What happened to sightseeing?

The arr sightseeing is a bit of a headache from time to time because of the vague description but the one in HW and I presume onward simply makes no effort in hinting you what are you suppose to emote and where to. Why did they butcher the sightseeing feature like that?

A bit of a headache? Proper location, weather, time of day. That’s a lot of making sure the stars align and you aren’t busy when they do. Much more accessible the way it’s handled now

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Originally Posted by LitheSuxman

The arr sightseeing is a bit of a headache from time to time because of the vague description but the one in HW and I presume onward simply makes no effort in hinting you what are you suppose to emote and where to. Why did they butcher the sightseeing feature like that?

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We don't need 2nd fisher only for a painting...

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Originally Posted by Kolaina

A bit of a headache? Proper location, weather, time of day. That’s a lot of making sure the stars align and you aren’t busy when they do. Much more accessible the way it’s handled now

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That's also true. Though I think this sightseeing mechanic makes no sense, you are no longer reading the journal for hints of the location, you simply stop by wherever has a glowing dot and try different emotes if not /lookout most of the time. I much prefer the way they introduced it in ARR.

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

We don't need 2nd fisher only for a painting...

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Good to know that it gives you collectable items. I do sightseeing for lores, maybe why I enjoy the arr sightseeing more, not necessarily the weather and time part though. The fact that they discontinued the effort in hinting the locations they did in arr's sightseeing make it less interesting to find, because your only way to find them without looking up on the internet is to fly around aimlessly and hope to find a shiny spot. It simply makes no sense to the original quest that gives you the sightseeing log.

It’s not difficult nor do you need to fly aimlessly. Just look at what feature stands out in the zone and you’ll find the glowing orb. They aren’t random. They are usually in points of interests.

Starting in Stormblood, there are some locked behind jumping puzzles, in non-flyable zones, in a game not designed for jumping puzzles. So it’s not like they completely did away with difficulty.

One thing I noticed though is that Shadowbringers’ achievement for sightseeing has a Roman numeral “I” as if they planned to do a second series like with Stormblood but never got to it. Endwalker has no numeral so I guess what we got at release is what we’re getting.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Starting in Stormblood, there are some locked behind jumping puzzles, in non-flyable zones, in a game not designed for jumping puzzles. So it’s not like they completely did away with difficulty.

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If you do the jumping puzzles often enough, you start to enjoy them! And it's totally not a sign of insanity!

*small eye twitch*

The ARR Sightseeing log was kind of a mess, as you needed to find the correct spot and have the time of day and weather to align to get the log done.

HW onwards they mostly just removed the time and weather requirements, and started adding those glowing blue orbs to signify where you need to stand for them.


Then Stormblood, they made the ones in cities behind jumping puzzles.

Not to take away from those who did the Kugane Tower, it is a challenge, but I really wish that got an adjustment, I think that is an example of a good desire but quite a few spots that are poor execution. Way too much whacking your head on stuff that you don't actually see, toes standing on things that don't exist.. Accidentally or purposefully, it feels to me frustrating but for no particular gain (imo lol). Meanwhile their golden saucer puzzles I feel have gotten better and are generally just great fun (even the originals I have fun with, though they're a bit short).

An aether compass for logs might be nice (maybe going hazy in details once you're within a certain sphere). Though the ones that have time, weather, unknown emote, or previous 21-80 unlocked first... could also use some sort of love.

Personally I think when you get to an area you should get an echo eagle eye (Assassins Creed) type event, where it will go to the time and weather that the dev thought would be interesting and also give you the angle in a nice panning shot (doesn't need to be a circle like the eagle system, just panning over and around whatever was meant to be interesting).

More to the system itself might also be fun, like sometimes you get to a view point and you fight some mini-notorious monster, do one of those dancing or singing mini games (that SE has used), does a sort of GW2 jumping puzzle system, etc (not Kugane Tower type of frustrating, at least personally I consider that more on the annoying side than the fun side, meanwhile their saucer puzzles are quite fun to me, though I wouldn't mind more stuff going on and perhaps some check points.. again can reference GW2 too). Maybe bigger exp reward and or poetics even.

Mostly tangential but semi-relating also add points of interest that do stuff, like a cavern with a wind stone in it and when there are gust weather you can interact with the stone to get a semi-long lasting buff to sprint (duration, speed, cooldown). Sight seeing log then occasionally touching upon the "interactivity" of the world. Like that stone, or perhaps a majestic view filling your character with hope causing them to get a regen buff that doubles when out of combat. Can be fun stuff, jump speed, temporary item that transforms you, etc, and for balance they can not work in instanced content (or at least synced content).

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Originally Posted by Kolaina

Much more accessible the way it’s handled now

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Except for the ones that require jumping puzzles. Which inevitably means you can't buy paintings from the vendor in idyllshire if you don't have the manual dexterity/perfect aim for every jump needed to complete them.

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Originally Posted by LitheSuxman

The arr sightseeing is a bit of a headache from time to time because of the vague description but the one in HW and I presume onward simply makes no effort in hinting you what are you suppose to emote and where to. Why did they butcher the sightseeing feature like that?

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It doesn't include the hint because they stopped bothering with time/weather/emote conditions. Every single one has 100% uptime, they all have a little sparkly ball to show you where they're at, and the only emote you use is /lookout.

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Originally Posted by Limecat

It doesn't include the hint because they stopped bothering with time/weather/emote conditions. Every single one has 100% uptime, they all have a little sparkly ball to show you where they're at, and the only emote you use is /lookout.

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IIRC, there is one in Stb that still had a time restriction(early morning), but nothing else. It's in the Ruby Sea.

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Originally Posted by Erinellza

Yup! Except for Kugane tower. I've been trying to climb up that thing for weeks now, I can't get past the 3rd green roof. :') I really want cheap SB paintings for my Shiro house but I'm starting to accept the fact that it will never happen because I suck at jumping, lol.

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FWIW, you can get people to cheese you up the tower (or onto the lamppost below that you jump off the tower to land on), just to get the vistas checked off. I've done the lamppost one for more people than I can count, and I've rez-hopped folks up the tower a few times before, since I used to climb the tower (then jump down to the lamppost, then climb the tower, then jump down to the lamppost, then climb the tower...) any time I was stuck in a DPS queue.

Basically, you go as blue mage, climb as high as you can, use the self-destruct spell, someone climbs up higher and rezzes you onto a higher spot, you wait the 10 minutes for your self-destruct to be off cooldown, then you self-destruct again and they rez you to the next spot higher on the tower, etc. For the lamppost, it obviously only takes one rez.