think it is a matter of taste but if you do want to appeal to a larger crowd, i think choice is the key here.

Questing does seem to be more popular then grinding. WOW and other mmos taking that approach did prove to more successful and popular then Asian mmos going the grinding path.

As of now it seems to me that FFXIV is a bit of a grindfest (correct me if i'm wrong as i don't play that much) FFXI was the same and i have to admit that it was pretty fun at times but it does get repetitive. Quests on the other hand can be repetitive too, unless they are well designed and provide a bit of verity with quests that have different goals and play styles.

The problem with FFXIV is that i login, i do leves, once i finished them, i did the few quests available for my level and then i'm stuck. What else is there to do? I'm not a very big fan of grinding and after killing a few monster i get bored and log off. There's definately a gap between things to do and then you get to a point where you're stuck with 1 option only and if that's not something you like then you just don't feel like playing anymore.

This is what I'd like the game to be like.

Lvl 1-10: Tutorial quests, keeps you busy and shows you the game mechanics, tells you a little bit about the game's story, lore, region etc....

Lvl. 10: 1st story quest. Get's you deeper into FFXIV's story. Another story quest is available every couple of levels(which is already the case, but more would be nice)

Lvl. 10-max: A variety of miniquests and behests when available will help you progress through the game. The mini quests should not only provide you with things to do and help you level but also help you travel and discover the world. You start with a couple of quests in the main city and by the time you finish them, they take you to another area. They make you discover the camps and teach you about behest, they take you to small villages(if they add these) and the other main cities.

Questing should take you all over the world, from the low level areas all the way to the end game areas. Depending on which quests you do they make take you different parts of the world and your path from level 1 to max lvl may be different depending on which quest takes you to which area. Like that leveling multiple classes will be more fun and less repetitive.

Quests can be done solo or with a party. When doing then in a party, the game will automatically adjust the difficulty of the quest. Monster will be harder and more items will be required to finish the quest.

Dungeons. Lvl 25 is your first dungeon and then every 10 level you should have a new dungeon available.

Behests, Which have a 1h cooldown should be done between quests to help you progress faster.


Levequests. These i think should be changed completely. I fail to see the difference between these and mini quests besides the fact that they are repeatable. I don't think we should have a whole system/feature just for that tiny difference. I think they should be changed to something like the monster hunt system of FFXII.

Eache levequest/card represents a target posted by someone who needs that beast to be slayed. They are cathegorized by difficulty/level and someone targets will be party only. Once you accepted the leve, you need to go to the poster who will give you the details and the requirements to meet the monster. It should ask you to do different task before you can fight the target.

Example:

Leve Name: "King Bomb", Requirements: Level 20-25, difficulty:Medium. Details:Solo/Party, no time limit. Poster: Taru(location) Cooldown:1.5 days (rare leves will have a longer cooldown but provide better rewards)

Once accepting the leave, you go see the poster, who tells you that the target was spotted in a specific location but needs some "magic oil" to lure him out. He tells you that a certain monster carries that oil. So right there it's not just a matter of teleporting to a camp and walking to the monster location to finish the quest. Theres multiple steps before getting to the target. Harder monster will have more then 1 step like this one and when in a party, different party members can go and complete different steps so it is faster to gather the required items etc to get to the monster.

Goals and Rewards

it's nice to have a way to get from level 1 to max and make it fun but you also need a reason to do so. They should have some very cool looking and rare armors, weapons, mounts, materia etc to motivate players to get all the way to the end game content.

EDIT:

Grinding

Forgot to mention Grinding. Of course if that is the way you prefere to Rank up then you should have the option to do so. You can gather a party, setup a camp and pull high rank monsters to Rank up quickly with friends.

Quests Edit

Quests should indeed be repeatable per class. I fail to understand why they made quest for your character overall and not for each one of your classes. When you completed those and then want to level a new class you cant take these quest anymore and that goes against SE saying they want us to try as many classes as possible.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

Few thoughts on the matter:



TL;DR (because everyone loves these ;p)

Questing: Should take you all over the world (as OP said) and then some.
Dungeons: Progression every 10 levels starting at Lv.15. Make the spoils plentiful.
Levequests: Fine as is, but with the ticket system they should base it on class.
Behests/Invasions: Should be streamlined better with a more epic feel & rewards.

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Questing - I agree that they should take you everywhere. I also think there needs to be way more quests than what we have. It seriously is only like 1-2 higher rank quests per city. When considering people level multiple classes, this leaves them with nothing at all because there are no repeatable quests (I do not count Leves).

Also agree that the low levels should direct you to do all these tutorial quests from the very moment you get out of the beginning cut-scene. Not text either, but on-screen images (or video) of some of the ways the world works & how to interact between them.

Behests need a more epic feel, IMO. The "boss" fights are boring & they feel too much like guildleves. Maybe they could make them into open-world invasions similar to RIFT. I could see them grouping Behest & Garlean invasions similar to this. They would be good quest filler content.

Dungeons - The level of accessibility should be low (a tutorial of sorts, but still with a purpose for some lowbie gear). Lv.15, 25, 35, & 45 (maybe even 50) would be nice progression. Not just a single dungeon every 10 levels either, but one in each city region for that level.

Dungeons should also be more forgiving on some of the armor output as well as bulks of dark matter. I don't care if they have to reskin/recolor armor, just add more rewards for people (even if they aren't that great).

If someone runs the dungeon enough times they should be able to get fully geared from it, but not better than HQ crafted gear for that level. There should be rare drops that do rival crafted gear, BUT there should be rare crafting materials that drop that rival even that.
Can anyone seriously argue against something like this? It favors everyone & keeps crafters relevant.

Lastly, you should be able to select a dungeon difficulty similar to guildleves. It would also be nice to have a progression element to dungeons so it isn't always running to the same old finish line every time (unlock stuff, different wings, etc)

Levequests - i think they are fine as is (still slightly low on SP for some Aetheryte locations, imo), BUT it would be nice to have that ticket system they were talking about. Leves would be like the "dailys" of FF14, but with the ticket system it would be nice to be able to accumulate multiple uses similar to campaign ops or assault.

So instead of having only 8 total to do, if you accumulated enough, you could go out and do many more up to the ticket cap.
To expand on this, so that it is not overpowering, they could only allow this ticket system based on the class.

You wouldn't be able to do 20 guildleves all on the same class, but when the time came that you wanted to switch classes, it would be nice if this "ticket" system accumulated for them so they would still be left with something to do.

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Community Team: Please think carefully over these suggestions & posts and don't take them lightly. It would be nice to hear from the Dev & some of the things they envision when thinking about our suggestions.

[DNO]

leave leves as it is level grinding as it is. Just because you do not like it does not mean other will not.

I only agree with adding the quest part to rank up. If you have leves, questing (WoW like) and grinding as balanced out and all equally as important i think we will have a unique MMO that no one esle has. What i mean is have a quest system that can get you from 1-50 just like leves do and party grinding can. You will have so many ways to rank up that even grinding will not be boring.

Of course add more leves to make it less boring and add more camps to grind to make it less boring and more mobs and faster respawn on the mobs etc. improve what we have do not ask them to take it away.

[Nipa]

Questing, dailies (leves) and grinding are not even enough.

We also need the ability to level with dungeons only and public questing (the behests before the party size nerf) only, if we want to have more than the average current game.

Rift, for instance, has questing, public questing (rifts), grind and pvp. I'm pretty sure WoW has at least 4 ways to level too. Etc.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

Questing, dailies (leves) and grinding are not even enough.

We also need the ability to level with dungeons only and public questing (the behests before the party size nerf) only, if we want to have more than the average current game.

Rift, for instance, has questing, public questing (rifts), grind and pvp. I'm pretty sure WoW has at least 4 ways to level too. Etc.

Rift is a really good example of dynamic leveling (other than monster grinding). Once we have exp chains and what not FF14's leveling could shape up to be amazing if they get creative with it.

Unfortunately, i think they're stuck in a 1-minded way of thinking and can't see ways of making these things work. It's very sad.

[Imoen]

As far as questing goes, one key difference between most of the MMOs mentioned and this one is, in this you are able to switch classes on the fly. The others you kind of just "respec" your current class to fine tune it (Which is kind of what you have with the action system here)

My point being is, these other MMOs have the luxury of you making a new character when you want to play a different class. Thus all the quests are reset and right from lvl 1 your off doing quest chains etc...

This game you can switch classes on the fly thus... you would need a different solution. Like what happens if you play through all of example: Blackshroud zones quests on one class? These would no longer be available to your other classes unless starting a new character. Granted there are a couple of ways to solve this if one was so inclined but it does add an additional challenge to design I think.

1. Add so many quests that you can barely see your mini map so you can have enough to support all the classes that you may play in the future.

2. Have so many repeatable quests that you wouldn't get bored from doing them all.

3. Create quest lines for each class per area that branch out and merge lets say mid 30s and could run each class through 1-50 (in addition to any future classes /jobs) With this comes having to implement a way for "you changing classes" to flag a trigger that tells the system that you are now on a new class so please show these quests and hide the others... and then you run into the problem of how do you solve the journal if there are quests over laps / names are the same... Do you make it so the journal is different per class? if so then will this effects leves? If not then do you solve this by having all quests with unique names? etc... etc...

4. Say that they only put in the enough quests to support 1 class after which you have to find alternative ways of leveling etc...

Then obviously there is prob other creative ways of making something like this work that I'm not thinking of... but to me currently in my mind... you would have to put a huge amount of work in to make questing a viable option for "level grinding". Anyway just my 2 cents.

[Nipa]

As far as questing goes, one key difference between most of the MMOs mentioned and this one is, in this you are able to switch classes on the fly.

It's doable to have enough quests to level, say, 2 or 3 classes. In Rift you can level nearly twice doing every quest from one faction, times this 1.5 to account for the duplicated quests for each faction during the first half of the game, and you got 3 whole leveling. In EQ 2 I'm pretty sure your have enough to level 3 or 4 times, hell the whole AA system is here to make you do those. I won't even try to get in WoW territory, this would become obscene.

If the time required to level a single class is the same in FF14 than in those, then I'm pretty sure most people will be ok with 2 or 3 leveling times of quests...

And to complete that, we need dungeon leveling (need dungeons for all level range), dailies leveling (more varied and interesting leves), public quest leveling (behests that actually make people play them on the go), and some more nicer way to grind (chains, combos, etc.).

Of course SE need to understand than a quest is something where the travel part is negligible before the content part. This step may take some time...

[Imoen]

It's doable to have enough quests to level, say, 2 or 3 classes. In Rift you can level nearly twice doing every quest from one faction, times this 1.5 to account for the duplicated quests for each faction during the first half of the game, and you got 3 whole leveling. In EQ 2 I'm pretty sure your have enough to level 3 or 4 times, hell the whole AA system is here to make you do those. I won't even try to get in WoW territory, this would become obscene.

If the time required to level a single class is the same in FF14 than in those, then I'm pretty sure most people will be ok with 2 or 3 leveling times of quests...

And to complete that, we need dungeon leveling (need dungeons for all level range), dailies leveling (more varied and interesting leves), public quest leveling (behests that actually make people play them on the go), and some more nicer way to grind (chains, combos, etc.).

Of course SE need to understand than a quest is something where the travel part is negligible before the content part. This step may take some time...

Even if there is enough quests to do 3 classes, that still leaves the rest of your classes in the dirt as far as questing goes. (god forbid they add more with only a small amount of quests.)

Now I understand what your getting at having all these different ways to level that you kind of just do a little of everything, And that Is how I would do it personally... however, you can not assume that is what everyone "Wants" or "Is going to want" to do that.

I guess this is where lines have to be drawn about "How do you rank/level up in ffxiv?" that Square needs to make. Do they make the game have "Options of leveling" If they make it options each one needs to be able to rank you in and of itself for the most part across all ranks... Grinding/Questing/Leves/missions/dungeons... otherwise its not really an option.

Lets say I'm Joe... (Which I'm not but for the sake of argument) As Joe I really enjoy doing quests with parties and solo... as Joe I really don't care for leves too much(for w/e reason that Joe has)... and I'm not too interested in dungeons either ... and party grinding on mobs isn't really my cup of tea it bores me.

Does Square say ok Joe, we are going to make questing a viable way for you to rank either solo or with a party and have other aspects of the game for ranking for those who wish to participate? Or do they say well that is just tough Joe we really want to encourage players to try multiple ways of ranking so after your 3 classes are done your going to have to do something else?

Either direction they take I'm cool with it because I will continue to do party grinds/ quests/ missions/ and dungeons. But at the same time I wouldn't blame Joe if he really just didn't want to play anymore after those 3 classes since questing is what he likes to do and it is now exhausted.

[Akashi]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, OP. This grindfest is burning me out and is exactly why I left FFXI. Some very good ideas there.

[Azurymber]

i'd be scared if they tried to make levelling up via quests because the quest system in this game is so horrible and outdated that I can't see how many people would enjoy it.
This game's quests are
-meet npc in city
-run 40min
-talk to other npc
-kill things for 2mintues
-talk to npc in city again

Not exactly exciting or immersive.