Please bring back Exploratory Zones in Dawntrail

We must reinvent the Diadem.

Unironically. Original Diadem had it's issues, but those could easily be avoided. We already have the structure for successful, and importantly still relevant, exploratory content in the game. I'd like to see them take that structure and see how many types of content they can fit in it.

Mayhemmer, I completely agree. A big one I have been wanting to see ever since Anemos was actually the use of treasure maps in these large field areas, too. Make it so that killing monsters from the packs has a chance of dropping little maps that 1-8 people can go explore the zone for. What gets popped is targetable only by them (like maps in the open zones). The contents of the chest can range from exploration-specific things like we had in Eureka from bunny chests, weather-warped chests, drops from NMs (Yinyang and Skoll items for magicite, Cassie Earring, Speed Belt, etc.), eureka fragment(s), Bozjan coins, logo/lost actions, and even an item that can be traded back at camp to force spawn critical engagements, etc.

The more "micro" content you can do with a few people to full party inside these zones, the more people can feel like there's always something to be doing. You can do this while you're leveling up, while you're trying to pop FATEs and CEs, and after you've level capped, but still want to explore and farm different loot. I loved BA, but BA and DR Savage both have the issue where that type of "end game" - exploration content requires you both to gather a ton of people and sometimes only participate on schedules. Having small scale activities in there as well that offer similar rewards at a smaller and slower rate gives you something to be doing while you're waiting for the next BA or DR Savage run.

The other part of this is that the claims that Eureka and Bozja are ghost towns are most likely blatant lies. I haven't run around to all the data centers to check, but Aether consistently has a sizable portion of people in all 6 zones every time I go in. Just tonight each Eureka zone had 30-55 people, Bozja had 67 with 30 people in CLL, Zadnor had 72 in one instance with 28 in Dalriada and a new instance starting up, and a full group running DR Savage on a Sunday night. There's over 14750 member online in the Aether BA discord (can't see how many offline), so the myth of "no one likes this content" or "it's just a ghost town" are incredibly misleading. Meanwhile, the brand new V&C dungeon that just came out only had a single PF listing the same night when I was checking everything out. Certainly looks like a lot of people would rather do 2-4 year old exploration content during this content lull than the V&C stuff that's barely a week old.

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Originally Posted by Shadows_Arrowny

Meanwhile, the brand new V&C dungeon that just came out only had a single PF listing the same night when I was checking everything out. Certainly looks like a lot of people would rather do 2-4 year old exploration content during this content lull than the V&C stuff that's barely a week old.

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To be fair, how many Eureka/Bozja party finder entries were there during the same time period? Because, with a nearly 15K Discord dedicated to that stuff, why would anyone utilize PF these days?

Also, do you truly believe that the V&C content is the reason why you don't have an exploration zone in Endwalker?

When did I ever claim that the addition of V&C content was the reason there was no exploration zone in EW? I explicitly framed what I said as countering claims that exploration zones are ghost towns (which appears to be patently inaccurate) or that exploration content is unsuccessful if it were empty 2-4+ years after it came out (in my earlier comment: #120).

For instance, TeleraRistain said, "It wasn't long lasting, though. Those zones are ghosts of what they were at launch. And some content from them you can only do if you join certain Discords." Velkor echoed the same sentiment, "As has been said, one of the most critical points about developing this content is the one simple fact that after its relevance has passed it is a DEAD ZONE. Virtually no one uses it. A few discords and a few PF parties maybe, but to all intents and purposes it is empty." Some others look like they might have deleted their comments. And you see this general attitude all over Reddit.

In the bit you specifically quote from me, all I did was juxtapose two different types of content to point out that the accusations against exploration were more fitting for something like V&C (being a ghost town or unsuccessful due to unpopularity--if that's a metric people want to measure exploration by). The arguments people have levied against exploration content have been dishonest, hypocritical, and nonsensical. It's entirely fine to not enjoy the content. But that's different than trying to trash it with falsehood, double standards, or fallacies.

Personally, I think we got incredibly little in EW because (I hope and strongly suspect) the devs have been super focused on Dawntrail and setting the foundation for the next 10 years.

To your first question, are there discords dedicated to V&C content that would help explain why there are so few PFs? I'm asking, because I actually don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if there were. But from the FFXIV Collect website, while not a 100% transparent and accurate source of data (since people can hide their achievements on lodestone), participation rates in V&C content do not look especially strong for brand new content.

Additionally, exploration content is a very different type of content than V&C when it comes to PF. The partying up in Eureka and Bozja happened largely inside the zones. Sometimes PFs would show up outside to try to get a coordinated group for whatever task you wanted to do in an exploration before going in, but it was generally easier to just find parties in the zone (so I think people stopped wasting time outside).

It became pretty popular to set up DR (normal) PFs instead of using DF so that you could get people committed to using good lost actions. BA and DR (Savage) were obviously not very present in PF, since the (poor) design of BA (in regards to in-game grouping systems not built into the game) led to Discord becoming a standard to set up and organize runs of 48-56 people and provide comms. And that just carried through to DR (Savage). Personally, I wish PF was more utilized than Discord, but people got too used to that method for those specific parts of exploration content. Castrum and Dalriada were very successful, though, as people attempted to organize (and control) runs for those inside discord until it become abundantly clear it was unnecessary and a hindrance to simply working with the duty finder for CE's in the zone and coordinating with whoever got in.

A slide in the JP fan festival showed that Field Operations are coming back for Dawntrail! I see them wanting to bring a ton of content in the expansion. Hopefully they're not biting more than they can chew.

The good news dropped indeed! Can't wait to see what we're going to get :)