Endwalker role quests make no sense (Quest spoilers)

[KyahAlmasy]

Why do the role-specific quests you pick up in Radz-at-han have absolutely nothing to do with the role they're related to? I did the ranged DPS quest in Ishgard, nothing I did had literally any bearing on the fact that I was a DPS, or ranged. I just picked up the healer role quest, and again the entirety of the questline has literally nothing to do with the fact that im a healer, but in fact has me fighting monsters like any other quest in the game. I guess I just don't understand the point of making them role specific quests, when they only boil down to exposition devices to help paint the struggles each nation is currently facing during the final days. At least in Shadowbringers the role quests were actually relevant to the role they were targeted at, while Endwalker's role quests make no sense.

I imagined the intention of role-specific quests were so that we, the player, could see our character's actually preform their role within the story, whereas in the main story we generally just stand around helplessly while our comprads do everything for us. It makes sense for this to happen in the main story, because accounting for every single class would be extremely difficult and to implement into a cutscene. But the fact that we don't even do anything in the role quests either has me asking what was the point?

[Sheriyana]

Yeah, the Endwalker role quests were just terrible in comparison to the Shadowbringers ones. Finding out what happened to the warriors of darkness was interesting, I can't bring myself to care about any of these random nobodies who turned into monsters in the Endwalker ones. The fact that you have already familiar characters accompanying you through the quests doesn't earn any points from me.

[Doragan]

I don't know about all of them, but with the ones I did so far, I do disagree.

The healer one is very much about healing, well, healing Fordola's past trauma. She even scolds you for attempting to literally heal her -- and to an extent, the whole region by helping the Silver Griffins. After all, like Raganfrid said, Healing only begins with liberation. Charlet was clearly not a fighter and stayed on the sidelines while his friends got to fight for the wrong cause. Despite not knowing to fight at all, his ressentiment about not being there to fight took form into a huge beast. Despite being " a kind soul ", he felt that not being there to fight was cowardice, and Fordola's obession to not let her wound heal for a hot minute caused her to despair over it as well. "I'm the Butcher, I will never redeem myself" "I did all these horrible things myself, it's all my fault" "My friends died for the wrong cause and I just kept pushing ahead" -- She has to stop beating herself with her own stick and let her trauma heal.

The Tank one was interesting because there are no tank classes/job to get in Gridania, and that it shed some light on Kan-E-Senna and her determination to protect everyone and how the Black Shroud defends itself. How strongly she feels about protecting her nation (god knows she needed more lines because until now she really was just a Princess Peach wannabe), how padjali are selected to be the head of state, and that "The Great One" is.. not very fair all things considered. Who the hell is that supposed to be anyways? Also, Raya-O literally tells you "oh yeah you're a white mage too,remember? cant heal that disease i'm afraid" in a tank quest. It seriously made me question what the hell was going on for a moment, but it's rather nice to have NPCs acknowledge your other jobs. It happened in MSQ as well, but I think that's the first time it happens at all? Ah well. I do think it fits the theme for a tank quest though, since it's all about protection.

The Yuna summon animation was a nice bonus though, I appreciated it haha.

From what I understood for the magic ranged, it's all about a reanimated knight of the round forced back into living in a world post-orthodoxy without a pope being the head of state, by people who want this kind of regime to be back in Ishgard, with the Ishgardian exceptionalism on top of it. Because how can we do things differently from what we always done before? If it has worked before, why don't we keep doing that? why do we have to change? We are much better than our peers anyways. So afraid to change they try to summon Thordan again, it fails and they give up immediately. Magic is very much involved here.
To me, these mindsets fit Allag and Mhach extremely well. That would cover the current 3 magic ranged jobs origins, and to me, that was probably the point.

[KyahAlmasy]

The healer one is very much about healing, well, healing Fordola's past trauma.

People are not eager for role-specific quests so they can "metaphorically" play out their role - the actions of the player in this questline could've been achieved by any class in the game with little, to no changes to the plot. Being a healer has no actual significance, weight, or role in this questline. Players want role-specific quests to actually see their role acknowledged within the context of the game, both in the story and in action. The reason this isn't done in the main story is that it has to account for literally every class, so if your only correlation between "healing" and the "Healer Quests" is us metaphorically healing Fordola's emotional trauma, then it's an extremely weak and poor conclusion. And if you think that's all the meaning those quests require to be relevant to their role, than there really isn't a purpose for role specific quests at all because all these metaphorical concepts are present in the main quest line anyway.

It's like picking up a tank quest where all we do is cover someone's ears when someone says something mean to them and then excuse it by saying "Well, we were shielding them from their words!" which is as weak as the argument you're putting forth here.

From what I understood for the magic ranged, it's all about a reanimated knight of the round forced back into living in a world post-orthodox

Magic being present doesn't make it a "Ranged magic" questline, especially when our characters don't actually involve themselves in any of the magic, or even have a part in figuring the magic mystery out (The whole story is solved through NPCS.) in Shadowbringers we directly helped close and open portals, and helped a mage relearn their magic, whereas in Endwalker we don't do anything. We literally follow our NPCs around nodding at everyone, nothing about the story actually has us involve ourselves with magic, or even require us to figure anything out, nevermind actually act as a magical dps. Again, this whole questline could've been done by literally any of the other classes and been exactly the same.

The fact that you're actually trying to scrounge for metaphorical arguments really says it all.

[Doragan]

People are not eager for role-specific quests so they can "metaphorically" play out their role - the actions of the player in this questline could've been achieved by any class in the game with little, to no changes to the plot

Well,no. You literally do heal her in the quest and the final battle. The quest line starts by you healing NPCs when you arrive in Gyr Abania. You don't actually heal her metaphorically either, she does heal herself. From what I can see, the questline theme is about healing. Now, yeah, I agree that the role quests weren't involving your character very much, and everything just happened in front of you -- but I do get why you get sent to these places. That running around with Raubahn in Ul'dah could've been a little bit more productive though. Ah well.

Magic being present doesn't make it a "Ranged magic" questline

Why not? Magic is involved (because yeah,it's a botched primal summoning,but still magic), and that's why the Blasphemy even spawned there.
I do understand that there's no reason it couldn't have been done as well if your character was a Monk or a Dancer. To me,it makes sense it would end up for magical dps if it involves magic. From there,it doesn't seem particularly out of place for it to be a magical range quest?
That being said,I don't really see that as a reason why it absolutely had to be ranged magical though, it's not like Aymeric isn't going to wake up and talk about magic damage,and you don't use any magic spells either. Compared to the Healer and Tank one,it definitely makes a lot less sense to me,too. I'm pretty conflicted about it myself,honestly.

The fact that you're actually trying to scrounge for metaphorical arguments really says it all.

I think you do misunderstand my position on this.
To the statement:

Why do the role-specific quests you pick up in Radz-at-han have absolutely nothing to do with the role they're related to?

That, I do disagree. Atleast,for healer and tank,they do. You're sent to Gyr Abania as a healer because they need backup. First thing you do is healing the army, and Fordola. This isn't metaphorical -- you very much use your skills to heal there. The whole questline of her beating herself with a stick and refusing to heal from her trauma isn't a metaphor either -- that's the point of the whole story. She starts to heal from her trauma by you telling her to let you do your job,and M'naago telling her to face her hurt.

For the tank one,you're sent to Gridania because that's the only one of the 3 city-states to have no tanks in them. Gleipnir is 2 to 3 times bigger than anyone there,and they pretty much have no one to take it on their own. Kan-E argues for quite some time about how her people are dying and she can't protect them if she cannot heal them literally, or even stuck in the Conjurer's guild yelling at E-Sumi. The Gridanian also come to the big tree to ask for help and protection. The whole thing was about not faltering, and that even if you're trying to please, address the fears and uncertainties and try protect your citizens, some things are out of your control and people will get hurt/die.

Could all of this been a lot more involved on your part? Hell yes, it should have been honestly. You end up just watching people's fates unfold and you really only do something either at the beginning, you get the echo skype call and you beat the boss at the end. It wraps up in 2 minutes or less everytime. The pacing was really weird for the healer one too, like you do look for the blasphemy then you go on a shopping trip with Raubahn.. great. Why was that in a healer questline though? That being said, I do agree they didn't amount to much at the end. I don't think this is a complete thematic failure however -- atleast for Tank and Healer. For caster, more I think about it, less it makes sense. Hopefully the other DPS ones are better.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Glad they aren't mandatory this time around.

[Hayden]

I mean, I did the Tank roll quest to completion today and you def had to use tank mechanics for the final boss, and the Melee DPS had a bit of a DPS check so...I dunknow. No there not to do specifically with the one of possibly 6 jobs that relate to that roll, but there what they are designed to be?

Are you missing the Job Specific quests? I think the logic of doing away with them was that at SOME point its gets hard to find "masters" better at our job than the PC, who at level 80-90 is already god tier.

You're not wrong.

I did sort of wonder why, for instance the Tank quest took me to Gridania, then I figured it was likely because that "Npc" needed a tanky person to go along with her "healing"?

*shrug* the Role Quests have been somewhat lack luster since introduced. I agree, I do miss the Job specific quests with the specific job related lore.

[Raikai]

I mean, I did the Tank roll quest to completion today and you def had to use tank mechanics for the final boss, and the Melee DPS had a bit of a DPS check so...I dunknow. No there not to do specifically with the one of possibly 6 jobs that relate to that roll, but there what they are designed to be?

Are you missing the Job Specific quests? I think the logic of doing away with them was that at SOME point its gets hard to find "masters" better at our job than the PC, who at level 80-90 is already god tier.

You're not wrong.

I did sort of wonder why, for instance the Tank quest took me to Gridania, then I figured it was likely because that "Npc" needed a tanky person to go along with her "healing"?

*shrug* the Role Quests have been somewhat lack luster since introduced. I agree, I do miss the Job specific quests with the specific job related lore.

I don't think the Job quests need to stay out for that reason... While you're right in mentioning the thing about beind hard to find new masters, they can always go towards a more collaborative route with the NPCs.

Truth be told, what I liked the most about the early job quests is that you actually get to delve into their lore a lot and that's important since jobs are how we portray our WoLs. I wish they would make a comeback for that reason alone, but the writing need to have that intention regardless. From the recent jobs added ever since ShB (I didn't do RPR yet), Dancer is the most rich under that scope because is purely centered around what means to be a Dancer, whereas for Gunbreaker and Sage it sort of feels like a very side thing, even though the narrative of those quests is quite good.

The actual downside is that would get too onerous for the writing team to have a set of quests for EVERY job, given the fact that the roster just increases as time goes on. But maybe they could just do one single quest that has a lenthy chain and a single player trial to unlock future relic sets or artifact weapons?

[BluexBird]

I see what you mean. You ultimately only play your role during the last quest, when there's a fight.

I personally really liked the tank fight. The quests leading up to it weren't too bad, either. Some parts were really boring, but it had some nice backstory. That said, you really only do tank stuff in the last fight.

The healer one was boring for me at first, but I really liked the ending. Putting Fordola there was a nice touch. Again, the last fight really has you having to focus on healing, which was nice.

The caster one for me was the worst one. Like no comment. Boring story, boring characters, blah blah Ishgard religion etc. And unlike the tank and healer fights, this last one is just meh.

Not sure what the other two will be like. Still leveling my monk and bard.

[Lexis]

I appreciated the story of the ones I did so far (Ranged DPS and Healer), though I'll agree I was disappointed my role had little to no bearings on the cutscenes and overall on-going action (although at least the healer's final duty is designed around you playing that role). I've always found job quests disappointing for that very reason; they're a missed opportunity for our characters to finally shine in cutscenes. The only job quest I've done that had 'some' interesting acknowledgment in a cutscene was the lvl 30 ninja quest where they have you ninja-dodge some thrown weapon.

I also preferred the Shadowbringer role quests, although I didn't hate the Endwalker ones, I was just left mildly disappointed.