Quote Originally Posted by lenn1 View Post
Now imagine doing that quest when you were level 75. Do you think it would have been challenging and exciting? Most of the people asking for this to be a challenge have multiple 50s and millions of gil. Its a bit difficult to make something designed for mid 20s a challenge for level 50s.
I did that quest with my newbie friends many times, after reaching cap (when cap was 75.) My point in the message you quote was not that it was a difficult fight, or voyage. What made it so valuable, was its organically standing as a rite of passage, a sine-qua-non to obtain the coveted license, when you were at the right level. As such it had the ability to generate cherished memories, and implant an emotional link in your brain. Even if your higher-level friends helped, the whole quest was a symbolic hurdle; it appeared as a logical chore, cohesive and seamless within the cosmogony of the game, and one that evinced enough care bestowed on it to detonate an unencumbered emotional reaction. It was also great that you had the option to buy the grass to complete the quest, since I am not against options. But then you knew you were taking a shortcut. Plus you still had to figure out why the chocobo would not take his third dose. Any way you chose to go, getting the grass was only part of it, and once finished, there was an evident sense of accomplishment, and satisfaction. Plus the reward was wonderful.

Compared to that, the quest I mention in the OP seems like a clumsily patched on afterthought, makeshift, dull, and with 0 emotional value. An equivalent quest in XI would've been the Onion Brigade task, which required from you to provide the Brigade some sort of "tail" to be completed. The tail ended up not being a real tail, but a so-called variety of asparagus that the Windurstian loved to eat pickled. But you would not know that until you talked to them with the (rather common) drop in your inventory. In the meantime, you would be trying to figure out how to detach a tail from the critters in Saruta Baruta. The reward was also very gratifying (the Justice Badge was a commonly equipped item, for the neck slot, all the way up to level 40, sometimes beyond.)

And that would be only the first quest within an organically developed series, which would keep you entertained well into level 50, and would provide you with the above-mentioned badge, (and another one towards the end of the series that would be quite valuable from level 50 onwards.)

There is a big difference there. In the meantime the bunch of Stuffed Dodos is still sun-tanning on their crowded corner, on the way to Nanawa

R