I miss the "dangerous" zone/area we had in 1.0

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to this when we get new zones or something like that, but my main concern is as follows...

The only example I can give is FFXI, since I never had the opportunity to play 1.XX, yeah I remember how exciting it was being a fresh player in XI and how I would try my best pre-20 to make it to Jeuno just to see if I could avoid the aggro and make it successfully to get to where my friends already were. But eventually in XI they made it rather easy to get around to so many different zones, purposefully avoiding many of the dangerous areas in zones, we got Outpost warps, tele/warp rings, tele/warp scrolls, Recall spells, ability to warp/tele others, Runic portals, etc.

Eventually if they were to implement areas like this, especially if on the other side of that area is a zone/outpost you need to get to for a mission/quest, they'll just more than likely give us some fast way of getting there w/o having to go through all of that aggro. Players will take the easiest path to get to an area, without having to fight their way to their intended goal. If there is an aetheryte, or some kind of new warp/teleport people will use it. Just my 2 gil on the matter.

I hope that with the expansion that we will see some really tough areas in the game once your at level cap and have great gear. The issue is currently we have out geared most open world content. Seeing an area with monsters with ?? for a level would be cool. I'd also support any idea for open world dungeons as well, that would require a full party if not an alliance. Not that all content should be like that, but I think it would be fun for those who want to do it. :)

I'm not sure where the line is.. Like a super elite mob would be a fun/different challenge, but would it really be difficult in an open world environment? Second coil is challenging not just because of the monsters but because of the mechanics. All of the bosses would be a cake walk without the mechanics involved. It works well in coil because you are in a space designed to contain the party and mechanics, in an open world it would be difficult to duplicate (I think, anyways).

I really hope they do add something like this, that would require a full party. But it needs to be more than just a tank and spank, so maybe instanced content is the only way?

EQ1 and to a lesser extent FFXI were fine examples of death penalty/challenging MMO's. New MMo's don't do "challenging/dangerous". For every player that enjoys challenging game play with REAL repercussions, there are 1000 players that want things to be as easy as possible and be given an illusion of great accomplishment (participation awards).

The business men at the big table realized years ago each player pays the same for a sub.. Would you rather cater to tiny portion of your customers or the vast majority?

This doesn't mean I have to like it. I greatly prefer dangerous, group enforced, death penalty game play with real risk vs reward. There aren't any MMO's that do this currently. If one opened it would be a ghost town with a very small niche of highly skilled, friendly, community driven, passionately loyal customers. Unfortunately while this sounds great, there are simply not enough of this type of customer to keep a AAA MMO afloat at current subscription rates.

On the teleportation concern from Yami, I don't think that the teleports were a bad thing in limitation. The trek to Xarcabard was a long and arduous journey that I remember fondly because I did it sparingly. Sometimes you needed to help someone get to Xarcabard for the first time, which is great because you make a friend, get to re-experience what it was like when you first did it, and see how far you have come if worse comes to worse. On the other hand, if someone in Xarcabard needs your help immediately, using one of a limited pool of teleports is far less annoying than trying to rush a maze of snow-ridden cliffs in a blizzard.

For those who haven't played FFXI, the trip to Xarcabard is kind of like the Final Fantasy equivalent of Frodo traveling to the volcano at the heart of Mordor. Only its really cold as opposed to hot, and the volcano is a castle with a demon lord in it.

Just to be clear: Higher-level areas with monsters matching a certain iLevel (let's say i80 or i85) by itself wouldn't be a bad idea (it would do wonders for spiritbonding as well as Chocobo leveling); however, the idea of planting dangerous enemies for the sake of doing so is silly. Designing areas that few people would want to visit is a rather self-defeating idea and would probably get a developer fired.

I would like to see this return, I really enjoyed the difficult areas from 1.0. It would be cool if they had some difficult areas with NPC characters that had something like group dailies that you would need to work hard at getting to and completing them.

Unfortunately the world is too small for these areas it seems like each section of each area has a landmark and are all closely connected.It would be nice if they could open up the world a little when the PS3 version dies down I miss the vast areas of FFXI. Maybe they could expand areas like the Sagolii desert.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

Designing areas that few people would want to visit is a rather self-defeating idea and would probably get a developer fired.

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see the list of things I put up on the first page. people will want to visit but it won't be everyone all the time.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I'm not sure where the line is.. Like a super elite mob would be a fun/different challenge, but would it really be difficult in an open world environment?

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treasure maps can be challenging.

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Originally Posted by ColorOfSakura

People look at FFXI with nostalgia goggles, sadly. They don't remember how infuriating those areas were and instead choose to paint them with "OMG THIS WAS SO AWESOME", when really it was just a bunch of players shouting at each other because someone pulled aggro and caused everyone to die and lose EXP.

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This isn't the kind of experience you want to go for. The one you want to go for is the guy who mines Ifrit's Cauldron and gets Adaman Ore when that was the only place to get it and you can sell them for 500k a pop.

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Originally Posted by Yamimarik

Eventually if they were to implement areas like this, especially if on the other side of that area is a zone/outpost you need to get to for a mission/quest, they'll just more than likely give us some fast way of getting there w/o having to go through all of that aggro.

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there shouldn't be any fast travel thing on the other side, these zones should really be restricted to strongholds like Natalan and all the important stuff (the rare nodes, NPCs, treasure chests) should be inside the zone itself.

there could be a super awesome lake with super rare fish deep in an extra high level of Sapsa, and you desynth the Fish for a bone that makes some cool furnishing.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

I'm sorry, but I played FFXI for years and I never saw people going "It's so awesome that everything in here can agro and kill me".

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I played XI since the JP Beta and I can safely say I also seen more people say they had fun going through zone because no matter how strong you are, something can still kill you than not because they realize outside of abyssea, they're not invincible god like creatues for 3 minutes.

Likewise I also seen lots say they hate how level 65 crabs will still aggro you at 99 even though they're pretty much just tickling you.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

there shouldn't be any fast travel thing on the other side, these zones should really be restricted to strongholds like Natalan and all the important stuff (the rare nodes, NPCs, treasure chests) should be inside the zone itself.

there could be a super awesome lake with super rare fish deep in an extra high level of Sapsa, and you desynth the Fish for a bone that makes some cool furnishing.

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Well see the problem is, you're banking that everyone (not just some) think exactly like you and will want to go there over and over for something. Gatherer's already can get by strong enemies by stealth, NIN will be introducing some type of stealth as well, see people will always find a way around this, and find the easiest route possible to get this done, or not visit it at all but once to either finish something up there or just to check it out. I'm not saying everyone would go this way, but some if not most will.

Like I said I'm not against it, but gating content behind hard enemies/areas for the sake of having hard enemies/areas really isn't the best development plan most likely, though I could be wrong. Just a thought.