quest design

[Kaurhz]

I think capitalizing more on quests that involve solo duties/instances would help tremendously, even if the goal isn't necessarily to kill, but to stealth, e.g., In From the Cold.

I don't think they need to get too egregious with the quests, honestly, just need to look at the frequency of certain things. We need more solo duties, and less of the "Hide and go Seek" nature... The quests that had NPCs following you or you following them like they started in Endwalker was a little interesting. Would be nice to capitalize on that a lot more.

[Sjol]

Oh, I dread quests in this game, especially side quests. The MSQ is slightly better due to somewhat better writing and, presumably, stakes. But side quests often involve menial tasks, listening to the life stories of some of the more boring people on Eorzea. Don't get me wrong if they were real people, it would be a different story, but they're so clearly artificial and the writing doesn't land, it's clear I'm just randomly clicking on shiny points for no benefit. This NPC's life isn't going to change because I've found them a buyer for their wheat. Though, when the writing is good, and the quests are interesting it can land and be effective. I've just seen way too much bad writing in FFXIV side quests for my taste. Though it's on par with most other MMOs.

I think the other two categories of quest I've come to despise is where you train someone by just doing a thing -- "If I can see you do something once, I'll get it" is so not how learning works -- and I'll do a thing for 5 minutes and then tell the professional how to do their job -- "Oh, sell things people want to buy and you'll succeed." The latter would be incredibly insulting to a real person. We're pretending to do their job for 5 minutes and then explaining it back to them.

[HappyHubris]

To me the gold standard of questing has always been Guild Wars 2. The game gives you many options to gain experience: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exp...ing_experience
-Main story quests
-Completing hearts, which are essentially areas where you can perform several different tasks to "fill up" the heart for experience. So if bandits were attacking a farm you could say kill bandits, put out fires with water, capture escaped livestock, or rescue farmers. Completion rewards currency and XP.
-Vistas: Where there is a point on the map you need to puzzle out a path to with climbing and pathing. You're rewarded with a cinematic vista and XP.
-Waypoints (reaching fast travel points) / Points of interest (reaching specific points on the map)
-Hero challenges (a climbing puzzle, boss, or event that rewards a skill point).
-Gathering nodes.
-Dynamic events, which are like what FATEs should be. Varied objectives that often create branching paths for a zone's story. So for example if you fight off the centaur invasion you might help the farmers rebuild, or if the centaurs are not driven off in time you might lead a revenge strike on their leader. Later on these turn into complex campaigns that involve zone-wide coordinate and culminate in boss battles and impressive loot.
-Adventures, where you are given some sort of challenge with Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers. It might be an obstacle course with a timer, defusing X mines in a minute, or surviving Y waves in an arena.

FFXIV has the worst questing I've seen in any MMO. The MSQ quests are 90% just watching cutscenes, and it's clear that the developers love movie content and only stick a few gameplay crumbs in to technically make it a game. I dread the MSQ, because it's less interactive than a game and disjointed compared to a movie due to all of the traveling to point X. The open world is just a bland canvas to sprinkle a few fates on and to spawn quest characters on.