One to Fifty, One Zone - Long OP

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Originally Posted by kurokawa

Question for you.

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Sorry for the late response. :) I'm honestly not sure, and it's because I feel we're being given a bit of contradicting information. On one hand, they're talking about adding hubs for remote areas and I worry that they feel it's a permanent solution to deal with the bloated, 1-50 zones.

On the other hand, the Japanese were told that they're going to spend a long time on the design, and then came ominous news of storms over Gridania. But could it mean wider corridors for the Shroud?

Hopefully this thread can lure in some attention so we can all get some clarification as to what's really going on, in simple terms. :)

To fresh scenery for a fresh start!

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Originally Posted by kurokawa

Just had a humble ish thought before I trott off to bed.

The area designers, if they read this thread, will be mortified and truly gutted that their work has undergone such fierce (but hopefully largely constructive) feedback from the community. Sorry fellas!

I just wanted to say to Bayonne if you read this sir, can you please pass on my (our?) thanks to the devs for the designs they've made so far. We moan alot in the community and i'd hate for them to go home feeling crap after reading our feedback. Yes the areas need work, mistakes may have been made with the limitations and guidelines the devs worked to, but the areas have so much potential right now. They're massive canavases to work on!

I hope this thread can be read in the right way, and that com reps, devs and even yoshi see it and know that we love the game and want to make it better. That's why we grumble and joke, argue and laugh.

We care loads and just want freedom to explore a truly diverse world.

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I dont think the new devs should feel bad, they are just trying to pick up after the mess. To the people who did design the zones (specifically the people who made the layout and told people to do it) they should, tbh, be embarrassed they couldnt even come to the levels of their 8 year old game. Someone at some point must have been mostly done with it and went "this seems kind of oversized and repetitive". I cant image they were proud of their work. The only semi excuse they could use at this point was that they were forced to do it because of time restraints....other then that, you clearly need to change jobs, because designing zones and layout CLEARLY is not what your good at.

Its harsh to say, but when someone does something that is not very good, especially on something with such high stakes attached to it (particularly the FF name and anticipation) and your charging people money for it, you need to step up or get out.

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Originally Posted by Aistaraina

While I realize this thread is about creating a more distinct, natural world that is fun to explore, the music should not be forgotten. Music is used to set the mood of the environment, or the battle, and plays an intricate part in making the player believe.

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I couldn't agree more. Being a musician IRL, I am one of those people who will continue to play with game music on long after everyone else has turned it off. The music is a large part of the experience for me, one that always evokes memories.

When I made the transition from FFXI to other MMOs, the music was one of the biggest things I missed. I remember nights rep grinding in WoW listening to my FFXI OST. Ironic.

Final Fantasy games have always paid great attention to detail with the music. Rich, varied, and epic music tracks for each zone. Battle music. Victory fanfares. Crafting music. Market wards muzak (LOL).

That's another thing that's definitely dragging us down while adventuring in Eorzea. With unique subzones, there should be unique music. We shouldn't have to queue up the techno just to keep us motivated.

There is a trend most, if not all, square soft & final fantasy games have had.

Please bare with me on this and forgive my grammar.

Super Mario RPG: after yet another battle against Bowser, we traveled through mushroom land
fighting bosses, earning that glorious hammer, learning new skills, making it to Mushroom kingdom, meeting mallow and making trips, to coming back to Mushroom kingdom to retake it back from that bouncy sword guy with the cool red hat.

FF7: we emerged at an enigmatic train station, fighting
it's enemies, blowing up what was a mako reactor, meeting and fighting alongside Tifa, Barret, and Aerith making our journeys to the Shinra building to riding a motorcycle, escaping towards the outer city walls of Midgard. Only to be in awe of the world map.

Xenogears: being completely ignorant of our protagonist,
we spoke to townsfolk, fought through the mountains to Citan's house to returning for an engaging
story, to joining with the girl in black forest whose help we needed to head towards the outskirts of another unknown city.

FFXI: we began our quests in our starting city, traveling outside to beat our enemies and realizing that in order to progress more we had to party and assist each other through zones to reaching cities and for accomplishing our mission ranks and or quests in order to earn more rewards and experience our beloved game. Impossible to solo.

Can you see this trend?

As we progress through said games, we've made companions because we couldn't do it by ourselves. While joining together we experienced a plethora of beautiful and diverse environments, making psychological progressions (As Sorel has stated), overtaking troubles and hardships to achieve our desires. Creating bonds "forged through hardships" (as someone paradisaical said in another thread) giving us character growth, new friendships, and a feeling of great achievement.

This game and it's maps hinder this feeling. Huge maps with no progressive areas to overcome (1-50 in 1 zone!), easy to get to point a to b, leves that require no companionship's and no real challenges, behests which do ask of parties but are so boring and repetitive it feels like chores. Free giveaways (teleports), easy gil to be made and did I mention boring huge maps? There isn't a need to work together to reach a goal, and it doesn't feel like we are earning anything. I can't look back and say I accomplished that, doesn't feel like I did anything! Just like Siobu expressed. Yeah, it's supposed to also be a solo game but IMO, it's more a solo game than a party one.

To derail from these Final Fantasy'esque' tracks, voids the game of such rewarding feelings.
Thus, we simply aren't playing Final Fantasy anymore.

Heck, barely feels like a squaresoft game for that manner.

If square gets back on track using it's methods in previous games. I think this game will rebound enormously

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

I dont think the new devs should feel bad, they are just trying to pick up after the mess.

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Actually, the same devs who made the maps are probably still there. When Yoshi-P and his crew took over, it's not like the entire team was scrapped. Only the upper management for the game was changed out; everyone else stayed the same. :p

Good luck on dev comment tonight or in the morning! I expect a dev letter and video once I awaken :P Goodnightaru!!

I do think that one aspect crippling the sense of exploration of this gorgeous (although repetitive - kinda like Flintstones background loop repetitive at times) world is the very very readily available, instant teleportation system.
Convenience at the cost of stifled fun and adventure.

I was so adamant about this, I actually attempted setting up a "World Tour" of sorts on my server.
We'd do the unthinkable - walk, not warp - to different zones. Take screen shots and show everyone how gorgeous the world was, and that there WAS things to see. But, 90% of people who had been there for more than 2 months already had seen the entire world, and they'd just be wasting their time taking snaps of the same things, over and over, broken up by the small handful of landmarks they already knew of.

You can, if you so choose, get your LS together with a load of freshly rolled characters (aptly named fun things such as Youcanhas Warpz) and by anima load sharing, get each and every single zone picked up by this rank 1 character, then just alt it to be a public bus to and from hot zones such as BW and LL. And you'd quickly make more money than any other person legitimately grinding, with 1/4 the effort. And you're still an R1 CON in your Weathered gear. Something about that system stinks. And it ruins the vast world.

I say once we have this oft-rumored 'catastrophic coming of the 7th Umbral Age', Anima should regenerate slower than Charlie Sheen's contract with 2 1/2 Men.

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Originally Posted by Chrees

Actually, the same devs who made the maps are probably still there. When Yoshi-P and his crew took over, it's not like the entire team was scrapped. Only the upper management for the game was changed out; everyone else stayed the same. :p

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well those folk should be ashamed of the final project. if that was their end vision for a zone, then id like to see them start all over....its a joke tbh, singular people with little to no time have come up with loads better maps. I think as the director over all things Yoshi cant be blamed, he and the new people have to fix this trash heap.

again im not blaming every coder and developer on the team, they are mostly just doing what they are told, i mean the heads who decided this was their big vision and this is how it should end up.

Good stuff added on here tonight!

I feel like sharing my first time with FFXI, it was the first MMO i ever played. I didn't know what to do but i was overwhelmed with how big the world was! I started out as a Hume/Warrior fighting Tiny Mandragoras and Bumblebees straight out the gates of Windurst. I remember my first ass whooping from a Yagudo and meeting the best friend i could have in a game. She really helped me to enjoy the game teaching me things i needed to know and helping me complete quests. I had got to lv10 exploring most of Sarutabaruta, the Horutoto Ruins and Giddeus, with an adventurers attitude. It took me almost a week to get here but it was an amazing start to the game for me. Soon later we decided to leave our beautiful home and adventure into the unknown, Tahrongi Canyon and then Buburimu Peninsula. We didn't know where we were going but it was exciting! We came across new enemies like the Bull Dhalmel and with no trouble we managed to make it to a small port town called Mhaura. After saying goodbye to my friend i got on the ferry and headed out to sea. I had such a blast on my first ferry ride, talking to other adventurers and watching people fish. What an amazing journey! After fifthteen minutes on the ferry I got off in Selbina. There i got my first party and experienced a different whole FFXI.

Each zone had uniqueness that motivated me to keep playing!

Thanks for sharing, Calevr! Exploring and earning new areas has always been my most memorable and satisfying experiences during my time in online games. Especially with friends. :)

Hopefully with all the upcoming news being translated, our thread will be acknowledged along the way.

Just putting it out there, but how long are people willing to wait and keep up with the game, if for some crazy reason they DO decide to fix the world? to what degree would you consider it "fixed"? What if they started charging before it happened? id like to see some peoples responses to these questions.

For me, im not waiting forever to be honest. Il give it at most another 6-8 months (unless i hear how something like a big world reboot is almost done) before i throw in the towel. For me, just adding in some camps and fixing some mob placement IS NOT enough, the world itself as it stands is such a big problem to me, i just dont even want to bother moving around because i know its 90% of the same copy/paste crap. If they start charging anytime soon, which i have a bad feeling it will be by the end of the summer, im going to likely bid this game adieu.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Just putting it out there, but how long are people willing to wait and keep up with the game, if for some crazy reason they DO decide to fix the world? to what degree would you consider it "fixed"? What if they started charging before it happened? id like to see some peoples responses to these questions.

For me, im not waiting forever to be honest. Il give it at most another 6-8 months (unless i hear how something like a big world reboot is almost done) before i throw in the towel. For me, just adding in some camps and fixing some mob placement IS NOT enough, the world itself as it stands is such a big problem to me, i just dont even want to bother moving around because i know its 90% of the same copy/paste crap. If they start charging anytime soon, which i have a bad feeling it will be by the end of the summer, im going to likely bid this game adieu.

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I'll wait (as in stop playing) 'til its fixed. Say it take two more years, I'll forget about FFXIV and pretend it never was released to begin with and come in in two years and see what happens. Of course it wont take this long if they wanna have a shot at salvaging this game so I'd say we're looking at, at most, end of fiscal year for them to get things straightened out; this makes it March 2012. Of course this may or may not include a map revamp considering most of the talk in this conversation is our imagination going wild and we hardly know what the devs have planned....funny considering these forums were supposed to bridge that gap, and yet we still wait for a reply.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Just putting it out there, but how long are people willing to wait and keep up with the game, if for some crazy reason they DO decide to fix the world? to what degree would you consider it "fixed"? What if they started charging before it happened? id like to see some peoples responses to these questions.

For me, im not waiting forever to be honest. Il give it at most another 6-8 months (unless i hear how something like a big world reboot is almost done) before i throw in the towel. For me, just adding in some camps and fixing some mob placement IS NOT enough, the world itself as it stands is such a big problem to me, i just dont even want to bother moving around because i know its 90% of the same copy/paste crap. If they start charging anytime soon, which i have a bad feeling it will be by the end of the summer, im going to likely bid this game adieu.

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I don't know if the world as it is now can be fixed. To really achieve this, to give a real sense of adventure and progression would take a level of effort and thoroughness that I have trouble imagining, much less seeing SE actually implement. Not only would you have to dice the world into smaller, more distinct zones with smaller level ranges, but you'd have to(well really should) establish lore to go with the zones/locations, quests should be associated with them, story missions should deal with them, music has to be assigned, etc. In my opinion it would take nothing less than a world reboot to even approach what FFXI had, or most other major MMOs to be honest.

Perhaps its apparent that I'm a bit of a lore fanatic, but it truly seems they have lost any sense of a coherent vision for the world from a story point of view with their seemingly haphazard attempts to fix and adjust. (looking at you Grand Companies <.< ) How can they really create a world with numerous distinct places and a clear progression of danger without a central story vision? >< When you walked into Xarcabard in FFXI as a lowbie, you knew you were in the ultimate dangerous place - the scenery, the music, the mobs - and it all existed within a specific vision created by the lore... it was the Shadow Lord's domain, the frozen north from whence the evil that sparked the Crystal War came. Naturally, this was the most dangerous place in the game, suitable for only the highest levels.(This all being pre-expansions of course)

Anyway, personal rant aside..

What I'd envision happening is that scenario of adding more camps and fixing mob placement, trying to define more of a sense of progression in the world as it is - because short of a straight up reboot, any halfway redesign would fail to really capture any sort of adventuring magic for people who have already trekked through the utterly bland, largely 3-zone world. The realistic dream imo(though maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised), would be for them to take this massive thread and player outcry to heart in implementing the rest of the world, to add new zones which are smaller, more distinct, and frankly more thought out in the future.

Until that time, whatever may come, I'm content to watch for battle changes, class/job changes, and other crucial updates to the actual gameplay mechanics - so that whatever new world we're confronted with, we're able to enjoy it more than the last.

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Originally Posted by Calevr

Good stuff added on here tonight!

I feel like sharing my first time with FFXI, it was the first MMO i ever played. I didn't know what to do but i was overwhelmed with how big the world was! I started out as a Hume/Warrior fighting Tiny Mandragoras and Bumblebees straight out the gates of Windurst. I remember my first ass whooping from a Yagudo and meeting the best friend i could have in a game. She really helped me to enjoy the game teaching me things i needed to know and helping me complete quests. I had got to lv10 exploring most of Sarutabaruta, the Horutoto Ruins and Giddeus, with an adventurers attitude. It took me almost a week to get here but it was an amazing start to the game for me. Soon later we decided to leave our beautiful home and adventure into the unknown, Tahrongi Canyon and then Buburimu Peninsula. We didn't know where we were going but it was exciting! We came across new enemies like the Bull Dhalmel and with no trouble we managed to make it to a small port town called Mhaura. After saying goodbye to my friend i got on the ferry and headed out to sea. I had such a blast on my first ferry ride, talking to other adventurers and watching people fish. What an amazing journey! After fifthteen minutes on the ferry I got off in Selbina. There i got my first party and experienced a different whole FFXI.

Each zone had uniqueness that motivated me to keep playing!

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That's what I'm talking about. Compared to that there is absolutely NO VARIETY WHATSOEVER in XIV.

I'd be completely fine if they scaled down all the areas by 80% is it meant that they'd re-design them to look interesting.

I don't need to see generic hill no3 15 times all over the place anyway.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...806-14-2011%29

Auto attack and new animations look SICK. /sadpanda for the delayed patch but all worth it if they get all the kinks out ahead of time!

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Originally Posted by Richard

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...806-14-2011%29

Auto attack and new animations look SICK. /sadpanda for the delayed patch but all worth it if they get all the kinks out ahead of time!

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Agreed! Chaos Thrust and Rage of Halone looked amazing! I'm stoked for this patch. :D

No mention of any major area design changes in the letter, however the letter was specifically about auto attack so....

He did say that 1.18 will be a heavyweight patch, so there's still hope one day.

Is it me or did anyone else notice the music change between fights in the video? Not sure if I've heard that track before. Area looks to be near Limsa but that isn't the local area music is it?

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Originally Posted by kurokawa

No mention of any major area design changes in the letter, however the letter was specifically about auto attack so....

He did say that 1.18 will be a heavyweight patch, so there's still hope one day.

Is it me or did anyone else notice the music change between fights in the video? Not sure if I've heard that track before. Area looks to be near Limsa but that isn't the local area music is it?

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I noticed that as well. I'm not sure where it's at in-game, if even at all, but it used to play on the official FFXIV site. In fact, I just checked, and it's still there. Track 3 if you change the music at the bottom right. Also, right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8doI-AOILxY

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Originally Posted by kurokawa

No mention of any major area design changes in the letter, however the letter was specifically about auto attack so....

He did say that 1.18 will be a heavyweight patch, so there's still hope one day.

Is it me or did anyone else notice the music change between fights in the video? Not sure if I've heard that track before. Area looks to be near Limsa but that isn't the local area music is it?

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I didn't notice the music, good catch. What I did notice was the reduced attack speed of the goblins though...during the GLA part which was roughly 30 seconds long, the goblin only attacked 3 times. I hope they didn't reduce the attack speed of mobs because that would make this game just that much easier. Maybe it was reduced for demonstration purposes /shrug

Now that the letter has arrived, let's hope our thread will get a little love. :)

Not much to add other than I completely agree this is a problem and makes the world very lackluster. It's not just even that we're in the same zone, we're fighting the same mobs, just at different levels. No sense of adventure there.

The thread has gone over 660 replies and still we have been offered no official reply whatsoever? Seriously? Not even a simple "we will get in touch with the dev team regarding this"? I don't get it.

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Originally Posted by Miliant

The thread has gone over 660 replies and still we have been offered no official reply whatsoever? Seriously? Not even a simple "we will get in touch with the dev team regarding this"? I don't get it.

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I'd speculate it's because they don't want to say 'no' to something that the game so desperately needs, but can't say 'yes' because of the unrealistic volume of work that would be necessary.

Doesn't mean the thread should be stopped, though. Eventually they'll have to give SOME kind of reply for sure. Something needs to be done, the way zones are now is just unnacceptable, and it's pretty much going to prevent the game from ever really getting anywhere. Each of the city states should've had a progression through their zones. With Limsa perhaps you should have fought out in the fields then moved on either to the volcano region or an area where the Sahagin re as the story advances. Once you hit level 35 or so you'd move on to Mor Dhona etc, finally ending up in Ishgard as the new hub for rank 50.

That would be my idea of real progression, with Ishgard being the base of operations to deal with the Garleans and dragons, as well as the beastmen tribes.


Oh well.

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Originally Posted by Chrees

Haha, no problem! And I do agree wholeheartedly. People have been complaining about this since alpha/beta, and the answer we got in that interview is probably the only reasoning we'll ever get, regardless of how sucky and/or potentially untrue it might be. All we can do now is hope they find some way around that. :(

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Something crossed my mind. I had been discussing another issue with the game last week and now I connected the dots after the information you provided me sunk in.

There is a major issue with how this game uses memory. I discovered it while monitoring my frames per second. In Gridania my fps goes above 90, and in other areas such as near camps, it averages at 60fps with no spikes. However, if I travel to Ul'dah which is always most busy, I had noticed that I consistently get low spikes, sometimes going as low as 30fps which is the bare minimum for smooth play in this day & age.

Now we have all heard the complaints about how demanding this game supposedly is for hardware, while the truth is I can run it on a nvidia 9600GSO with 348MB VRAM at the office. It is the same situation on that inferior PC. outside of busy places the frame rate is more than acceptable yet when I travel to a city, it gets very consistent with spike drops in fps.

Now I bet you are all wondering how I concluded that it is an issue with how the game uses memory. I had almost came to this same conclusion last week, but after reading direct from the mouth of SE that they have issues with the 'cost' of memory, I was able to finally see what the issue is.

Any of you can try this for yourself. In general FFXIV will sit with aprroximately 1GB of RAM usage total (physical + virtual) when you are in a quiet/not-so-busy place, as well as using from your VRAM. If you go somewhere busy such as Ul'dah, you will notice that RAM usage begins to rise. This is to be expected as there are other players around. However, at around 1.7GB total, it stops rising. I've checked this on two systems now and it is always the same behaviour, it caps off at around 1.7GB of RAM usage. Regardless of how much RAM is in your system and whether or not you are using a 64-bit OS, this is where it caps.

Why is that an issue? It's an issue because the game actually needs more memory than this. As it is not taking more, the game is throttling itself. It is creating it's very own bottleneck that ignores the power of your hardware completely. That is why when you are in a very crowded place, the spike drops in fps happen. I can only assume that they put the limit in so that the game would be less 'demanding' on older hardware or where people have less RAM. But taking that into account and their supposed reasons for having to copypaste terrain, it seems that FFXIV is completely retarded when it comes to memory management.

Before anyone says it, of course I'm aware that most games only use 2GB ram max and it's almost like the limit at this current point in time. I'm a warlock, my mind is more knowledgeable than you could imagine. For the record my main PC is i5 running at 4Ghz with 6GB RAM and a 560Ti GPU. The spike lags in the city are absolutely nothing to do with hardware, I don't think we need to investigate any further. This game needs to be completely redesigned from the bottom up if they want to get anywhere with it on the coding side...

Or we can continue waiting months at a time for big updates too.

@Charliesheen: In this day and age there's really no excuse for memory problems other than poor or lazy coding. Most console game devs are delivering amazingly sharp games in HD with video/system memory that is a quarter of what an average gaming pc has right now. With the resources available on PCs this game should look amazing, should have triple the vegetation, and a thousand times more variety.

And I would really like to stress the fact that there's no excuse for such poor variety between maps. And given that textures repeat themselves so evidently, there's really no excuse at all for loading corridors between regions. There's simply no excuse for not clearing ram or vram correctly and using it for new textures. Or maybe there is: a simple "our engine is not good enough and cannot deliver the performance that is expected of a current generation game."

I'm gonna be completely honest with you. At this point, I don't even expect them to make every small region within la noscea, thanalan and tbs again: I know they're not going to. At this point, I'd settle for a ground retexture, the removal of copy-pasted assets, mob recolor, and the addition of diverse vegetation models. Yup, that's right, they can even keep the same boring layout they have right now.

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Originally Posted by Miliant

@Charliesheen: In this day and age there's really no excuse for memory problems other than poor or lazy coding. Most console game devs are delivering amazingly sharp games in HD with video/system memory that is a quarter of what an average gaming pc has right now. With the resources available on PCs this game should look amazing, should have triple the vegetation, and a thousand times more variety.

And I would really like to stress the fact that there's no excuse for such poor variety between maps. And given that textures repeat themselves so evidently, there's really no excuse at all for loading corridors between regions. There's simply no excuse for not clearing ram or vram correctly and using it for new textures. Or maybe there is: a simple "our engine is not good enough and cannot deliver the performance that is expected of a current generation game."

I'm gonna be completely honest with you. At this point, I don't even expect them to make every small region within la noscea, thanalan and tbs again: I know they're not going to. At this point, I'd settle for a ground retexture, the removal of copy-pasted assets, mob recolor, and the addition of diverse vegetation models. Yup, that's right, they can even keep the same boring layout they have right now.

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If we're talking about how simple it would be to add some better progression and sense of moving around, one very, very basic thing is mob placement. Why are Goobues on the beach? Crabs on the plains? Jellyfish on mountains? We're just fighting the same random stuff all over the place, it feels like a hodge podge with no progression or sense. Why don't we start on the rats - then we move to those crabs - then later you find the goobues somewhere else. It would add some fun and a nice feeling to the world, but instead they're all crammed together randomly. Nobody can honestly say it would be that difficult to change the monster placement and ranks. I understand game development is difficult, but for some things there are just no excuses. It is not supposed to be THAT difficult and if it honestly is, they have a serious problem with their engine or whatever system they use :S

(PS I very much agree with you)

If they cut each of the zones into 4, changed the music in each, added new textures, dropped in buildings, different camp styles, colored mobs, bigger trees, deeper lakes, waterfalls etc, it shouldn't have a massive effect on RAM. Probably take 6 months.

I wish it were like the Sims, the devs could just drop in a great big swimming pool and a BBQ. I'd be fine then.

Man, at this point I wish they'd just say no we can't do it, and this is is why....

Radio silence is killing me.

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Originally Posted by Miliant

@Charliesheen: In this day and age there's really no excuse for memory problems other than poor or lazy coding. Most console game devs are delivering amazingly sharp games in HD with video/system memory that is a quarter of what an average gaming pc has right now. With the resources available on PCs this game should look amazing, should have triple the vegetation, and a thousand times more variety.

And I would really like to stress the fact that there's no excuse for such poor variety between maps. And given that textures repeat themselves so evidently, there's really no excuse at all for loading corridors between regions. There's simply no excuse for not clearing ram or vram correctly and using it for new textures. Or maybe there is: a simple "our engine is not good enough and cannot deliver the performance that is expected of a current generation game."

I'm gonna be completely honest with you. At this point, I don't even expect them to make every small region within la noscea, thanalan and tbs again: I know they're not going to. At this point, I'd settle for a ground retexture, the removal of copy-pasted assets, mob recolor, and the addition of diverse vegetation models. Yup, that's right, they can even keep the same boring layout they have right now.

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Epic post dude. Sadly we both can see how bad the game is at managing memory and SE have basically admitted it themselves. I really wonder where they can realistically go from here without it taking forever for them to program anything epic.

I know that people dont really want the zone loading, but if SE did that like previous posts have mentioned would that allow them to enhance the zones more with the engine they currently have? If this is even an option i think it would be fine and sure they dont have to give us all the updated zones at once but slowly like a new zone every patch or something i would be ok with, or even a complete territory (ie. Thanalan, La Noscea, Black Shroud, Coerts.....) every major patch which is every 2-3 months. Then even break up cities like how FFXI was splitting them into different sections. So if they did this would the fps spikes change and would we be able to get more diversity/excitement per zone?

almost 70 pages in an not a damn word yet eh? guess they really are ignoring it.

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Originally Posted by AuronYevon

I know that people dont really want the zone loading, but if SE did that like previous posts have mentioned would that allow them to enhance the zones more with the engine they currently have? If this is even an option i think it would be fine and sure they dont have to give us all the updated zones at once but slowly like a new zone every patch or something i would be ok with, or even a complete territory (ie. Thanalan, La Noscea, Black Shroud, Coerts.....) every major patch which is every 2-3 months. Then even break up cities like how FFXI was splitting them into different sections. So if they did this would the fps spikes change and would we be able to get more diversity/excitement per zone?

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As it seemingly stands, splitting it into zones just like FFXI is the only way they can give us that kind of diversity. The only thing that would make them bearable in my mind is if the chatlog is continued after you zone, which I believe it does already? I have no desire to return to the days of this:

charliesheen: zoning!
charliesheen: dezone... what did you say?

definitely should keep the chatlog going :)

LMAO ... i totally forgot all about that. yea that got annoying. But at the same time i would rather miss a possible word or two if that means an enhanced world.

Also they would have fixed the zoning a mob if u cant kill it as well so u wont see many ppl doing that anymore at least. Since each mob already has its predetermined area.

I would think though there is a way to program the chat log though that sure u might not see it or be able to use it while you are zoning but at the same time it will register what every1 is saying so when you do dezone it will just pop back up with what you have missed while you were zoning

It's kinda sad that we are actually discussing about sacrifices we would make to have a diversed world that gives us a sense of adventure when really in this era of online gaming this should not even be a discussion, there is quite enough exemples that it is possible to have beautiful diversed graphics in a seemless world (really seemless not like lolseemless we got in FFXIV right now), even old games offers that and yet this new engine they created for FFXIV is not capable of doing that? it's so sad really.

But yeah I too would sacrifice the lolseemless we got for diversity, I'll even take loading corridors that sometimes does not even fit in the scenery if it meant I'd have a different looking area on the other side.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

almost 70 pages in an not a damn word yet eh? guess they really are ignoring it.

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It's the top of the 'hot topics' list, SURELY they'll say something eventually.

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Originally Posted by Perrin_Aybarra

It's kinda sad that we are actually discussing about sacrifices we would make to have a diversed world that gives us a sense of adventure when really in this era of online gaming this should not even be a discussion, there is quite enough exemples that it is possible to have beautiful diversed graphics in a seemless world (really seemless not like lolseemless we got in FFXIV right now), even old games offers that and yet this new engine they created for FFXIV is not capable of doing that? it's so sad really.

But yeah I too would sacrifice the lolseemless we got for diversity, I'll even take loading corridors that sometimes does not even fit in the scenery if it meant I'd have a different looking area on the other side.

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Bad coding is at the heart of this issue. Let's face it, SE has become rather lacklustre when it comes to how they design their games in recent years, and perhaps that has been nothing to do with lack of imagination and more to do with capability.

Yeah I agree Charlie, still how can a big gaming company like SE not be able to hire the top of the line programmers if they wanted to create their own engine?

I totally agree with what most people have been saying in this post. Its nice that they are fixing up the battle system and all, but unless they fix the zones there is no point in fixing everything. FFXI,WOW, and Eq all gave a sense of progression. FFXIV feels small to me because of the 1-50 in the same zone. I'm LEVEL 25 and I'm still fighting the same mobs i was at level one and what makes it worse i feel like I'm still at the starting zone or the gates of the city i started!. When the game was first released my guild and I hit every camp in the game for teleports in then less 2 hours, that's pretty small to me. There will never be a sense of progression if i don't get to experience new options and new lands. Yeah, you can teleport in between 3 zones, but everyone is so spread out that it feels like there is no community. I think if they at the very least added one zone for groups,camps, and grinding like the V.Dunes in FFXI, things would be much better. A zone where all 3 starting zones can meet and form groups together around level 10!I really hated the fact that FFXI forced you to group with others to level, but i have to admit that it was the way to go because it forced a sense of community and made your class feel like it was meant to do something.

This is my first post ever on these forums
I created one of the biggest guilds in North America before the game was released.....Please turn this game around SE!
Here is my wish list for SE
1) Create zone progression, more zones, more exploring
2) Take away Armor Repair or make it easier to repair items...
3)Everything else you guys seem to be working on :).....cough cough AH

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Originally Posted by Laiferr

Not much to add other than I completely agree this is a problem and makes the world very lackluster. It's not just even that we're in the same zone, we're fighting the same mobs, just at different levels. No sense of adventure there.

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True. But to be fair, we did fight the same monsters at different levels in FFXI.

Taking my rose-colored nostalgia glasses off for a moment, FFXI was far from perfect in offering a balance (notice I didn't say variety) of creatures to effectively level on. I spent most of my FFXI career killing mandragoras, crabs, goblins, and colibri. Not because there wasn't a variety of different monsters, but because these particular monsters were the least lethal and rewarded you with the same experience as the most lethal monsters of the same level. That's an imbalance. So much so that it negates the purpose of having a variety in the first place, no?

The Development Team should be careful of this as they conduct their overhaul. Not only should we go to new places, see new sights, and hear new sounds ... we should also have to fight new things.

And as another poster said, those new things should make sense for the area.

• Goats don't live in the desert (too little to graze on).
• Goobues don't live on the beach (saltwater doesn't like trees).
• Giraffe-Camel hybrids could live in a desert.
• Giant Mutant Clams could live on the beach.

We not only need variety, we also need things to balance ... and to make sense. :)

I finally took the time to fullr read this thread and all I can say is the OP hit the nail on the head. I would just like to hear some feedback on whether they planned on cganing the zones at all, or they're good as is. Just curious.