Extra questsssssssssss

[MsQi]

Kill quests are fine if they have a reason.

[MikkoAkure]

We spend the entire game killing random monsters. I'd rather my sidequests be more talking and cutscenes and learning about the world we play in than "kill 8 of this enemy that happens to be 20 meters away from me". If you want to kill monsters for exp, then do a leve/fate/guildhest/dungeon/alliance raid. If you don't like all of the prompts for quests, refuse to do them because it's content you don't like, then go to the forums to complain that you're missing out on content that's hidden behind sidequests because you don't read the news, then that's your fault, not the developers. There's even a special icon for sidequests with a "+" on it that means that this quest leads to new stuff.

I guess you can lead a catgirl to content, but you can't make her do any of it.

If you're skipping through all of the dialogue and cutscenes of this game, then what are you playing for? You say that FFXIV is not a reading game but a battle game with a huge great story, but a lot of that story is in sidequests that you are complaining about. Not everything has to relate to the main story quest. Without everything else going on to fill out the world, the game just becomes boring and all that exists is the one thing happening and nothing else matters. It's one thing to say that you don't like it and you want to ignore it, it's another to ask for the devs to take it away from everyone else because you don't like it.

[ErryK]

Then my suggestion is you may as well start reading books and stop playing games.

[MsQi]

Text and reading are fine, but there is not enough involvement from the the player or your character. You are just standing there listening to a seminar most of the time. When there are times you should be jumping to someone's defense you do nothing, maybe draw your weapon. If anyone does it's !@#$'n Thancred. Can I just once shoot Gaius van Baelsar between the eyes while he's standing up on Ultima Weapon monologuing for the fifth time?

I think the writing is getting worse. Too verbose, repeating the same things just in different ways in the same conversation. I was doing a quest a while back when I realized they were trying to convey a joke that someone talked too much. It landed flat, because it's how everyone talks.

They waste words trying to convey character, weird accents, and speech patterns in text when it would be more effective and entertaining with recorded dialog. Yeah it's more expensive, but easy as !@#$ to do.

Can't get mad at Final Fantasy for Final Fantasy-ing, but I read through a lot of Square and Enix games and they were more engaging.

[Gula]

I guess you can lead a catgirl to content, but you can't make her do any of it.

Just... perfection.

[kaynide]

Side quests are entirely optional. Some are very stupid fetch quests, others are lots of talk and lore, some are just...not engaging to me personally.

I have done every single quest in the game with exception of savage/ultimate content. I did not feel any of it was horrible. Could they be better in some areas? Of course. But with the amount of actual roulette etc to get my jobs to 80, I rather like slow paced quests with a lot of talking and little to do.

[yukiiyuki]

We spend the entire game killing random monsters. I'd rather my sidequests be more talking and cutscenes and learning about the world we play in than "kill 8 of this enemy that happens to be 20 meters away from me". If you want to kill monsters for exp, then do a leve/fate/guildhest/dungeon/alliance raid. If you don't like all of the prompts for quests, refuse to do them because it's content you don't like, then go to the forums to complain that you're missing out on content that's hidden behind sidequests because you don't read the news, then that's your fault, not the developers. There's even a special icon for sidequests with a "+" on it that means that this quest leads to new stuff.

I guess you can lead a catgirl to content, but you can't make her do any of it.

If you're skipping through all of the dialogue and cutscenes of this game, then what are you playing for? You say that FFXIV is not a reading game but a battle game with a huge great story, but a lot of that story is in sidequests that you are complaining about. Not everything has to relate to the main story quest. Without everything else going on to fill out the world, the game just becomes boring and all that exists is the one thing happening and nothing else matters. It's one thing to say that you don't like it and you want to ignore it, it's another to ask for the devs to take it away from everyone else because you don't like it.

You know that you can tell the story without just bunch of dialogue? There's a lot of MMORPG that do it without any problems these days, just look at ESO.
It's supposed to be an MMO, not a visual novel, you suppose to play the game, not read it. Again, it can be anything besides just killing few mobs or collecting 5 whatever, it's 2020 and most games already do that better, than XIV do.
Also, if I wanted to read visual novel, I would better do so, than read this boredom that you call side quests lore.
And yeah, for someone who's trying to sell - gO rEaD a bOoK, if player base actually read some, they would never rate XIV anime as story 10/10, especially if you comparing it to books or visual novels.
Game needs more side quests with actual interaction and action storytelling, more quests in general as well, because clearing them takes almost no time, so I've already finished all of them in each expansion. (No achievement of course, because why bother)

[MistakeNot]

When I take them, I take the most I can at once.
When I do them, I smash "next" button without even reading.
When I do them, I sometimes have NO clue about where to continue and complete them. So I fail, do all others I have and start again. Because the one I failed is the only one left so I can see.

Well, that sounds like completely the wrong way to do things.

When I reach a new area I pick up all the quests I can and start working on them. Only when I have finished all the nearby quests do I move on to where the MSQ or vector quests points me next. This way my quest log never overflows, and the quests I do all are connected with each other in some way.
After several years of playing various MMOs, I have found this to be the best approach - to systematically finish as many quests as possible in one area before moving on. It makes most sense story-wise and does not leave me with a ton of unfinished quests in my questlog.

[Iscah]

It's supposed to be an MMO, not a visual novel, you suppose to play the game, not read it. Again, it can be anything besides just killing few mobs or collecting 5 whatever, it's 2020 and most games already do that better, than XIV do.

It's supposed to be a single unique game that falls in the genre MMO. It doesn't have to follow what other games do exactly. It's already known for being more story-based and talky than other MMOs, so why shouldn't sidequests be the same?

Arbitrary "kill five monsters" requirements don't add anything better to a quest than other kinds of objectives - we have plenty of them already anyway, but there's no need to wedge it in where they don't make sense.

If the OP is going to just mash Next on all dialogue then yeah, they're not going to get anything out of quests that are "talky" and intended to deliver bits of lore but not much else.

They're not my favourite thing either - particularly the longer ones that try to be emotional but the characters are a bit flat. (Seasonal events have this issue as well - trying too hard on emotion when something light-hearted would be fine.) But more arbitrary tasks won't make them more enjoyable for me.

[kaynide]

...

While you are not wrong, this is a game built to Japanese tastes/thinking. Japanese very much prefer manga/light novel feel to the game as opposed to the button mashing.

I agree in some aspects that as a game FFXIV is astoundingly badly done like UI, but the plodding nature of the game is actually a reason is might remain so popular in Japan. (Most Japanese households have consoles, not PCs, so the game competes with stuff like Mario). It’s a bit behind the reason YoshiP encourages people to take a break, play other stuff and come back when they want something different and not more of the same.



Allllll that said, I do wish they’d tighten up the quests in regions to have a single overall story with a few minor threads.

Kinda like Raktika has the crazy skreee quest line and the bunnies have their own ruin delving line, but in the end it comes together.