This game has the most absurd quest ordering I’ve ever seen.
New player here. I‘ve just started Natlan archon quest and entered the new region. so far so good. Got introduced to new character and the quest led me to the city. The moment I was about to enter it, I receive that the archon quest blocked by song of the welkin moon act 1. Now it’s not like I have experienced other quests blocking the main one in the past. Wish I remembered to tick that focused mode box before proceeding. I couldn’t do it. after it already got blocked. Well okay, I thought, some small encounter in Natlan as as foreshadowing, what could go wrong, so I decided to roll with it. I enter the city stairs and bam, the cutscene triggers where traveler is already leaving Natlan, saying goodbyes to friends I haven’t even met and heading to Nod Krai. Just… wow.
Now, although annoying I was fine with some side quests blocking the main one, I could complete those before advancing the main arc, all fair, but this.. Never have I imagined that an archon quest for the next new region would prevent me from starting the archon quest of the earlier region. That is the most absurd thing ever. I don’t know what wrong with game designers at Mihoyo, but for the new player this is a total experience killer for me. I haven’t seen anything more ridiculous in dozens of games that I played in the past. Im playing this game exclusively for the great narrative and getting nonsense like this totally takes me out of the game.
I didn’t want to sound like a jerk. Just wanted to share my frustrations with you guys.. I’m definitely going to write feedback to Mihoyo about it. I absolutely love this game and I wish the devs to continue delivering such great and amazing experience for us, but things like this really need attention. It is a common sense to restrict certain content from triggering until you complete the prerequisites to not ruin the pacing. This quest did the entirely opposite of that. The checkbox in the quest log is not a solution as you might forget about ticking it on, next time you play. It should be the game responsibility to drive the narrative in a correct order, not player. For now the best I can think of interpreting it as a flashforward and return to Natlan to continue the earlier story. Wish I couls roll back the story at the very least.
Now, although annoying I was fine with some side quests blocking the main one, I could complete those before advancing the main arc, all fair, but this.. Never have I imagined that an archon quest for the next new region would prevent me from starting the archon quest of the earlier region. That is the most absurd thing ever. I don’t know what wrong with game designers at Mihoyo, but for the new player this is a total experience killer for me. I haven’t seen anything more ridiculous in dozens of games that I played in the past. Im playing this game exclusively for the great narrative and getting nonsense like this totally takes me out of the game.
I didn’t want to sound like a jerk. Just wanted to share my frustrations with you guys.. I’m definitely going to write feedback to Mihoyo about it. I absolutely love this game and I wish the devs to continue delivering such great and amazing experience for us, but things like this really need attention. It is a common sense to restrict certain content from triggering until you complete the prerequisites to not ruin the pacing. This quest did the entirely opposite of that. The checkbox in the quest log is not a solution as you might forget about ticking it on, next time you play. It should be the game responsibility to drive the narrative in a correct order, not player. For now the best I can think of interpreting it as a flashforward and return to Natlan to continue the earlier story. Wish I couls roll back the story at the very least.
Commentaires
The transition is just..not very well thought out.
Also made even worse cause there's a sorta "canon" order by how every region tends to bookend the story by discussing the traveler's next destination.
Only a tiny fraction of players are represented here on Reddit. The rest are essentially silent to us - but they may not be silent to Hoyo.
But yeah, I most likely clicked the quick start button…
Do people really need entire 15m Paimon yap session that quick start means well, quick start for a chapter?
Not saying that focus mode is perfect but it was entirely your reasonable choice to QUICK start 😅
Each major region has unique gameplay and story.
And some people who returned in the game or new players just want to play together with friends in newest patch (i mean doing same story line and discuss it)
To sum it up: quick start is just optional quality of life for those who dont want to spend time on 5 years of content and just want to start new last region to keep up with other people.
2) You agreed to this when you clicked quick-start in the events menu. Not entirely your fault, since you probably didn't know what it actually did when you clicked it, but ultimately a 'accept the TOS without reading it' moment.
3) Despite all that, yes it does suck. And they should give you the option to pause/disable quests. Definitely add it to the survey, and hopefully they improve FEM or quest selection ability so similar issues don't happen in future. Auto-triggering world quests while doing the Archon Quest also kinda suck, and as long as they don't 'block' the AQ, FEM doesn't prevent them triggering.
Sadly Genshin doesn't have something like HSR's quest timeline the only thing is to use the traveler's handbook guide and so whichever AQ or WQ it recommends there as it usually recommends them in sequential order (though I've never used the quick start button so that might have messed up the guide).
Focused Experience mode is a bandaid for it, sure, but as you said, even that doesn't fully protect you, unless you're 100% paranoid about it at ALL times.
Either way, sorry to hear this happened to you. That's a failure on our part as a community, for not being vocal enough about such issues.
Hard to take something seriously and immerse oneself in the story, when such things happen.
I'd go even further, saying that the community praised that change by saying "yay more primogems for doing the new quest within 42 days!"
Due to that peculiar interaction, the game stopped me from fighting Scara right at peak of the climax and forced me to start the first part of Tighnari's quest with nothing i could do to change the priority order.
they *do* have this kind of restriction in place. i remember so many people getting confused on how to continue the AQ after liyue because they didn't know you had to complete a world quest first to unlock the next AQ (chapter 1 act 4) and you can't go to inazuma without completing both of those quests + the chapter 2 prologue.
it's just that from 5.0 onwards, they included limited rewards for finishing the latest AQ within the version it released on then added the quick start feature to skip to act 1 of the latest AQ so that even new players have a chance to get those limited rewards without speedrunning all the previous ones.
what i think happened is you probably saw the free character (aino) event in the events list then clicked quick start without thinking too much about it.
By the time I got to Fontaine’s Archon quest I wasn’t able to start it. I ended up having to watch the farewell scene first, play through a bit of the beginning of Natlan’s Archon quest and *then* go back and start Fontaine’s Archon quest.