The world feels too small.

It doesn't help that everything is instanced. There is no sense to go though an underground area, remember visiting the Horutoto Ruin or Bastok mines, knowing these places where actually under the city? Copperbell is under Thanalan, but you barely notice it because you can teleport inside the dungeon from Gridania without spending no more than 5 seconds talking to the NPC at the entrace.

Honestly I'm against instancing overworld maps. Does it make things easier from a design standpoint? Yes. But it also leads to people being on the same map, in the same spot, and not being able to see eachother. Which just ends up with the game feeling less populated and empty.

Agreed, and +1. The world is about half the size I feel it should be, for an MMO, even as a first try.

This is still a small issue compared to the lag/animation delays/graohics engine/whatever issues, but it's still a big issue.

I dont understand the reason people seek difficulty in things that dont need to be difficult.
The reason people remember that trip to jeuno is because it sucked. The mobs were too strong for the player who needed to make that trip.
Im aware the world is relatively small, but we have quite a bit of solid content to begin with. Much of the content is competently difficult, so talk of things needing to be harder is just a joke...for now. If you want hard, turn 5 of the coil is waiting on you.

That LARGER world went mostly unused by the majority. Is this just nostalgia speaking? because i went into shroposhae, copperbell and mistbeard cove you would be lucky if there were more than 3 people in there at any given time. The world was huge and empty before and those non-instanced zones were done away with because they were a waste.
Think back to 1.0, how much of the black shroud did you actually use and how much was travel time for the sake of wasting your time?

There's nothing fun to me about having to meet someone somewhere, and having to tell them it'll be at least half an hour, including a 10 minute ferry ride, after waiting 10 minutes for it to even show up (I've cried a couple of times upon finally getting through to the dock just as the Al Zahbi ferry was leaving :x). I will agree that what we have is also a bit much, in the other direction.
However, the game just opened up. I am completely confident we'll get more to the zones we have, and more additional areas, and eventually the world could be huge again (but legitimately so, less copy/paste XD).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andrien

Compare FFXIV:ARR launch with FFXI launch. XIV is larger.

---

Yet it feels much smaller.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maqaqa

Yet it feels much smaller.

---

It looks like they made a mistake lowering repair costs, if you have enough gil to teleport freely the world will feel small. Because why walk, when you can travel through space/time right?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wobi

It looks like they made a mistake lowering repair costs, if you have enough gil to teleport freely the world will feel small. Because why walk, when you can travel through space/time right?

---

The mistake is giving us the opportunity to teleport EVERYWHERE (no matter the price really), so traveling is pointless; if you dont travel you dont see the Eorza, which is beautiful, handcrafted, w/ever... and pointless, its just the place where you spam fates, anything remotely interesting happens in instances.

Instant porting makes this issue worse. I guess it can't be avoided at this point though.

Yes I miss larger, open worlds to a point. The world does feel small because you abandon most areas after leveling as well. (By FATES anyway)

For alts: 1 - 14: Starting Area Zones
15 - 20: Aleport
20 - 30: South Shroud
30 - 35: Costa Del Sol
35 - 42'ish: Coerthas
42'ish to 50: Northern Thanalan

Everywhere else is abandoned apart from class quests and gathering. :/

Honestly, the "smallness" of the world has nothing to do with the teleports, for me, and everything to do with the actual design of the zones. With a few exceptions, they're all narrow tunnels and canyons that funnel you from one spot to another. It's extremely claustrophobic. And the zones themselves are simply not very big.

Yeah, and everything feels so crowded. I can go from the level 1-5 mob area outside the starting city and be at the end-game level 50 mobs in three minutes on the other side of the map. Mounts and travel were a big deal and much appreciated in 1.0 because we had anima restrictions and we had to walk everywhere and couldn't just queue up to be instantly teleported to a duty. Now everyone can just TP quick to where they want to be. After a month of playing I was level 50, had been to all areas following the story, unlocked all the maps, and now I don't have anything to explore. One thing I miss about 1.0 was that the world went at a slower pace because of the size, but when you went somewhere, you actually had a journey. Not this "push button, get exp" feel games have nowadays.

Anyone miss those Lalafell Assassins in Hatatali? A heck of a nightmare mining there...

Used to farm them for leather, eff water and gil.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leenk

That LARGER world went mostly unused by the majority. Is this just nostalgia speaking? because i went into shroposhae, copperbell and mistbeard cove you would be lucky if there were more than 3 people in there at any given time. The world was huge and empty before and those non-instanced zones were done away with because they were a waste.
Think back to 1.0, how much of the black shroud did you actually use and how much was travel time for the sake of wasting your time?

---

not to mention quite a few areas in that "huge" world would instantly 1 shot you due to being lvl 80-90 mobs or just a convoluted mess with being a copy and pasted.

*You run past a rock... five minutes later you pass by the exact same rock but positioned differently... hears twilight zone theme play*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rannie

not to mention quite a few areas in that "huge" world would instantly 1 shot you due to being lvl 80-90 mobs or just a convoluted mess with being a copy and pasted.

*You run past a rock... five minutes later you pass by the exact same rock but positioned differently... hears twilight zone theme play*

---

Wrong music - from the situation you just described, there was a glitch in the matrix. It happens when they change something...

i know that the game would feel so much slower without it, but with it it just feels like there's no distance between anything. no sense of belonging to a town. Back in ffxi people that started in each of those cities became attached to them. Doing your first run to Jeuno felt like an adventure in itself. I guess i just miss the feeling of vastness that this games predecessor offered. DAE feel the same?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Terius

Yes I miss larger, open worlds to a point. The world does feel small because you abandon most areas after leveling as well. (By FATES anyway)

For alts: 1 - 14: Starting Area Zones
15 - 20: Aleport
20 - 30: South Shroud
30 - 35: Costa Del Sol
35 - 42'ish: Coerthas
42'ish to 50: Northern Thanalan

Everywhere else is abandoned apart from class quests and gathering. :/

---

That's what most people do :P. I don't FATE grind. ( I only do FATEs when i'm passing by them I may stop to do it.)

If Ishgard gates were open it would have been comparable to having an adventure to Jeuno would it not?

People who tell us we have Nostalgia goggles on: "We didn't enjoy it so nobody else could have."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DarkLordOfToast

i know that the game would feel so much slower without it, but with it it just feels like there's no distance between anything. no sense of belonging to a town. Back in ffxi people that started in each of those cities became attached to them. Doing your first run to Jeuno felt like an adventure in itself. I guess i just miss the feeling of vastness that this games predecessor offered. DAE feel the same?

---

Given the number of step and fetch quests that so often love to take you across continents, this game would be PAINFUL without teleporting.

I look at teleporting at a hefty cost as a good balance between flying and walking everywhere endlessly.

1. Zones are not dangerous. So you don't need to pay attention as you proceed, hence you move through zones quicker.
2. Camps everywhere. Serves as an "interrupt" to the feeling that zones are big.
3. Zones are small compared to some zones many veteran MMO gamers are used to in older games.

I think these 3 factors combine to make the world feel very small.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zfz

1. Zones are not dangerous. So you don't need to pay attention as you proceed, hence you move through zones quicker.
2. Camps everywhere. Serves as an "interrupt" to the feeling that zones are big.
3. Zones are small compared to some zones many veteran MMO gamers are used to in older games.

I think these 3 factors combine to make the world feel very small.

---

1. Very true.
2. Also true, though there's not a single area in the game currently that I consider big.
3. It's not just older games - every zone in GW2 is as large or larger as any 3-4 FFXIV zones combined. Even the Secret World, which has small zones, has areas that are twice as large as what we currently have in this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andrien

If Ishgard gates were open it would have been comparable to having an adventure to Jeuno would it not?

---

lol, not in the slightest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Leenk

The reason people remember that trip to jeuno is because it sucked.

---

No, they remember it because it was an adventure. WHICH SHOULD BE THE WHOLE POINT OF THE GAME WORLD. You were traveling to a far away and famous city. You could go alone, team up with a friend or have someone high-level escort you. You had to dodge monsters because the game word wasn't built as theme-park. Dangerous and secret passages were everywhere.

It was hard? Yes. But it was also an epic adventure.

I remember the old maps being bland, boring, and lifeless. Love the newer maps.

Level a gathering job and then try saying that the world is small and mounts are bad.

The zones are plenty big. They would be what Goldylocks would describe as "just right". Not too small and not too big. If you don't want to teleport, you don't have to, so that's a null point. If you want to walk everywhere, you can... nothing is stopping you. But it's not your right to force the rest of us to do so too. Most of us don't like wasting our time running from place to place to get to what we want to do; unless that's part of what's involved with what we want to do (like gathering, mob killing, FATEs, etc).

Try walking from Gridania to Vesper Bay some time. It actually takes a long time. This *****ing about teleporting and mounts is baseless and irrational.


P.S. The reason there is now a lot of "stuff" breaking up the landscape is because one of the top 3 reasons people hated on 1.0 was "copy-pasta" terrain with nothing in it. And now that they fixed that by adding "stuff", people are whining about that. Some of you really can't be satisfied at all... just go play something else if nothing SE does will be enough.

P.P.S. You still have to actually run/ride to an area manually before you can teleport there. So that feeling of "arriving" is not affected in the least.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dreamer

Given the fact that that most gathering nodes in this game send you in a circle if you go from one to the next, it makes the problem seem even worse.

You cannot sugarcoat this issue. The game world we've been given is so small it's practically an insult, and trying to gloss over this doesn't help anyone.

---

*sigh*

I'm not talking about after you get to the gathering spot. I'm talking about getting to the spot. Any gatherer can tell you that the world is plenty big when you have no choice but to run to an area and not teleport.

As for sugarcoating... that's laughable. If anything, a small number of masochists are blowing the "problem" way out of proportion and wanting to force their masochism on others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MageBlack

You would have loved 1.0 Black Shroud then!

---

I could always manage to get lost in there, it scared me to leave Gridania back then

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yuripa

I didn't think it was small at 1st but now I am max level and don't have as much to do it does feel very small.

---

This.

When you're first starting out, trying to map all the areas and get all the teleports... It's frustrating and takes forever. It's only after you've done all of that, the world seems smaller. I wouldn't mind a few larger maps added on to the game, but if every area is huge and requires me to have an escort just to play, I would quit. I want to play on my own time, not stand around staring at the scenery because I can't advance on my own. We do this enough while waiting for the DF.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

People who tell us we have Nostalgia goggles on

---

Maybe the same can be said for ff13 that it is actually better than all the older ff games and it was just nostalgia that they made fans think otherwise o_O All I know is that FFXIV areas don't really feel any special even though if it looks pretty.

Just tossing in my agreement - this game world is TINY! The most recent MMO I've played, GW2 had huuuge maps compared, lots of exploring involved, hidden areas with secret jumping puzzles. Even in WoW it was a big trip getting from one major city to the next, unless you paid someone to teleport you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaedan94

Level a gathering job and then try saying that the world is small and mounts are bad.

---

Given the fact that that most gathering nodes in this game send you in a circle if you go from one to the next, it makes the problem seem even worse.

You cannot sugarcoat this issue. The game world we've been given is so small it's practically an insult, and trying to gloss over this doesn't help anyone.

I played FFXI for 4 years and still love it but after the expansion beyond lv 75 it's not worth my time.

I play FFXIV ARR for 2 months+ and already achieved 2 max characters with relics. I feel SE ripped me off.

......................................................................................

Every time I see this topic, no matter the game, I have to ask: "what does it matter?"

Unless every zone has a reason for players of all levels to always be in them, making them huge is just a waste of resources. No matter how big or small, once you've explored a zone fully there was rarely any reason to go back and take the scenic route again. If you came back a zone you did it with purpose and made an immediate beeline towards your destination, leaving the rest of the zone completely untouched.

FFXI was no different. The zones were big and expansive, but there was rarely any reason for you to be out in the middle of them so they were usually devoid of life and otherwise big for the sake of being big. I quit right after the release of WotG so maybe things changed after that, but from when I started during NA release all the way to WotG most of the zones were empty 99% of the time, save for someone passing through on the way to another location or people doing a specific quest or mission.

Forcing people to spend a lot of time on travel is just a timesink. It isn't difficult and it doesn't add anything to gameplay, it's just padding your playtime. Even in FFXI it was very easy to run from a place like Windurst all the way to Bastok or Sand'Oria on foot at level 1 without ever incurring a death once you knew where to go and who to avoid.

I would much rather SE spend time and resources on interesting content instead of wasting time making expansive and detailed zones that people will explore all of once and then never explore again until something forces them to.

It feels like the world is small. Coerthas seems moderately sized, but as someone said before traversing from sanctuary to sanctuary seems like a 100 meter dash at best. I miss the vast expanse of worlds from FF XI. The very idea of questing somewhere else forced you to do simple things like gear up. Mind you it was a grind walking everywhere. There are many things FF XIV has done well. I love the graphics for each area, stunningly beautiful vistas, I love that I was able to get a chocobo so quickly, I love that I can teleport if I'm not broke. :) But I wish the zones were bigger, so that 500 gil seems like money well spent. And hey what is done is done. those are the zones. So lets make some new zones and if there are PS3 limitations holding the game back like another poster said then maybe we just have to deal with a few more loads from zone splits.

Things I hated from FF XI taking a ferry only to have some crazy level mob kill me in the hull of the boat and having to wait 15 minutes during the boat ride. It added to the feeling of the world being larger but was a pain getting killed buy some ocean pugil really sucked.

Teleports seemed like a luxury, and as a result a market for teleporting opened up, which again seemed like a luxury.

Snails pace of the game.

But as someone has already stated this is 10 years later and a game informed from so much more...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

just a timesink. It isn't difficult and it doesn't add anything to gameplay, it's just padding your playtime.

---

Oh, you mean just like what they did with the mythology tome cap? 300 points a week, 2+ weeks to obtain anything, 6 months to gear out ONE class? "Just get Allagan gear", some people might say, well, there is a one week lock out timer on Coils and you are not guaranteed anything.

So, go ahead and say that larger zones is just empty padding. Maybe it'll give me something to do while I wait for weekly resets. While you're at it, this whole "leveling" thing is an unnecessary waste of time. Why not just start off at level 50? Then players wouldn't be forced to do quests that make them talk to NPCs in one part of the world and teleport or walk to the place they were just in. You wouldn't even have to move anywhere, and they could just have Mor Dhona as their only zone where you stand still in place until your 30m queue as a healer finally comes up. At least then there wouldn't be any "empty and unnecessary" zones adding useless "padding". /endrant

Sorry, but lack of content is not a feature. No world to explore, two dungeons to eternally farm for your tomes. Please, by all means, look forward to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

FFXI was no different. The zones were big and expansive, but there was rarely any reason for you to be out in the middle of them so they were usually devoid of life and otherwise big for the sake of being big.

---

NMs, HNMS, leveling spots, quests, bcnms, etc. There were plenty of reasons to explore the beautiful world of Vana diel!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

Every time I see this topic, no matter the game, I have to ask: "what does it matter?"

<Snip>.

---

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I play MMORPGs for the virtual world aspect. I generally care less about the 'game' part and more about having something to explore and be a part of. Socializing, crafting and economy, and roleplaying are generally my bread and butter for these types of games; if I wanted to do other stuff, I would play offline games, since they're generally far, far better at gameplay and such than MMORPGs.

When the world is small, it directly affects my enjoyment of the above more than just about any other factor. It doesn't matter if every inch of land has a purpose or not; what's important is that it's there, and for my style of play a large gameworld gives more possibilities than a smaller one.

I do miss the openness of 1.0, even though it was copy/paste. I liked going from Thanalan into UD without zoning. Only other MMO I played without zones was Vanguard. Seems like a zoneless world, is more advanced than a world with a bazillion smaller zones.

Eorzea could have been this big, without zoning!
Eorzea 3.0

If you look, you could see what may have been Thanalan and the Shroud. Noone cares about LL so it's not in that tech demo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DeceptionsWrath

Yes FFXI wasn't that big either but come on guys. What other product can come out now with shorting comings that it had 10 years ago and be acceptable? I just do not get this mentality. "Games can be crappy because they were crappy 10 years ago". Just drives me crazy. I understand older games were different but there is a reason we have new technology and engines. Games are suppose to get better with more technology, not be on par with 10 year old games or worse in some cases. Just saying.

---

10 years ago the playerbase for every single MMO was a fraction of what even the worst ones have these days. In those 10 years, the technology and game engines have gotten marginally better and the playerbase has increased to match. So you pretty much end up with the same situation.

Though I have read a bit on the storage situation and the Dev responses to it and I have to wonder; what sort of horrible DB implementation are they using that can't be expanded easily to accommodate large amounts of static storage (stuff in houses and chests, not moving with characters)?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Baneus

Though I have read a bit on the storage situation and the Dev responses to it and I have to wonder; what sort of horrible DB implementation are they using that can't be expanded easily to accommodate large amounts of static storage (stuff in houses and chests, not moving with characters)?

---

Good point, I've worked a lot with SQL databases and this sort of movement should be a no brainer, cross table query based on your characters ID/Server ID. Oh well.