The head of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, announced that some of the long and sluggish story quests of the MMORPG will be made more compact.
What did Yoshida say? In the past producer stream, the head of FFXIV answered player questions during a Q&A. He mentioned that the development team is currently working on shortening the story quests of “A Realm Reborn.”
The quests are to be made more compact overall. The change is expected to come with Patch 5.3 next year.
This adjustment will be especially beneficial for new players starting with FFXIV and having to work through long lines of fetch quests from ARR.
Yoshida did not specify which aspects of ARR will be shortened, but it can be assumed that it will not impact the storytelling of the MMORPG.
Why is this a problem? While Final Fantasy XIV is praised by many for its great story, the beginning of the MMORPG is generally considered very sluggish. New players must play through the entire story before they can reach the endgame.
Meanwhile, the starter quests of the “A Realm Reborn” storyline are considered rather uninteresting, even though they contribute to world-building. They mainly contain an extremely large number of fetch quests, which sometimes require a lot of running on foot.
This can also deter new players and is supposed to change in the future.
What does the community say? The information has received a large response in the community. On reddit, players voiced their opinions in a long thread on the topic.
Many said that while the length and amount of fetch quests did not bother them too much, the game would benefit from reducing the running around. Some also mentioned examples of fetch quests that annoyed them the most while playing:
[…] The one thing that annoyed me was the quest where you have to dump a bucket of water over a guy’s head: You take the bucket, go to the river, and use it. Ok, done, right? No, you have to put the bucket in the river. Then you have to click it again to fill it. Ok, now are you done? No, you have to click it again to pick it up. And every action has a preparation time.
by senj0ugahara
Other quests from ARR have also received criticism. Players also mentioned the quest line leading to the battle against Titan as one they found to be the worst.
What’s next for FFXIV? After the release of Shadowbringers and the start of the summer event in FFXIV, the developers are now working on the next content patch number 5.1, which should go live in the fall. It will include, among other things, the following content:
- Continuation of the Shadowbringers story
- The first quests for the Beast Tribes of Shadowbringers
- The 24-man raid for Nier Automata
- Balance adjustments for jobs like Ninja, Samurai, Summoner, and some others
- The Extreme version of the last trial of Shadowbringers
Players can also look forward to the “Festival of Rebirth” event at the end of August / beginning of September to celebrate the 6th anniversary of Final Fantasy XIV; data miners have already found hints for it in the game code. It will likely be accompanied by a 14-hour live stream from the developer studio in Tokyo, as has been the case in previous years.
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