Quest Hubs issues

[Dirich]

I also disagree.
Your points of contention are a matter of preference. Everyone is different.
ARR Was very small (In comparison to HW/SB) - everything was easy to reach - HW made that longer and harder - SB far more so.
There are some nuances that make it....difficult - but that's part of the game.

I personally enjoyed the dialogue and stories - I starve for it even now. But I'm not you....everyone is different.

ALL Final Fantasy games have this "Traveling" aspect..... it wouldn't be FF without it.

I am fine with everybody having their own taste, and I'm fine with the game having to feel like a FFXIV game. But I disagree that "having to spend a lot of time just walking from A to B" is a defining feature of FF.
I can agree in single player games having a story related reasons to have you move around, but anything more it's plain bad design or disrespect for the player time.
Also note that the "too much traveling for no good reason" I am referring to, is not really specific to the FFXIV SB locations I've played through. Many MMORPGS have it, and I think it's not by chance, but that's another topic.


I understand some people want to read, but others want to get to end game and enjoy the game (as in playing with mechanics rather than reading a (sort of) book). I'm not saying there's no value in your way to enjoy the game, or that it's wrong. What I'm saying is that there should be ways to skip through it faster for someone that has other priorities due to taste, time contraints or whatnot.
Let me re-formulate my suggestions:
1. What would improve both of our gaming experiences is less time wasted traveling, as that's not playing.
2. I am not saying having non killing quests is bad. It's actually very refreshing once in a while. But while there's been some very interesting kind of them, like the "you are the merchant, sell stuff" in Reunion, and the "MSQ sleep dart" in Yanxia, all the non killing quests that I did in those 3 hours were of the "go click on the interactive object over there".
This kind of quest does not add any interesting or unique mechanics, as the two examples I made, nor does it leverage the existing ones (combat), so from the playing perspective they are not very engaging.
It is fine to have this kind of quests too, of course. The issue is when they are the majority, as they are not engaging as all the other possibilities since the only mechanic they use is "click once and then wait a bit", which is not an entertaining mechanic given that what you click on is not even moving (as there are games based on clicking, but they are based on the ability/timing of clicking at the right time and right point on the screen, when things you need to click on are not static).
3. Add a quickskip button to avoid lengthy dialogues in side quests for those that wish to skip them.