open world zones?

My only big gripe with this game is that the open world zones feel a little flat.
I kinda only feel like being there for the quest but once I'm done I feel no sense or need to explore the place.

What can they do to improve the place?

I want there to be more explorable space. I hate seeing a spot and not being able to explore it because of some invisible walls.

the fate system could be done better and should really provide more experience to level other jobs.

Like they should tell more of a story.

what do you think?

The question isn't what can they do, but rather WILL they do anything? Dev team tends to have an always look forward and rarely almost never look back mentality when it comes to content making. Blue mage is honestly the first real update to "open world" content aside from hunts which is standard with every new expansion since its conception. Remember companions? That "system" that allows you to level your bird and battle with it in the overworld? They haven't touched that thing since the lower half of heavensward release and it wasn't even an update to the system itself like new classes and such, chocobo colors. Aside from that there is NOTHING to do in the overworld other than gathering if you count that as OW content. :P

So back to your question of what can they do to add to it? Plenty I'm sure. Will they though? Lulkekerdoodles.

Edit: sorry I forgot about the maps rng gatekeeper portal into an instanced duty but does that really count?

Currently the main thing is hunts I guess, but not everyone has a reason to do hunts. You have to do a ton of them to get tome upgrade items so I always just do alliance raids instead. The two emotes are okay but take a long time not everyone will want to invest that. The mount speed buffs aren't that useful unless you're already going out into the world a lot.

One thing they 'could' do is make fates more rewarding siimlar to WoW world quests, but they would have to balance it with other things.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Currently the main thing is hunts I guess, but not everyone has a reason to do hunts. You have to do a ton of them to get tome upgrade items so I always just do alliance raids instead. The two emotes are okay but take a long time not everyone will want to invest that. The mount speed buffs aren't that useful unless you're already going out into the world a lot.

One thing they 'could' do is make fates more rewarding siimlar to WoW world quests, but they would have to balance it with other things.

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I'd really like branching fates that told a story like gw2.
And they really should provide more exp

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Originally Posted by artyport

I'd really like branching fates that told a story like gw2.
And they really should provide more exp

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We have those aswell.

There is a 13(?)-step FATE chain telling the story of an Au Ra tribe in the Azim Steps.

There is also a special FATE chain about a dragon called Darkscale in the Churning Mists.

...aswell as several other FATE-chains, like the one in the south shroud, the FATE-chains around the special HW- and SB-FATEs (Coeurl-Queen, Ultima, Foxlady), some in southern thanalan... I'm pretty sure I'm fogetting a lot of them right now.

There are also the sightseeing logs you can complete - special glowing dots you can find everywhere in the world that will give you some information about the place in your sightseeing log if you use the right emote and the right time. ARR is a pain here, but HW and SB are totally doable.

I'm not saying they couldnt do more (I'd like to see something like the hidden treasure chests from Diadem, for example - put them on a timer and make them indivually), but there are some things in place already - if you care to look for them

There's the multi chain fate in Northern Thanalan that everyone would do back in the day while trying to get a job to 50.

The thing with FATEs is they serve little to no purpose outside leveling (and even then the XP gain is marginal). Not only that but 'boss' FATEs seem to be mostly a once in a lifetime thing (You will be mine one day, fox lady!). Sure, you may call in friends or your fc to help, but chances are there's almost no one in the zone interested in doing it, or no one [else] in the zone at all.
As much as people hate on RNG, maybe adding RNG based rewards like currencies, reputation, reagents, or even gear would help incentivize doing them, similar to the WT rewards, and rank the rewards in tiers from easiest to hardest so an easy FATE doesn't end up giving something like an i380.

There are maps, too, that force you look around to figure out where the spots are. Unfortunately, those are moving toward instancing. I still wish they'd implement something more with your chocobos, but I don't know what they could add to make open world more enticing. Things that readily pop to mind, like world bosses in other MMOs, are already covered with F.A.T.E.s and hunts. There are F.A.T.E. chains with stories, and even some that change what happens in the map, like the one in Southern Shroud whose name is currently escaping me.

I also really want to see more focus on the open world, but there are probably limits on what can be done that we can infer from looking at what already exists in the game.

I like the idea of exploration but most maps are small. SB's maps are larger than previous maps and have some underwater elements but the devs still felt the need to artificially gate sections of them off and control the pace at which you could explore. I think part of it is because a single player with a flying mount can basically cover the entire map in one attempt and nullify any long lasting exploration.

Due to the above I think that maps should be built around the idea of interactivity. Let players interact with and change the maps, even in limited ways. Things like creating or destroying paths which can influence mob behavior and spawns, or areas that will trigger an event with a large player presence. If the map changes to remain unique over time, then even a small map has continuous exploration value. Players may have already covered a particular area 100 times, but if this area keeps changing, then there is a reason to go back.

We can combine this with revamped FATE's like you mentioned as well. Unique mechanics should be added to FATE’s to make them more interesting and challenging. Currently most open world mobs just sit around doing nothing until attacked or until they spot a player (for some reason ignoring anything else nearby). I would like to see FATE enemies that actually do more than just exist. Cooperation between mobs could be a start. Say that mobs in a FATE take a defensive stance when reduced to 50% HP and call nearby mobs to them for aid. This also potentially opens up a wider choice of tactics on the part of the players. Do you only attack one mob and have it aggro a large group for assistance or do you choose a few isolated enemies to fight initially in order to draw the AI’s attention to specific points where you may even be able to set a trap using the interactive environment?

In my opinion there are many possibilities for an interesting overworld. They just need to be balanced against the limitations of the game.

Honestly best thing to do would be to tie fates to some kind of currency reward used for unique glamors.(Not just the Odin and behemoth stuff)
Have more difficult fates yield more of the currency etc and have unique glamor trade ins for every area so ARR,HW and SB all have different fate currencies.
Adding tomes wont work because it would kill Duty finder roulettes.

Of course im not sure SE want this either though because of player congestion.
There's a reason Eureka instances are capped at 144 players.

I've been thinking they could revamp their leve system, such that you get a few mega leves (placeholder name lol). These mega leves will come with many steps (occasionally going across multiple zones) and some of the more difficult ones can come with optional steps to make the end part easier, for example a one leve might be an attack on an outpost and if you're going to solo it then you could do the optional content to gather more NPC allies (vs if you were going to do it in a group you might avoid that & increase the difficulty). These mega leve would have some very good rewards, but due to their limited nature SE doesn't have to worry about you spamming them (they're on intervals, you can choose when to do them in the week but you can't spam them forever).

These mega leves can happen all over the world and as there will be only so many a week with a decent variability in the scripting and structures that script can form from there will be new activities all the time. Things that happens in the open world, that wont feel too repeated from the last, with very high rewards, in a different location, every week.

Like picture the hive fate in South Shroud turned into a conquest/hamlet "mega leve" that can happen in many locations throughout the world, the fight taking into consideration where it takes place (what monsters you face, where and what you do to build up to the fight), many variations and steps that you could take to get to the final point (some optional some just being different because the script chose it). You could complete hamlet in the same area twice and both play out a bit different.

Another could be a far more personal and involved hunt, like picture the FFXII system and how that worked. You went to the hunt board, you talked to the npc, you figured out how to draw them out, etc. Draw that process out to a personalized just for you monster, with optional ability to bring trust/squadron if you can't bring friends (although the exp / gil boost might be lower then since you couldn't jack the difficulty up as high, it would however be very much worth your time). Sort of a BCNM experience, draw out your own mini-boss/boss like open world fight.

Anyway, if they had this global context aware leve system I feel that could help the entire map system feel more used. Since these are leve monsters you can spawn higher level than normal monsters in areas normally for lower level, in this way the system can take you back to old areas and still be relevant to your experience.

Perhaps you get one mega leve a week but if you complete challenge log based on leves you get an extra one. Such that the low tier leve system feeds into the high tier. Two challenge log examples: complete X leves. Complete 5 unique leve, each in a different zones. There are some decent rewards in some of the leves to be honest, they're just easy to ignore because there tends to be better / easier choices (but baking in the very high tier mega leve with a low tier leve makes the low tier leve extra valuable now as well).

Back before there was flying and there was just "one giant map" there was a lot more actual exploring to be had. Especially seeing that Aetherytes were few and far between, so getting anywhere took a lot of work. You had to sneak around certain areas because the mobs in your way were extremely high level and would one shot you if you took a wrong step. Once the game added on ps3 capability it took on the burden of restricting a lot of its capabilities. This made the maps much smaller and easier to navigate because of said restrictions.

Once Flight became available it was exciting and people were exploring all the time so they could see the new maps and what they held for us. As time went on, people finished their quests and had no need for those zones anymore, minus gathering or leveling other jobs. It is kind of sad because aside from /GPOSE, Gathering and Leveling there really isn't much left to do in the open world... oh and maps and hunts. I really hope that the devs will figure out a way to make the open world more exciting again, but to be fair, this is kind of the way it goes in a lot of mmos once older areas are well past their prime. If flying and teleporting wasn't a thing and everyone had to run everywhere or take airships and boats, you would definitely see more people populating certain zones as they run through, but those same people would most likely creat a hub that was more centralized to the current content so you would be right back in the same situation.

I think that "Limited Jobs" like Beastmaster could be a fun way to make the over world relevant again, at least for a little while. But only time will tell.

Because the server and the game isn't ready to keep a huge amount of people in the same map, so the only solution was instanced maps with a cap of 144 players. Potato servers.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I've been thinking they could revamp their leve system, such that you get a few mega leves (placeholder name lol). These mega leves will come with many steps (occasionally going across multiple zones) and some of the more difficult ones can come with optional steps to make the end part easier, for example a one leve might be an attack on an outpost and if you're going to solo it then you could do the optional content to gather more NPC allies

These mega leves can happen all over the world and as there will be only so many a week with a decent variability in the scripting and structures that script can form from there will be new activities all the time. Things that happens in the open world, that wont feel too repeated from the last, with very high rewards, in a different location, every week.

Like picture the hive fate in South Shroud turned into a conquest/hamlet "mega leve" that can happen in many locations throughout the world, the fight taking into consideration where it takes place (what monsters you face, where and what you do to build up to the fight), many variations and steps that you could take to get to the final point (some optional some just being different because the script chose it). You could complete hamlet in the same area twice and both play out a bit different.

Another could be a far more personal and involved hunt, like picture the FFXII system and how that worked. You went to the hunt board, you talked to the npc, you figured out how to draw them out, etc. Draw that process out to a personalized just for you monster, with optional ability to bring trust/squadron if you can't bring friends (although the exp / gil boost might be lower then since you couldn't jack the difficulty up as high, it would however be very much worth your time). Sort of a BCNM experience, draw out your own mini-boss/boss like open world fight.

Anyway, if they had this global context aware leve system I feel that could help the entire map system feel more used. Since these are leve monsters you can spawn higher level than normal monsters in areas normally for lower level, in this way the system can take you back to old areas and still be relevant to your experience.

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this is a great start. now we need the ability to climb slide and explore like botw. real adventuring not some fetch quest. find hidden caves, under water tunnels. hidden npcs that appear at certain times like majora mask. tie the relic behind that. find stuff in the world like other open games. ff14 open world is point a to point b and "fight" some trash mobs along the way.