Issues with Cities/Regions

I would like to address a couple points regarding the 3 different cities/regions in this game.

1) City Layout

While I must say that Uldah looks nice and the map is fairly easy to memorize thanks to the circle shape and all the intersection I feel that in general the layouts of the cities make walking around a bit annoying! (for example: entering Gridania Getting to the Conjurers' Guild)

I like big cities but none of the cities in FF feel big, only the walking distance feels big and rather unreasonable.
Also every time you want to enter a city you have to walk some very long and annoying paths (like the super long wooden bridges in Gridania)
It feels like the only reason to make you walk so much is to stretch game time?
And while you walk you see nothing interesting…
Inside the city you don’t see any housing area… only the shops and the wards.
Where do the peole live? Gridania is like a huge castle but without a living area…
LL is just made of bridges and shops.
The graphics look nice but the design and functionality is low.
The old FFXI had better cities in this respect, there were houses you could enter and talk to random NPC citizens, it felt more like a city and walking was less annoying because you could see things on the way.

2) Uldah’s popularity

Fairly obviously most people tend to hang around Uldah for various reasons, that makes the other Cities look boring and empty.
- One reason for this is probably the Market wards, having 3 separated market wards people will pick the most popular one and gather in this location.
- The 2 Mines located around Uldah are the best grinding spots for solo, duo and trios
- Story quests mainly lead to Uldah ( I started in Gridania and spend about half the time in Uldah for the main story quests alone but never was send to LL)
- Location of Uldah. Being in the middle of the other 2 cities makes the location most convenient.

IMO closing the triangle by connecting Gridania and LL, merging the marketwards, balancing the main story quest locations and the dungeons/mobs might help.
The Doblins/coblins alone are a reason to stay in Uldah… easy EXP and they drop silver more than you can carry….

just to point it out, coblyns are no longer the uber-solo grindind whore of eorzea :X they are pretty much the same of every other mob around now

yes i noticed that when i last logged in...

I see no real problem with the maps...OK, gridania is annoying...but it fits prefectly the blach shroud, which is just as annoying as the city. I'd rather having stuff there closer, specially since we actually are using the "beta map" that covers like 1/3 of the city...but its still not that bad.

IMO they were made to fit the background...Gridania was made by treehuggers...they wouldn't clean an area to build the city...they built it where the space allowed it. I just wish Gridania had some treehouses and stuff for more floors...i can feel it becoming Windy again when the full map is released...crossing Waters > Port > Woods, gate to gate, w/o teleport was a punishment...but if it had more floors the trips would be much faster.

Needz more changes in weather, more moving NPCs, more quests, and more cow bell.

Needz less lag.. Running through a crowded area means you have to stop for 10 seconds and wait for things to load. Of course this was worse when more people played.

It's a conundrum.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grit

Needz... more cow bell.

---

Well played, Sir

I have actually rigged Ul'dah to explode when the servers come back online ^^

The only way they will be able to 'close the triangle' is with Air ships. Limsa is on an Island of its own.

Like i said in another old topic, cities should have one or more important places inside to attract players to come back in it (something like the -future- casinò in Uldah, in which i hope there'll be mini-games as well). Something players need or can enjoy in every city. And not only shops or training places for classes. I noticed for example a sort of music-hall in Gridania that could be 'something fun' in that sense, in the future. So to avoid the concentration of players in one single city only and leave the other cities almost empty (a common problem of all mmorpgs around).

And regard of NPCs in cities, i noticed that cities have almost nothing about city-life. The perfect example is Limsa Lominsa. In the cut-scene introduction we see children playing in the plaza, sailors carrying boxes, etc. That is awesome! But when you actually walk in the city, they are gone.. sadly. :( In the same way there are few citizens and there aren't their houses to visit (like in ff11). Cities need this kind of 'visual activities' to be real and live. Maybe adding new sidequests they could add new NPCs in this sense. An i agree about the missing houses of citizens (there were in FF11)..

o.o You know how many time i want to walk the long path in jenuo but could not because of a zone? The maps are find beside Gridania which is my home city and i dislike it -.- i wish they fix that map.

There do seems a lack of life when walking around zones more critter's which are not targetable. Example Gridania surrounding area at night the owl's come out make them visible in tree's have field mice roaming around and a random owl swoops out and takes it. The birds sounds during the day make them visible to doing whatever birds do o.o' There alot of other examples but as of now it pretty blah walking around.

I personally believe the cities in 14 seem dull. The only thing supporting the towns is the high quality graphics (And the way water looks is good). If the towns had more excitement and structure with the high quality complementing the effects it would be a huge +. there are a few good notes though such as the fountain in the middle of Ul'dah. But definitely room for improvement.