Role quest in Endwalker worry me. Job quest make this an RPG

[Ultimatecalibur]

In FF14 there are similar quest for Summoner that give you a history. Now imagine in Endwalker if you now have to share a generic quest with other Magic Ranged classes. It is just shallow development that I promise you will slowly chip away at the RPG part of the MMORPG.

I doubt that the Endwalker Role quests will be generic. I'd expect them more to be storyline crossovers focusing on the similarities and differences between the jobs in each role. The Magic Ranged Role quests will likely involve X'rhun Tia, Arya, Lalai, Zhai'a Nelhah, Jajasamu and Y'mhirta teaming up to do what Magic Ranged jobs do best:rain destruction down on enemies.

The Endwalker Tank role quests will likely involve Curios Gorge, Broken Mountain, Dorgono, Sidurgu, Rielle, Radovan, Sophie, Aldis and Solkzagyl.

[SaberMaxwell]

I doubt that the Endwalker Role quests will be generic. I'd expect them more to be storyline crossovers focusing on the similarities and differences between the jobs in each role. The Magic Ranged Role quests will likely involve X'rhun Tia, Arya, Lalai, Zhai'a Nelhah, Jajasamu and Y'mhirta teaming up to do what Magic Ranged jobs do best:rain destruction down on enemies.

The Endwalker Tank role quests will likely involve Curios Gorge, Broken Mountain, Dorgono, Sidurgu, Rielle, Radovan, Sophie, Aldis and Solkzagyl.

I'd love to see the reaction of the CNJ in the BLM questline to a RDM. "Wait...black AND white magic?!"

[Puremallace]

best:rain destruction down on enemies.

The Endwalker Tank role quests will likely involve Curios Gorge, Broken Mountain, Dorgono, Sidurgu, Rielle, Radovan, Sophie, Aldis and Solkzagyl.

My question remains is how does the Dark Knight, Gunbreaker and Warrior quest differ from what me as a Paladin gets. At what point do they put a new shiny ability on my bar and I do not know why except here is your new shiny. I honestly do not care if the quest is goofy or sucks compared to that awesome quest over there I care that it is still an RPG.

The main issue we know how it ends. Slowly the RPG elements of am MMORPG start to get chipped away as things are sacrificed in the name of expediency until one day we are all sitting here with shiny jobs with no substance.

Unfortunately I feel this post will be looked back upon as when the FF14 job experience lost its depth.

[Payadopa]

My question remains is how does the Dark Knight, Gunbreaker and Warrior quest differ from what me as a Paladin gets. At what point do they put a new shiny ability on my bar and I do not know why except here is your new shiny. I honestly do not care if the quest is goofy or sucks compared to that awesome quest over there I care that it is still an RPG.

The main issue we know how it ends. Slowly the RPG elements of am MMORPG start to get chipped away as things are sacrificed in the name of expediency until one day we are all sitting here with shiny jobs with no substance.

Unfortunately I feel this post will be looked back upon as when the FF14 job experience lost its depth.

Fair, but you make it sound as if SE retroactively deletes all previous quests. And, realistically speaking, how many really novel quests/short stories can you produce. I'd much rather have a wider cast and an in-depth story.

[Puremallace]

Fair, but you make it sound as if SE retroactively deletes all previous quests. And, realistically speaking, how many really novel quests/short stories can you produce. I'd much rather have a wider cast and an in-depth story.

Say we are 2-3 expansions later and all the new people are being told to just skip ahead as the pressure grows on Square Enix to just make large amount of content from say 1-99 irrelevant and given to you. Some do not realize this but FF14 is at a tipping point where WoW was around say Cataclysm. They embraced systems to make everything easier and gutted the RPG elements. What I do not want to see is complacency.

Look at the quantity of content new people are already asked to go through just to get to Shadowbringer 5.55, ff14 has a bloat issue and at some point they are going to drop the axe and cut content. The obvious focus would be abilities unlocked via Job quest hence making those quest useless especially when you see salty veteran FF14 players like you have seen in this thread dogging out everything but the Dark Knight questline.

I can predict at some point there will be a lot of pressure to just unlock at the dungeons and job abilities at lvl 100 for example and at that point the leveling process becomes just a time gate to the end game. What I would prefer is that the team stands by the fact this is an FF14 game with x years of content and to go do it.

When the tipping point comes it will be obvious and Yoshi P is smart enough to know it.

[Mikey_R]

The thing is though, the only class/job quests that gave you an ability and specifically stated it in the quest are all from ARR. With the exception if Summoner (someone can correct me if I am wrong) no other job quest from HW onwards have been about learning a specific ability. Even in ARR, you don't do a duty specifically for an action, the job trainer just says, I think you are ready for this ability, here you go. There is never any lore behind the ability you learn. Sure, you can find examples where it does, however the vast majority of them do not.

Add into that the SB quests only give you an action for the last quest, where NONE of them have a lore reason why you learn it (I have not double checked that, but I am 99% confident) and from there it is just a story that has some ties to your job. Some of it being new things, some of it being in the same vein, just continued on.

The job quests provide virtually no substance in how your character grows as a job and I would argue that there is nothing else the job trainers can teach you, you have surpassed the master at this point. From now on, you will just be following them into situations that need a skilled job, which you happen to be and have some vague ties to the job. Or it is something that could be solved by anyone, you just happen to need to be X job to do it.

So, with the WoL being the pinnacle of their job, why should we add 'generic story #4' for the jobs and not try something that could be more unique. Something that doesn't have to be forced to have some sort of vague tie in with a job, keeping it more open. As an example, all tank jobs have their roots in protecting something, so rather than 4 sub par stories, you can make 1 more engaging story that really pulls from the strengths of the tanking role.

[SpiralMask]

much as folks would love things like "wow id sure love a satisfying continuation to MNK/SMN/AST (whats up with geomancers?)/WAR/PLD/etc"--ah, too bad, you get one check-in quest with a minor cutscene after your 10 levels of advancing your quest with no reasoning how or why you're getting the abilties you have now, so you can inform them about saving the world for the Xth time and be told what a strong and powerful boy you are.
some of them might have a bit of important or meaningful information (such as SCH and the nymean plague. and DRG/DRK's character moments), but by and large they're inconsequential.

AST's entirely screwed, since now they dont even have to go back and fix the class quest info they've made false now (no time magics, no card effects, no sects now), since it'll all be role quests from here on out, and sage will basically get nothing to stand on itself either (like DNC and GNB--you get your ten levels and now the class npcs and lore is effectively irrelevant forever), so we'd all best hope nothing important gets brought up in them or there's no interesting characters, since they will be abandoned immediately and permanently.

[Iscah]

It is just shallow development that I promise you will slowly chip away at the RPG part of the MMORPG.

You keep saying this, but the game is an RPG from start to finish because you are roleplaying the Warrior of Light from start to finish, whatever it is that they do in the course of the story.

I doubt that the Endwalker Role quests will be generic. I'd expect them more to be storyline crossovers focusing on the similarities and differences between the jobs in each role. The Magic Ranged Role quests will likely involve [all the mage job trainers] teaming up to do what Magic Ranged jobs do best:rain destruction down on enemies.

The Endwalker Tank role quests will likely involve [all the tank job trainers].

As great as it would be to see that, I doubt it. Having the job trainers appear is dependent on having progressed their stories – their situations often change from start to end.

If the writers can weave in a way for them all to cameo with no dependency on how they have developed over the course of the story, great, but some of them aren't really going to work unless you've already been introduced to them over the course of the story. Some of their personalities and outlooks have changed considerably.

I'd love to see the reaction of the CNJ in the BLM questline to a RDM. "Wait...black AND white magic?!"

Same here.

He'd also probably have a panic attack over the prospect of Reaper.

AST's entirely screwed, since now they dont even have to go back and fix the class quest info they've made false now (no time magics, no card effects, no sects now)

People keep repeating this too, and it's never been true.

The plot does not rely on having time magicks – if anything it's enhanced by the now-fact that Sevestre can call on this extremely powerful form of the art that we don't have access to. (The old version had everyone shocked by the idea that he could control time, even though we'd already learned some time-based spells ourselves at that point.)

The card effects have shifted but they've never been taken away. The idea of reading the cards to tell a man's fortune and empower him in battle remains; only the exact effects have shifted to all boost attack instead of their more specific purposes. The script has already been altered accordingly and the Ewer is the only one severely impacted by losing its concept as the "source of all magic" (MP boost) because it now serves ranged DPS as well.

As for sects, only the writers know what will happen now, but either the 60-70 story will see some rewriting or the Nocturnal Sect skill will be retained in some other form that still fits the story. Some combination of the two approaches is likely.

[Puremallace]

You keep saying this, but the game is an RPG from start to finish because you are roleplaying the Warrior of Light from start to finish, whatever it is that they do in the course of the story.

I will stop saying it the day that every single "I swapped to FF14" or "5 best things about FF14 over X MMO" stops mentioning it as a massive positive. I think what most multi year FF14 players forget as you guys are in a bubble but the RPG part of MMO's is basically dead in the genre at the moment. Korean MMO's have a massive focus only on big flashy spells, American MMO developers outside of ESO 100% focus on end game with zero class development, Chinese developers are more focus on grind with monetization options, European developers are basically non existent and the Japanese developers are the last bastion of core RPG game development.

It really is a dying genre to the point that most people who say they dislike FF14's forced MSQ content only say MMO and do not even say MMORPG anymore. I dislike the idea of role quest on a fundamental development level as it homogenizes the jobs far too much and leaves little no room for distinction and strips RPG elements out of the MMO.

What I especially dislike about role quest in Endwalker is I have played Paladin in literally every MMO or single player game that has ever offered them and Endwalker is supposed to be the Paladin expansion inspired by LITERALLY my favorite Final Fantasy game which is 4. It bothers me to no end that they are doing some generic tank role quest to handle this.

[Lyth]

Every story has an ending, even the good ones. MMOs often feel compelled to keep a story going well beyond its natural potential, turning what was good into a soulless husk of what it once was.

It's okay for the job quests to have a natural endpoint. Some characters, like Frey, get their value out of when they choose to appear. The fade to black WHAM moment 'Justice deserves no less/I tire of this charade' in the level 70 DRK quest only works because Frey's story has been over and done with for the past 20 levels. There's actually a lot of potential with this, we know that the game is capable of flagging optional events that you've seen and having that change the dialogue that you get. Could Frey have a cameo in the MSQ for DRK mains? It's possible.

I feel that if they want to pay homage to some of the better written job storylines, it should be as an optional side feature. One thing that I really want to see is job animation glamours, similar to how Warcraft's glyph system works. As I mentioned earlier, you could always pick a job at random for a patch, moogle delivery quest style, and explore a bit of additional job related lore with an unlockable bit of glamour tied to the end.

But there will always be more stories. I'm really looking forward to what they do with the Reaper job and its adorably evil Avatar. There's something about arguing with the dark side of your persona that never gets old.