My opinions on Flight and world design in FFXIV and my reasons for quiting the game.

Firstly, I'm ready for this to be an unpopular opinion for lovers of this genre or the world of Final fantasy. I am giving my opinion as someone who normally does not play MMO's but really enjoys the dungeons in FFXIV but no other parts of the game. I first played this game in 2015 and LOVED it. But the complexities of the maps has increased 10 fold since then and FFXIV's dev teams ability did not rise enough to complement it.

I understand that unlocking flight in each area of the game only takes around 30 minutes, 15 minutes to do the quest, 15 minutes to find the Aether currents. However in many of the areas I have played in so far it takes an additional 30 minutes or more to get because of aether currents that are given by MSQ's vice side quests or are locked in parts of the map that you cant access due to the MSQ, ultimately intending for you to finish the MSQ in that area before unlocking it.

In most games I wouldn't be bothered by this since Maps are High quality making it easy to find your way around, or the maps are just relatively simple to navigate. In Final fantasy this is not the case. The zone maps in FFXIV are poorly drawn and labeled giving the appearance of "False paths" that should be there based on the map, but factually don't exist. The world of final fantasy is BEAUTIFUL; but no matter how beautiful it is, I lose my mind when I see constant issues of poor map design and knee high unscaleable ledges. I understand most people will grab my gripe with flying and ignore the rest, but the core of my complaint here is: Final fantasy does not do a good enough job designing their maps or parkour mechanics to justify limiting flight without the addition of some sort of guiding tool or parkour ability(I'm serious, even a simple thing like a higher jump or the ability to climb over a waist high ledge would fix 90% of this).
I would also like to talk about those MSQ's. The quests themselves are terribly boring. Fetch items here, kill mobs there, fight 30 some odd enemies while our unlimited mana healer protects you. Honestly, it seems like the quests are nothing but filler to get you from cutscene to cutscene. At any rate it is obvious where square enix funnels all their creativity. But this is forgivable, and I want to point out the unforgivable. Mob density in this game is absolutely insane. Before I started using stealth with a gathering class to help, I usually had to fight 10-15 enemies unrelated to my quest just to get to the location. On more than one occasion I failed a fight in a quest, not because of the mobs SE intended me to fight, but because of random mobs that got aggrod while I dodged an AOE attack or more frequently, respawned on top of me because the last guy to do this quest killed them before hand since it was the only way to do it without assistance. All of this combined just creates a grind to get you to put in more hours and pay them more money in subscriptions.

My ultimate take on this game is that the only thing that would convince me to play it without improvements on the previously mentioned issues is the ability to skip ALL of the story missions to include the current expansion so I can get to the dungeons I enjoy so much, but at that point I'm not even played the game. I would like to remind people that when I first fell in love with this game before any expansions came out I didn't have an issue with any of this. I only quit playing the first time because of work related things. But now, it just feels like Square Enix has bitten off more than they can chew and released an inferior product aimed only at people that want to watch cutscenes and fall in love with the lore.

I would probably disagree with you on just about everything you said. As far as the questing goes though, the only tedious part I can possibly imagine is going through the ARR post launch content. But I wish you luck should you decide to quite the game completely. It just might not be for you and that's totally fine.

I can't really agree on flight, but I have complained that zones are basically mob farms since SE moved away from ARR design. (I really miss the way they made the zones in ARR. I still walk through them because they feel like a world.)

But, yeah, half the quests in this game are go here to see this to go there to see that, when they could just have easily put those npcs in the same place. Or had some kind of courier send that message. We're the Warrior of Light, ffs! We have better things to do than be someones messenger. It really is just to pad time.

Sad to see you go, but hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere!

One thing I could see them doing over time is delinking the amount of Aether current unlocked via flight in say Heavenswards but keeping the Aether current. Honestly...... just unlock it since it is like 2 expansions old. There is a compromise here over time.

Flight should require completion of the MSQ in that area, because you only get the on-foot experience once and it's nice. Being able to fly would allow you to see parts of the map that give away what happens in the story. There just are parts of the maps that make it pretty obvious they are involved and give clues to what happens ahead of time.

You can collect the aether currents by pressing the compass on the way to each quest task and complete sidequests while doing main quests nearby and this makes it very efficient and painless. I have done it on multiple alts and it does remove the pain of collecting them most of the time.

The invisible walls and unclear maps are annoying but this issue is quickly eliminated by flying really.

You said quests require you to kill 30 enemies. That is true in other MMOs, but in FFXIV you are only asked to kill 3 enemies on average. I found this a big reason for me to play this game actually. More than 3 is about where you start to get bored and it becomes grindy.

Yes the game is mostly full of cut scenes, but those cut scenes give context to the dungeons, trials and raids that you do, making them more enjoyable and have more fun mechanics.

You complained about fighting enemies on a gathering class. I found that to be part of the fun of a gatherer - that you had to avoid enemies. As you said, they did change it because they listen to player feedback.

As you have said the story and cut scenes are a big part of this game. It's a story-driven game and that's not for everyone. If you did buy a skip as you seem to have implied, getting through Shadowbringers isn't that hard. I've skipped through shadowbringers on multiple alts. Just spend a weekend doing it and it's out of the way.

Dude people only care about the actual content. No one visits old areas unless they're doing maps.

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

One thing I could see them doing over time is delinking the amount of Aether current unlocked via flight in say Heavenswards but keeping the Aether current. Honestly...... just unlock it since it is like 2 expansions old. There is a compromise here over time.

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I have a pal who's just hit Shadowbringers.
Today I realized that while trying to play catchup one of the many things they've neglected is unlocking flight as they move through areas, even though they feel limited and hampered by being stuck on the ground.
I wonder if they couldn't also make it so old expacs unlock entirely through MSQ, just like ARR flight does.


Also, OP, sorry to see you go.
I hope you find satisfaction wherever things take you next.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I can't really agree on flight, but I have complained that zones are basically mob farms since SE moved away from ARR design. (I really miss the way they made the zones in ARR. I still walk through them because they feel like a world.)

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I really miss ARR style zones too, when you saw a building it was an actual building you could go in, some with npcs inside and all, but pretty much every single "building" in SB for example, is just a giant cube with a paintover, and that really kills the illusion of it being an open world rather than just a stage.

As for the aether currents, they're a joke compared to "complete every single quest in every single zone, get exalted reputation with several factions, complete like 100 fates, and complete this ~3 months long, time gated questline, and when if you're all done, wait for like a whole year till we unlock the feature anyways"

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Flight should require completion of the MSQ in that area, because you only get the on-foot experience once and it's nice.

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I could disagree with this. The on foot experience in FF14 boils down to Talk to Guy 1, Guy 1 sends you to Guy 2, Guy 2 can't help but he knows a Guy 3 who can, Guy 3 sends you to a purple goop ring and you fight two mobs, Guy 3 sends you back to Guy 1. Sometimes the Guys send you to an actual fight and you fight a Primal that gets stomped on in 2 minutes. MSQ in a nutshell.

Also there's a nude Y'shtola every once in a while, I'm also taking bets on if we'll get a scene like that in Endwalker.

Kind of sounds like a love it or hate it situation; and if a person dislikes something down to it's core design philosophies, no amount of debating is going to convince that person otherwise.

So long @cbaitfist , I hope you enjoy your ventures in other lands!

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

One thing I could see them doing over time is delinking the amount of Aether current unlocked via flight in say Heavenswards but keeping the Aether current. Honestly...... just unlock it since it is like 2 expansions old. There is a compromise here over time.

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Didn't they say they're lowering the amount of aethercurrents needed for flight in Heavensward and possibly Stormblood once Endwalker rolls around? Or am I just insane.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I can't really agree on flight, but I have complained that zones are basically mob farms since SE moved away from ARR design. (I really miss the way they made the zones in ARR. I still walk through them because they feel like a world.)

But, yeah, half the quests in this game are go here to see this to go there to see that, when they could just have easily put those npcs in the same place. Or had some kind of courier send that message. We're the Warrior of Light, ffs! We have better things to do than be someones messenger. It really is just to pad time.

Sad to see you go, but hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere!

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I completely agree. I think that for Endwalker I should stand in the solar in the Rising Stones, where they tell me the entirety of the expansion's story, without me having to go anywhere. I've no desire to see new maps, no desire to go on an adventure, I don't want to be given any reason to leave the safety of the Rising Stones. Thal's balls I'm a Warrior of Light damn it, not some.. some.. adventurer!

Ehh while i think its a anoying thing to unlock currents in the zone by zone but its hardly a reason to quit the game.
I smell bait.

FFXIV open world sucks so you aren't wrong with the thread.

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Originally Posted by Jin-

FFXIV open world sucks so you aren't wrong with the thread.

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Sucks? Nah. Could use some spicing up? Of course.

Considering that dungeons were reduced in SHB and SB compared to HW and ARR. Dungeons are still great but lower in number. I do believe Aether currents are a waste of time and should just be linked to MSQ completion.

But its not worth quitting over. There are far greater dungeons and spaces that cover amazing areas like the alliance raids from Bozja and the Ivalice raids.

OP is complaining about aether currents in HW yet we did not even have flight in ARR in 2015...

Flying was a mistake. Walk on the ground like gravity intended, you godless heathens.

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Originally Posted by Erendis

OP is complaining about aether currents in HW yet we did not even have flight in ARR in 2015...

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Yep. I always took the choco porter to Gerolt at Fallgourd Float back then. Maybe the OP needs to do that more often.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

I can't really agree on flight, but I have complained that zones are basically mob farms since SE moved away from ARR design. (I really miss the way they made the zones in ARR. I still walk through them because they feel like a world.)

But, yeah, half the quests in this game are go here to see this to go there to see that, when they could just have easily put those npcs in the same place. Or had some kind of courier send that message. We're the Warrior of Light, ffs! We have better things to do than be someones messenger. It really is just to pad time.

Sad to see you go, but hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere!

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Agree. But it is the way with MMOs. They just do not have the same amount of time and planning to implement on xpac what they had for the initial product. So usually the first initial launches of mmos tend to have bigger immersive worlds than subsequent xpacs.

Gridania Forest is still sooooo nice to travel though. I sometimes travel on the ground when I am passing thru it just to enjoy the forest complete with sounds of birds etc. :)

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

Didn't they say they're lowering the amount of aethercurrents needed for flight in Heavensward and possibly Stormblood once Endwalker rolls around? Or am I just insane.

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They did say they were going to make adjustments on some of the older aether currents though I don't think they were specific on what type of adjustment. Removing them would be the simple solution, of course.

Personally, the only zone I found annoying was Lochs. I have no idea what they were thinking when they were placing most of those.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Flying was a mistake. Walk on the ground like gravity intended, you godless heathens.

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I'm perfectly fine being restricted to the ground while working on the MSQ for that zone. Being on the ground feels like part of that story.

I'm not fine being restricted to the ground when the story has moved on and the only reason left to return to the zones is the repetitive side content. That's just wasting the player's time. They're not getting any benefit from it. They're not seeing anything they haven't already seen before.

It does not make things more fun.

Restricting flying in WoD was one of the ways WoW started going totally wrong. It made already boring end game grinds even more boring and time consuming. It makes things less fun.

It's not a coincidence that I picked up FFXIV for the first time as SE was getting ready to add flying for the first time in its new zones while at the same time Blizzard was getting ready to stop adding flying new zones in WoW. SE showed that they appreciate players value their time. Blizzard didn't not and still does not.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Restricting flying in WoD was one of the ways WoW started going totally wrong. It made already boring end game grinds even more boring and time consuming. It makes things less fun.

It's not a coincidence that I picked up FFXIV for the first time as SE was getting ready to add flying for the first time in its new zones while at the same time Blizzard was getting ready to stop adding flying new zones in WoW. SE showed that they appreciate players value their time. Blizzard didn't not and still does not.

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Part of why WoD restricted flying was because Draenor was half-finished and they were hoping nobody would notice if they couldn't fly over and take a look. I remember using a water-walking mount and taking a look around the coasts, and running into invisible walls all over the place to keep players out of places they hadn't gotten to yet. It was just one of many ways that WoD was such a gigantic mess.

Then Blizzard talked about no flying at all going forward, and got such huge backlash over it that they just made it stupidly convoluted to unlock it instead. Then they doubled down on it in Legion, and then I quit the game so I dunno how it went from there, but I've heard nothing positive.

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

Didn't they say they're lowering the amount of aethercurrents needed for flight in Heavensward and possibly Stormblood once Endwalker rolls around? Or am I just insane.

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Yeah, I remember that as well. From what I understood at the time is that they are removing aether currents entirely, which would be good. IMO flight should be automatically unlocked when you complete the last quest of a zone.


It would be exciting to have one less chore to complete when making new characters, and for new players. I know so many people that are in the endgame and still can't fly in multiple areas. I usually ferry them arround to get aether currents when I discover they haven't done it, but it would be nice to have flight enabled for everyone. ARR made it really easy since you unlock flying just by completing the end of 2.0's MSQ.

I always liked collecting the Aether Currents. I liked exploring the map a bit off the ways and get familiar with the environment. I think that was the way SE wanted you to get to see (almost) every corner of the map at least once. When flying would be unlocked immediatly, there might be places you would otherwise never see because you have no business to do there.

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Originally Posted by cbaltfist

Mob density in this game is absolutely insane. Before I started using stealth with a gathering class to help, I usually had to fight 10-15 enemies unrelated to my quest just to get to the location. On more than one occasion I failed a fight in a quest, not because of the mobs SE intended me to fight, but because of random mobs that got aggrod while I dodged an AOE attack or more frequently, respawned on top of me because the last guy to do this quest killed them before hand since it was the only way to do it without assistance. All of this combined just creates a grind to get you to put in more hours and pay them more money in subscriptions.

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You know, there used to be a time when MMOs had open worlds where your character could potentially get KO/killed by mobs. Ya'll spoiled anymore.

As for flying in general, I'm mixed. Huge time saver so I'll never be completely against it, but the flight mechanic really ruined the feel and depth of some zones. Fairly recently I was leveling BLU for example (the only time you actually level in open world), and completely forgot what an amazing and actually fairly sized place I was in.

Think the bigger crime here is there's nothing in game to make the time traveling from A to B worth it.

Maybe it's partly because of remember WoW time gating flying unnecessarily in its later expansions, but I really don't see the aether currents as a big deal unless you're doing multiple alts and repeating the process over and over. And the exporation/side quests ones are easily done as you do the msq in a zone. So I just struggle to see anything overly difficult or annoying about unlocking the ather currents with a couple of specific exceptions like in the Lochs where you have to traverse half the zone to loop around to where the current actually is. But those are few and far between.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Part of why WoD restricted flying was because Draenor was half-finished and they were hoping nobody would notice if they couldn't fly over and take a look. I remember using a water-walking mount and taking a look around the coasts, and running into invisible walls all over the place to keep players out of places they hadn't gotten to yet. It was just one of many ways that WoD was such a gigantic mess.

Then Blizzard talked about no flying at all going forward, and got such huge backlash over it that they just made it stupidly convoluted to unlock it instead. Then they doubled down on it in Legion, and then I quit the game so I dunno how it went from there, but I've heard nothing positive.

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Tanaan had nothing to do with why we didn't have flying at the start of WoD. The no fly decision was made before the expansion was even announced at Blizzcon 2013 (we were told then we weren't going to have it).

We didn't get flying because a faction among the senior lead developers didn't want us to have flying.

Tanaan was delayed because a couple of months after Blizzcon they chose to make garrisons a central component to the expansion instead of optional content as originallyl announced. Tom Chilton said as much in a couple of interviews at Gamescon 2014. Farahlon was cut because they had to make a choice between and Tanaan once they could move developers back to things other than garrisons. Tanaan was already attached to the main continent while Farahlon was just an island. Rumor was the Shattrath raid got axed alongside Farahlon because the story was heavily tied to it but I don't think that was ever denied or confirmed.

If you think getting flight in FFXIV is hard, you obviously have never played WoW.

unlocking flight there is worse than painful, its full time employment. running around and finding the currents and having to complete a couple quests is remarkably simple.

only if they had us complete every side quest in a zone, max all the beast tribe reputations, complete EX's and Savages, and sacrifice small animals in your back yard would it be even remotely like the other game. count yourself lucky.
that said, enjoy where ever you end up and I hope it fits your playstyle better

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Originally Posted by Garet

Agree. But it is the way with MMOs. They just do not have the same amount of time and planning to implement on xpac what they had for the initial product. So usually the first initial launches of mmos tend to have bigger immersive worlds than subsequent xpacs.

Gridania Forest is still sooooo nice to travel though. I sometimes travel on the ground when I am passing thru it just to enjoy the forest complete with sounds of birds etc. :)

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I'd have to disagree. ESO and WoW continue to make worlds with just as much detail, and sometimes more. I have described the world design of FFXIV from SB onward as what the world staging looked like in Perfect World. They can, they just don't.

I love the way flight works in this game, although sometimes it is hard to find the sidequests that unlock aether currents. If they did away with that and just had you find the aether currents and finish the zone story I think that would be fine.

Although I have to disagree with the original post. FFXIV zones are very easy to navigate. There are usually well define paths that are free of most aggressive mobs, so even if you do get "lost" it's easy to get back on track. I don't even really feel like I "need" flying, although it's nice to have.

I have no problem with aether currents. I actually think they are a pretty neat mechanic for enabling flying. They aren't that hard to find and sort of ensures that people actually explore the land before taking to flight. First thing I do when entering a zone with my alts is to round them up along with attuning to all main aethers in a zone. Quest based ones will take more time because those are pretty much story based in order to acquire and do them.

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Originally Posted by Wasselin

I love the way flight works in this game, although sometimes it is hard to find the sidequests that unlock aether currents. If they did away with that and just had you find the aether currents and finish the zone story I think that would be fine.

Although I have to disagree with the original post. FFXIV zones are very easy to navigate. There are usually well define paths that are free of most aggressive mobs, so even if you do get "lost" it's easy to get back on track. I don't even really feel like I "need" flying, although it's nice to have.

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It shouldn't be a problem finding the aether current quests as long as you have the quest hub areas uncovered on the world map. The ones that aren't part of the MSQ now have the blue unlock icon so you just need to check your world map to see where they are.