What will be the next big traversal feature in 5.0? What do you want to see?

I did a sidequest yesterday, which had an NPC miqote sitting in a tree and i immediately thought being able to climb could add something to the game in terms of traversal around the world. I liked the thought of being able to sit in a tree as players. With Heavensward we got the ability to fly and with Stormblood our character learned to swim/dive in various areas. After the quest i tried to think about anything else, besides being able to climb. But i didn't found anything. What do you guys want to see and what are your thoughts about being able to climb?

My thoughts what climbing could add to the game:

• climb a tree and chill in cities
• have fights that require you to climb. For example have an fight lower and higher area to fight two bosses. On each floor one.
• Being able to make content like palace or jump challenges more exciting
• Add more layers to cities, because flying isn't allowed in them. Instead Square could allow us to climb.
• New gatherer options. For instance, climb a tree to get coconut

None?

Perhaps not the "sexy" answer, but I would rather they divert those funds to something far more productive than another niche travel option. Swimming may be a neat addition as it does make the world feel more real. Alas, it's both woefully underutilized; accomplishing next to nothing as a result. Better to spend their budget elsewhere, imo.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

None?

Perhaps not the "sexy" answer, but I would rather they divert those funds to something far more productive than another niche travel option. Swimming may be a neat addition as it does make the world feel more real. Alas, it's both woefully underutilized; accomplishing next to nothing as a result. Better to spend their budget elsewhere, imo.

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It did bring us spearfishing, though.

It's a lot more fun to spearfish than normal fish, IMO.

To be fair, drinking bleach is more fun than regular fishing n_n

Personally I hope that rather than introduce a new mode of travel, they do something to expand upon the existing ones. I would really love to have aerial or underwater combat (perhaps with separate abilities or only during specific instances to make the implementation easier) and generally more to do.
But I don't think "new mode of travel" should be a core feature of every expansion that has to be checked off the list even if there is no natural reason to add it. Flying made total sense in HW considering the size of the areas, their design and the fact that dragons and airships were central to the plot. Swimming in SB was only really limited to the Ruby Sea BUT it was definitely core to that area. It was my favourite part of the expansion and it wouldn't have felt the same if we were land-bound and travelling between islands and to Tamamizu and Sui-no-Sato was only done through NPC ferrying and loading screens. But do we really need to have climbing, low-gravity-jumping, snowboarding, burrowing or going to space if it exists only to meet feature quota?

...

Actually forget what I just said, on second thought, there's ALWAYS a good justification to have snowboarding! IN SPACE! @.@

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

None?

Perhaps not the "sexy" answer, but I would rather they divert those funds to something far more productive than another niche travel option. Swimming may be a neat addition as it does make the world feel more real. Alas, it's both woefully underutilized; accomplishing next to nothing as a result. Better to spend their budget elsewhere, imo.

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FFXIV has no shortage of players who subscribe purely for the sake of role-play. There's a financial benefit for the developers to focus on 'fluff' such as swimming, especially when you consider that the primary target audience - Japanese players - loves that sort of thing as well. More could be done with it, certainly, but at least future zones are likely to have spots to dive underwater for the sake of immersion and exploration.

Truth be told, I don't expect any.

In general, traversal features are relegated to the realm of "fluff", because flying exists and is always superior to every other traversal option. So any other option instantly falls out of viability the moment flying gets enabled and might as well not exist. And with straight-line dungeon design, you can't do much with the options there either.

And swimming was about the only thing people commonly requested even if it was solely for fluff. So unless another feature gets a good amount of wind behind it, I wouldn't expect anything.

I just want them to add flying into the ARR areas. Since you already have to finish the ARR MSQ to be able to unlock flight it shouldn't interfere with starting player progression.

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Originally Posted by era1Ne

Add more layers to cities, because flying isn't allowed in them. Instead Square could allow us to climb.

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This sounds nice. Maybe they can add the ability to climb as well as more layers to new cities moving forward.

Climbing? I dunno, that seems to be a thing with some open world games but flying takes the fun out of it.

Climbing sounds fun but I honestly wouldn’t trust them to do a very good job of it. I just feel like it’s far more complex than flying or even swimming and considering the lengths they go through to simplify the use of double mounts and interactive emotes such as /hug , /embrace and /pet, I just feel like it wouldn’t have the most streamline feel to it that many of us would like.

That, and I agree that there’s not necessarily any suggestion that we’ll continue to get new travel features going forward. Swimming and flying are the two big ones and they even incorporated diving alongside the former. Even if they liked the idea of climbing or something else, I feel like that there is a good chance they’ll feel like the effort and investment is not worth the pay-off, especially when - as someone rightfully pointed out - both features are under-utilised at present and serve little function beyond the initial hype and convenience. Swimming in particular could have been added a lot more to transition zones in dungeons and the like to mix things up and give them a fresher appeal but, as I recall, only Rabanastre and uh.... Sui... Sui-so......... the underwater castle dungeon bothered adding it, and very barely so in the case of the latter.