Anyone miss that feeling of being an adventurer?

Choosing a much less...controversial topic for potential discussion this time. Does anybody else miss the feeling of just being an adventurer? Don't get me wrong, personally, I am still highly engaged with the main story line, and I am personally looking forward to seeing what comes in 4.3. But ever since 4.1 with Skalla, I kinda missed just being an adventurer. Sure, the story had a bit to do with Skalla, but I miss the feeling that we had before we got involved with the Scions, as well as ARR's Hard Mode dungeons.

I don't think the devs considered this, but ...I think they're missing some huge potential with the open world maps, in that they could be used for adventuring purposes. Let's be honest, most maps are only busy until the vast majority of the playerbase clears the first part of an expansion, then it becomes fairly barren. FATEs don't really do anything once players hit the level cap.

What do you guys think? Are the devs missing a nice opportunity to harken us back to our adventurer start?

I personally feel like we’ll return to adventuring and stop with what I’ll call the “Garlean Campaign.” Once 5.0 wraps up due to that being the garlean expansion. The new world continent lies to the far west of Eorzea and from what little info we have remains mostly unexplored.

4.1 was amazing in that sense. To have Arenvald go on and on about how this is what you're supposed to do, us basically taking initiative to do something (well it was Arenvald's idea but still), just going out with comrades and as much as you can in a dungeon, having fun, racing to see who'd reach the treasure room first... it was such a good storyline, gosh.
I think that's part of what's nice about Eureka, as much as so many of us being there is actually contradictory to the lore of the place. Running around, having to be careful, teaming up and playing strategically, but also to boldly go where no one has gone before (and lived to tell).
I think that's one thing we really lost with them going down to one dungeon every other patch, because it leaves us only with the MSQ story, or some other story-heavy dungeon (like Hell's Lid) instead of just interacting with the world at large.

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Originally Posted by Soupa

I personally feel like we’ll return to adventuring and stop with what I’ll call the “Garlean Campaign.” Once 5.0 wraps up due to that being the garlean expansion. The new world continent lies to the far west of Eorzea and from what little info we have remains mostly unexplored.

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Watch the Ascians stir things up and tie it back to the story there.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Watch the Ascians stir things up and tie it back to the story there.

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I mean it’s pretty clear that the ascians are always going to be a driving force behind whatever plot we do, no matter what but that doesent mean they can’t run off to a place Noones ever been before, forcing us to go looking for them.

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Originally Posted by Soupa

Once 5.0 wraps up due to that being the garlean expansion.

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Has this been confirmed anywhere?

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Originally Posted by Kohdo

Has this been confirmed anywhere?

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Don't think it has, but logically it makes sense. But then again, HW started with us dealing with Ishgard and that transformed into a story about us going to fighting for Ala Mhigo...maybe this expansion will throw a curveball by the final expansion too.

Reminds me of that one SB quest where the NPC (won't spoil) is like "hey, the war is over and you're an adventurer at heart right, want to come hunting a rumour of awesome treasure with me!?" and you're like "heck yeah!" and a few minutes in he's like "Nvm, actually it's all for a nobel cause again, here's a sad story and we're giving it all away and you'll be saving the realm."

Oh... :c

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Originally Posted by Kohdo

Has this been confirmed anywhere?

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4.1 and 4.2 have had heavy foreshadowing to this. We’re diplomatically dealing with the garleans now too. By the end of 4.3 we should know for sure what’s in store for us but I’m 90% confidant that 5.0 is ilsabars and the story we’re accustomed to will wrap up. (They’ve done an interview with Yoshida that basically says the conclusion to the 1.0-current arc is also all written and done.)

Mixed feelings about it. I like the idea of exploring things just for funsies, discovering the secrets of the realm and whatnot. But I also enjoy the fact that I'm considered for political issues, as I can see how things move behind the curtains. That being said, they could stick with all these elements for the MSQ, and create a full set of sidequests related to the Adventurer's Guild, where you can unlock misc. content and explore the world, giving these empty areas a purpose and exploiting these beautiful maps that are now dead.

There are plenty of ruins and places that are barely used for some jobs/classes/sidequest that are now forgotten and some places that were completely ignored. You fly over them and wonder "What the heck happened here?" or "What on earth is this place for...?". It happened to me when I was exploring Azys Lla... such a wasted map... SB made it worse. When you start exploring The Peaks or any map, really, you see plenty of unused elements that could give the world a more lively impression.

Part of the problem with feeling like an adventurer is that there is nothing to explore in the world. There's no hidden areas, no secret monsters, no open world dungeons. The trip to Skalla felt so refreshing because yes it felt like doing something that adventurers do instead of something superheroes do, it's fun to be The Hero but it's also fun and rewarding to be just exploring for the sake of exploring which this game has very little of.

In a meta sense this hits twice as hard for me since at this point I'm very experienced with MMOs so there's not much in the way of mystery to the gameplay or what's expected to happen. And probably for a lot of people too in the sense that we can predict perfectly what's going to be released next (outside of Jobs or dungeon locations sometimes).

And like Lilseph said above, there is so much wasted potential in the maps. So many ruins and locations that could be used for more lore or expanded to give the maps more depth but are most likely doomed to be merely footnotes that are discarded as quickly as they're noticed.