Quote Originally Posted by Preypacer View Post
Stop being ridiculous.

First, people did quests in XI plenty - they only avoided the ones that felt like too much effort for not enough reward (which is entirely subjective). Of course, considering how "reward-driven" so many MMO gamers are these days, it becomes a lot of them. We're talking about people who consider any amount of time/effort that stands between them and their "shinies" to be a horrible crime against humanity. That's an issue with the impatient and entitled gamer's mindset typical of "modern gaming", not with the game itself.

Second, FFXI actually played like an RPG, where you're encouraged/required to actually - you know - explore, investigate, talk to different NPCs, see what they have to say, see if they want/need/request anything of you. You actually do have to pay attention to what they're saying and follow-through on it. They actually required you to use your brain - which of course, in today's MMO market is tantamount to asking many to poke their own eye out with a hot stick. FFXI treats you like an actual Adventurer, not a helpless and hopeless idiot who needs to be shown the how/where/what of everything in order to complete it.

Quests in XI felt 100x more like actual quests than almost anything out of the "gaming on training wheels" nonsense to come out since WoW started dumbing down the genre and babying the players. I'm talking everything outside of FoV and GoV which were added much later and are not the core storyline, etc.

The biggest problem with XI was in how poorly worded or translated many of the quests were. That was a problem with the localization, not with the quests themselves. In those cases, yes, you would have to ask another player who may have completed it, or go online to figure it out. There were plenty of quests I did in XI, however, where I never needed to do anything but actually read what the NPC was saying to get through it. Then, SE did the right thing by leaving it up to me to figure it out and complete the task - which is what a quest should be. Killing 10 boars that all but have freaking neon-signs on them saying "Hey stupid, I'm right here. Kill me", so you can find them if you're not even looking, is not questing. It's mundane, repetitive, patronizing and frankly, insulting, BS.

Being given tasks where you are not even required to read a single word of what the NPC says because every. single. step. is clearly pointed out for you is not questing. It's derivative, boring, empty and shallow nonsense. It's lazy, uninspired design and it's something for which Yoshi-P deserves derision, not praise.

If this is the kind of brainless, repetitive, uninspired and boring crap some of you people consider "engaging and fun content", well then be happy... Looks like you're gonna be drowning in it.

I'm not sure what's worse, the way MMO developers these days treat gamers as though they're morons who can't tie their own shoe-laces without an illustrated step-by-step guide, or the fact that so many gamers actually like being treated that way.
I mostly agree with you, but I think the old questing systems worked better when here was no internet to look it up, and there were no guides or yo had to buy them, and well, there were guides, so then the use your brain get's kind of aside. This shows that most gamers do not want to use their brains while questing, they want fun gameplay and an engaging story.

So if guides and all that will be made regardless of the game design, developers started making those guides a part of the game, so people just focus inside of the game and the immersion get's less broken than having to read a guide. And secondly, as someone pointed out, these are side quests, not the main history mission, so I guess it's not that bad, but I guess there should be a compromise between a step by step hand handling through the game, and having to find your own solutions.

As other main reason why developers do this is, sadly, to cater to a wider audience, and game companies are just that in the end of the day, companies, and they need to make their profit so we can get further games from them, so if dumbing down the questing system get's more money in... they will do it, if complex puzzles and "Gymkhana" questing style game more money, we wouldn't be seeing the games getting "casualized".