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.

We were only really an adventurer at the start of the game and became the WoL as the 2.0 opening storyline progressed. Hard to miss something we were for like, an hour or 2. I'd certainly welcome more exploration though and more incentive to do so.

I know that it would probably be too much work to balance the two and make it believable, but it would be nice if the MSQ was two-tiered; your work as the WoL, with the scions, doing the Heavy Lifting for them while folks like Urianger and Alisaie and Tataru research, and your work as an adventurer, in your own rights. If they cut out the side crap for the scions (we've got baby scions who can carry cabbages for grandma now, thanks) we wouldn't have as many fetch quests, and a lot of the dungeons and side content could be tied into your identity as a world-famous adventurer in your own right. Because let's be real - you'd have wealthy magnates from Ul'dah coming to you to get you to spearhead adventures into the wilds, you'd have scholars from Sharlayan asking for your help uncovering old ruins, people all over the place would want your help with actual stuff that a skilled adventurer would be good at. If they're good at giving you 'roadblocks' in the MSQ, i.e. "we know this is a terrible thing but we need to actually figure out what's going on, and our prized monster-puncher is probably not needed for this, we'll get back to you", it'd make sense why you'd have time to go out and actually do these other exploratory things.

It could be a woven MSQ line, where the scions show back up at regular intervals to get your help, or it could be a separate type of quest, a third tier, "Honor and Glory" or something. And it could be really broad and deal with all kinds of things. They could even tie all of the dungeon unlocks into it, except for those that make sense to be part of MSQ.

IDK. I just think that as nice as side quests are and all, most of them are so very unconnected and brief that you never really get a sense of anything exploratory, and half of them are still basic "kill 3 wolves and get us furs for clothes."

TL;DR: I loved the "let's go back to being adventurers" schtick Arenvald had in 4.1, and I'd love more.

Honestly I would like to see some future quests go back to some old maps from ARR and HW just because there are so many unused places that need to be expanded on

Eureka filled that hole to me. Too bad people just hate the content without even trying to explore it.

I do wish we'd get more stuff on old maps though. Explore the destroyed West Shroud, the Crystalized Southern Mor Dhona or anything really.

Honestly, not really. It is incredibly damaging to my immersion in a game when people only view me as an adventurer when I've literally saved entire nations, singlehandedly defeated gods, saved the planet and a whole lot more. When I play a game, I like it when the game itself recognizes my accomplishments. I haven't played many MMO's, but not many I've played openly acknowledge your achievements to the same extent FFXIV does, and that's really appealing to me.

To be honest, I have never truly felt the adventurer feeling in ffxiv. I always felt like I was being led by the nose. ffxiv's constrained map design strongly opposes the sense of adventuring and rewards are strongly against it too. Most rewards in this game are 'do x thing y times for thing'.

The last time I felt adventure in an MMO was in WoW or maybe a little in Wildstar. Here we are not adventurers. We are the fated warriors of light and it is our fate to be weighted down by duty.

Being the WoL and the stereotypical "chosen one" archetype is cool and all, but sometimes you just want to go and do your own thing for a while, do some exploring and such. Granted the story's kind of shoehorned the WoL into being a driving impetus on the revolution and all, not even to mention the Ascian shenanigans that'll inevitably crop up to remind us of the "chosen one" role, but still. I wouldn't mind at least having more of the occasional side quest or something that didn't boil down to "Oh, please help me with a chore" or "You're some kind of hero, right? Kill this thing/save this person/etc." and instead was rather like "so here's some rumors about something interesting. Wanna go check it out?" so that we have more agency as a character.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

Being the WoL and the stereotypical "chosen one" archetype is cool and all, but sometimes you just want to go and do your own thing for a while, do some exploring and such.

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I'll agree with this.

Being the allmighty WoL doesn't mean we can't help the common folk with their errands, imo. The WoL concept doesn't strike me as a cocky person that, because they saved the realm, they think they are the hot s**t and would put others down. Being humble is a great trait for a hero. Since the concept of time and events in this game isn't 100% realistic (stopping your mission of destroying the Ultima Weapon so you can kill some bugs destroying a random farmer's crops), it's not crazy to think that the WoL can participate with some adventurers or alone in order to discover and enjoy the secrets of the world.

Being an adventurer wouldn't stop you from being the WoL, as people actually ask you for help because of that very fact.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Eureka filled that hole to me. Too bad people just hate the content without even trying to explore it.

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At this point they really don't give people much of a reason to explore in Eureka. I do wish they'd reward people for doing so, however. It's mostly "there's these monsters here, and different monsters over there", not really much of an incentive to explore. Who knows, they may do just that with the next area, but I doubt it.

I love the feeling when you go to a new unknown continent and find out all the new information and places about it. So the travel to Doma was great in SB. The only problem: It again was done for the sake of getting help for a war and you had people that you know with you. It would be so nice to have an expansion that acts kinda as a "filler". Not just the next war or big world ending conflict but an expansion where the WoL travels to another continent completely alone. No other scion (even if I love Alphinaud as a character) with us, just the WoL. (They are still human and might need a break) This could also give a breather for all the other states that we helped. Let them rebuilt on their own without needing the WoL all the time. We could still get some information about them from time to time but at least half or more of it should just be us the WoL as an adventurer.

And maybe add more stuff to find in the new world. (And new monsters that are not just re-used from other places) We would be someone unknown in that part of the world which could also help us to finally get a bit of rest.