As the realm of Final Fantasy XIV rises up from the ashes, join Corey Jenkins as he shares his adventures of the newly revived land of Eorzea

The Rebirth of Traditional Questing

Immediately after stepping foot in front of the gates of Ul’dah I had bumped into an NPC with the oh so familiar “!” over his head and without beating around the bush I will say that, yes, Final Fantasy XIV does have a lot of traditional questing. Many of the quests start with you getting a quest with an NPC who has an “!” over his or her head and proceeding to collect X of Y, killing Y out of X creatures, or talking to person A, B or C. So there’s nothing really new and ground breaking here in terms of questing, but I don’t necessarily think that this is a bad thing for the game. Traditional questing allows players familiar with MMOs or even most regular RPGs to quickly get in and understand what’s going on. This is something that the original game lacked with its guildleve system, which was essentially traditional questing masked in an overly complicated coat of paint.

While traditional questing is definitely a safe way to go, I think it has also helped pave the way for XIV to sprinkle additional layers of content in other areas of the game. For example, aside from just regular filler quests, XIV does offer cool main story quests as well as class specific quest lines.

The main story quests are exactly what they sound like and help bring the main story of XIV to life. Class quests act as side-stories that are specific to your class, but also teach you the basics of how to play that class. While early class quests are pretty simple and along the lines of “go use this skill chain on a monster 3 times” they get increasingly more difficult and upon their completion will allow you to unlock powerful class abilities and class-specific gear. The inclusion of the main story quests are pretty standard in most MMOs these days but, including class specific quest-lines are something that I think many players enjoy in their games and gives a sense of “class pride” if you will.

Personally, while only completing the first initial class quests I found the class story to be equally as interesting as the main story and wanted to see more of it after getting a hint that a rogue member of the Pugilists Guild was lurking about. For my level 15 quest I would also receive a classy new chest piece and a cool new class ability to keep me interested in following the road to becoming a Master Pugilist. While I can’t speak for how interesting the other class’s quests were, I can say that they offer additional content that I think most players will enjoy.

The second layer of the XIV questing system is the return of guildleves. However, this new guildleve system is a lot more “new player friendly” than its original conception; acting more along the lines of daily quests that can be completed 5 times a day on varying levels of difficulty. While they do offer bonus exp. and rewards for leveling, they  didn't seem to be forced on you if you didn't want to do them.

Lastly, as far as questing goes, is the Full Active Time Event system, or FATE. Dynamic events seem to be the new hotness in MMOs, and the XIV FATE system is essentially just that. As you’re out questing FATEs will occur around you and you’ll be notified as soon as you’ve entered one. Your map will also indicate where nearby FATEs are taking place. Just like in other games such as Guild Wars 2, FATEs scale in difficulty based on the number of players participating and will also reward players based on their contribution. Additionally, players who are above the recommended level for a FATE will be asked if they would like their level to be scaled down. While you don’t have to choose to be scaled down, you’ll get little to no reward for participating in a FATE event above the recommended level. So while level synching makes it more challenging, it also gives you better loot.

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