OP What you're describing is literally any game ever made and this and things like "Witcher quests are all the same where you just go to NPC, use witcher senses, repeat" are things that don't really factor into constructive critique about the game.
That being said there will be padding. Not only are teleport costs a way to try to get gil out of the player's hands (which is kinda moot with FC actions and the like) they constantly try to keep people going back to old areas for multiple reasons.
The writing may not always be 10/10 but the writing and story content is why a lot of people like myself are into the game, if you're not here for speech bubbles I don't know why you'd really care about FFXIV's questing to begin with.
Guild Wars 2 got rid of fetch quests, I love it, whenever i take a break from GW2 and try other MMO's i am instantly turned off, i am spoiled lol..
Does GW2 even have a quest system? The Heart system was a good idea at first until you realize the entire story structure was garbage due to the open ended-ness of it and most of the GW2 Heart system was repetitive actions to fill a heart meter like "Put rabbits in cages" or "kill X amount of Y." When I left during Heart of Thorns it was basically the same zerg rushes for events that was the only thing anyone did.
I'm not saying FFXIV couldn't do with more of that (basically the FATEs system is their kind of gimmick similar to the heart events), but I remember the "story" outside of personal story being complete shit in the original and first expansion because there was no structure and ultimately it was an entire game of busy work. I prefer the narrative driven structure of FFXIV for sure personally, but to each their own.
There is already an arc for MMO's where you'll see an influx of new people around the time of content drops and then it flatlines out until the next major content drop. Elongated grinds are a way to keep players busy for months until the next new content can be made. I'm not saying its great design or anything but when your game is a 24/7 live service you have to find ways to keep players on the hook. Its just a matter of if that is a big enough turn-off to you or not.
I'd say FFXIV is one of the better designed games for this treadmill mechanic than most other online games. Each time a new update comes out a previous grinding method becomes expedited so as to not make it inaccessible for new or returning players. The tomestone currency is an excellent example of this.
FFXIV has to keep people engaging with the content, that's why you get more exp for alt jobs, get exp for helping with lower level stuff, you get incentives for running old content, and they go back and add new items to old content to make sure no one ever gets truly "stuck."
The "elongated" parts aren't even that bad, we have a guildie who started like 2-3 months ago and is already in Stormblood towards the end of it. I don't really think it's as bad as people make it out to sound but some people in this thread are literally asking for an "auto walk to NPC" button so I can't be surprised by this.
It's why i dropped the game during HW . I was told the quests get better but it's all the same thing. Go here kill 3 things go back now go back to this person now come back to me now go back to them.
Every RPG has the exact same quest structure. You're either invested or you're not. Monster Hunter is just "go here kill monster and go back and now go back and kill another monster" but people like it. To each their own.
I quite like quests that make you go back somewhere and it then unlocks a bunch more quests in that old area before you head back.
But yeah in general quests are the one big blemish on FFXIV, throughout all the expansions. This is what I'd change, personally:
- Have every quest appear on the map after you've accepted it, not just the five most recent/highlighted. It's infuriating to finish a quest in an area, go hand it in, then find out there was another you could have done right next to it. Sure you can check the journal, but on PS4 that's an effort.
- Have more free-form quests that don't have markers. There are a few of them but there needs to be more. Or at least make it an option, like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
- Adopt the Trust mechanics from FFXI that let you explore with an unlocked party member. Would have been perfect for how Shadowbringers was built out, and it helps the game feel more like an adventure solo.
- Piecemeal the quest unlocks when you reach a new area. On more than one occasion in Shadowbringers I had to shut the game down because 20+ quest prompts all at once was overwhelming.
- Have the world feel more alive after you complete quests. It kinda sucks when you meet extremely important characters to the lore, finish their questline, and never see them again. Have 'em spawn in that player's world, get new dialogue over time, that sorta thing. Having more player-specific instanced town development akin to Doma would be cool too. They've been building those ships near Limsa for years.
The quests appearing on the map I agree with. Although I make a habit of checking journal anyways it could be a good QoL feature.
People don't like free form quests. People usually just look up the answers online to things like the marker-less quests and such and there's a reason more games don't adopt that.
FFXI's systems are perfect for a game that's 3 gens old and lower in player count than your average big name MMO. It isn't needed in FFXIV and they've had to tweak and balance trusts so that they're not more effective than other players or they'll effectively kill the "Multiplayer" part of their Multiplayer Online RPG. Starting with HW there are so many quests and scenes with your party members that I think you still get the effect of traveling them. I can't relate to this issue as the game is very solo friendly in almost all content but crafting/gathering and EX/endgame content. Having NPC characters like SWTOR would be neat, but it would be such a superfluous and un-needed system in a game that already lets you do everything easy outside of boss fights.
I'm sorry that you get overloaded but the sidequests being that numerous resulting in you shutting down the game seems like a personal problem.
The world is actually pretty alive and old NPCs constantly get new dialogue so I'd need more citation for a proper response to that. Things like the Triad Questline and other characters in side quests and stuff even get dialogue updated for events happening in the world that they're not involved in, and I can't think of one major character that I can't still talk to. They're also doing the Firmament for Ishgard just like they did with Doma and just like they did with Idylshire. So I'm not quite sure why this is "lacking" to anyone.
(and other automatic answers "it's a mmo")
No. First, fighting the windmill but whatever : MMO means massively multiplayer online, not "heap of 2mins trash quests". There are ton of things to invent and discover with online games, using a MMO to make these quests is an abyssal waste. Second, MMO or not, bad quests are bad quests. After tutorial (~10 levels, not 80), quests should always bring a small gimmick. Making hundreds of empty quests with just 2 npc or 1 very weak monster is, again, a waste.
What you're asking for isn't scale-able in any sense, and the structure that FFXIV has implemented in its quest system is why they can focus on content like the trials/bosses/dungeons/etc and put mechanics and interesting things in those, and still people complain and/or can't figure those out. The "MMO" part of the game is the dungeons/trials/raids which are all masterfully done and great to play, and they continue to build on their pre-established mechanics.
You could argue in turn that the whole game should be less quests and just more of that, but it's not scaleable/possible to keep that level of content at a persistent enough basis to keep players. Again, like I've said before, any game can be boiled down to 2 min trash quests. Destiny, WoW, Assassins Creed, BOTW, Witcher 3, etc all have quests that could be considered "trash" but you're not usually playing it for the quest design, you're playing because of story, gameplay or something else.
FFXIV has to ride the line between being singleplayer/casual friendly and providing meaningful and challenging content, and while the quest design may not be ideal (I've got plenty of complaints) it's a decent combination of the available means of questing.
You can call it a waste if you want, but it's definitely not. The focus on the game is on its narrative, and even with some of the weaker parts it's held true to that. If you want something different there are other games out there, but the quests are literally just to segment the story and make it digestable for players. Keeping something as complex as an MMO persistent and building on itself is already a huge feat, let alone working with 6+ year old spaghetti code. Adding a "new gimmick" every single quest would be a nightmare to design, and I don't know why anyone would want that.
