Radical Game Suggestion: Shut down the Aetherytes.

Yes. Really. Hear me out on this:

Square Enix is already using every trick in the book to slow down player progression: Multiple kinds of currency, limit on how many of certain currencies allowed per week, low drop-rate on certain items and limit on how many items that can be obtained per week from most recent raid dungeons.

So why not slow players down in a more "natural" way?
If the aethyrites where removed from the game it would force people to move around the world at a much slower pace. We would have to start using airships to move between the major cities, (Who ever uses airships at all anymore after unlocking the aetherytes in each city? The airships just sit there unused), and we would be forced to use mounts or even the chocobo couriers. (No one uses them at all - I think there are people out there that dont know they exist.)

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Another benefit would be to have people explore and enjoy the world itself. Eorziea is actually quite beautiful, yet most people would be unable to find their way around just outside a starter city without looking at their maps. They have been in the zone countless times but don't know the zone by heart. In FFXI I could find my way from any of the 3 starter cities to Valkurum Dunes for example, with my eyes closed. I knew the zones by heart. Every rock and tree. And it was a journey traveling from one place to another. Something I really enjoyed and made the game so much more "real" to me.

There would be whining if the aethyrites where removed. Yes to no end. But players would adjust and come to appreciate Eorzea all the more in the end.

Just because something is "old school" does not mean its outdated.
Bring back the more engaging worlds. Give us back the illusion.

Thank you for reading this. Let me know what you think. (I hope devs read this too at some point... I'm allowed to dream, right?)

While I am not opposed to reducing - or even removing - the amount of teleportation done, a prerequisite for that must be that a large number of quests and questchains are changed/adjusted to drastically reduce the amount of back-and-forth required. Otherwise some parts would be just too painful. Especially the "Isn't this linkpearl nice. Now come back here so I can waste your time by telling you in person what I could just as well have told you in this conversation" moments.

And FYI - I use airships and chocobo porters as well as ferrys quite a bit. They are mostly cheaper than aetheryte travel, and reaches more places.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

While I am not opposed to reducing - or even removing - the amount of teleportation done, a prerequisite for that must be that a large number of quests and questchains are changed/adjusted to drastically reduce the amount of back-and-forth required. Otherwise some parts would be just too painful. Especially the "Isn't this linkpearl nice. Now come back here so I can waste your time by telling you in person what I could just as well have told you in this conversation" moments.

And FYI - I use airships and chocobo porters as well as ferrys quite a bit. They are mostly cheaper than aetheryte travel, and reaches more places.

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A valid point.
Yes the quests where you have to travel right across the world to talk to one npc and then travel all the way back again to continue the quest would need to be adjusted in my opinion. But then again SE only made them that way to make us waste time so changing them would be in line with what Im suggesting.

This is not a localization issue.

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Originally Posted by axemtitanium

This is not a localization issue.

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There's no suggestions option in the feedback head forum. Lots of other people use this one to make gameplay suggestions.

Sometimes I miss the days of actually having to go to content to participate in it. Like having to run to Alex if your wanna do Alex. Or goto insert name of that gnats place to do rav ex

I do also feel there's to much fast travel in this game. Especially in cities where you have mini aetherytes not even 15-20 seconds away from each other.

It's kinda sad when the only time I venture out into the open world at all is to do a spot of gathering or my scrips.

I think there's no turning back when it comes to existing content.
But I would want to explore the wilds of an uncharted continent far from Eorzea which has no aetheryte network established. This would be the island of old-school mmo adventures. A vast place with danger and no shortcuts. Rare monster drops, NMs, etc. Optional for the people who to play that kind of thing, while not interrupting the faster menu-driven teleporty, DF-popping Eorzea that other players enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Optional for the people who to play that kind of thing, while not interrupting the faster menu-driven teleporty, DF-popping Eorzea that other players enjoy.

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Until rewards come in and the once optional place no longer is optional.

You forget, right now, going the long way without aetherytes is an option - a true option even, since you don't even negatively affect other people by taking it. People just don't take it, because it's the less convenient and thus perceived inferior option. The same thing would happen if you turned the principle into a zone, provided it is truly optional and all the rewards can be gotten with equal efficiency outside of it.

Personally, I'm fine with the way it currently is. You do the journey once to get access to the aetheryte, then no longer need to do it. The 5th walk between Darnassus and Ironforge wasn't remotely as thrilling as the first anyway.

100% against this myself. The world of Eorzea is beatiful but slow travel should be a choice and not mandatory.
I do use airships if I'm already in one major city and heading for another. I sometimes hop on a chocobo porter for fun. However far more often I just want to get where I'm going. I would hate for my game time to be taken up by travel time especially for things like timed gathering nodes in Heavensward areas.

While I agree with people that say that it's optional to use the slower world travel. I think you are missing my original point: Not only would slow travel be more immersive, but also slow progression down. I would much rather spend my time traveling around Eorzea and thus not have to wait for latest tomestones to become available again after having capped them for the week. Or only being able to loot once per week in the latest raids.
I just think it would provide a more natural way to slow people down, instead of these weekly barriers. Not to mention the insane grind like 5 billion tomestones trades for that next whatchamacallit so we can get our next relic upgrade. Keep the airships and the porters. But get rid of the insta-travel that keeps players from enjoying the scenery.
Im playing Morrowind atm, and it feels so much more immersive playing having to travel to the nearest slitstrider-bus to get to the next town. And if I wanna travel beyond that I need to make a bus-change.

I would be okay with maybe not unlocking Aetheryte travel until later in the MSQ, but removing it all together would not be something I'd support.

If some major story event were to cause a specific Aetheryte to fail or malfunction, that would be fine, though. It might even be okay to have a story event temporarily cut the player off from the network at large, but I'd be a lot more hesitant to allow something like that, since if you happened to need to step away from the story at that point, it would be incredibly inconvenient to the player, which would not be good for morale. But I could see completing certain quests from patch 2.55 causing you to lose access to the Ul'dah Aetheryte for a while, for example.

Side note one: If your post runs over 1000 characters, you can get around the post limits by copying your text, posting with a short placeholder like 'post on the way', and then editing the post.
Side note two: This topic does not belong in localization. I think General Discussion would be more appropriate.

I would rather that they just made the open world more dangerous. Different speeds for mobs depending on their size, make them more aggressive and follow you for longer once you have aggro. The whole open world is too tame, we need more mobs like the toads that whip you back, maybe spiders pulling you back with their webs or snakes paralysing you to the spot instantly upon aggro.

You are right transport is pointless and that includes mounts the only purpose they have is to get to A to B faster. I would rather it be I need this mount to get from A - B safer.

That's an interesting idea. The thing is that the only reason you dont aggro anymore is because the mobs are 10 or more levels below you. They stop aggroing.
Back in the day, doing the beasttribe quests such as the sylphs where a pain as the whole damn zone aggro you when you ran around trying to do the quests. Now that we have lv 60 cap they all leave you alone, making the experience kinda lame.

I don't think the idea of certain mounts for certain zones would go down well as people would feel they had to get the mounts to be able to "do it right" for each zone. It would be the same as if SE made some mounts faster than others. People would feel obligated to get the fastest mount. (Poor fat choco would never get used.)
Im sure the new zones we get for the expansion will have lv 70 mobs thats gonna be a pain to deal with until we getmuch higher ilv.

i think instead of removing teleports completely they should make them instead much, much more expensive. nobody wants to walk from ul'dah in the dravanian hinterlands, but do we really have to teleport for every few steps? make teleport much more expensive, so that people will think: "do i really have to teleport?"

Sharlayans would ask this post to be taken down. It's an offense to everything they've done to Eorzea.

That could turn out to be interesting, but take a look at Black Desert. One of the first things people complain about is the complete lack of teleportation. What would be interesting would be removing some aetherytes and leaving strategic ones. I already make use of the airships and the ferry that goes between Limsa and Western Thanalan because coming from a third world country, I think every penny counts. Whether I'll use them or not depends on where I am and how efficient that would be against the teleportation cost. Sometimes I even ride my mount to some area to make the teleportation cost cheaper. Only times I don't do that and pay the 600+ cost is when I'm in a hurry, like when I'm hunting.

Since HW it feels like the game has been designed around fast travel. Maybe I have that perception because I gather a lot, but where I would often run from one area to the next it in ARR, in HW timed nodes make this impossible, hunts too, you need to get where you are going fast.
I wouldn't mind slower travel personally, but I know it's not something everyone would enjoy and I think you would get a huge outcry if you took a lot of the Aetherytes out.
Personally, I'd like to see a little more love given to ferries and airships, would love to see other players get on and off and interact with them like you do in WoW.

Obviously the people agreeing with the OP don't do hunts or timed nodes...

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Originally Posted by Griffey

Obviously the people agreeing with the OP don't do hunts or timed nodes...

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I earn most of my gil from gathering since I cant stand the RNG in crafting.
Yes them timed nodes would become troublesome indeed. Obviously a few things would have to change to make it work. The timed nodes would be easy to fix: Increase the window of opportunity you have to get to them and maybe include an airship route to a central zone, so you only needed to hike it for one or two zones to get to the nodes.
Another idea could be to take the timed factor completely out of the equation and just leave them up but increase the spawn locations so people would need to hunt to find the node itself. Once harvested it would respawn 30 min later someplace else.
This would force people to roam around the zones and not just zone in and stand in one place waiting for a node to pop: More time spent on hunting for node equals less time doing other things, thus slowing people progression down

I will use airships and chocobos if I'm playing a low level character without much money. I'll take a round trip for all the early level crafts that can be done with just the crafting guild supplier.

But there's things I need to do each day that would take far more time if I didn't have aetheryte access. Say I want to run all the beast tribe dailies for anima materials. That's travelling from East Shroud all the way to Western La Noscea, and several long and involved quests along the way (If I'm unlucky, South Thanalan will require me to reach the far eastern end of the amalja fortress for a fate that might not be there).

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Originally Posted by RogueDK

While I agree with people that say that it's optional to use the slower world travel. I think you are missing my original point: Not only would slow travel be more immersive, but also slow progression down.

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I wouldn't neccesarily mind Teleports being disrupted for a short time, HOWEVER as far as being more immersive it would not really be so. Teleports isn't just something included to let players go places quicker its an actual thing that NPCs can also do. Specifically its even one of the things that slows down Thancred since his re-introduction because without aether, he can't use the Aetherytes himself now.

As well I actually do still walk around, use airships and even sometimes the rental chocobos at times.

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Originally Posted by Dualblade

...HOWEVER as far as being more immersive it would not really be so.

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Yes SE is good at making sure their games have lore, that's one of the reasons why so many of us love playing Final Fantasy games in the first place.
It would be just as easy to make new lore why aethyrites had stopped working.
However the reason why they are there in the first place (not lore but irl reason) is probably that players today are just... I don't want to say lazy, but they don't like it if they have to wait doing things. They want to do whatever they login to do, and they want to do it NOW. MMO's today also seem to cater to players that don't play for long per session. Something I can completely understand.