Sidequests - the bane of my existence

[Prestige]

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way - when you turn in a quest thinking, "finally, my map is cleared and no more little quest nodes" and BAM, 30 more pop up after your turn in. Some people can ignore them, I cannot. Don't ask me why, just the way I'm wired I guess.

That said, I believe there is a better way for SE to handle sidequests, and I'd like your opinion. The EXP you get isn't that big to begin with, as it mostly equates to finishing a few FATEs in the area. In my humble opinion, a zone should have one chain of quests spanning the zone's overarching storyline. Usually there's maybe one or two interesting stories in each zone, and the rest are disposable fetch quests. I believe that having your main story + a "zone story" for each area would be a much better approach.

What are your thoughts?

[Lord_Zlatan]

I actually suffer from the same problem as you. Apart from gearing my classes and what not, one of my "end game" projects is to have a clean journal and wipe every stormblood sidequest off the map. The nodes just bug me. Its a thing, I feel your pain

[BillyKaplan]

It's something to do while you're rotting away on a dps queue. I agree that more of them can have more substantial stories even if not necessarily more substantial game-play, but I'd rather they invested that time and effort into other things.

[Prestige]

It's something to do while you're rotting away on a dps queue. I agree that more of them can have more substantial stories even if not necessarily more substantial game-play, but I'd rather they invested that time and effort into other things.

I actually feel if they made one main zone quest, they would free up resources to do other things. There are so, so many quests with a bunch of filler text. They go into a lot of detail for the most mundane things (I mean, I appreciate the effort they put into it), but you're right, that could be spent somewhere else.

[Genz]

That said, I believe there is a better way for SE to handle sidequests, and I'd like your opinion.

The better way to handle sidequests is to make better sidequests so that we're happy to see more quests pop.

[BillyKaplan]

I actually feel if they made one main zone quest, they would free up resources to do other things.

True, but you'll lose out on a source of exp, as negligible as you find it to be, and some of them do have stories and flesh out things a bit, even if they're not very detailed. I think a lot less people would've minded the dreary story-telling if the gameplay was beyond "go talk to these half a dozen NPCs", and all the more if we didn't have as much of it in the MSQ on top of it all

[Sciwolf]

Side quests are atrocious. Good thing I don’t bother reading the corny dialog otherwise I would still be leveling my main. At least if I was killing things i would enjoy them more. But no, most of the time you go from point A to point B to point C and click on npcs. More gameplay less story ffs. If I wanted a good story I would read Tolkien or manga or some shit.

[Theodric]

I think they're pretty great - they're entirely optional (other than those needed to unlock specific things such as aether currents) and they serve to flesh out the game world by offering up interesting lore. I do agree that some of them are rather bland...but as of Heavensward and beyond they've steadily been getting better.

[Ghastly]

Weird I actually want more sidequests..so much lore behind them and most of them are really fun.

[Metalwrath]

They are not too bad if you leave them till you have access to flying in the later areas.I find them useful to knock a load of them out at one go while waiting on a queue while leveling a dps.