Quest Hubs issues

[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.

[Dirich]

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.

As a note, it's an MMORPG, and the game starts at max level. Unless you wish to play it as a single player, which is also fine, in which case you might enjoy being lower level too. But being max level is also important if you want to play with your friends on content they care about. That is, without forcing them to do pointless content, which is something they might not enjoy, albeit they'd do it just to play with you. It's literally in the game genre (unless you go back to pre WOW when MMORPGS were only levelling).

But this is really beyond the point of the thread. And many, not just you, have misunderstood the topic.
The topic has nothing to do with how you like the game or what we can do now to level fast. It's about feedback on things that I deem to be bad design decision, so that they don't do it again the next time.

Everybody, regardless of play style and taste (rush-to-70 or not), are affected by too much travel time and excessive use of point-and-click type quests (quests not using any interesting mechanic, be it the combat one or some special non-combat one, like the "zoom + search + sleep dart the target").

Everybody that wishes to play FFXIV as a MMORPG (rush-70) is affected by the lack of a skip option for text dialogue that allows to skip the -very long- dialogues and the -very long- pauses caused by emotes (even when performed by other characters). This is mainly an issue for the first job, as you are forced to go through MSQ to unlock content (albeit, personally, I'd use it on the side quests only, many I know would use it on MSQ too, since they don't care about the story at all).

[MomomiMomi]

As a note, it's an MMORPG, and the game starts at max level. Unless you wish to play it as a single player, which is also fine, in which case you might enjoy being lower level too. But being max level is also important if you want to play with your friends on content they care about. That is, without forcing them to do pointless content, which is something they might not enjoy, albeit they'd do it just to play with you. It's literally in the game genre (unless you go back to pre WOW when MMORPGS were only levelling).

I actually find that the game ends at max level. You run out of max level content to do very quickly. The majority of this game is in its story quests.

[Vaer]

I did MSQ and side up to lvl 20 (pretty much 2 starting zones), then only MSQ. I finished ARR I was 60, so I only did MSQ in HW too. I was 64 at beginning of SB, so I burned through MSQ until far east, where I thought that only doing MSQ would leave me underlevelled due to lack of road-to-60 bonus. Which made side quests a necessity.

Thanks for the suggestion of alternative approaches, but the issue here is not what I can do now to sidestep the problem, but a suggestion to the devs to avoid it in future content.

That's the thing though. Other people might prefer the opposite (like some of the people in this thread don't mind the quests). Forcing them to change them so 75% of them are just fighting trash mobs (I find fighting them kind of dull since they usually aren't even a threat, it's like killing a striking dummy with maybe a circle or cone telegraph to dodge) is somewhat removing options or variety from people.

So maybe they can bring the ratio to 1:1, but there is already content that is geared toward killing things if efficiency isn't the problem but I suspect it is most of the problem.

Hunts which are somewhat what you are asking for basically skipping the bs and just killing mobs, so that is there as well, there is no text to skip, just tells you to kill a bunch of stuff for EXP. There are FATEs where a lot of them is literally just kill stuff, don't even have to read anything.

There is quite a bit of stuff that is for people that just want to kill things already. I just don't see the point in taking a hatchet to non combat content that other people like in the game just to add more stuff where you kill trash mobs that are almost no threat when there are already FATEs, hunts and tons of dungeons, trials, etc you can do.

I wouldn't care if they added a skip option but I personally don't find that it takes too long now just to spam through the text.

[Dirich]

That's the thing though. Other people might prefer the opposite (like some of the people in this thread don't mind the quests). Forcing them to change them so 75% of them are just fighting trash mobs (I find fighting them kind of dull since they usually aren't even a threat, it's like killing a striking dummy with maybe a circle or cone telegraph to dodge) is somewhat removing options or variety from people.

So maybe they can bring the ratio to 1:1, but there is already content that is geared toward killing things if efficiency isn't the problem but I suspect it is most of the problem.

Hunts which are somewhat what you are asking for basically skipping the bs and just killing mobs, so that is there as well, there is no text to skip, just tells you to kill a bunch of stuff for EXP. There are FATEs where a lot of them is literally just kill stuff, don't even have to read anything.

There is quite a bit of stuff that is for people that just want to kill things already. I just don't see the point in taking a hatchet to non combat content that other people like in the game just to add more stuff where you kill trash mobs that are almost no threat when there are already FATEs, hunts and tons of dungeons, trials, etc you can do.

I am not skipping hunts and FATEs. Also, I'm not suggesting to go back to the "grind your way through 70 levels" that was the standard in the old games.


I'm saying that the majority of the quests I had to go through had dull mechanics (point and click to immobile object). The devs should either use some cool or unique mechanic (like the examples I made previously, or card battle or whatever other mini game is already available in the game) or use the main game mechanics (combat). Moreover, since combat is the main game mechanics, you can't use it just once every 10 quests, or it's not the main mechanic anymore (the exact ratio, 1:1 or 2:3, is not particularly relevant in this context, as long as it is fairly balanced and not 10 to 1).

I wouldn't care if they added a skip option but I personally don't find that it takes too long now just to spam through the text.

You are talking qualitatively, saying that it doesn't take too long. I gave numbers: I played 3 hours, of which less than 15 minutes were combat, the rest was all running around and clicking on non-moving stuff or clicking through dialogues (or watching/reading MSQ stuff).

We can discuss if reading MSQ text is "playing" as it is a necessity for the story to advance (I'd rather not though, as it is a bit out of topic), but the fact that a major activity is "waiting for character to move from A to B" is an issue regardless of it.
The fact that "skipping text I don't want to read" is another not irrelevant part of the time, is another issue, albeit it only affects part of the player base. How much of it, only a proper statistic by the devs can tell.
In my experience in MMORPGS, though, the majority rushes max level without reading, a minority either reads everything immediately or rushes first and then goes back and reads the side quests (maybe on an alt). If your experience differs -and you don't have the habit to be in an roleplay or lore-geek community- then count me surprised. Regardless, neither yours nor mine are proper statistics unless we back them with numbers and proper sources.

[Vaer]

I am not skipping hunts and FATEs. Also, I'm not suggesting to go back to the "grind your way through 70 levels" that was the standard in the old games.


I'm saying that the majority of the quests I had to go through had dull mechanics (point and click to immobile object). The devs should either use some cool or unique mechanic (like the examples I made previously, or card battle or whatever other mini game is already available in the game) or use the main game mechanics (combat). Moreover, since combat is the main game mechanics, you can't use it just once every 10 quests, or it's not the main mechanic anymore (the exact ratio, 1:1 or 2:3, is not particularly relevant in this context, as long as it is fairly balanced and not 10 to 1).

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I didn't even say the quests were even engaging. My point was that there is plenty of combat related things to do, and that quests are there to expand on lore and flesh out the story while mostly being entirely optional and sometimes combat just doesn't fit depending on what it is trying to portray. I personally find fighting trash mobs super dull, adding more of it wouldn't make it more engaging to me, just more annoying. But that's really just a difference in opinion.

You are talking qualitatively, saying that it doesn't take too long. I gave numbers: I played 3 hours, of which less than 15 minutes were combat, the rest was all running around and clicking on non-moving stuff or clicking through dialogues (or watching/reading MSQ stuff).

We can discuss if reading MSQ text is "playing" as it is a necessity for the story to advance (I'd rather not though, as it is a bit out of topic), but the fact that a major activity is "waiting for character to move from A to B" is an issue regardless of it.
The fact that "skipping text I don't want to read" is another not irrelevant part of the time, is another issue, albeit it only affects part of the player base. How much of it, only a proper statistic by the devs can tell.
In my experience in MMORPGS, though, the majority rushes max level without reading, a minority either reads everything immediately or rushes first and then goes back and reads the side quests (maybe on an alt). If your experience differs -and you don't have the habit to be in an roleplay or lore-geek community- then count me surprised. Regardless, neither yours nor mine are proper statistics unless we back them with numbers and proper sources.

I was saying it doesn't take me that long to spam through text. Your travel distance and clicking on things has nothing to do with mashing through text. Unless you're going to tell me it takes you 30 seconds to mash through 5 bubbles of text since the contention here is that you want an auto skip which is what I was responding to in that quote.

And on the topic of SE numbers and stats, the sidequests before SB were even more annoying and spaced out like I said before. (They even commented on the stupid moogle quests that everyone hated and they cut a lot of the filler from future MSQ due to 2.0-2.55) I'm surprised you didn't run into this problem before SB, (actually the main complaint was 2.0-2.55, which is why they added the jump potion) I'm guessing that is due to road to 60? If people weren't doing these quests they wouldn't have bothered even adding them in volume again in SB.

[Dirich]

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I didn't even say the quests were even engaging. My point was that there is plenty of combat related things to do, and that quests are there to expand on lore and flesh out the story while mostly being entirely optional and sometimes combat just doesn't fit depending on what it is trying to portray. I personally find fighting trash mobs super dull, adding more of it wouldn't make it more engaging to me, just more annoying. But that's really just a difference in opinion.



I was saying it doesn't take me that long to spam through text. Your travel distance and clicking on things has nothing to do with mashing through text. Unless you're going to tell me it takes you 30 seconds to mash through 5 bubbles of text since the contention here is that you want an auto skip which is what I was responding to in that quote.

And on the topic of SE numbers and stats, the sidequests before SB were even more annoying and spaced out like I said before. (They even commented on the stupid moogle quests that everyone hated and they cut a lot of the filler from future MSQ due to 2.0-2.55) I'm surprised you didn't run into this problem before SB, (actually the main complaint was 2.0-2.55, which is why they added the jump potion) I'm guessing that is due to road to 60? If people weren't doing these quests they wouldn't have bothered even adding them in volume again in SB.

Skipping the quest text should be 1 click. Instead you have to mash (and the skip speed is far inferior to anybody's mash speed too...). Up to here it's bereable.
The issue is the emotes, that block everything regardless of who performs it. Hence even the mashing through text takes time: every emote takes 2 to 5 seconds (I'm including stuff like "npc turns and walks toward the sunset" in the "emote" category).

I didn't run into the problem before SB because I reached 64 and end of HW by only doing MSQ, thanks to road-to-60. As you correctly guessed.
I did the first 20 levels in the first 2 zones out of Ul'dah though, and there the pathing wasn't too horrible and there was no excess of dull point-and-click quests (albeit, to be fair, they were almost all mob grind quests).
What I really don't undestand is that there are like tons of mini games available throughout the game, and only a couple are used in side quests...