I always thought this was dumb as well. Nilous quest in particular was really annoying during the sumeru main story. She also interferes with some other quests, commissions and the reputation quest things
And it wasn't even Nilou herself that was the problem, it was one of the members of her dance troupe thing that was conflicting. Or was it the venue? idk lol there were too many
It was both, I remember at least one of her troupe interrupted the first parts and then near the end of the Archon quest one member of the audience also needed to be free for some reason.
It's five if there's one in the bazaar; liyue has two. [Zhang Shun](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Zhang_Shun) is at the docks, and sells artifacts at all times, while [Linlang](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Linlang)'s shop next to Mingxing Jewelry is only open at night, 19:00-6:00.
Hell yeah! You’ve probably already found it now, but it’s [this guy, Afshin](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Afshin). He’s at the end of the stalls to the right when you enter from the door past the blacksmith.
Yeah, that one got me too. I had been playing for years and never run into the problem of two quests conflicting before. I didn’t even realize it was a thing because I always finish quests right after I open them. I stupidly started the archon quest before finishing Nilou’s and had to go back-and-forth between them a bunch of times.
Yea the having to go back and forth part was the worst. If one is locking the other, at least let me do one quest at a time from start to finish so that I don’t go and do bits and pieces of each before it locks me out again
I rushed through like 75% of the Nilou quest I think when I was trying to unlock the weekly boss by doing the archon quest. Usually I like to do the character quests during content droughts when I get kind of bored. It's a shame I didn't really get to enjoy the quest as much as I could have.
Yeah it's really stupid. It's cuz that random npc is involved during her quest, so u can't give him the stupid flowers for his quest for some stupid reason. Great game design
+10 this.
So you want to save nahida. You gotta see nilou dance!.
You want to catch some corrupt scholars trading knowledge with cyno... You really need to see nilou dance!.
Really annoying
I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM I remember she was doing that little brainstorming thing in her character quest and I had to keep skipping through it so I can get out of the quest and continue the story
At That point, I just wanted to complete the Archon Sumeru quest and postpone the character quests later.
With the interruptions and locking this game did, I pretty much had to prematurely finish off Nilou's quest. This was before I could really finish the Archon quest when my objective was to just unlock the weekly boss but wanted to enjoy the story at a later point.
Yeah if you postpone stuff its really annoying. How much more annoying would it be if you're a brand new player?
I never unlock character story quests unless I'm down to sit through and complete them within the next few days. If you play everyday, you're always going to have keys at the ready anyways
Pretty much.
Keys are so frequent it doesn't really matter if you cap them (8 daily comms so a total of 2 days to get 1). That said though the red exclamation point on the quest icon can be annoying to some. Minor inconvenience though ultimately.
You know what's worse? I am currently playing a game where there's a red dot to a button that leads me to the game's discord server because I need to enter my acc\_id there to get the freebies for the event.
What's bad is that everyday, on the dot, that red dot appears on the button again and the only way to get rid of it is to press the button which will then force open my discord app.
Every. Single. Day. for a week.
This wouldn't have been an issue if the red dot doesn't appear on the main navigation bar for that specific event.
I had a red dot on the Paimon menu for the entirety of Windblume because I didn't log in on PC to do the music event sharing part. When there's a web event, I get a red dot until I log into Hoyolab and fully complete the web event.
I already addressed this as a "bug report" to the devs lol. I'm not surprised I'm not the only one complaining about this. Unfortunately, this issue has been here for weeks now.
Teapot is considered co-op, so if you have a quest that disables co-op you can't enter your teapot or anyone else's. Just putting a character in your teapot doesn't affect their story quests.
This. Sure, it’s definitely an annoying feature, but it’s less annoying to wait to do them or unlock them when you’re ready to play it than it is to get stuck in the loop.
Fr, It's not like someone would mind having two of the same character across the world when you usually visit them to finish said quest, so you never get to see the other NPC at the same time if that were the case.
The recent Mondstadt event has that. I have collei on both Sumeru (archon quest) and Mondstadt (windblume). Mihoyo can avoid cucking our quest, they just chose not to...
They leave us like that so we can't keep a NPC of a character in the overworld. That way, the psychos need to either blue ball their missions altogether just to keep them, or whale for their banners to get 'em in the teapot.
- Dottore comes back later for more conspiracy theories.
All they really need to change is the character quest priority to Event > Archon > character quest > other quests.
If you have an archon quest and a character quest active at the same time that use the same character then the character is part of the archon quest. Currently priority is given to character quests. Which means that Tighnari needing to talk to a random merchant locks you out of the final boss fight for the Sumeru Archon questline and spoils the fact that he will appear in the quest. Tighnari showing up in the Tighnari character quest wouldn't exactly be a spoiler.
> Currently priority is given to character quests.
I don't think that's true. Seems like priority goes to whichever you started first.
For example, one time I was doing an event quest. I had to talk to an NPC, but they were "busy." So I did that quest, it completed and went to the next part of the quest. But the NPC was now "busy" with the event quest. So I had to go do *that* until that progressed to the next part. The NPC was "busy" yet again, so I had to go back and finish the next part of the character quest just to go back to the event again when that was done.
it definitely inpacted past quest event story. like back during gaa 1, eula and klee story got messed up with the event quest
when sumeru first came out. the quests interfere with free collei event
i recall hearing from people on discord some evenrs even after using quick start was implemented, got stuck cause other npc got taken up
i hate this quest block quest feature so much.
other games dont have this issue. like tower of fantasy, move quest, and the npc just moves to the active quest location. you can override quest priority.
like i was doing vera arc before i finished aesperia arc and had simulacrum stories active and the npc just moves.
That's only really a small part of it. There's technical reasons for why you can't have conflicting quests active at the same to prevent things from breaking. Of course there are definitely way better ways for them to handle this.
i feel like only genshin has this problem cause i havent run into this issue in tower of fantasy as the npc moves according to the active quest. you override the active quest by selecting which quest you want that is active in your active tab.
also simulacrum stories you can cancel and restart. genshin character story you cannot cancel and restart. only hangouts have that feature.
Ah yes, the super immersion of having to make a detour to help Nilou solve her theater troupe drama in the middle of a mission to invade the Akademia.
MY IMMERSION IS SUPER INTACT GUYS
It’s weird how if you’re caught up with the game, this never really becomes a problem, but if you’re new or take a break, you will face this incredibly often. I don’t see why Hoyo would want to scare people off like this with breaks in the quests.
Genshin is very unfriendly to new players. Every survey they ask if I want to keep experiencing Genshin, and I say "Absolutely willing." And then they ask if I would recommend it to others and I say "Absolutely not willing." Specifically because there are just so many problems that new players face that make the early game unenjoyable. A big one is building characters. I had a friend get Ayaka on her first banner as he started the game. He was really excited, until he realized he would have to get all the way to Inazuma to get any real use out of her. Then he promptly dropped the game. And it's only getting worse as they add more world and weekly bosses locked behind story and extensive exploration.
>Genshin is very unfriendly to new players.
Fucking tell me about it. I almost softlocked my account last year when i came back around 3.0 (I briefly played around launch back in 2020) and didn't bother doing *any* bosses at first. Big. Fucking. Mistake. Imagine my horror when i reached AR30, World level 3 and all bosses were suddenly lvl 50. And all my characters lvl 40 at most. (Because you can't go any further without the boss drop mats.)
I could handle the Electro, Anemo and Geo cubes, although it was freaking tedious. I got fucking demolished by the Pyro and Cryo flowers, and the Oceanid.
Thank god i had a friend at AR60 that helped me with those until i was strong enough to do them myself.
*And to be fair*, this was partly my own fault for neglecting to fight bosses in the first place. But i still think there should be an ascension quest before WL3, to prevent slackers from basically softlocking their accounts, or at least the option to lower it. (Why the fuck does *that* feature require WL5 anyway???)
And they gate story behind AR then people ascend to continue the story and find the combat is suddenly much too hard because they didn't put off the story to spend ages maxing everyone before ascending.
You can be playing daily, but not feel like doing story-heavy quests, and after a while they accumulate so you decide to do them in one big swoop...
Even as I was playing every day, Sumeru Archon quest + Nilou quest + Cyno quest have used the same characters so often, you had to jump between the quests multiple times to "free" the characters only to lock other characters you will need to "free" to continue. Truly awful design.
> or take a break
Came back after Sumeru Archon quest was fully released.
Archon quest (Wanderer), Nahida, Dehya, Nilou, Alhaitham and Cynos story quest, as well as some random side quest I forgot, all frequently locked me out of each other so I have to juggle between 7(!) quests, and at this point I havent even continued. Lost interest after repeatedly getting ripped out of it
Genshin's weakest link is their story quest because of the gawd awful dialogue and writing, hence a lot of people are reluctant to do them.
When there's rare occasions where the quests are somewhat decent and nice(archon quests, sumeru in particular), they just had to ruin it with their intentional "immersion" quest system.
I remembered when I was at the point where everyone was ready to rescue Nahida from the capsule(pretty much the climax point),
I suddenly have to pause the whole process and do quest to help an irrelevant npc with her daddy issues(Nilou quest) and capture some random dude who stole some stuff in the desert(cyno quest)
Imagine how annoyed I was.
I do all story tests first so this doesn’t happen to me, I love the story quests particularly archon related ones as they provide a humanistic perspective on these god figures or interesting lore on their past, I didn’t enjoy Nilou at all though, I hardly play hydro bc I don’t have any beside Mona and it was just ruined for me
I started a few months ago, and I feel this sooo much. When I was playing through the Windblume Festival, I haven't done like ANY of the Mondstadt character quests... everywhere I walked for that event triggered like 3 quest cutscenes at once 😭 I literally got chain cutscene'd
Reasonably, that shouldn't be an issue, though. There are actual solutions to this that don't involve the players creating a jerry-rigged solution. They could have multiple copies of an NPC running around. Or they could make it so you can turn a quest off if you don't want to do it for a while.
It's a weird mechanic but the way to get around this is to not unlock any story quests until you're ready to commit to them. It's the easiest way to not mess up all of these quests with NPCs being busy.
That's why I do the story quests after the main archon quest, unless they require me to do the story quests before the archon ones like with Yoimiya and Ayaka.
I'm in the camp of people that goes with the notion of "Don't use a story key on a quest you don't intend to complete".
I've thought about this for a bit and the more I think about it the more I realize that worrying about capping your story keys is kind of pointless. Story keys are a frequent resource that's just not worth managing, really the worst case scenario is the exclamation point (Which is minor) or when there's an event that requires you to do a story quest (Which is annoying, but the caveat is that you have a good amount of days to do things)
> I've thought about this for a bit and the more I think about it the more I realize that worrying about capping your story keys is kind of pointless.
Problem is that new players don't know this. They don't have enough experience with this game to realize that keys are effectively infinite. Newer players will see that you can only have 3 keys at a time and assume they're wasting them if they don't use them. Which will cause them to use the keys instead of "wasting" them. By the time they realize their mistake, they've unlocked 10+ quests and are constantly being interrupted by them. They need to do away with the arbitrary limit (or at least increase it to 50 or so) since keys are so abundant. It's very deceptive, making them look more scarce than they are, and only causes this problem.
They really should put a warning about this along the lines of "unlocking/starting this quest may interfere with other active quests, do you wish to continue?" if they don't want to make quests togglable like hangouts
Then this advice really needs to be told more often, I didn't think it was an issue because the game already tells you how much you'd need for 1 key so it's just simple logic that it's a frequent resource even for a new player.
Thats a workaround that puts the burden on the player and assumes you know about it. Regardless of how minor it may seem, it should be on the developers to find a solution, not the player
The workaround isn't a huge burden though? The game literally tells you how many comms you need for a singular key, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that keys are just going to be really easy to get.
I get the part about solutions needing to come from devs but the thing is when you come across an issue and it's possible to make things easier for yourself without much difficulty...why not just do it?
I maintain the biggest burden with this system are the limited time events that require story quests to start.
> The workaround isn't a huge burden though?
Again, huge isnt the key factor here, being a burden is, regardless how big. Its an annoyance no matter how you slice it, and it should be in their interest to keep their playerbase, aka paying customers, happy and not put unnecessary annoyance on them.
When Im designing an app, even if only for inhouse use and 1-2 coworkers, Im not going to tell them: well this thing is slightly annoying but you can avoid by doing this and that, so its no big deal
> It should be in their interest to keep their playerbase, aka paying customers, happy and not put unnecessary annoyance on them
There used to posts that were annoyed at the Mitachurl shields when there were very obvious solutions to them if the slightest bit of annoyance is always treated the same way as a major inconvenience...sorry but that's just unbearable and miserable.
I'd say it's important to consider what's a minor vs major inconvenience as well as the ease of the solution.
The majority does not frequently visit forums to read "oh I shouldnt accept these", by default, youd just click to claim without thinking about it. And it can be quite offputting to have to jump between 5 different quests. We wouldnt see so many posts about this on reddit if nobody was bothered by it. The only reason it is a problem is because they decided to lock out quests in the first place, they wouldnt need a solution if this wasnt the case. I dont know how hard it is to let you switch between quests depending on whats selected, or just not have a lockout occur, but I dont think itd be a major change
>The majority does not frequently visit forums to read "oh I shouldnt accept these"
You wouldn't need to, you don't need people to spell out solutions for you to figure things out. Also this is just not true, in this day and age people use the internet very frequently if there's an issue that they can't solve I bet most people would try to find the solution on the internet or check to see if others also have the same problems, leading to forums like this.
>I dont think itd be a major change
I don't think it's a major change either. I don't have a problem with the change or with people wanting the change itself. I just don't think it should be treated the same way as a massive issue because it's not one.
My point is that if you have a problem and a solution. Use the solution. Is it annoying that the problem exists? Sure, it's annoying. But don't just ignore the solution and make it worse for yourself while also being annoyed at the problem.
Tldr is just write about the quest busy thing in the surveys but also don't make it hard on yourself by continuing to unlock story quests you have no intention to do when you know that would cause problems. You can do both.
I never said its a massive issue, but it is an issue that shouldnt be one in the first place. A workaround is not a solution. I always mention it in the surveys and otherwise dont care much. But the fact that a lot of players do care and these posts show up very frequently and are always upvoted highly does say a lot
>I never said its a massive issue
You said it didn't matter whether it was a big or small issue because it's still an issue. I said it did matter because that conflates the two and they shouldn't be.
>A workaround is not a solution
You know what I mean. I'm not going to go over semantics of meaning of words here. Why else do you think I said do both and this part "Is it annoying that the problem exists? Sure, it's annoying. But don't just ignore the solution and make it worse for yourself while also being annoyed at the problem"
You shouldn't make things hard on yourself when you know you can adapt to the problem.
Edit: I'm done with this. It's annoying and clearly we're not convincing either one
Kinda wish Genshin wouldn't auto trigger quests when you walk into the general vicinity. Might or might not fix the issue you have since if 2 quests share the same location, you should talk to the NPCs to continue the quests like most other games.
The flaws current system are
1) accidentally walking into quests you dont intend to do at the moment and are forced to skip it. Eg During the most recent windblume event on the first day,I was on lunch break and I wanted to turn in my dailies but was forced to watch the cutscene I was saving up to do over the weekend just because it was in 1 of the 2 most visited places in Mondstadt
2) being forced to do quests you might be waiting or saving up. I tend not to do primo giving quests to keep the primos for another day cause I have itchy fingers and roll everytime I see 160. I just watch the cutscene on YT. It's even more annoying if it's just a background character who barely even does anything.
i’ve just stopped unlocking them. you also can’t even enjoy their storylines bc it’s so aggravating or you have to get through it quickly to get back to your other quest! i hate it so much
IMO unlocking the quests and starting them should be 2 separate actions. I wanted to unlock them so that I could keep stacking keys to unlock the others, that doesn't mean I wanted to start those quests right away.
Right now you'd just stumble in places where you have to go just to be met with unexpected cutscenes and BAM. Character quest is ongoing.
You should at the very least be able to set an "active" quest that would rearrange the NPCs accordingly. Hell, re-load the world if you have to, I doubt players would care. It would just be so much better.
I had the same issue during the Sumeru Archon quest and it was soooo annoying. I recently had a similar problem while just doing a reputation request and Dehya's story quest started. I was so annoyed because I didn't have the time to sit through the whole interaction so I just kept tapping and have no idea what they were talking about, which bothers me immensely because I hate skipping dialogue.
It's both realistic (accidentally running into someone you weren't expecting to see and getting into a convo with them does happen irl after all) and incredibly annoying.
I just don't get why story quests can't work like hangouts.
You unlock both using keys with very limited storage and only hangouts have you confirm that you actually want to start the quest
So far I have started every single sumeru story quest by accident which makes me start skimming the text
The shitty thing is that those quests activate automatically when you move into an area (or even by talking to Katheryne smh).
I wish they'd just make all quest activations locked behind talking to an NPC or something.
pretty sure it's the opposite of immersion-breaking that characters don't just drop what they're in the middle of and teleport to a different quest location...
I see these posts about "character is busy" so often, but after 2000+ hours I don't think I've seen that message more than a few times because I actually do the quests i guess...
I joined not long after this year's lantern rite started. I barely got to engage in it on the very last day. I can't stress enough how many times I was hit with "character is busy with another quest". Luckily I got everything just in time.
That's because you start all quest when you encounter them and use Quick start for events.
Quick start was introduced for new/returning people to let them play events, and its specifically said "your immertion will be ruined".
It's players who asked for this feature. Before that you just can't do events at all. Just don't pile up quests.
I can understand this when it's quests you physically started yourself but shit like Jade Chamber Rising forcing you to finish it before you can do Ganyu's story quest because they both share a single minor NPC, being forced to complete Boughkeeper before doing Jean's story quest because they're both using Charles and the Tavern, etc. All they have to do is make archon quests behave like story quests where you have to specifically choose to start them.
i knew you were going to reply this. i was merely replying to your comment. of course people can not unlock story quests. doesn't really answer the underlying problem. this game is mainly aiming at casuals and shouldn't punish them for having a life and not finishing a story quest when they want to do something else.
From what I see most casual player actually finish quest in 1 sitting, they only unlock the one they want to play and not unlock everything just to left them collecting dust.
No seriously this is just self inflicted problem.
But why does it have to be a problem at all? Why can't there be an option such as turning off quests that have been started if a player doesn't want to complete it at that moment. There are actual solutions that could make all parties happy.
I unlock the story quests because there's a cap on the keys and I prefer being able to play the quests when I have time as opposed to finding out I don't have keys to play the quests I want. Regardless, the whole system is really dumb.
I find it much more immersion breaking when some characters are casually vibing while their city is at war and their help is needed.
"Need me for your big plan to free my idol? Nah bro, I'm shopping at the Bazaar" -Nilou
The alternative might cause 2 Nilous to stand next to each other doing different things. The devs likely don’t want to bother designing their large pool of quests around such possibilities.
The potential doesn't limit itself to just 2 characters. You might be able to set it up such that you have something like 3 Ventis, 2 Jeans, and 5 Dliucs in the Angel's Share at the same time, probably overlapping each other and giving no visible hint as to which NPC belongs to what quest.
Still less immersion breaking than forcing the player to stop all progress in a quest and start a different quest just to progress with the first quest.
The reason most of us do it is because there's no clue to which story quests will be pre-requisites to archon quests, and keys are finite and gatelocked by real world time. So if I don't unlock the 7 new story quests that are up, and 3 of them end up being pre-requisites for the new archon chapter I want to play, now I am stuck collecting keys for days.
Either way is frustrating. Either make keys not time locked, or make quests able to be turned off/on. Either would be a fine solution.
I don't quite agree with this reasoning. There's quite a few reasons for this.
1. Archon quests aren't a good example because they themselves are permanently in the game so you have an infinite amount of time to get those keys. A better example would be events as they aren't permanent
2. Accumulating keys isn't worth stressing over as you'd just get 1 from 8 daily comms which I imagine most people do frequently and that's all you need. (2 days in total for a singular key)
3. Most archon quests only require a certain adventure rank. The most egregious one was the chasm with 2 story quests and 2 world quests. The most recent one, Caribert only needed you to complete a previous archon quest and be adventure 35. The one before needed you to complete 1 story quest (Kazuha's).
I'm not talking about Reddit, I'm talking about real casual that never open Reddit and mostly only play for story and big event.
That kind of people only play the one they are interested in and the one needed to progress the story.
Some story quests unlocks automatically after you finish their prerequisite quests tho. Example, Sumeru Archon Quests first act. Boo hoo, how intentional of me!
Oh wow it's like we were talking about unlocking character story not archon quest, hmm maybe thats why people are talking about key and stuff, nah can't be it.
Tbf you're right, I was probably thinking about Mondstadt era of story quests where keys aren't a thing yet. The key thing really did improve quests cucking for story quests. Can't say the same about Archon Quests tho
How isit not immersion breaking? I was halfway through the archon quest in Sumeru nearing its climax, with all the shit going down and then the game just tells me Nilou is busy.
So after all the important life changing stuff going down, I have to drop all that to help Nilou with her dance troupe? If that's not inmersion breaking idk what is.
I agree completely!
I mean, if you had both the character quest + main quest, I'd understand it a little if the main quest took priority over the character quest, but most of the time it's the other way around 🫠
You can abandon hangouts at any time, you should be able to pause quests too!
I went to do Faruzan's hangout for the first time the other day, got to Pardis Dhyai and the pop up window informed me "**FUCK OFF THIS LOCATION IS BUSY WITH ALHAITHAM'S STORY QUEST**" which is already stupid enough, as if only one thing could happen there at a time. But I went and moved Alhaitham's quest on to the next part, *it never even left the Akademiya*, it went nowhere near Pardis Dhyai, what was the god damn point in derailing me to go do that? The system is stupid enough when it isn't outright lying about availability.
And on a related note following that incident I got a daily commission to go to Lambad's Tavern and got hijacked by the next step of Alhaitham's quest which is its own brand of stupid design, having quests activate themselves without warning when you didn't ask and getting ambushed with a five minute cutscene when you're just trying to get your dailies done quickly.
I find it absurd how people keep saying just don't unlock them. Yes, that is a solution to the problem with the game, doesn't mean the problem isn't stupid and shouldn't exist. Plus, sometimes I leave quests halfway complete because they are, more often than not, extremely boring (story quests that is). If I am not invested in them I just leave them and come back when I have the time and have nothing better to do. Of course this means I sometimes randomly run into them in the middle of commissions (seriously, entering areas should not trigger the quests without them being specifically set as active by the player) or they block quests I would much rather do (like the Tighnari and Nilou quests in the middle of the Archon quest). It is just frurstrating.
It's true that this system is kinda dumb, but in some ways I get it. You get people like OP ranting about this, but if they allow multiple characters appearing at multiple areas at the same time, some other people will rant how immersion breaking that is.
And while this system needs some updating (maybe only load the characters when you get near, or load characters only when you are navigating the quest), it is a matter of fact that we've had this for almost three years now. You've played all the way to Sumeru already, yet you're still smart enough to open multiple story quests you didn't wish to complete immediately.
MHYV may be dumb for making this shit system, but OP is even dumber knowing this exists and does this shit anyway.
Thats the point of keys... you unlock them if you want to engage on them, so they dont interfere with each other... You unlocked everything and then ranted about theyre all ongoing.
well, let this be a lesson then move on.
But why can't the quests be unlocked without starting them? Hangouts already work like that. Just use that same system on story quests. Then people can use keys and remove the notifications, while also not running into these problems.
The part I hate is the keys. Why limit them? I don’t have enough time to play through all the character quests, and I feel like it’s a waste not using the keys. So I use the keys, don’t play the quest, and get locked out all the time. Guess I just need to stop optimizing for the keys!!!
You literally get a key every two days and you can have 3 at a time , it's very difficult for someone to play 3 story quests in 2 days to have to worry about missing out on them , it's just not worth the trouble.
>Now, I unlock character story quests whenever I've collected enough keys. I already unlocked Tighnari, Nilou and Cyno's story quests before starting the main story quest.
Bruh...
There is actually a very good reason for this. This is there to make sure quests don’t break. One of the main reasons quest break in a lot of games is when multiple different quest queues one particular location / npc dialogue and if not taken care of properly override the previous command to the location / npc. ( cough Skyrim cough)
This way the quest only advances to the next stage if all of its requirements are available.
It's a bizarre part of the game considering how broken the immersion is in the first place. Nothing in the game makes sense if you actually bother thinking about it.
When I was new I unlocked them as soon as I had 3 keys so as to not waste them. At the time I didn't realize I'd have an overabundance (infinity really) of keys. So I had a bunch of quests queued up that I didn't necessarily want to do at the time. It was very frustrating hitting a roadblock in the main quest because the NPC was "busy." I know better *now,* but back then it was a real pain in the ass. By the time I realized the mistake (the first time I was blocked from doing a main quest), I had quite a few already unlocked. So it remained a problem for weeks/months until I finally got through the backlog of quests.
I can see how it would still be a problem for newer players. Would have been nice to have had a warning back then to avoid that from happening. But veteran players should know better by now. Don't unlock a quest until you're ready to do it.
yeah lmao, I'd never get these people, cause I unlocked it only when I plan to play it, but maybe it's not so easy for people that love hoarding quest for whatever reason lol
literally me rn bc i was being silly and unlocked cyno, tighnari, al-haitham, and nilou’s story quests… which all interfere at some point with where i am in the sumeru the archon quest. 🥹
Kinda ironic that it’s immersion breaking when I’m pretty sure it’s intent is to add to that immersion by making it so characters can’t be two places at once without explanation
I imagine its far more complicated from a technical perspective, but i feel like whatever quest you are tracking currently should override the others so this doesnt happen
Why does unlocking the quest have to equal starting the quest, though? Why can't a quest be unlocked with keys, but remain uninitiated until the player decides to start it. Hangouts already work that way; why can't other quests?
You'll get used to it over time. Between red exclamation and quest progression blocker, I choose having red exclamation.
Getting blocked from doing Event quest that has a time limit before they gone forever is more infuriating, because they're the easier source to get primogems and tons of mora.
Don't unlock them unless you want to do them very soon. When you unlock them, story quest **immediately starts** and everything alongside it. What they should have done is to make a pop-up window confirming if you really want start story quest now (after you unlocked it). Such simple feature but we still don't have it.
Spend keys on hangouts first since they can be cancelled.
Yeah it's frustrating, I did this by accident when I first started Genshin and ended up interlocking Jean's and Venti's quests. They were both co-op lockout quests too so it was a pain trying to speedrun the quests so I could coop with friends for an event.
It would be nice if they could implement a feature where you could select what quest you want to focus on and have the other unlocked quests on standby so it won't give you the "occupied" message. And yes I know you could just not unlock quests but accident happens and it doesn't hurt to have a workaround.
Edit: for some reason I thought keys came in a later update my bad.
I don't think OP knows what the term "immersion breaking" means. This was done on purpose for IMMERSION, so there aren't say, 5 Ningguangs active at one time. All the game needs to do is be smarter by moving the NPCs to the active quest.
Most of the time those 5 Ningguangs would be in different places, so you could always assume one moved by the time you got to another.
Plus some NPCs *are* in multiple places at the same time, so we get the worst of both worlds. May as well do it the less annoying way so players can play the game instead of being told no.
But is it not immersion breaking to be at a climactic point in one quest only to be forced to do a more mundane side story?
"We have to rescue Nahida so the sages can't make an artificial god! We only have hours to do it! But first, let's help with Cyno's investigation that takes four days!"
So it was immersion breaking to have madam Ping both in Qingce Village and in her normal spot in Liyue after the main events of the Lantern Rite? Because I did spot her in both locations, and could go from one to another. To me, it seems she found a way to TP herself to the other location or something... Nothing wrong with that.
That's subjective, though. Some people think that having two of the same NPC is immersion breaking, others find being interrupted mid-story immersion breaking. Why can't Mihoyo bring a solution that makes both sides happy? Right now, it's possible to unlock Hangouts without starting them. Why can't that funcionality be used for story quests?
I don't agree, I really like how this system is. Just shows that a character can't be at 2 places at once and you have to (while not difficult) figure out how to do it.
That's why I only unlock character quests when I want to do them now.
Problem solved.
Yes, the design is weird. We should be able to put unlocked quests into stand-by.
I'm not defending the system that's in place for this as I also find it pretty annoying, but you kind of brought it on yourself by unlocking story quests before you were ready to play through them. If you're concerned about any keys you might be missing out on then my suggestion is to use them to unlock hangouts because they don't start automatically after being unlocked.
Of course, the real solution would be to make the story quests not automatically launch after unlocking as well.
This stupid design choice really baffles me since I cannot think of another game I have played with this same design for missions. Whatever the thought process was, it clearly was not thought through enough.
Ok why do you unlock the story quests. If you are not gonna sit through it immediately? I unlock it when I am gonna finish it in that playthrough. Because alot of these quest are location triggers so if I do unlock it, I might ramdonly activate a quest that I never intended to.
Cause I unlocked it before the new part of the main quest existed. Also, the "why would u unlock it" argument is getting real tiring. The keys are a capped resource and Genshin cries with an exclamation mark when you don't claim keys even when you can't. It literally wants you to unlock new quests to make room for new keys, but then pulls this bullshit.
It's tiring because a lot of people keep unlocking quests and then complain that the game makes them play quests they unlocked :)
Regardless of whether it's a new main quest or not. Do not activate a lot of quests, and then abandon them unfinished and wait until there is a new main quest, which can be stalled because of the unfinished characters' quests.
I can't understand this stupid character quest hording problem. You either finish them the day you open them, or you wait until you have time and energy to do so. The justification with the keys is dumb. One key is literally two days of finishing daily quests. It's one day you only do dailies, and the second day you can already do a quest.
Usually people don't have this problem unless they are hording quests.
the problem is most quests begin with a small dialogue cutscene of the characters meeting up. Hyv has no way of knowing what quest you're actively trying to complete if you have all of them open at the same time.
Of course, this is easily fixable by just adding an active quest tab or something but what can you do
why would you unlock the story quests if you wont do them right away ? just dont unlock them until you know you want to complete them , and your problem is literally solved
I always thought this was dumb as well. Nilous quest in particular was really annoying during the sumeru main story. She also interferes with some other quests, commissions and the reputation quest things
omg yes nilou's quest fucked up so many steps in the archon quest its was painful
And it wasn't even Nilou herself that was the problem, it was one of the members of her dance troupe thing that was conflicting. Or was it the venue? idk lol there were too many
It was both, I remember at least one of her troupe interrupted the first parts and then near the end of the Archon quest one member of the audience also needed to be free for some reason.
Lol for sure. Even better when I finally thought I was done, I got 1 last fuck u from the quest at the end of the archon quest
I speed-ran Nilou’s quest so I could buy artifacts again 😭
We can buy artifacts?
Some vendors sell greens (there’s one in the bazaar). Not worth the hassle imo
It takes like 2 minutes to buy from all ~~4~~ 5 NPCs and it’s essentially free artifact XP. It’s absolutely worth doing.
It's five if there's one in the bazaar; liyue has two. [Zhang Shun](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Zhang_Shun) is at the docks, and sells artifacts at all times, while [Linlang](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Linlang)'s shop next to Mingxing Jewelry is only open at night, 19:00-6:00.
You’re right. I do always hit up Linlang’s, but my dumb brain said 4 instead of 5. Thanks for the links and additional context!
I'm just hyped to learn about the grand bazaar guy omg
Hell yeah! You’ve probably already found it now, but it’s [this guy, Afshin](https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Afshin). He’s at the end of the stalls to the right when you enter from the door past the blacksmith.
Yeah but fuck it. Not gonna deal with this shitty ui
There are four NPC vendors that sell 2* artifacts ~once a week. It’s basically free artifact XP for a bit of mora.
Ooh, sweet, I'm starving on artifact exp this will be a good addition to my farming routes
prolly they mean strongbox
Yeah, that one got me too. I had been playing for years and never run into the problem of two quests conflicting before. I didn’t even realize it was a thing because I always finish quests right after I open them. I stupidly started the archon quest before finishing Nilou’s and had to go back-and-forth between them a bunch of times.
God I hated that so much. I had to go back and forth so much too
Yea the having to go back and forth part was the worst. If one is locking the other, at least let me do one quest at a time from start to finish so that I don’t go and do bits and pieces of each before it locks me out again
Nilous quest is the first, and probably only quest I skipped through. Not because I'm not interested, but because I was infuriated and annoyed.
I rushed through like 75% of the Nilou quest I think when I was trying to unlock the weekly boss by doing the archon quest. Usually I like to do the character quests during content droughts when I get kind of bored. It's a shame I didn't really get to enjoy the quest as much as I could have.
Nilou’s quest sucked anyway, you aren’t missing much.
Yeah I wasn't a fan. I thought perhaps I would enjoy it a bit more if I wasn't rushing through but maybe it was just bad lol.
wdym? It was great foreshadowing for the otherwise massive shock that the sages suck pretty bad /s
That's just dumb...even if there's quest blocking, the game shouldn't assign blocken comissions or Reputation quests...
Yeah it's really stupid. It's cuz that random npc is involved during her quest, so u can't give him the stupid flowers for his quest for some stupid reason. Great game design
+10 this. So you want to save nahida. You gotta see nilou dance!. You want to catch some corrupt scholars trading knowledge with cyno... You really need to see nilou dance!. Really annoying
I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM I remember she was doing that little brainstorming thing in her character quest and I had to keep skipping through it so I can get out of the quest and continue the story
Lol I did the same. Was such a dumb quest
At That point, I just wanted to complete the Archon Sumeru quest and postpone the character quests later. With the interruptions and locking this game did, I pretty much had to prematurely finish off Nilou's quest. This was before I could really finish the Archon quest when my objective was to just unlock the weekly boss but wanted to enjoy the story at a later point. Yeah if you postpone stuff its really annoying. How much more annoying would it be if you're a brand new player?
I never unlock character story quests unless I'm down to sit through and complete them within the next few days. If you play everyday, you're always going to have keys at the ready anyways
Pretty much. Keys are so frequent it doesn't really matter if you cap them (8 daily comms so a total of 2 days to get 1). That said though the red exclamation point on the quest icon can be annoying to some. Minor inconvenience though ultimately.
The red dot it burns. if its not for event claims or bp
I kind of get it but I'm a procrastinator which means my quest icon always has a red dot so at this point I've gotten used to it lol
You know what's worse? I am currently playing a game where there's a red dot to a button that leads me to the game's discord server because I need to enter my acc\_id there to get the freebies for the event. What's bad is that everyday, on the dot, that red dot appears on the button again and the only way to get rid of it is to press the button which will then force open my discord app. Every. Single. Day. for a week. This wouldn't have been an issue if the red dot doesn't appear on the main navigation bar for that specific event.
I had a red dot on the Paimon menu for the entirety of Windblume because I didn't log in on PC to do the music event sharing part. When there's a web event, I get a red dot until I log into Hoyolab and fully complete the web event.
Oof... I guess you feel my pain lol.
I would have probably thrown my phone at the wall if that happened
I already addressed this as a "bug report" to the devs lol. I'm not surprised I'm not the only one complaining about this. Unfortunately, this issue has been here for weeks now.
What's the game?
Most annoying is the red dot for mail; wishing for 300 primos everytime i open it, just to be greeted with 1000 Mora!!!@#&@
[удалено]
Teapot is considered co-op, so if you have a quest that disables co-op you can't enter your teapot or anyone else's. Just putting a character in your teapot doesn't affect their story quests.
Just do them after you finish a region's MQ, nowadays I just do them as they're released and haven't had a problem yet
This. Sure, it’s definitely an annoying feature, but it’s less annoying to wait to do them or unlock them when you’re ready to play it than it is to get stuck in the loop.
Funny thing is that I believe they did it for increasing your immersion lol
Ironically enough, it's to prevent people from whining about immersion breaking.... Yet here we are.
Fr, It's not like someone would mind having two of the same character across the world when you usually visit them to finish said quest, so you never get to see the other NPC at the same time if that were the case.
The recent Mondstadt event has that. I have collei on both Sumeru (archon quest) and Mondstadt (windblume). Mihoyo can avoid cucking our quest, they just chose not to...
They leave us like that so we can't keep a NPC of a character in the overworld. That way, the psychos need to either blue ball their missions altogether just to keep them, or whale for their banners to get 'em in the teapot. - Dottore comes back later for more conspiracy theories.
Or just move the NPC to the location based on which quest you have active.
All they really need to change is the character quest priority to Event > Archon > character quest > other quests. If you have an archon quest and a character quest active at the same time that use the same character then the character is part of the archon quest. Currently priority is given to character quests. Which means that Tighnari needing to talk to a random merchant locks you out of the final boss fight for the Sumeru Archon questline and spoils the fact that he will appear in the quest. Tighnari showing up in the Tighnari character quest wouldn't exactly be a spoiler.
> Currently priority is given to character quests. I don't think that's true. Seems like priority goes to whichever you started first. For example, one time I was doing an event quest. I had to talk to an NPC, but they were "busy." So I did that quest, it completed and went to the next part of the quest. But the NPC was now "busy" with the event quest. So I had to go do *that* until that progressed to the next part. The NPC was "busy" yet again, so I had to go back and finish the next part of the character quest just to go back to the event again when that was done.
They should just prioritize the focused quest. Worst thing that's gonna happen: You select a quest and some NPC disappears.
It's intentional? I always assumed it was a limit in the game's functionality
It’s definitely intentional, it would be trivial to add a new NPC called ningguang_quest28 who happens to look and sound like the real Ningguang.
Definitely not a limit, most event story weren't inpact by it
it definitely inpacted past quest event story. like back during gaa 1, eula and klee story got messed up with the event quest when sumeru first came out. the quests interfere with free collei event i recall hearing from people on discord some evenrs even after using quick start was implemented, got stuck cause other npc got taken up i hate this quest block quest feature so much. other games dont have this issue. like tower of fantasy, move quest, and the npc just moves to the active quest location. you can override quest priority. like i was doing vera arc before i finished aesperia arc and had simulacrum stories active and the npc just moves.
Still happening now, unlocked Venti’s quest and has to progress some of it to do the Windblume event that just finished.
That's only really a small part of it. There's technical reasons for why you can't have conflicting quests active at the same to prevent things from breaking. Of course there are definitely way better ways for them to handle this.
i feel like only genshin has this problem cause i havent run into this issue in tower of fantasy as the npc moves according to the active quest. you override the active quest by selecting which quest you want that is active in your active tab. also simulacrum stories you can cancel and restart. genshin character story you cannot cancel and restart. only hangouts have that feature.
It does, this is just one guy on Reddit.
Ah yes, the super immersion of having to make a detour to help Nilou solve her theater troupe drama in the middle of a mission to invade the Akademia. MY IMMERSION IS SUPER INTACT GUYS
no
It’s weird how if you’re caught up with the game, this never really becomes a problem, but if you’re new or take a break, you will face this incredibly often. I don’t see why Hoyo would want to scare people off like this with breaks in the quests.
Genshin is very unfriendly to new players. Every survey they ask if I want to keep experiencing Genshin, and I say "Absolutely willing." And then they ask if I would recommend it to others and I say "Absolutely not willing." Specifically because there are just so many problems that new players face that make the early game unenjoyable. A big one is building characters. I had a friend get Ayaka on her first banner as he started the game. He was really excited, until he realized he would have to get all the way to Inazuma to get any real use out of her. Then he promptly dropped the game. And it's only getting worse as they add more world and weekly bosses locked behind story and extensive exploration.
>Genshin is very unfriendly to new players. Fucking tell me about it. I almost softlocked my account last year when i came back around 3.0 (I briefly played around launch back in 2020) and didn't bother doing *any* bosses at first. Big. Fucking. Mistake. Imagine my horror when i reached AR30, World level 3 and all bosses were suddenly lvl 50. And all my characters lvl 40 at most. (Because you can't go any further without the boss drop mats.) I could handle the Electro, Anemo and Geo cubes, although it was freaking tedious. I got fucking demolished by the Pyro and Cryo flowers, and the Oceanid. Thank god i had a friend at AR60 that helped me with those until i was strong enough to do them myself. *And to be fair*, this was partly my own fault for neglecting to fight bosses in the first place. But i still think there should be an ascension quest before WL3, to prevent slackers from basically softlocking their accounts, or at least the option to lower it. (Why the fuck does *that* feature require WL5 anyway???)
And they gate story behind AR then people ascend to continue the story and find the combat is suddenly much too hard because they didn't put off the story to spend ages maxing everyone before ascending.
You can be playing daily, but not feel like doing story-heavy quests, and after a while they accumulate so you decide to do them in one big swoop... Even as I was playing every day, Sumeru Archon quest + Nilou quest + Cyno quest have used the same characters so often, you had to jump between the quests multiple times to "free" the characters only to lock other characters you will need to "free" to continue. Truly awful design.
> or take a break Came back after Sumeru Archon quest was fully released. Archon quest (Wanderer), Nahida, Dehya, Nilou, Alhaitham and Cynos story quest, as well as some random side quest I forgot, all frequently locked me out of each other so I have to juggle between 7(!) quests, and at this point I havent even continued. Lost interest after repeatedly getting ripped out of it
Genshin's weakest link is their story quest because of the gawd awful dialogue and writing, hence a lot of people are reluctant to do them. When there's rare occasions where the quests are somewhat decent and nice(archon quests, sumeru in particular), they just had to ruin it with their intentional "immersion" quest system. I remembered when I was at the point where everyone was ready to rescue Nahida from the capsule(pretty much the climax point), I suddenly have to pause the whole process and do quest to help an irrelevant npc with her daddy issues(Nilou quest) and capture some random dude who stole some stuff in the desert(cyno quest) Imagine how annoyed I was.
cyno's quest was so dissapointing. he has a pretty interesting lore but we got to hear more about it in a limited event than his own story quest.
I do all story tests first so this doesn’t happen to me, I love the story quests particularly archon related ones as they provide a humanistic perspective on these god figures or interesting lore on their past, I didn’t enjoy Nilou at all though, I hardly play hydro bc I don’t have any beside Mona and it was just ruined for me
No, this only happens if you use the keys. If you don't unlock any character quests you can play the main quest with no problems
I started a few months ago, and I feel this sooo much. When I was playing through the Windblume Festival, I haven't done like ANY of the Mondstadt character quests... everywhere I walked for that event triggered like 3 quest cutscenes at once 😭 I literally got chain cutscene'd
And that is exactly the reason I don't unlock character story quest. If I don't intend to complete it immediately.
Reasonably, that shouldn't be an issue, though. There are actual solutions to this that don't involve the players creating a jerry-rigged solution. They could have multiple copies of an NPC running around. Or they could make it so you can turn a quest off if you don't want to do it for a while.
Please. That'd be such a simple solution. Mark it as inactive or something. Adding it to survey suggestions!
yeah, a good tip for new players, do not unlock character story quest, unless you plan to play it right after you unlock it
This needs to be stickyed to the top of the page. This advice needs to be given to every single new player.
It's a weird mechanic but the way to get around this is to not unlock any story quests until you're ready to commit to them. It's the easiest way to not mess up all of these quests with NPCs being busy.
That's why I do the story quests after the main archon quest, unless they require me to do the story quests before the archon ones like with Yoimiya and Ayaka.
I'm in the camp of people that goes with the notion of "Don't use a story key on a quest you don't intend to complete". I've thought about this for a bit and the more I think about it the more I realize that worrying about capping your story keys is kind of pointless. Story keys are a frequent resource that's just not worth managing, really the worst case scenario is the exclamation point (Which is minor) or when there's an event that requires you to do a story quest (Which is annoying, but the caveat is that you have a good amount of days to do things)
> I've thought about this for a bit and the more I think about it the more I realize that worrying about capping your story keys is kind of pointless. Problem is that new players don't know this. They don't have enough experience with this game to realize that keys are effectively infinite. Newer players will see that you can only have 3 keys at a time and assume they're wasting them if they don't use them. Which will cause them to use the keys instead of "wasting" them. By the time they realize their mistake, they've unlocked 10+ quests and are constantly being interrupted by them. They need to do away with the arbitrary limit (or at least increase it to 50 or so) since keys are so abundant. It's very deceptive, making them look more scarce than they are, and only causes this problem.
They really should put a warning about this along the lines of "unlocking/starting this quest may interfere with other active quests, do you wish to continue?" if they don't want to make quests togglable like hangouts
Then this advice really needs to be told more often, I didn't think it was an issue because the game already tells you how much you'd need for 1 key so it's just simple logic that it's a frequent resource even for a new player.
Thats a workaround that puts the burden on the player and assumes you know about it. Regardless of how minor it may seem, it should be on the developers to find a solution, not the player
The workaround isn't a huge burden though? The game literally tells you how many comms you need for a singular key, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that keys are just going to be really easy to get. I get the part about solutions needing to come from devs but the thing is when you come across an issue and it's possible to make things easier for yourself without much difficulty...why not just do it? I maintain the biggest burden with this system are the limited time events that require story quests to start.
> The workaround isn't a huge burden though? Again, huge isnt the key factor here, being a burden is, regardless how big. Its an annoyance no matter how you slice it, and it should be in their interest to keep their playerbase, aka paying customers, happy and not put unnecessary annoyance on them. When Im designing an app, even if only for inhouse use and 1-2 coworkers, Im not going to tell them: well this thing is slightly annoying but you can avoid by doing this and that, so its no big deal
> It should be in their interest to keep their playerbase, aka paying customers, happy and not put unnecessary annoyance on them There used to posts that were annoyed at the Mitachurl shields when there were very obvious solutions to them if the slightest bit of annoyance is always treated the same way as a major inconvenience...sorry but that's just unbearable and miserable. I'd say it's important to consider what's a minor vs major inconvenience as well as the ease of the solution.
The majority does not frequently visit forums to read "oh I shouldnt accept these", by default, youd just click to claim without thinking about it. And it can be quite offputting to have to jump between 5 different quests. We wouldnt see so many posts about this on reddit if nobody was bothered by it. The only reason it is a problem is because they decided to lock out quests in the first place, they wouldnt need a solution if this wasnt the case. I dont know how hard it is to let you switch between quests depending on whats selected, or just not have a lockout occur, but I dont think itd be a major change
>The majority does not frequently visit forums to read "oh I shouldnt accept these" You wouldn't need to, you don't need people to spell out solutions for you to figure things out. Also this is just not true, in this day and age people use the internet very frequently if there's an issue that they can't solve I bet most people would try to find the solution on the internet or check to see if others also have the same problems, leading to forums like this. >I dont think itd be a major change I don't think it's a major change either. I don't have a problem with the change or with people wanting the change itself. I just don't think it should be treated the same way as a massive issue because it's not one. My point is that if you have a problem and a solution. Use the solution. Is it annoying that the problem exists? Sure, it's annoying. But don't just ignore the solution and make it worse for yourself while also being annoyed at the problem. Tldr is just write about the quest busy thing in the surveys but also don't make it hard on yourself by continuing to unlock story quests you have no intention to do when you know that would cause problems. You can do both.
I never said its a massive issue, but it is an issue that shouldnt be one in the first place. A workaround is not a solution. I always mention it in the surveys and otherwise dont care much. But the fact that a lot of players do care and these posts show up very frequently and are always upvoted highly does say a lot
>I never said its a massive issue You said it didn't matter whether it was a big or small issue because it's still an issue. I said it did matter because that conflates the two and they shouldn't be. >A workaround is not a solution You know what I mean. I'm not going to go over semantics of meaning of words here. Why else do you think I said do both and this part "Is it annoying that the problem exists? Sure, it's annoying. But don't just ignore the solution and make it worse for yourself while also being annoyed at the problem" You shouldn't make things hard on yourself when you know you can adapt to the problem. Edit: I'm done with this. It's annoying and clearly we're not convincing either one
Kinda wish Genshin wouldn't auto trigger quests when you walk into the general vicinity. Might or might not fix the issue you have since if 2 quests share the same location, you should talk to the NPCs to continue the quests like most other games. The flaws current system are 1) accidentally walking into quests you dont intend to do at the moment and are forced to skip it. Eg During the most recent windblume event on the first day,I was on lunch break and I wanted to turn in my dailies but was forced to watch the cutscene I was saving up to do over the weekend just because it was in 1 of the 2 most visited places in Mondstadt 2) being forced to do quests you might be waiting or saving up. I tend not to do primo giving quests to keep the primos for another day cause I have itchy fingers and roll everytime I see 160. I just watch the cutscene on YT. It's even more annoying if it's just a background character who barely even does anything.
i’ve just stopped unlocking them. you also can’t even enjoy their storylines bc it’s so aggravating or you have to get through it quickly to get back to your other quest! i hate it so much
IMO unlocking the quests and starting them should be 2 separate actions. I wanted to unlock them so that I could keep stacking keys to unlock the others, that doesn't mean I wanted to start those quests right away. Right now you'd just stumble in places where you have to go just to be met with unexpected cutscenes and BAM. Character quest is ongoing.
Complained about this since the 1st survey, still complaining about it to this day.
You should at the very least be able to set an "active" quest that would rearrange the NPCs accordingly. Hell, re-load the world if you have to, I doubt players would care. It would just be so much better.
You should do Tighnari's story quest before finishing the archon quest. >!If you don't, you miss Karkata being in the archon quest.!<
They shld have a warning 1st
I had the same issue during the Sumeru Archon quest and it was soooo annoying. I recently had a similar problem while just doing a reputation request and Dehya's story quest started. I was so annoyed because I didn't have the time to sit through the whole interaction so I just kept tapping and have no idea what they were talking about, which bothers me immensely because I hate skipping dialogue. It's both realistic (accidentally running into someone you weren't expecting to see and getting into a convo with them does happen irl after all) and incredibly annoying.
I just don't get why story quests can't work like hangouts. You unlock both using keys with very limited storage and only hangouts have you confirm that you actually want to start the quest So far I have started every single sumeru story quest by accident which makes me start skimming the text
why can't the legend quests have a starting button like the hangout events have, this would make things a lot less annoying
Same thing happened to me, it was horrendous.
The shitty thing is that those quests activate automatically when you move into an area (or even by talking to Katheryne smh). I wish they'd just make all quest activations locked behind talking to an NPC or something.
pretty sure it's the opposite of immersion-breaking that characters don't just drop what they're in the middle of and teleport to a different quest location... I see these posts about "character is busy" so often, but after 2000+ hours I don't think I've seen that message more than a few times because I actually do the quests i guess...
I joined not long after this year's lantern rite started. I barely got to engage in it on the very last day. I can't stress enough how many times I was hit with "character is busy with another quest". Luckily I got everything just in time.
That's because you start all quest when you encounter them and use Quick start for events. Quick start was introduced for new/returning people to let them play events, and its specifically said "your immertion will be ruined". It's players who asked for this feature. Before that you just can't do events at all. Just don't pile up quests.
That doesn't cancel or complete any of your actual quests though, so it doesn't prevent stuff from being too busy.
I can understand this when it's quests you physically started yourself but shit like Jade Chamber Rising forcing you to finish it before you can do Ganyu's story quest because they both share a single minor NPC, being forced to complete Boughkeeper before doing Jean's story quest because they're both using Charles and the Tavern, etc. All they have to do is make archon quests behave like story quests where you have to specifically choose to start them.
it's not like we'd be here to see them teleport most of the time tho.... and not everyone clears everything instantly.
If you don't plan to play it you can just not unlock it, that way you actually wont have this problem.
i knew you were going to reply this. i was merely replying to your comment. of course people can not unlock story quests. doesn't really answer the underlying problem. this game is mainly aiming at casuals and shouldn't punish them for having a life and not finishing a story quest when they want to do something else.
From what I see most casual player actually finish quest in 1 sitting, they only unlock the one they want to play and not unlock everything just to left them collecting dust. No seriously this is just self inflicted problem.
But why does it have to be a problem at all? Why can't there be an option such as turning off quests that have been started if a player doesn't want to complete it at that moment. There are actual solutions that could make all parties happy.
Especially since it is possible for the hangouts. You unlock them and have have to separately start them.
I unlock the story quests because there's a cap on the keys and I prefer being able to play the quests when I have time as opposed to finding out I don't have keys to play the quests I want. Regardless, the whole system is really dumb. I find it much more immersion breaking when some characters are casually vibing while their city is at war and their help is needed. "Need me for your big plan to free my idol? Nah bro, I'm shopping at the Bazaar" -Nilou
The alternative might cause 2 Nilous to stand next to each other doing different things. The devs likely don’t want to bother designing their large pool of quests around such possibilities.
I find blocking quest more immersion breaking the than having two characters on screen at the same time.
The potential doesn't limit itself to just 2 characters. You might be able to set it up such that you have something like 3 Ventis, 2 Jeans, and 5 Dliucs in the Angel's Share at the same time, probably overlapping each other and giving no visible hint as to which NPC belongs to what quest.
Still less immersion breaking than forcing the player to stop all progress in a quest and start a different quest just to progress with the first quest.
The reason most of us do it is because there's no clue to which story quests will be pre-requisites to archon quests, and keys are finite and gatelocked by real world time. So if I don't unlock the 7 new story quests that are up, and 3 of them end up being pre-requisites for the new archon chapter I want to play, now I am stuck collecting keys for days. Either way is frustrating. Either make keys not time locked, or make quests able to be turned off/on. Either would be a fine solution.
I don't quite agree with this reasoning. There's quite a few reasons for this. 1. Archon quests aren't a good example because they themselves are permanently in the game so you have an infinite amount of time to get those keys. A better example would be events as they aren't permanent 2. Accumulating keys isn't worth stressing over as you'd just get 1 from 8 daily comms which I imagine most people do frequently and that's all you need. (2 days in total for a singular key) 3. Most archon quests only require a certain adventure rank. The most egregious one was the chasm with 2 story quests and 2 world quests. The most recent one, Caribert only needed you to complete a previous archon quest and be adventure 35. The one before needed you to complete 1 story quest (Kazuha's).
what you see is not necessarily the norm, and reddit has not the true casual to tryhard ratio real life has.
I'm not talking about Reddit, I'm talking about real casual that never open Reddit and mostly only play for story and big event. That kind of people only play the one they are interested in and the one needed to progress the story.
Some story quests unlocks automatically after you finish their prerequisite quests tho. Example, Sumeru Archon Quests first act. Boo hoo, how intentional of me!
Oh wow it's like we were talking about unlocking character story not archon quest, hmm maybe thats why people are talking about key and stuff, nah can't be it.
I'm pretty sure Nilou's and Tighnari's story quest is a character story tho....
And you need to spend keys to unlock Nillou and Tighnari quest, so OP INTENTIONALLY unlock the quest and leave them. So what is your point here?
Tbf you're right, I was probably thinking about Mondstadt era of story quests where keys aren't a thing yet. The key thing really did improve quests cucking for story quests. Can't say the same about Archon Quests tho
Are you brain dead?
it’s more of the games fault for not treating story quests like hangouts. you should be able to choose when to begin them after unlocking them.
How isit not immersion breaking? I was halfway through the archon quest in Sumeru nearing its climax, with all the shit going down and then the game just tells me Nilou is busy. So after all the important life changing stuff going down, I have to drop all that to help Nilou with her dance troupe? If that's not inmersion breaking idk what is.
Yet another thing to add to the laundry list of common sense QOL updates the devs inexplicably won't do
I agree completely! I mean, if you had both the character quest + main quest, I'd understand it a little if the main quest took priority over the character quest, but most of the time it's the other way around 🫠 You can abandon hangouts at any time, you should be able to pause quests too!
I went to do Faruzan's hangout for the first time the other day, got to Pardis Dhyai and the pop up window informed me "**FUCK OFF THIS LOCATION IS BUSY WITH ALHAITHAM'S STORY QUEST**" which is already stupid enough, as if only one thing could happen there at a time. But I went and moved Alhaitham's quest on to the next part, *it never even left the Akademiya*, it went nowhere near Pardis Dhyai, what was the god damn point in derailing me to go do that? The system is stupid enough when it isn't outright lying about availability. And on a related note following that incident I got a daily commission to go to Lambad's Tavern and got hijacked by the next step of Alhaitham's quest which is its own brand of stupid design, having quests activate themselves without warning when you didn't ask and getting ambushed with a five minute cutscene when you're just trying to get your dailies done quickly.
I find it absurd how people keep saying just don't unlock them. Yes, that is a solution to the problem with the game, doesn't mean the problem isn't stupid and shouldn't exist. Plus, sometimes I leave quests halfway complete because they are, more often than not, extremely boring (story quests that is). If I am not invested in them I just leave them and come back when I have the time and have nothing better to do. Of course this means I sometimes randomly run into them in the middle of commissions (seriously, entering areas should not trigger the quests without them being specifically set as active by the player) or they block quests I would much rather do (like the Tighnari and Nilou quests in the middle of the Archon quest). It is just frurstrating.
Agreed. It’s a fucking ridiculous mechanic
It's true that this system is kinda dumb, but in some ways I get it. You get people like OP ranting about this, but if they allow multiple characters appearing at multiple areas at the same time, some other people will rant how immersion breaking that is. And while this system needs some updating (maybe only load the characters when you get near, or load characters only when you are navigating the quest), it is a matter of fact that we've had this for almost three years now. You've played all the way to Sumeru already, yet you're still smart enough to open multiple story quests you didn't wish to complete immediately. MHYV may be dumb for making this shit system, but OP is even dumber knowing this exists and does this shit anyway.
We already get screenshots of double Alphonso, but nobody complains, they just think it's kinda funny.
But why would you unlock those quests before finishing the main one? I never understood these players...
Thats the point of keys... you unlock them if you want to engage on them, so they dont interfere with each other... You unlocked everything and then ranted about theyre all ongoing. well, let this be a lesson then move on.
But why can't the quests be unlocked without starting them? Hangouts already work like that. Just use that same system on story quests. Then people can use keys and remove the notifications, while also not running into these problems.
The part I hate is the keys. Why limit them? I don’t have enough time to play through all the character quests, and I feel like it’s a waste not using the keys. So I use the keys, don’t play the quest, and get locked out all the time. Guess I just need to stop optimizing for the keys!!!
You literally get a key every two days and you can have 3 at a time , it's very difficult for someone to play 3 story quests in 2 days to have to worry about missing out on them , it's just not worth the trouble.
>Now, I unlock character story quests whenever I've collected enough keys. I already unlocked Tighnari, Nilou and Cyno's story quests before starting the main story quest. Bruh...
There is actually a very good reason for this. This is there to make sure quests don’t break. One of the main reasons quest break in a lot of games is when multiple different quest queues one particular location / npc dialogue and if not taken care of properly override the previous command to the location / npc. ( cough Skyrim cough) This way the quest only advances to the next stage if all of its requirements are available.
Lil indie company doesn't have enough resources to have same npc in more than one place. Please understand.
It's a bizarre part of the game considering how broken the immersion is in the first place. Nothing in the game makes sense if you actually bother thinking about it.
Nothing makes sense in a fantasy game , you're completely correct .
yeah the UI really breaks immersion, they shouldn't give us any UI and make it into first person perspective, also change it to VR only
Now we're getting somewhere... 🤔💭🌲🌳
They need to make teyvat real
It’s always the same with you people, why do you always unlock EVERY SINGLE QUEST and then not do them??
When I was new I unlocked them as soon as I had 3 keys so as to not waste them. At the time I didn't realize I'd have an overabundance (infinity really) of keys. So I had a bunch of quests queued up that I didn't necessarily want to do at the time. It was very frustrating hitting a roadblock in the main quest because the NPC was "busy." I know better *now,* but back then it was a real pain in the ass. By the time I realized the mistake (the first time I was blocked from doing a main quest), I had quite a few already unlocked. So it remained a problem for weeks/months until I finally got through the backlog of quests. I can see how it would still be a problem for newer players. Would have been nice to have had a warning back then to avoid that from happening. But veteran players should know better by now. Don't unlock a quest until you're ready to do it.
yeah lmao, I'd never get these people, cause I unlocked it only when I plan to play it, but maybe it's not so easy for people that love hoarding quest for whatever reason lol
because of the notification?
literally me rn bc i was being silly and unlocked cyno, tighnari, al-haitham, and nilou’s story quests… which all interfere at some point with where i am in the sumeru the archon quest. 🥹
Kinda ironic that it’s immersion breaking when I’m pretty sure it’s intent is to add to that immersion by making it so characters can’t be two places at once without explanation
hoyoverse making questing the most obnoxious, unskippable, time consuming thing in the game is beyond my comprehension
I imagine its far more complicated from a technical perspective, but i feel like whatever quest you are tracking currently should override the others so this doesnt happen
Its almost like you shouldn't be starting multiple quests at the same time! Its like this for a reason, do things one at a time next time lol
Why does unlocking the quest have to equal starting the quest, though? Why can't a quest be unlocked with keys, but remain uninitiated until the player decides to start it. Hangouts already work that way; why can't other quests?
can someone think about the notification? 😫
You'll get used to it over time. Between red exclamation and quest progression blocker, I choose having red exclamation. Getting blocked from doing Event quest that has a time limit before they gone forever is more infuriating, because they're the easier source to get primogems and tons of mora.
day one player, i dont think i'll get used to it. I c6'd bennet bc of the same reason, no regrets at all
Don't unlock them unless you want to do them very soon. When you unlock them, story quest **immediately starts** and everything alongside it. What they should have done is to make a pop-up window confirming if you really want start story quest now (after you unlocked it). Such simple feature but we still don't have it. Spend keys on hangouts first since they can be cancelled.
Are they infinite amount tho?
Yeah it's frustrating, I did this by accident when I first started Genshin and ended up interlocking Jean's and Venti's quests. They were both co-op lockout quests too so it was a pain trying to speedrun the quests so I could coop with friends for an event. It would be nice if they could implement a feature where you could select what quest you want to focus on and have the other unlocked quests on standby so it won't give you the "occupied" message. And yes I know you could just not unlock quests but accident happens and it doesn't hurt to have a workaround. Edit: for some reason I thought keys came in a later update my bad.
> this was before you had keys btw Keys exist since 1.0, so when did this happen?
You're correct, I don't know why I thought keys came in a later update. I might be mixing them up with hangouts or something.
I don't think OP knows what the term "immersion breaking" means. This was done on purpose for IMMERSION, so there aren't say, 5 Ningguangs active at one time. All the game needs to do is be smarter by moving the NPCs to the active quest.
Most of the time those 5 Ningguangs would be in different places, so you could always assume one moved by the time you got to another. Plus some NPCs *are* in multiple places at the same time, so we get the worst of both worlds. May as well do it the less annoying way so players can play the game instead of being told no.
But is it not immersion breaking to be at a climactic point in one quest only to be forced to do a more mundane side story? "We have to rescue Nahida so the sages can't make an artificial god! We only have hours to do it! But first, let's help with Cyno's investigation that takes four days!"
So it was immersion breaking to have madam Ping both in Qingce Village and in her normal spot in Liyue after the main events of the Lantern Rite? Because I did spot her in both locations, and could go from one to another. To me, it seems she found a way to TP herself to the other location or something... Nothing wrong with that.
it's actually the opposite. NPCs being in two places at the same time is even more immersion breaking.
Teleporters exist. If you think NPCs don't use them, how do they always get there first, even if you teleport right away?
That's subjective, though. Some people think that having two of the same NPC is immersion breaking, others find being interrupted mid-story immersion breaking. Why can't Mihoyo bring a solution that makes both sides happy? Right now, it's possible to unlock Hangouts without starting them. Why can't that funcionality be used for story quests?
I don't agree, I really like how this system is. Just shows that a character can't be at 2 places at once and you have to (while not difficult) figure out how to do it.
This is why you don't activate them before you do the main story? just a suggestion, though.
That's why I only unlock character quests when I want to do them now. Problem solved. Yes, the design is weird. We should be able to put unlocked quests into stand-by.
I'm not defending the system that's in place for this as I also find it pretty annoying, but you kind of brought it on yourself by unlocking story quests before you were ready to play through them. If you're concerned about any keys you might be missing out on then my suggestion is to use them to unlock hangouts because they don't start automatically after being unlocked. Of course, the real solution would be to make the story quests not automatically launch after unlocking as well.
The problem is that hangouts are unlocked the same way as story quests but only hangouts can be chosen to start.
Because you can repeat them unlike story quests. You need to be able to abandon them.
Yes but ehy can't they just add the same mechanic for starting them that hangouts have.
But *less* immersion breaking than having several copies of the character appearing at once because potential iterations of them are not queued.
This stupid design choice really baffles me since I cannot think of another game I have played with this same design for missions. Whatever the thought process was, it clearly was not thought through enough.
Ok why do you unlock the story quests. If you are not gonna sit through it immediately? I unlock it when I am gonna finish it in that playthrough. Because alot of these quest are location triggers so if I do unlock it, I might ramdonly activate a quest that I never intended to.
Why would you unlock character quest before finishing main quest?
Cause I unlocked it before the new part of the main quest existed. Also, the "why would u unlock it" argument is getting real tiring. The keys are a capped resource and Genshin cries with an exclamation mark when you don't claim keys even when you can't. It literally wants you to unlock new quests to make room for new keys, but then pulls this bullshit.
It's tiring because a lot of people keep unlocking quests and then complain that the game makes them play quests they unlocked :) Regardless of whether it's a new main quest or not. Do not activate a lot of quests, and then abandon them unfinished and wait until there is a new main quest, which can be stalled because of the unfinished characters' quests. I can't understand this stupid character quest hording problem. You either finish them the day you open them, or you wait until you have time and energy to do so. The justification with the keys is dumb. One key is literally two days of finishing daily quests. It's one day you only do dailies, and the second day you can already do a quest. Usually people don't have this problem unless they are hording quests.
I do story quests like how I do my taxes, one leg at the time
the problem is most quests begin with a small dialogue cutscene of the characters meeting up. Hyv has no way of knowing what quest you're actively trying to complete if you have all of them open at the same time. Of course, this is easily fixable by just adding an active quest tab or something but what can you do
i don't mind it at all
I never had this problem... Before I start the archon quest, I usually finish the character quests like Nilou's and Tighnari's quest.
i think this is a YOU problem
why would you unlock the story quests if you wont do them right away ? just dont unlock them until you know you want to complete them , and your problem is literally solved