The World: so Big so Beautiful... But yet so empty

I agree on that but on the other side, I don't really know what they could do to make them less empty :/

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Originally Posted by Celef

I agree on that but on the other side, I don't really know what they could do to make them less empty :/

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To make it feel alive they just need to make it more like a real breathing and living world. More NPCs that wander around, maybe have some in the forest looking at some fungus and talking about it, or NPCs from the city states going on a patrol to make the streets feel save. In the wild you could have a big amount of small critters and other small animals going on with their lives. Have the herbivore animals and monster be passive and in bigger herds. Use fates not to spawn some random monsters but spawn some carnivore that will attach the grazing herds of animals. So make it less "monsters everywhere that will kill you on sight" and more of a world where farmers and other people can survive. So no random spawning tree of death that will attack anything that walks on the street. This way you will have a landscape that does not look like a beautiful painting but like a beautiful and alive world.

Give us riddles in the overworld (maybe each zone having at least one) that you need to find and solve or even jumping puzzles (but better thought out than the Kugane one). Yes people might look at the solution online but this is a decision by the players themselves. Or give us lore items that we can find all over the map at random places. Maybe have an item that will show us the general route but you will still have to find it yourself. Picking it up could either give you some lore of the zone or it could be part of a collection that will give you items or knowledge after you complete it. Nothing game breaking and nothing of a must have but at least something that could be done in the zones. (And please no huge amount of RNG..I am looking at you TT) I am still kinda surprised that a game that focuses so much on lore does not have some kind of way to gather it ingame. They could simply leave books at places with lore in it, that will unlock the description in a ingame lore section (thus no inventory space lost). They could even give us bookcases where we can store this in our house and click on it when we want to read them.

Have random daily quests that are not shown on the map but that you have to find by looking all over the zone. It could be that you find a certain item that is marked when you get near it and that will give you a fetch quest. Or some monsters could be marked that will start a quest to kill a certain number of them. Again nothing ground breaking and no must do but at least a way to shake up all the fate farming in a zone and this could give people a way to level up other jobs after they have done all the normal side quests.

(And yes all of these suggestion came from me playing rift, I am just a fan of its overworld)

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Originally Posted by Alleo

To make it feel alive they just need to make it more like a real breathing and living world. More NPCs that wander around, maybe have some in the forest looking at some fungus and talking about it, or NPCs from the city states going on a patrol to make the streets feel save. In the wild you could have a big amount of small critters and other small animals going on with their lives. Have the herbivore animals and monster be passive and in bigger herds. Use fates not to spawn some random monsters but spawn some carnivore that will attach the grazing herds of animals. So make it less "monsters everywhere that will kill you on sight" and more of a world where farmers and other people can survive. So no random spawning tree of death that will attack anything that walks on the street. This way you will have a landscape that does not look like a beautiful painting but like a beautiful and alive world.

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And people will still not go there. It may be novel at first, but even the people that enjoy it will start to keep away over time, and most people will just flat out not care unless there's loot involved.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Give us riddles in the overworld (maybe each zone having at least one) that you need to find and solve or even jumping puzzles (but better thought out than the Kugane one). Yes people might look at the solution online but this is a decision by the players themselves.

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Riddles are a great example of one-time-use content unless they have a writer change them up on a daily basis. Jumping puzzles too, to a lesser extent (unless you add dailies for them a la GW2 or gathering nodes at the end of them [expect rage]). The content would need to be truly dynamic to incentivize people to do it continue to do it on its own merit, and even then may need significant rewards to maintain interest.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I am still kinda surprised that a game that focuses so much on lore does not have some kind of way to gather it ingame. They could simply leave books at places with lore in it, that will unlock the description in a ingame lore section (thus no inventory space lost). They could even give us bookcases where we can store this in our house and click on it when we want to read them.

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This should be a more prominent thing, even if I don't believe it would increase zone traffick. And done well. As in incomplete, in-depth, yet potentially tattered journals that FEEL like journals, and not in the GW2 style of "3-second overview of an entire reqion" or the BotW style of "Life's journal (that conveniently happens to only include events of my life relevant to you!)" We have a bit of this withe the notes left by Ser Yumeric's men, Edda's journal, etc. within the dungeons, but you'd expect places like the Sharlayan ruins to have a load of old documents lying around (granted, the Goblins might have picked them clean, but still).

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Have random daily quests that are not shown on the map but that you have to find by looking all over the zone. It could be that you find a certain item that is marked when you get near it and that will give you a fetch quest. Or some monsters could be marked that will start a quest to kill a certain number of them. Again nothing ground breaking and no must do but at least a way to shake up all the fate farming in a zone and this could give people a way to level up other jobs after they have done all the normal side quests.

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This is somewhat near an idea I had years ago, to make hunts into actual hunts. As in, rather than the monster just popping in a zone, you first start seeing signs of them, injured/dead NPCs on the road, spots of blood, trees knocked aside, scorch-marks on the ground, etc. You would then have to follow the destruction and lure out the monster. Kind of like how S-Ranks are now, but... less obtuse, and with a more sane way of knowing if they're actually available or not.
Unfortunately this would ultimately result in the 'Tedious' variant of encouraging zone participation in that after the first week; people would just stop caring about the journey pretty quick and want to kill the things again. And even during that time, most people would still just go, "I'll wait until someone calls it" rather than getting out there and looking for things... :-/

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

I have played other MMOs with the "seamless open world" which if you ever had slow loading were basically stitched together with endlessly looping loading tunnels, be they tunnels with visible walls or not. As the system still had to unload the area you were leaving and load in the area you are entering.

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I can climb over mountains and around valleys, swim across rivers, jump cliffs, and in some cases even fly from zone to zone in WoW, Rift, TERA, WildStar, Archeage, and BDO - and those are just the ones I've played in. NEVER have I felt like I was being funneled through a narrow, looping tunnel in the way people describe 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Sandoria

I'd like to see more interactive doodads and treasures hidden around the world. A good lot of the towns scattered over the world feel like hollow building veneers (Can't enter nor explore inside) with not a lot to distinguish them from one another. With a little bit of clutter and love, the game would have a whole new level of depth.

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This. Even if chests, pots, and whatnot scattered about, were filled with just potions, ethers, random gil bags, etc, it would help. Look at DDO's, or even ESO's open world. In those games I spend HOURS looking for stuff, chests, crates to break, cabinets, etc. It does make the world feel alive and gives a sense of exploration.

RP you can do it in public, ERP you do it in private. Who does ERP in public violate the user agreement:

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3.3 Profanity and Offensive Language... The Game is for players aged 13 and older. You agree to behave accordingly.

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The agreement also say:

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...If you reject this User Agreement, then you will not be authorized to play the Game...

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tl;dr version and/or for who still does not understand:
If you ERP in public you may be kiss your account goodbye (I think it just suffice a report by anyone witnessed your "performance").

Then, you also can be quite unlucky...: some parent see (and screenshot) what you wrote in public chat of their 13 year-old child, and then files an offence at their local police office about it, if you are in the legal age you also may face court. This is extreme but not impossible.

How to make the world feel alive?

You make creatures and npcs in the world have different hopes, dreams, unique characteristics, and different reasons for being in particular places at a particular time. 1.0 had some of this with the creatures and FFXI had it in spades.

Implementation of that comes at a cost though. Zones would no longer just be a means to reach the end, a trivial obstacle, a detriment to questing.

Most Npcs & Enemies here have no life/goals/activities outside their purpose. Which is to stand around and give you quest or wait to be killed.

• Even the ones that supposedly have a purpose, that purpose is only watched real time in the MSQ. Retainers and squadrons are supposed to be adventurers as well, but you never see them actually out in the world fulfilling that purpose. Why do you never see the scions or Aymeric out fighting the good fight if it is not part of your quest line?
  
• Where is the XIV version of Besieged, a city under constant assault which must be protected by it's inhabitants and generals? The closest thing to that here is the MSQ in Stormblood when the scions accompany you on this journey, and that is only in MSQ.
  
• Where is the XIV version of Campaign or City-State Alliance content, where battles and wars are waged over the entirety of Eorzea? Again, some of this happens in the MSQ but not much elsewhere. In FFXI there were battlefields in multiple areas at somewhat random times.
  
• Why is it every common enemy has a limited skill set that can be averted the same way which is dodge?
  
• Why do we have Control skills when a majority of stuff worth killing resist it completely?
  
• Why do common enemies not have their own group tactics such as flanks, rear, etc, or change the way they react to things based on party composition or circumstances?

Why isn't the world alive? Because the majority of people don't want alive.

They want a nice, neat, package all created to make the game relaxing and stress free, minus the raiding community.

Why in the Seven hells would it be fun to actually ask people to depend on one another or communicate in the open world? When it so much easier to queue up and be proactively friendly or the be worst kind of as#, and regardless of which, they can queue up again and again without the trouble. I read in 1.0 certain creatures used to react differently and to some people it was annoying.
If npcs had goals they set out to achieve at certain times of days or seasons, and they had some relevant quest to progressing, people would scream in outrage at the gating.

TLDR:

• You can't have a living world, if it doesn't change.
• You can't have a living world if it doesn't inconvenience you at times.
• You can't have a living world if job creation has to adhere to everyone being able to be a flavor of another job to facilitate faster grouping up without segregation.
• You can't have a living world if most things worthwhile are locked behind instances.
• You can't have a living world if there is no long lasting persistence in skills or gear or the content you challenge.
• You can't have a living world if the world itself stops until you continue the MSQ.

I have ideas on capturing the spirit of a living world, but it exist in a self contained vacuum which will probably never be implemented. Because if it spilled out into the open fields of Eorzea, all havoc would break out and bunch of players who value convenience over immersion would run to the next game that values convenience.

Has anyone considered the fact that the majority of the zones are wilderness? Why should anyone expect those to be crowded?

However I think the wilderness would benefit from more npcs than just quest/hunt mobs. WoW has critters (squirrels, rabbits, etc) and having something like that in XIV would only bring more life.

Remove teleport.

Not all teleport needs to be removed though. Just Leave about 6 major teleport hubs, like in FFXI. 1 in Thanalan, 1 in shroud, 1 in noscea, 1 in mor dhona, 1 in Fringes, 1 in Doma.

That's it. This will encourage people to use airships, boats, to access major cities that dont have teleport. And make those airship, boat, and yes, let's implement the Thanalan train , not skippable cutscene, make them real time but not too long. In FFXI even if you want to go to a major city, you had to do this.

If you want to go further, have only Healers able to teleport to encourage interaction between players.

Every so often I put a month back on WoW just to poke around and get it out of my system, and every time I do I always find myself marveling at how different the worlds feel. After Stormblood I had this lingering feeling that I just preferred the A Realm Reborn zones, but I wasn't able to quite put my finger on why other than the new zones being less "interactive." It's with the help of some of those WoW zones that I think I can better describe it though.

The Heavensward and Stormblood zones feel artificial. They don't feel like they're alive, they do genuinely just feel like large hubs. So, I'll try to qualify that statement. If I'm going through some random zone in WoW everything has a place. If you're near a river, you'll find a small ecosystem of hostile and nonhostile enemies that make sense, like crocodiles and insects and fish. You go a little further away into the woods and you find inland creatures, like deer and wolves. The world between is sprinkled with little signs of life, like birds and rabbits and whatever else. The birds fly away when you get near, the rabbits are being chased by wildlife, there are packs of wolves with little cubs, dens of slumbering bears, and so forth. Some NPCs patrol around large areas instead of walking back and forth in their designated spot like others. Zones are sprinkled with small settlements, ruins of ancient civilizations, abandoned buildings, and all kinds of little nooks and crannies that have strong visual storytelling to help bring the player into the moment and make them feel like they're a part of a larger world.

A Realm Reborn never exactly did this to an extreme, but it did have a healthy mix of hostile and non-aggressive enemies instead of a world that felt like it just always wanted you dead no matter where you were (which is particularly annoying for gathering imo). Also, because the zones were smaller, it was a lot easier for them to cluster enemies in groups that felt more natural as well, compared to these sprawling zones from Heavensward and Stormblood that look very pretty but feel like a dropper tool was used to place enemies in an area before moving to another to do the same. One example I like to use is the random Jellyfish behind Onokoro hanging out near some pine trees. What's their deal? I'm sure some of it is to try to emphasize that these areas are harsh and war-torn and all that's been able to thrive in such an environment are the most aggressive species, but if that's the case then maybe it's time to diversify the kinds of zone stories we're trying to tell in order to diversify the experience we're able to give players as they quest and level and go through their daily rituals.

A Realm Reborn was also fairly good at giving you a healthy amount of exploration within settlements compared to its successors. If anyone remembers one of the MSQ quests where you had to go into the jail in Whitebrim, and despite it being such a small building on the outside it goes down like 2-3 stories underground. Sure, it's mostly barren stone walls in there, but it's still a neat touch. I've mentioned the Mun-Tuy Cellars before on this forum as well, I think. The connection between South Shroud and East Shroud could have easily been a generic rock tunnel but instead it's this lovely brewery with like 3-4 little siderooms and NPCs doing their jobs, and you can just give it a little look around. It fills in the world more, helps bring it to life.

That's not to say Heavensward and Stormblood are entirely devoid of these kinds of things. I think the Xaela camps in The Azim Steppe are good about this, with all the yurts you can go into and NPCs to talk to. There are small areas in Heavensward I enjoyed as well, like the kitchen in Falcon's Nest or the buildings and stables in Tailfeather, but the inclusion of these kinds of world-building areas has diminished significantly across all zones in a way that I think is kind of unfortunate. The zones truly are becoming more and more beautiful to look at now, I'd just also love to see some of that money and development go into making them feel more alive. As it stands, they've got a case of "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" syndrome.

Inplement Trade like Archeage. Where you have to craft and carry your package across zones on horseback/carriage. The farther zones you bring your package across, the more reward you will get.

It's very lively in Archeage when you had 10 people waiting for an airship carrying trade packs on horsebacks and then we all just chat on the airship during the journey. Or on ships/galleons that people built and drove across the seas to the other continents bringing our trade packs.

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

<excellent stuff>

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You've worded this beautifully and perfectly. Yes to all of it!

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

[Good insights]

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:: It's but a memory of a memory now, but I could have sworn the guards at the entrance to the Mun Tuy Cellars back when it was a leveling/leve/NM labyrinth area, rather than a mere tunnel, in 1.x had some decent jokes about... life when being a guard at the entrance to Mun Tuy Cellars. I'm glad at least that while the sub-zone was effectively removed, it remained at least a bridge between larger zones. Sadly, I don't think it points out a willingness to detail as a hesitation to anger Legacy players even further (especially after turning Sorrel Havens into a dry well when it was a huge misty river) that extended about the length of the Saghali Desert).

The Xaela camps in the Azim Steppes are actually one of my own core examples of missed opportunity. You get to see these different cultures during the MSQ, but it ends at the point of baiting any interest player. "What now?" An incredible opportunity for meaningful, dynamic daily-like activities just stops there with the completion of the zones quests, which have yet to show any real attempt at interesting mechanics. And, to be honest, given what we know of the steppes... the zone honestly felt far too small to be housing its alleged numbers, much like Doma is apparently a nation with the population of one tiny village and captives that can seemingly only come from one other, now-ruined, similarly small village. It feels... off.

Take a typical tiny zone arc from WoW for comparison. Enter the frey, find maps to leaders (likely keeping the prisoners), free prisoners, use said prisoners to set the enemy camp into frenzy while locating key lore to be used later; return the engineer (one of said prisoners) so that he can build your aircraft to get around cliffside defenses, attack runebinders not only to dismantle defenses and draw out officers but take their items necessary for seeing into the past around ritual bonfires, which in turn makes available new strategies and proposes new plot arcs, dismantle anti-air defenses, set up and defend a flag to move enemies to your position for as long as possible, hyjack the AA guns to take out as many reinforcements as possible before launching yourself out one such AA gun in order to return to your base.

Compare the above to: found sheep, (irrelevant to prior) lit some lanterns, (irrelevant to prior) delivered a letter, (irrelevant to prior) fended off a few bandits, (irrelevant to prior) gathered weeds, (irrelevant to prior) led a guy to someplace where (off-screen) he apparently learned he was good with his fists, (irrelevant to prior) talked to locales, (irrelevant to prior) did some weird gauntlet run for some guy, (irrelevant to prior) killed some bear-things... There's definitely something missing from the idea of quest synergy, not to mention the engagement in quest mechanics themselves or visual storytelling. For all the stock-animation and standard-pan cutscenes in this game, they do a fairly poor job of conveying lore or more immediate story relative to the soft phasing and ingame unlocked cinematics that WoW's been using since its first expansion and have been prevalent since the second (2008).

:: Personally, I'm not as put off by less settled zones of Stormblood and especially Heavensward as I was by the fact that the highly settled zones of ARR lent themselves to expectations that weren't met, from Yellow Jacket guard posts and their observation blimps doing absolutely nothing, to their being no patrol or other reasonable elements in military strongholds (generally beastmen camps), to the lack of any interesting dialogue from the wardens of smaller camps, the limitations of NPC interactions, etc., to even the apparent superfluousness of structures given their having no ostensible function. In Stormblood, the Lochs had a similar dissonance to it. How would a nation never more than thrice Ulduh's population have a city more than twenty times its size, even when one excludes the vast areas of sunken/flooded structures beneath? It took me out of the experience to "well, some zone artist really had fun with this..." By comparison, I found most of Heavensward's feeling somehow more right, simply because they felt historied and like we were arriving in a very specific time and therefore perspective of that area, but they didn't feel contradictory.

tl;dr: Something, something, utility and scale.

They need to add outpost to attack and defend so if the mobs win they get the outpost an we cant use mount in that zone or able to teleport or lose other things to it an if we win get get tomes mats etc they don't have to be in the arr zones tho maybe just HW and SB. BAM! zone filled with people!

I hope we get more stuff like the Sun/Moon minion NPC, and curious places you can speculate history from patched in. I think HW did this best because despite showing a world full of rot and remnants of history, it had vistas that were worth checking out. And despite the size, there was always something in between worth pause. Coerthas Western is literally a frozen wasteland but is 10x more interesting to look at than Azim Steppe in my opinion.

Having seen Ixion mess, I rather not have a FATE heavy world or worse instanced open world maps...ever
You know it's just a matter of time before people asking instances if it happen.

That said, I do like the story FATEs like in Steppe. It brings the world alive another way.
World lore need to be more rich than just few NPCs, plus the reward is just right
if they put a consumable/currency item like Outfoxed, so they can add new incentive.
Maybe HQ food, all kinds so it's not just one time thing. No more glamors/minions I hope.

We are in spaces that serve our needs. You can see the huge world around us. Our maps are small because our story takes place in those areas. It isnt a giant open world

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

yoki event number 2 haha :)

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hell no... that event needs to burn in hell for eternity.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

And people will still not go there. It may be novel at first, but even the people that enjoy it will start to keep away over time, and most people will just flat out not care unless there's loot involved.

Riddles are a great example of one-time-use content unless they have a writer change them up on a daily basis. Jumping puzzles too, to a lesser extent (unless you add dailies for them a la GW2 or gathering nodes at the end of them [expect rage]). The content would need to be truly dynamic to incentivize people to do it continue to do it on its own merit, and even then may need significant rewards to maintain interest.

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Lets be honest, there can simply be no content that can keep the zones active for all players forever. You always will have more active ones and those that are barely visited but at least some changes could mean a bit more activity for at least some time. Its not for everyone but at least those that enjoy a truly alive world will like it. I mean they have lots of minions which they could use to repopulate the zones as normal animals. And making the herbivore ones passive should probably also not be that big of a chance. They are already quite lucky that they can use a lot of monster models from FF11 and from other FF games and also have quite a lot of recolors of existing ones in the new zones. So they could use the time that other MMOs need to fully create new monster to create more wildlife. Heck most small critters could be copied all over the zones with different colors which would make it feel more alive.

Yes in the end you will not visit it all the time even if the world feels more alive and riddles and stuff like that is a one time thing. But these could be at least some small steps to make it more lively next to fates and hunts. And maybe if they add more smaller things like that over the time you will have more things to do in there. And if they dont have the best weapon behind it or other incentives like that, than people will not feel forced to do them thus only those that are interested in these things will do it. Which is a better game experience for at least those players.

In regards to the Azim Steppes, at one point during the MSQ an NPC (I think it was Cirina?) even says specifically that the area we have access to is just one small part of the vast steppe-land; the nomadic tribes were only gathered in the accessible area because of the nadaam, and not all the tribes were bothering to participate. Only the Qestir and the Oronir live there year round. I assume there's a secret tunnel elsewhere or an invisible bridge over the gully to the east to go to the inaccessible parts, and the desert to the south looks wide open as well.

Edit: There is also an in-game explanation for why previous hubs are now more empty. Mor Dhona and Idyllshire were under construction for most of their patches; there were tons of people flowing in and out helping with the construction projects. Now it's over. Rhalgr's Reach is the capital of a newly liberated nation and in dire need of repairs - so of course it is going to be very busy!

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Edit: There is also an in-game explanation for why previous hubs are now more empty. Mor Dhona and Idyllshire were under construction for most of their patches; there were tons of people flowing in and out helping with the construction projects. Now it's over. Rhalgr's Reach is the capital of a newly liberated nation and in dire need of repairs - so of course it is going to be very busy!

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Should have fixed up Ishgard while they were at it. :)

I kind of take it for granted that the areas we see are simply representative of an entire region, but we see it boiled down to the poin ts of interest needed for the story. So when I am in the Shroud, I assume it's 100s of thousands of acres of forest, and similarly for other zones, they are representative of much larger regions than we could realistically see in-game.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Rhalgr's Reach is the capital of a newly liberated nation and in dire need of repairs

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it most certainly is not the capital. it's not even a town like Ala Gannha or Ala Ghiri.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

• Even the ones that supposedly have a purpose, that purpose is only watched real time in the MSQ. Retainers and squadrons are supposed to be adventurers as well, but you never see them actually out in the world fulfilling that purpose. Why do you never see the scions or Aymeric out fighting the good fight if it is not part of your quest line?

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What you've never seen the various retainers gathering stuff in the ARR areas? Heck people got a kick out of the various random NPC visitors to the restaurant in Mor Dhona. During the Make it Rain Campaign Seasonal event everyone was visiting the Gold Saucer.

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• Where is the XIV version of Besieged, a city under constant assault which must be protected by it's inhabitants and generals? The closest thing to that here is the MSQ in Stormblood when the scions accompany you on this journey, and that is only in MSQ.

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The Attack on Highbridge, The Hive, Poor Maid's Mill (which broke) and Dataqi Chronicle FATE chains are what you are referring to.

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• Where is the XIV version of Campaign or City-State Alliance content, where battles and wars are waged over the entirety of Eorzea? Again, some of this happens in the MSQ but not much elsewhere. In FFXI there were battlefields in multiple areas at somewhat random times.

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These are Frontlines with 3 major battlefields currently: The Borderlands Ruins, Sealed Rock and The Fields of Glory.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Remove teleport.

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I used to have an efficient route stickied on screen for going to places.
I'd love this idea if it wasn't for unspoiled/timed gathering nodes.
They already extended the time because people panic when they missed the schedule.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Mor Dhona and Idyllshire were under construction for most of their patches; there were tons of people flowing in and out helping with the construction projects. Now it's over. Rhalgr's Reach is the capital of a newly liberated nation and in dire need of repairs - so of course it is going to be very busy!

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Regarding that...I feel like they'll do the construction at the Doma Enclave as well. Maybe more for story purposes though.

I'll be surprised if they didn't though.

May I chime in here?

I personally agree 100% that the world feels empty, but it still feels oh so very small.

The reason I personally think the world feels empty, is because you literally cannot interact with it even if you wanted to.

There are chairs you cannot sit on, there are huts, and places you cant enter, doors that are blocked off over and over, NPC's are extremely scarce.

I cant imagine its extremely time consuming or difficult to allow us to sit places, or swim in places, or just interact with the zones beyond just traveling through them.


I will say with 4.0 they did a much better job than 2.0 or 3.0. Which is nice to see. (In regards to wondering NPC's still cannot sit/relax anywhere though.)

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

What you've never seen the various retainers gathering stuff in the ARR areas? Heck people got a kick out of the various random NPC visitors to the restaurant in Mor Dhona. During the Make it Rain Campaign Seasonal event everyone was visiting the Gold Saucer.


The Attack on Highbridge, The Hive, Poor Maid's Mill (which broke) and Dataqi Chronicle FATE chains are what you are referring to.



These are Frontlines with 3 major battlefields currently: The Borderlands Ruins, Sealed Rock and The Fields of Glory.

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1. Do you mean those npcs out in the middle of nowhere with no name tag? Because I have never seen my retainers out in the field.

2.Those are not really as deep or involving as Besieged. The closest thing this game had was Hamlet which got canned. But it still was no Besieged.

3.I don't PvP much but if it exist there that's cool. I want PvE versions.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Remove teleport.

Not all teleport needs to be removed though. Just Leave about 6 major teleport hubs, like in FFXI. 1 in Thanalan, 1 in shroud, 1 in noscea, 1 in mor dhona, 1 in Fringes, 1 in Doma.

That's it. This will encourage people to use airships, boats, to access major cities that dont have teleport. And make those airship, boat, and yes, let's implement the Thanalan train , not skippable cutscene, make them real time but not too long. In FFXI even if you want to go to a major city, you had to do this.

If you want to go further, have only Healers able to teleport to encourage interaction between players.

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yes to this 10 times over.

I think it will feel empty for those who used to play other MMOs and play in PvP server. Because during your journey in the world , you will never feel that danger or excitement that you felt before.

This has been an issue since 1.0 shut down. SE is still gun shy to the point of paranoid about the OW, Sandbox concept. They go out of their way to crush it in the extremes. You would need 5000 kills to mob level from 60 to 61 and yet when you run through the world you carry a draggro everywhere you go, forcing you to keep moving at all times, never stopping to appreciate anything around you. Even combat leve, the ratio is 30:1 for leveling and has never been a true option in FF14. It's unfortunate.

When I was camping Ixion about a few weeks ago, I would sit there crafting, staring from Porta Praetoria across the Lochs and towards Ala Mhigo.

No airships or ground caravans going in or out of that city. It just sits there like it's Anor Londo, pristine but lifeless, surrounded by awful monsters. No signs of life from the outside. MAYBE it's on lockdown or martial law. Maybe there's a curfew and a temporary travel ban due to the war. Maybe it will change in 4.1 but I doubt it somehow. Right now it just seems...off. Other Eorzean cities aren't much different.

Kind of depressing. I wish the cities had more stuff going on around them like other final fantasy games (Lindblum, Rabanastre). Airships, caravans, travelers actually moving about. Maybe once the Empire is wiped off the map (or peace treaty signed), Eorzea will be abuzz with airships and ambient travelers. Again, though, not a lot of hope. This game can barely handle 200+ people beating on one boss without culling. SE has optimization to consider.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...threads/341847

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Originally Posted by Blackcanary

yes to this 10 times over.

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I'm not strictly a fan of teleport removal, but just to throw this out there:

In 1.x, Teleports were not linked to gil. Instead, they were linked to a slowly regenerating resource called anima. This made for reduced proportion of teleports overall, while also being more casual-friendly (or high-playtime-unfriendly, since you only had, essentially, x teleports per day/week/etc.). Additionally, teleports were more spread out, but there were also hubs alike to Souls-ish aether-fissures that you could make a home point. This allowed you to return relatively quickly upon death (more important in that mob camp grinding back then was much more productive, but with such activity came a higher chance of death), but meant that you were still traveling fairly large distances routinely, taking in the landscape. That said, more mission check-ins were also completed via linkpearl...

I spend a lot of time in the open world doing hunt bills, tribe quest, gathering, regular quests, vistas, treasure maps, leves even Fates if I'm leveling a DPS class. The content is there but force people to do stuff they don't want it's not a good idea.

They need more world content outside of FATEs (bleh @ FATEs), and Hunts. Hunts can be fun. Treasure Maps are nice. I also gather to get more out of the zones, but I'm sure SE could come up with more content to do out in the open world. So long as it's rewarding. And no, the sightseeing log is barely content.

Although it's arguable how good the content was, it was nice having things like Verminion and PotD added throughout HW. I'm looking forward to what they bring in the major patches throughout SB. Hated Diadem though. The areas were too meh and it started out as a chore/RNG exercise, especially after they nerfed it. What I want is to have reasons to explore the new areas they already added (like with Hunts), not go to more instances to do some sort of grind like Diadem. More things to interact with in the zones would be a good start. More solo content and maybe even expand Companion options some more to run through the content with.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

1. Do you mean those npcs out in the middle of nowhere with no name tag? Because I have never seen my retainers out in the field.

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Yes, I was referring to those NPCs. In several of the 2.0 areas NPCs wearing the retainer uniform will local spawn (spawning only on your computer/ps4) and act out various gathering actions (mining/logging/fishing/etc). They can't really do your retainers due to retainer data not being stored on your pc/ps4.

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2.Those are not really as deep or involving as Besieged. The closest thing this game had was Hamlet which got canned. But it still was no Besieged.

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Attack on Highbridge plays out pretty much like a scaled down (and more sane) Besieged.

• Attack on Highbridge: Prelude - Qirin attack the number of Brass Blades NPCs that survive the fate determine the number of generic NPC defenders during the subsequent FATEs.
• Attack on Highbridge: Act I - Qirin continue to attack now trying to destroy supply boxes and kidnap civilian NPCs. 3 named NPCs that make a lot of double entendre lead the way. All crates destroyed/civilian Npcs kidnapped is a failure any saved crates/civilians are carried over to Act II.
• Attack on Highbridge: Act II - Qirin notorious monster attacks. Must kill the NM while continuing to defend crates/civilians.
• Attack on Highbridge: Act III - Attack on Qirin camp to rescue any kidnapped civilians/kill the Amalj'aa mastermind.
• If Acts I through III are failed the shop at Highbridge has a very limited selection until the chain is successfully completed and a modified version of Act III (Attack on Highbridge: Denouement) must be completed to reset the npcs.

There you have it.

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3.I don't PvP much but if it exist there that's cool. I want PvE versions.

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Since all zones need to be timeline "neutral" that is not really possible.

And strangely most of those things that make the world feel more alive is part of a ARR. (Like the retainers and that fate chain)

Sadly this will not make the world feel more alive in the whole world.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Remove teleport.

Not all teleport needs to be removed though. Just Leave about 6 major teleport hubs, like in FFXI. 1 in Thanalan, 1 in shroud, 1 in noscea, 1 in mor dhona, 1 in Fringes, 1 in Doma.

That's it. This will encourage people to use airships, boats, to access major cities that dont have teleport. And make those airship, boat, and yes, let's implement the Thanalan train , not skippable cutscene, make them real time but not too long. In FFXI even if you want to go to a major city, you had to do this.

If you want to go further, have only Healers able to teleport to encourage interaction between players.

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THIS... is the one of the few things from FFXI that I wouldn't mind seeing exactly copied to FFXIV.

I can't help but read the title of this thread in Zenos' voice.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who did that? :p

Sometime I believe every game should use Gw2's system. All servers from the same datacenter send their player on the same instanced map, and when this map is full it creates a new one. if it's empty it deletes it.