The lack of open world end game content makes me sad.

If there is one thing I love about MMORPGS, is the open world and the feel of people being out in about in the open world (when you're done leveling). FFXIV really lacks this and honestly makes the game feel more of one of those town hub MMOs where all you do in run instances over and over.

FFXIV has this beautiful world, yet they don't even utilize it once you're down leveling. The one thing Blizzard did well with WoW with Legion (I know I know) was giving you utilize the open world and zones, with world quests, weekly bosses, PvP (I know this won't happen). The 180 the game went from WoD where it was standing in your garrison all day, to Legion that made people get out in the world and play was awesome.

I'm not saying open world needs to drop BiS gear, hell it doesn't in Legion, but for the love of god, please create content that get people out in the world on a regular basis rather then having people stand around in town or their house just using menus. Make the game feel like a World again, that's all I want.

Anyways, I digress. Thanks for listening.

I was thinking about posting about the design of Rhalgrs. It seems a little... too big and too spread out in comparison to Mor Dhona and Idylshire. Both those two also had a central platform type thing where you could people watch or see your groups of friends.

Rhalgrs kinda just feels like everyone is so spread out and I miss the platforms to stand on above the crowds! I know that comparatively a lot more of our community is hanging out in the housing districts now then in the end game area like they used to.

I gather and craft and am out in the world every time I'm on. I always see others out doing the same things. I see people out leveling jobs. I've been out leveling my jobs and doing fates and doing beast tribe quests I haven't finished yet. I see others doing the same. I often hop off my mount to heal people who are doing things in the open world. Not sure why you don't see them as we're on the same server.

I'm not saying more open world stuff is bad, well, as long as it's not as badly implemented as the ixion mount fiasco. However there are people out there.

I love to explore the world and take some pictures, and it's kinda sad how the design team put some much effort into stuff that people probably won't appreciate. Mainly because it's behind some forgettable side-quest or because it was completely unused. I wish there were some dynamic events using these locations, or special events that would take place there.

For instance: In the Lochs, there's 3 part FATEs that pop in the Tomb of King Manfred. Each FATE spawns a note next to it, detailing the chronicles of an explorer that ventured himself in said location. I really liked the idea. However, it's still a FATE. People reaching that zone are about to level or complete the story. There are many areas in the new maps that are barely used, and yet, they have a lot of neat details. It's SUCH a waste.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

I gather and craft and am out in the world every time I'm on. I always see others out doing the same things. I see people out leveling jobs. I've been out leveling my jobs and doing fates and doing beast tribe quests I haven't finished yet. I see others doing the same. I often hope off my mount to heal people who are doing things in the open world. Not sure why you don't see them as we're on the same server.

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While there is world content to do, there isn't an abundance. Think that's what the OP was getting at. The game could use more. Daily beastmen quests are great, but that's about as big as it gets in XIV. Hunts are a form of world content too, but hardly engaging.

Both Rift and World of Warcraft sprinkled special items throughout the game world for players to hunt down and discover. I feel like something similar would work wonderfully for FFXIV. The items themselves could include minions, special pieces of glamour, Triple Triad cards, orchestrion rolls and so on. There's actually a hidden NPC in Western La Noscea that provides two minions in exchange for items - but unfortunately it isn't embraced elsewhere.

I love wandering aimlessly sometimes. I find more Hunts to do than when I'm actually Hunting, and more people to help out at random. Then there's the crafting and gathering I do when I have stuff lined up to watch or listen to.

Then I go to Kugane and Reach where so many people just stand around, sometimes for days at a time until maintenance boots them., and where they more or less will remain until the next expansion comes out and we have a new endgame hub. (imo, the extra side of sadness is how many of these AFKers have houses with little to no thought given to furnishing/design, while so many active players are homeless)

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Both Rift and World of Warcraft sprinkled special items throughout the game world for players to hunt down and discover. I feel like something similar would work wonderfully for FFXIV. The items themselves could include minions, special pieces of glamour, Triple Triad cards, orchestrion rolls and so on. There's actually a hidden NPC in Western La Noscea that provides two minions in exchange for items - but unfortunately it isn't embraced elsewhere.

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I would like to thank that NPC, and the dev who put the NPC there, for the in-game nights I spent climbing Kugane's Hostelry. It gave me a way to help other climbers.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Both Rift and World of Warcraft sprinkled special items throughout the game world for players to hunt down and discover. I feel like something similar would work wonderfully for FFXIV. The items themselves could include minions, special pieces of glamour, Triple Triad cards, orchestrion rolls and so on. There's actually a hidden NPC in Western La Noscea that provides two minions in exchange for items - but unfortunately it isn't embraced elsewhere.

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FFXIV has some of that, it's just they tied it to fates. Orchestrion rolls, barding, housing items, minions, cards and more. It's great that it's there, but I think fates have worn out their welcome at this point. It would be nice if they took a page from FFXV's dungeons and did some neat things like open up secret areas depending on the date/night cycle with mazes and such.

The problem with open world content, is when you have 200 people trying to do it, its no longer "party" content, its zerg content. See hunts.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

The problem with open world content, is when you have 200 people trying to do it, its no longer "party" content, its zerg content. See hunts.

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They can phase it, the tech is there.

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Originally Posted by Rocco

They can phase it, the tech is there.

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So... Dungeons? Cuz that's basically what we have already. Cuz if you mean zone isntances, its gonna be just like ixion, people will go to whatever instance has the open world stuff respawned, it'll get zerged, repeat next instance.

The biggest issue with open world content is it's a one-and-done situation most of the time. Which means by the end, it'll be dead for a majority. Look at Prey Online, I have friends who are dying to get their hands on the Ultima Horns, but they can't manage to get people to do it with them.

To be honest, what we really need is the open world dungeons from 1.0 back again, or a similar system. I understand the importance of instances, as it helps to segregate people to a minimum, but 1.0 tech used to load each thing in chunks, wouldn't it be possible to return to using that system in order to implement open world dungeons?

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

FFXIV has some of that, it's just they tied it to fates. Orchestrion rolls, barding, housing items, minions, cards and more. It's great that it's there, but I think fates have worn out their welcome at this point. It would be nice if they took a page from FFXV's dungeons and did some neat things like open up secret areas depending on the date/night cycle with mazes and such.

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Speaking of day/night cycles, XIV also has moon phases, so it'd be interesting to see them implement them as a mechanic. People would probably complain a la 2.0 Sightseeing Log.

The problem with open world content for endgame is making it challenging without resorting to mechanics and design strategies no one will enjoy is very difficult. I'm happy with instanced challenges for endgame and what we have now for open world.

they could do it as in WoW and give all hunts (including a and s ranks) instant respawns and actual interesting loot to drop (minions, mounts, whatever), but let everyone just get loot once per day.

Maps will be filled 24/7 with people doing their daylie s ranks and stuff, everyone can get a piece of the cake and it wont be zerg content

it would be actually challenging, since smaller groups of people could try to tackle s ranks and get to see mechanics again ...

it would also help people to get the tiger mount in a more reasonable amount of time :p

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

they could do it as in WoW and give all hunts (including a and s ranks) instant respawns and actual interesting loot to drop (minions, mounts, whatever), but let everyone just get loot once per day.

Maps will be filled 24/7 with people doing their daylie s ranks and stuff, everyone can get a piece of the cake and it wont be zerg content

it would be actually challenging, since smaller groups of people could try to tackle s ranks and get to see mechanics again ...

it would also help people to get the tiger mount in a more reasonable amount of time :p

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wow wasn't always instant respawn.

Ixion dcing everybody all the time is enough open world content for me. Odin used to be the same way too. Foxy Lady is already pretty thinned out, I can actually see the mechanics she does now.

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Originally Posted by BigRed5392

wow wasn't always instant respawn.

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now it is and it works very well afaik

The problem with adding any kind of "end game" content to this game is vertical progression. It won't last long and continuing it means that much more work every patch. Devs have said adding more endgame gear sets per patch cycle in itself is a large work load (whether or not we agree on that is a different story) and adding content for getting that gear is another thing they have to work on. Hell they are using reskins of gear that become dyeable for things. They shoot themselves in the foot with this vertical progression and gear system but its not going to change and this is the system we've had since 2.0... Gear diversity on stats is another issue, even if they added some horizontal patches or more gearsets, stats are not diverse enough or interesting enough to play around with to warrant getting other gear unless you just want glam at any given time in a cycle.

Edit: I suppose there could be other rewards for openworld content like they have done with ixion, odin, etc... In the end though, this stuff is all fluff content and not on the level of openworld content that we are all expecting, especially the old FFXI players. I think those days are over.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

Look at Prey Online, I have friends who are dying to get their hands on the Ultima Horns, but they can't manage to get people to do it with them.

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Story of my life...

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

they could do it as in WoW and give all hunts (including a and s ranks) instant respawns and actual interesting loot to drop (minions, mounts, whatever), but let everyone just get loot once per day.

Maps will be filled 24/7 with people doing their daylie s ranks and stuff, everyone can get a piece of the cake and it wont be zerg content

it would be actually challenging, since smaller groups of people could try to tackle s ranks and get to see mechanics again ...

it would also help people to get the tiger mount in a more reasonable amount of time :p

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This is what I'm talking about.

Like I said in the op, it doesn't have to be about gear, but 'INCENTIVES' to get out in the open world and play, and WoW does this great with mounts, toys, achievements, rep grinding, ect. Not everything at endgame has to be about gear and instances, but just getting out in the world and having fun. It gives other types of content for people to do at level 70 rather then sitting in town or their houses playing a 'menu'.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

they could do it as in WoW and give all hunts (including a and s ranks) instant respawns and actual interesting loot to drop (minions, mounts, whatever), but let everyone just get loot once per day.

Maps will be filled 24/7 with people doing their daylie s ranks and stuff, everyone can get a piece of the cake and it wont be zerg content

it would be actually challenging, since smaller groups of people could try to tackle s ranks and get to see mechanics again ...

it would also help people to get the tiger mount in a more reasonable amount of time :p

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I have no problem with the respawn times or other criteria to make world bosses appear. I do agree though that random drops of minions, rolls or special glamor items would be nice to have in addition to the tomestones.

I agree that the open world is very dull after you are done with MSQ/Side Quests.

Coming from FFXI the one single thing I miss is going out into the world and looking for a "camp" to EXP at with a party and simply seeing others EXPing around you. Even though in FFXI this is rarely seen at lower levels these days, they are still present at end game due to people wanting to farm "Job Points" and Merit Points".

Now this is another thing end game would benefit from; being able to enhance your jobs and the skills they use or even just give your attributes a slight boost by accumulating certain "points". However, this does not help with the open world end game the OP is talking about, so I'll end it here and continue on with something else.

First this game needs way more open world dungeons/caves/tunnels etc. Places to go that you might get lost in if not careful. Again, I'll bring up FFXI because there are so many places I remember getting lost in or that were dangerous to run through depending on your level. I'm not even talking about the end game zones that many will remember. I'll start with the lowest of level areas Gustaberg, Sarutabaruta and Ronfaure. These 3 starting regions had many places you could get lost in right as you began leveling. For example, Gustaberg had Dangruf Wadi, Palborough Mines and even Oldton/Newton Movalpolos the latter areas mentioned would likely slap you back to your home point lol. You could even enter Bastok Mines within the city and end up delving into Korroloka Tunnel which would lead you to the Altepa region eventually, if you survived. I could go on for a while about the other 2 starting regions but I think my point is made by just talking about the area around Bastok lol.

FFXIV has none of what I spoke of in the above paragraph. There are no caves, mines, tunnels that lead to other places. There is no sense of exploration or even danger when walking through zones in FFXIVs open world. The closest you'll get to danger is when you're on a gathering class and happen to aggro something. Even then, what does it matter if I die? I'll just teleport back, fly over there again and switch jobs. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this game needs a more dangerous open world. When I first thought about "The Palace of the Dead" I was like "Is this going to be the first open world dungeon?" And in my opinion it would have been awesome to have it that way. A deep maze-like dungeon you can just zone into and not "queue" for. But of course not, it's simply a large semi-random instance.

Another thought. It would be nice if you could just zone into all dungeons in the game and explore them without the predetermined mob/bosses structure we are used to in the instanced version. Perhaps the bosses become NM/HNMs in the open world version? Maybe they drop unique items or items you can use to get other items? Who knows! These places could also be more flooded with enemies if anyone felt the need to go level there.

The above thought only occurred to me because technically every dungeon in this game is a the same moment in time. You get the quest to unlock the dungeon, there is a little bit of story as to what's going on in there and you go complete the quest by finishing the dungeon. That's pretty much the gist of every dungeon quest. But, what about after? When you've completed the quest and the threat is no longer. Perhaps when you finish the dungeon quest you unlock the ability to enter the open-world version? This version would be like I described in the paragraph just above. Differing enemy placement, maybe different enemies entirely and chances to spawn NMs and while I'm on this thought perhaps enemies can drop keys and you can find chests in these open world version too!

My god I typed a lot. Thanks for reading if you happen to! Lol.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

now it is and it works very well afaik

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Even the most recent expansion has respawn times, though they are usually only a couple minutes at most. I'll nit pick this a bit, though. Up until WoD, the respawns are still a couple hours for some rares, which are basically the equivalent of A and S ranks, and even longer for others (roughly 1 time per week for the Time-Lost Proto Drake and anywhere from weeks to a month for Aeonaxx or the rare seahorse mount, and over a day for most WoD rares save the Voidtalon mount which is a random portal in a random location every few days). All of those drop mounts. Some rares are only killable once in WoD content however and you can't loot them again. In current content, aka Legion, rares are a couple minutes at most. But, depending on where they are like, say, Argus, they despawn after a certain time and other rares pop up. But all of those can be looted more than once, though only 1 time per day. Once you kill a rare in Legion zones however (aka not Argus), they aren't rare anymore, and you don't get to loot them again unless they show up as a world quest. Such a system could work here, but they really are vastly different and don't see it happening. But it'd be nice.

I'm sad they started just giving you the whole maps opened up when you zone in instead of having to explore and fill it in as you went... the problem with open world dungeons is that while interesting would either be zerged for the loots or ignored completely.... I would like to see some open world hidden dungeons (a cave with vines covering that when your character walks up they can walk through the vines into the cave for example) filled with monsters and hunt type monsters that have a chance to drop glams or maybe a mount... obviously the boss would have random spawns inside the dungeon

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Originally Posted by Riko_Futatabi

Snip.

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Now I'm going to have nightmares about parties in the dunes fighting for a camp so they could level at all. That is actually the thing I miss the least about FFXI, and I still miss the game horribly (pre-abyssea). On the other hand, I really miss NMs and HNMs.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

While there is world content to do, there isn't an abundance. Think that's what the OP was getting at. The game could use more. Daily beastmen quests are great, but that's about as big as it gets in XIV. Hunts are a form of world content too, but hardly engaging.

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Whatever gets people out in the world rather than standing in towns or their houses on the daily making the game feel alive and an MMORPG. Doesn't matter if it's casual content or progression, just getting people out there would really help this game feel like a living breathing world.

Hopefully the closer we get to the empire, there will be some kind of city seiges where players can fight to protect small aetheryte towns and/or reclaim them for teleporting etc... These kinds of events are what draw players in, not fates. The reward for this is being able to teleport there which everyone wants idealistically. And make a seige by players require atleast an alliance or 2.

buuuuuuuut, we will probably just continue to see fates, turn in quests, and the same old since 2.0 cause that's just how it goes.

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Originally Posted by Mycow8me

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Pretty much like GW2. I liked these real time events. Losing a whole town because people weren't there to defend it, yet you have the chance to take it back as it's occupied by the enemy. They could combine it with some neat ideas, like that one FATE in the Peaks involving that slow walking giant mechanic spider. The world also need some specific spawn zones for some bosses, dropping loot and whatnot. There are several abandoned areas: Temples, destroyed buildings and some accesory layouts that could be used in the future. Not just FATEs. People are tired of FATEs.

There's tons of things they can do but the dev team needs to just sit down and actually get creative. We don't know what the server limitations are but obviously world events can occur using the fate system. Even if they stick to the fate system, the fate could zerg its way toward a town and then turn into a seige fate or something.

Hell, the more times a town is defended the town's aesthetics, blockades, defense could even improve and the next seige becomes more stronger. A battlefield that is always changing would be neat. Lower lvl players that are not capped could occupy cannons, turrets, etc to help participate.

Really there's so much they could do but we will see..

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Originally Posted by Lilseph

Pretty much like GW2. I liked these real time events. Losing a whole town because people weren't there to defend it, yet you have the chance to take it back as it's occupied by the enemy. They could combine it with some neat ideas, like that one FATE in the Peaks involving that slow walking giant mechanic spider. The world also need some specific spawn zones for some bosses, dropping loot and whatnot. There are several abandoned areas: Temples, destroyed buildings and some accesory layouts that could be used in the future. Not just FATEs. People are tired of FATEs.

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The meta map events in GW2 are probably the best use of this system. Gw2 just had its second xpac, and old maps are still full with people doing these events, it's such a great way to get people out in the world and do something other than raids or other instanced content. Plus, they can give decent rewards so people keep doing it.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

Now I'm going to have nightmares about parties in the dunes fighting for a camp so they could level at all. That is actually the thing I miss the least about FFXI, and I still miss the game horribly (pre-abyssea). On the other hand, I really miss NMs and HNMs.

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Dont need to bring this sort of content back (camp parties). But things like Campaign, Hamlet Defence, Besieged would all be welcome additions for earning exp while waiting for dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Dont need to bring this sort of content back (camp parties). But things like Campaign, Hamlet Defence, Besieged would all be welcome additions for earning exp while waiting for dungeons.

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I'd pass on the lag-fest of Besieged. Nothing more annoying than being killed by mobs you can't even see due to lag. Campaign was a lot of fun. I've never gotten to try Hamlet Defense. I pre-ordered FFXIV collector's edition when the game first came out but the computer I had at the time couldn't handle the game. Also, I'm in no way against more world content. I think it's a good idea as long as it doesn't end up being like Ixion.