Quest Hubs issues

[Dirich]

Yesterday I started Ruby Sea and did everything in the zone. It took me from morning to night, and it felt like I passed the entire day without really playing, so today I kept track of things.

Data
Yanxia, all quests (and aetheric currents) up to the last MSQ rewarding an aetheric current and excluding what that quest unlocks.
I was asked to kill a grand total of 12 mobs + 3 of a very weak type that took as much effort as a single normal mob. There was also a sort of "mini boss fight", which took quite a bit of time.

Combat time: 7 minutes.
Mini boss-fight: 5 minutes.
Travel + spam click to skip all dialogues for non MSQ stuff + read/watch everything MSQ related + non killing quests (i.e. interact-with-object, probably around 1 or 2 minutes total): 168 minutes.

To sum up, I barely used my character skills at all (12 minutes in 180, and half of that just because of the very special event "mini boss-fight").
Most of the time is spent walking around (and I try to optimize my pathing), skipping dialogues (I have not enough time to read through all that stuff), and watching/reading MSQ.


Issues
1. Only the dev can run a proper statistic, but I have the feeling most people skip through side quests dialogues, which make for wasted dev effort (since it's a MMORPG, thus many wants to reach max level fast - MSQ constraints already make FFXIV a game where such objective takes very long, compared to modern day average).
2. The quest hubs focus too much on non-combat quests. We barely get to actually play the game when going through the levelling experience.
3. It's not as bad as HW, but it still really feels as whoever designed the quests is trying to waste the player time by making the ratio of Travel-to-(Combat/DoQuestStuff) too skewed toward Travel.


Suggestions (for new content)
1. Reduce the Traveling needs before someone raeches flight/proper land mount movement speed.
2. Instead of having 2-3 non combat side quest per each combat side quest, use the opposite trend.

My only comparison (due to the road-to-60 effect), are the first couple of zones in ARR. They were better, as I spent more time playing and less time doing nothing but spam click or walk around.

[Moomba33]

I disagree.

1. I read all sidequest dialogue.
2. I enjoy the non combat quests and find many of them more interesting than killing a trash mob. I would love to see more creative quests (like a more difficult version of the find the area in the picture ones, or the one where you had to find the item based on the directions three Namazu pointed you towards) in the future.
Alternatively I would enjoy more combat focused quests if there were less trash enemies though I'm not sure how to make them more interesting while still being soloable by every job.
3. I feel like quest variety has been steadily improving since ARR. But like I've said I consider the non-combat quests to be playing the game as much as the combat ones.

[NephthysVasudan]

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.

[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.

[Vaer]

but others want to get to end game and enjoy the game

Shot in the dark here but did you buy a jump potion to 60? TBH the SB quests are rather tame compared to HW/2.0-2.55. Those were even more annoying. i.e Putting quest givers up on a cliff when you have no flying and having to go all the way around.

Though I will say the quests you are talking about aren't aimed at "gotta go fast" players. That's why they are sidequests, yellow ones are mostly optional if all you care about is getting to the end. You can skip a large portion of them if you don't care. You just have to do ones that advance the story. Just run a dungeon or roulettes to make up the exp loss if combat is more engaging, that is another option.

[Ariane]

Why are you doing the side quests if you don't like them?

[kikix12]

Quests are there for story. Dungeons are for leveling. There is zero reason to use quests for leveling unless you don't want to party at all.

Go do the dungeons, the roulettes, the beast tribe quests or PvP. Those are the things that offer experience. You will never come even close to the amount of experience in X time from side quests as you would from doing these things. This is made that way ON PURPOSE, so that people do not feel forced to do side-quests...and simply because there are so many jobs to level that making quests the way to level would simply kill the game. And as such, quests are NOT for leveling. If you level by doing quests...you choose the single worst possible option (other than just grinding on world maps mobs without any quest at all, that is).

Using the above, you can get multiple levels in few hours of gameplay at any point in the game. Using quests, you will be hard-pressed to get ONE level in an entire day. So yeah...

[Caitlinzulu]

It feels like give me lvl 70 now kind of person, why rush to 70? enjoy the stuff. Its only when you are leveling like your 4th or more character that you really dont feel like doing all those quests yet another time

[NephthysVasudan]

It feels like give me lvl 70 now kind of person, why rush to 70? enjoy the stuff. Its only when you are leveling like your 4th or more character that you really dont feel like doing all those quests yet another time

Agreed....the whole concept/idea behind Final Fantasy is just being "tossed out the window' with this "hurry up and skip content" mindset. Yes..to each their own - but its just sad.

[Liam_Harper]

I agree there's a slight lack of combat. I remember I started SB with a rank 7 chocobo. Kept the chocobo out permenently. Ended 4.1 with a rank 7 chocobo.

Not saying we should be swimming in kill quests, but a little bit of variety might be nice. Currently the inbetween-story padding is mostly travelling from point A to B.