quest design

[Asari5]

one thing coming up all the time is how boring ff14s quest design is. killing a few mobs there, walking back and forth and killing a few enemies again. with a lot of cutscenes in between.
we have dungeons and later they introduced a few more things like playing another character, aim at certain targets, walk around with npc's and follow them in secret. and then that famous quest as a garlean soldier.
they all bring a bit of variety but it doesnt feel like the players are overly keen on any of them. rather the opposit.

but what do player imagine as better quest design?

the mmos i played are metin2, aion, swtor, eso and ff14. i dont think in any of these games were better quest designs.

we had to kill like 20-50 enemies for a single quest. in aion sometimes even more. swtor pushed the killing into bonus quests but you still wanted the exp from them, so it was the same.
i enjoyed questing in eso a lot, which i think is because of the world and not the quests themselves.

so... what are better quest designs?

[Merrigan]

a bit of variety but it doesnt feel like the players are overly keen on any of them. rather the opposit.

There was a post about these quests, and it seems to me that the majority appreciated the variety introduced. Personally, they're my favourite, so I hope they keep them.

As for the other quests (the more classic ones: cutscene; go to X; talk to Y; maybe kill 2 mobs; then cutscene)... I'm more critical. Oh, I don't expect SE to revolutionise the questing model. On the other hand, I do think that they'd sincerely benefit from stopping relying on excessive cinematics that slow down the pace of the game. Endwalker took this trend to the extreme, so much so that you can sometimes find yourself spending almost an hour in cinematics.

It seems to me that there are more interesting (and more attractive) ways of extending the quest. Introduce bonus objectives, such as collecting items to fill your compendium; and generally multiply the number of mobs to kill by making the open world a little less accessible. But right now, the design that traps the player in an almost interrupted cinematic needs to be reviewed - and I admit that, if this pace continues at DT, I'm probably going to grumble a bit like a Karen who hasn't had her ice cream.

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[Asari5]

true, nowadays you mostly walk from cutscene to cutscene with barely any enemies to kill (or doing other stuff), except the ones in the occasional duty.

[Valence]

They could obviously take inspiration from some solo games, which can for some of them have more production value cranked around their story quests (dynamic filming and screen compositing, storyboarding, action cutscenes, etc), but that obviously requires a lot more budget to achieve. For example I felt I was almost playing another game when I reached the epilogue of 5.3 due to the whole care they added with all those motion capture sequences in Mor Dhona and the Garlean Throne Room.

When it comes to gameplay sections, the ninja job quests or in from the cold are good examples of what you can do to shake things up. Another game series that is very good at this is Nier, swapping between platformers, railshooters, standard action gameplay, etc.

[Merrigan]

They could obviously take inspiration from some solo games, which can for some of them have more production value cranked around their story quests (dynamic filming and screen compositing, storyboarding, action cutscenes, etc), but that obviously requires a lot more budget to achieve. For example I felt I was almost playing another game when I reached the epilogue of 5.3 due to the whole care they added with all those motion capture sequences in Mor Dhona and the Garlean Throne Room.

When it comes to gameplay sections, the ninja job quests or in from the cold are good examples of what you can do to shake things up. Another game series that is very good at this is Nier, swapping between platformers, railshooters, standard action gameplay, etc.

While I agree with you about the appeal of these quests, is it a good idea to introduce them in an mmorpg? Most of the time, you'd need to set up personal instances.

[Valence]

That's a fair point and I don't want to see Raubahn savage ever again.

[Jeeqbit]

When I started playing this game, I was immediately struck by the fact it asked me to kill only 3 enemies for a quest. It made me feel like finally an MMORPG had been developed by someone who gets it. That killing 100 enemies is tedious.

So, although it may not be the best quest design, it is certainly not the worst when so many other games will have you farming easy enemies for hours to complete quests which is a whole lot less waste of time than, you know, actually progressing the storyline.

[Ryaze]

When I started playing this game, I was immediately struck by the fact it asked me to kill only 3 enemies for a quest. It made me feel like finally an MMORPG had been developed by someone who gets it. That killing 100 enemies is tedious.

So, although it may not be the best quest design, it is certainly not the worst when so many other games will have you farming easy enemies for hours to complete quests which is a whole lot less waste of time than, you know, actually progressing the storyline.

To each their own, because I HATE FFXIV quest design. FFXIV might be progressing more story per quest than other MMOs, but it doesn't feel like I'm playing an actual game. And to be honest because of how their job design is tied so strongly to cinematic boss fights and lengthier encounters, it is either intentionally or coincidentally antithetical to traditional MMO quest design and world mobs. Killing mobs in FFXIV is boring. They have too few of HP, the GCD is too long, and there is next to zero mob density outside of ARR. So tbh, it feels like it's quite intentional at this point. When I played in ARR, it felt much similar to other MMOs with the endgame hubs being chock full of bad guys to the point where sleep and other CC was actually useful and you had to be careful how and where you were pulling mobs. Leveling other jobs often significantly increased your power and adaptability via increasing your cross-class skills. A progression system that was directly tied to overworld (and all) combat.

Better quest design is when the quests interact with your other game systems. But outside of solo instances the devs have eschewed this since ARR.

[Roda]

I will say The Secret World was the most fun I had in an MMO questing, especially with its investigation quests.
Love me a world that wants to be interacted with and that behaves intuitively.

[ThaCa]

I would like to have them add more quests that actually has you participate with other players, even if they are glorified Fates, it would be nice to occasionally interact with others aside from dungeons and trials. Also having more NPCs in some quests so they are less barren and lonely. I think just having some that are visual set pieces and "help" you with stuff occasionally would feel nice.