Anyone else feel like Tural was kind of wasted?

The landmass itself, not the zones in the game.

Look at this map:

https://i.imgur.com/RKNkckn.png

Hydaelyn, as we know Her.

Now, look at the same map, with lines drawn on it to determine the settings of various expansions (main MSQ, not counting raids, stuff like Bozja, or other funny business):

https://i.imgur.com/NbG63bm.png

I hope you see what I'm trying to get at here.

Ranked by length (in quests) of their main MSQ, it's:

1. ARR (161 quests)
2. Stormblood (122 quests)
3. Endwalker (108 Quests)
4. Shadowbringers (106 quests)
5. Dawntrail (100 quests)
6. Heavensward (94 quests)

And yet, despite having the second-least amount of quests out of all main MSQs, Dawntrail hands-down takes up the most amount of space, geographically.

This is immutable space on Hydaelyn that will never be touched again in the MSQ after the post-MSQ patches, save maybe for 3-quest asides.

Did we really need to eat up all of Tural for this? Couldn't have fit the MSQ into one half or the other? We could have had an entire expansion dedicated to cowboys.

I fear for what they're about to do to Meracydia.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that every expansion other than ARR only added 6 zones. HW, ShB, and EW I can understand, as the geography of the introduced areas is much smaller than that of Eorzea (or in ShB's case, uninhabited/uninhabitable). A case can be made for SB since a ton of Othard is only occupied by nomadic tribes, or was razed by Garlemald. DT has no excuse.

Doesn't really make a lot of difference when the overworld zones exist almost exclusively to be a hub for the MSQ.

i know not many people care about yellow quests. but those also give content to zones. compare those per expansion there are like 70 quests less than in ew.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

i know not many people care about yellow quests. but those also give content to zones. compare those per expansion there are like 70 quests less than in ew.

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I think when we start making excuses we start to lose out on things we've had in older expansions. I'm sure the yellow quests do probably flesh out Tural quite a bit, but all previous MSQs before DT did a tremendous job fleshing out their settings without the need for filler quests to pick up the slack. DT should have done a comparable job to ARR since it is basically the new start to a new arc and it doesn't even compare, to me anyways, when it comes to fleshing out the new setting.

oh no thats not meant as an excuse. its the opposit. there are less and less yellow quests each expansion.

and yes, their existence doesnt mean its ok for the msq to give us only the bare bone

The sad part is that 2 of DT's zones aren't even on the Source, so that much space is covered in just 4. Comparing that to how many regions and zones we got out of Aldenard makes it feel like they're speedrunning the setting.

It felt like this expansion deliberately had the least amount of content. For such a grand new land, we saw very very little.

There is an area to the right of Solution Nine and an area to the very south of the map. There is also Shades' Triangle where we will be going in side content. I feel that the split ocean that was created "by gods fighting" aka Hydaelyn and Zodiark may also be used at some point.

Often whole areas get explored by dungeons as well - for example, The Burn is a whole area you could circle on the map but if you consider that it's a dungeon, then we've already been there. The mountains above the Azim Steppe may seem unexplored but we sorta climb up them in Bardam's Mettle. The truth is that if a dungeon takes us there then we aren't likely to go there in an expansion, because it's already explored from SE's perspective.

I’m not terribly put out about the southern continent of Tural, but having the entire northern continent be consumed by Shaaloani and Heritage Found with no other exploration is such a damnable waste, not only of space but of potential. Hopefully they retcon Tural being the entirety of two continents and have the northern section of Tural just be **part** of the northern continent, with another country or something in the northern half.

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Originally Posted by CVXIV

do those numbers include the post patch content for the other expansions?
I just ask because it seems unfair to compare them otherwise, but I do understand your point

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Didn't count them because DT's post-MSQ patches haven't come out yet. But it will be neat to compare.

Honestly, couldn't tell you what I believe the reasons are.

They're hoping for at least another decade of XIV. (Which then hopefully will be another FFMMO)

Maybe they felt a Arc about yet again, uniting people is too much.

So they gave us a place that supposedly is all united, yet still facing issues that they easily could of stamped out with force, and negotiations with Sharlayan.(The one Neutral nation they had some ties to for at most 80 years. at least 20-10. Couldn't tell you, I'm a not a lore master.)

By this point we have a more clear idea of the constraints XIV 7.0 DT had to deal with.

and the even increasing need pace of having basically two expacs worth of concepts into one time frame. (at least for what is EW/End of Arc Story Mixed with a twist. and the start of a new Arc and some new concepts.)

8.0 and forward will hopefully be more one track going forward.

But as for Rn, it does feel like so much space was left barren.

but I've felt this in every single ARR area, ever since flying was added.
Every zone could be expanded, explored more in depth. Just like West Shroud, Give content ontop of the rocky shelf of Western Thanalan.(That is just blank space that we now see eternally with flying)

and then they did Upper La Nosceas Water Diving. which just fed my ideas even more.

The Viera Homelands, the clouded center part of the map(of the three great continents)

So much space.

if DT 7.0 was to made good space from the places we did see, the MSQ would of been sooo long, or the maps soo wide to give reason.

The Right of Succession should/could of included how they came in control of Xak Tural.

Too much crammed into a small space.

And then shard business which I was hoping we didn't have to deal with for a bit.

[Originally hoped that a hidden, Advanced society existed isolated from the world. but I'll just have to accept a unfortunately set up Electrope Landscape. and the idea that XI will likely be ducktaped into a Shard at this point.]

I think part of what caused this was the fact that you spend the vast majority of the expansion in cut scenes of characters yapping away endlessly rather than the MSQ sending you out to actually do things in the world. I've personally felt like Dawntrail is over-written, and they could have found ways to utilize MSQ to world build and let us actually see and interact with Tural. It doesn't help that the Unlost World/Living Memory counts as one of the regions in the expansion and to be quite honest, I would have preferred that be a temporary space the MSQ took us to, and had the other regions in Tural be larger with more to see and do in them.

In terms of actually going to all the different areas of the zones, that never happens in the MSQ. A lot of it is for sidequests and after you've done all sidequests, the entirety of each place in the game is pretty much explored. If you're not into sidequests, that's fine, but you'd probably be complaining if they merged sidequests into the MSQ, so.

As for "running out of places to go in the MSQ", I don't think this will happen because we have:

• A number of shards we can go to.
• Corvos, the garlean territories and Blindfrost.
• Meracydia.
• The past (Yoshi-P mentioned this, but I've thought it as well because a lot of interesting stuff happened in past calamities). But it would also create a chicken or egg first situation as time always does and that's the part I don't like.

Given they are only planning for "the next 10 years", they don't need a lot of places to remain unless they want to plan further than that, because they can only fit about 3 expansions into the remainder of that (now) 9 years with their current schedule.

They really shouldn't have made Tural be just one big empire. It just makes the whole continent completely boring because said empire is so perfect that there's zero internal conflict.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

As for "running out of places to go in the MSQ", I don't think this will happen because we have:

• A number of shards we can go to.
• Corvos, the garlean territories and Blindfrost.
• Meracydia.
• The past (Yoshi-P mentioned this, but I've thought it as well because a lot of interesting stuff happened in past calamities). But it would also create a chicken or egg first situation as time always does and that's the part I don't like.

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It's not even a matter of running out of places to go--there is so much unused space on the map of Hydaelyn that they could probably squeeze new environments out of it for another three decades.

It's a matter of wasted potential, wasted time, wasted storytelling.

By the end of ARR, the area(s) within Eorzea felt like an entire world by itself, with characters to love and sights to see.
By the end of HW, I felt like I had known the people in Ishgard all my life, an expert of their politics and culture.
By the end of ShB, I felt that if 2.0 took place in Norvrandt instead of Eorzea, the game would be just as good. Wildly different, but still good.

By the end of DT... I felt hollow.

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Originally Posted by Carolingian

They really shouldn't have made Tural be just one big empire. It just makes the whole continent completely boring because said empire is so perfect that there's zero internal conflict.

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Even if there was conflict, the Warrior of Boredom would have already united them all and solved all of their problems. Just Gulool beat us to it.

I feel like we see more of tural as time goss on? Like Xak tural is just NA and we saw a part of Arizona functionally

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Originally Posted by Villa101

I feel like we see more of tural as time goss on? Like Xak tural is just NA and we saw a part of Arizona functionally

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Not how the game works, so unfortunately and obviously not. Locations never get expanded in size, what you see is what you get. Patches do not contain additional "proper" locations, with exceptions of small instanced corridors similar to the void stuff, or obviously with field operations. (The field operation we already know is technically Tural, but a completely separate island and I bet it will barely be connected to anything Tural, judging by how Eureka and Bozja worked.)

You don't get new "open world" areas to explore or do quests in. You'll have to wait for the next expansion and the next expansion will certainly not be Tural. So we won't see more of tural as time goes on. That's exactly why it feels like such a waste. With other MMOs we might have actually stood a chance, because they DO add completely new locations in patches and sometimes overhaul old ones. But not ffxiv.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

In terms of actually going to all the different areas of the zones, that never happens in the MSQ. A lot of it is for sidequests and after you've done all sidequests, the entirety of each place in the game is pretty much explored. If you're not into sidequests, that's fine, but you'd probably be complaining if they merged sidequests into the MSQ, so.

As for "running out of places to go in the MSQ", I don't think this will happen because we have:

• A number of shards we can go to.
• Corvos, the garlean territories and Blindfrost.
• Meracydia.
• The past (Yoshi-P mentioned this, but I've thought it as well because a lot of interesting stuff happened in past calamities). But it would also create a chicken or egg first situation as time always does and that's the part I don't like.

Given they are only planning for "the next 10 years", they don't need a lot of places to remain unless they want to plan further than that, because they can only fit about 3 expansions into the remainder of that (now) 9 years with their current schedule.

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I don't really think they would need to merge sidequests into the MSQ to accomplish that, and Yoshi-P has mentioned a couple of times now that he would like to change the formula up more in the future. Instead of having everyone stand around talking for ages in one spot for 90% of the MSQ, they could mix the dialogue with action, and then utilize environmental storytelling during quest objectives and this has been one thing I've wished they would do for years now. They could also change it up by adding new zones once in a while throughout the patch cycle, which would be a welcome change to the formula.

I don't think they will run out of space to go for expansions either, though. We spent ShB in another world entirely and that has been my favorite expansion so far.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

It's not even a matter of running out of places to go--there is so much unused space on the map of Hydaelyn that they could probably squeeze new environments out of it for another three decades.

It's a matter of wasted potential, wasted time, wasted storytelling.

By the end of ARR, the area(s) within Eorzea felt like an entire world by itself, with characters to love and sights to see.
By the end of HW, I felt like I had known the people in Ishgard all my life, an expert of their politics and culture.
By the end of ShB, I felt that if 2.0 took place in Norvrandt instead of Eorzea, the game would be just as good. Wildly different, but still good.

By the end of DT... I felt hollow.

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It feels like a bitter irony - the "land" they tried so much to force feed us to learn about; seems to be the one we care the least about. The entire area overall feels hollow - even *redacted* when you realize your only going to one place to grab tomestone/crafting stuff and generally never touching the rest of the zones except for maybe the odd gpose.

Out of curiosity, what is the actual length (timewise) of each MSQ on average? The pure # of quests doesn't mean much, because they could be of different lengths. I could just as easily take a quest that has you travel to 2 different NPC's and talk to them and either make them two stages of one quest, or two separate quests. The latter approach ups the pure # of quests but has no effect on the actual time involved.

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The sad part is that 2 of DT's zones aren't even on the Source, so that much space is covered in just 4.

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Only the last zone is not on the Source. The penultimate zone involves the non-Source place being fused into the Source, but it is still part of the Source itself and all of the land is part of the Source.

This isnt the first time theyve wasted locales but i dont really care in this case as i find Tural to be visually unimaginative.

I hadn't seen that this thread existed until just now, but funnily enough I just posted a message in another thread about how wasteful it was they reduced a land mass larger than ARR, HW, and the western part of SB combined to just four zones. So yes, I very much agree with OP.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

I hadn't seen that this thread existed until just now, but funnily enough I just posted a message in another thread about how wasteful it was they reduced a land mass larger than ARR, HW, and the western part of SB combined to just four zones. So yes, I very much agree with OP.

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The 'skeleton' they insist on building expansions on has stifled creativity or any kind of interesting takes on zones. It'd be nice to see them make more zones in future expansions instead of just making 8 and calling it done. Especially when it's an entire bloody landmass that takes up a fair chunk of Etheirys. Like the user BakoolJaJa mentioned earlier, they never elaborate on zones or expand old ones so we're kind of screwed.

Like there's still zones from ARR that haven't been elaborated on that could be used or added in later that just aren't. They make it sound like the WoL would go absolutely anywhere just for the sake of saying they were there. Coerthas Lowlands/Eastern Highlands and the West Shroud come to mind. (I don't consider the PvP Arena to count) There's a LOT of areas to the North in Tural that we haven't gone to which houses all the villages for the Role Quests. It saddens me to know that we will likely never go there.

ShB, EW and DT MSQ shake out to about 40 hours each. Afair, HW is slightly shorter. The patches between ShB-EW and EW-DT take another 20 hours.

(Those times depend if course upon how much speed or dwaddle through them. They are how long they took me going at a chill pace.)

We are barely past the opener... so.
No i dont feel like that.

There's still room for them to expand it in the post expansion content and in future expansions. I doubt we'd seen everything Tural has to offer just yet!

Eh, given the lukewarm reception of Dawntrail and Endwalker, I feel it's less about running out of spaces to go and more about losing player interest and therefore revenue to develop future expansions.

Realistically speaking, I don't see FFXIV going beyond 10.0 without major changes

Too many jobs, too much bloat, old content basically becoming dead once the expansion is over outside of niche play.

Not to mention, getting a new player excited to play endgame with you is becoming more and more difficult, ESPECIALLY for players who are really only interested in endgame/fight/raids.

Sure, there are story-skips..but by 10.0 it'll be "Grind through the story your first month or two or three, or pay more money in this pay-per-month game so you can play with friends" is not going to be that exciting considering alternatives games.
Basically, for players who don't care about the actual story, the problem will come when it's factually cheaper to buy a story skip than pay the month(s) of sub fee needed to do the story.

For casual players, 2-3 months is a pretty big ask just to get to a level to play with friends in current content.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Eh, given the lukewarm reception of Dawntrail and Endwalker, I feel it's less about running out of spaces to go and more about losing player interest and therefore revenue to develop future expansions.

Realistically speaking, I don't see FFXIV going beyond 10.0 without major changes

Too many jobs, too much bloat, old content basically becoming dead once the expansion is over outside of niche play.

Not to mention, getting a new player excited to play endgame with you is becoming more and more difficult, ESPECIALLY for players who are really only interested in endgame/fight/raids.

Sure, there are story-skips..but by 10.0 it'll be "Grind through the story your first month or two or three, or pay more money in this pay-per-month game so you can play with friends" is not going to be that exciting considering alternatives games.
Basically, for players who don't care about the actual story, the problem will come when it's factually cheaper to buy a story skip than pay the month(s) of sub fee needed to do the story.

For casual players, 2-3 months is a pretty big ask just to get to a level to play with friends in current content.

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I guarantee you, FFXIV could be earning gazillions and a lot of that money won't see the light of day into the budget of FFXIV but other projects. This is Square Enix we're talking about and them squandering projects is legendary. FFXIV is the personal bank of Square Enix's bad gambling problems.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

I guarantee you, FFXIV could be earning gazillions and a lot of that money won't see the light of day into the budget of FFXIV but other projects. This is Square Enix we're talking about and them squandering projects is legendary. FFXIV is the personal bank of Square Enix's bad gambling problems.

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I think their income breakdown for 2023 was something around 60% MMOs, 30% mobile, 10% everything else.

Tural looks visual pretty but is also pretty boring.
there are barely intriguing landmarks.
It feels more they created the land more with the IRL counterparts in mind than with the fantasy setting.
There is also a lack of enviromental story telling. most stuff is just there for the MSQ.

Shaloaani is such a place its literally just a desert with one mexican themed settlement, one Cowboy themend settlement and one native northern American settlement.

Tural feels like the rejoinings never happen there. Normally the source should be a distaster scared world.
Also were are the ceruleum laced canyons shimmering in blue, they referenced in the Bluemage questline.

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Originally Posted by Unyqua

Also were are the ceruleum laced canyons shimmering in blue, they referenced in the Bluemage questline.

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Oh, just second left after all those culturally unique villages that each of the Role Quest Giver npcs are from.

This explains why there were so many cutscenes to pad out the lack of zone growth. Each zone was dissected into two instead of being one large zone each that we could expand on, each housing two (beast) tribes that lived alongside each other (but instead of exploring more we simply revisit the same zones). Wuk Lamat didn't know a single detail about any of it. The Dawnservant never addressed the apparent food crisis Yak T'el was facing that was ongoing before the storm wreaked havoc, or the cold war both tribes therein were caught in. There was no reason for that entire side of the plot to have been there (What was it again? Oh yeah: 'We only get to eat this and they get to eat that' vs. 'they have issues with us, so now we have issues with them' -- oh yeah, and a brief snippet of 'blessed siblings' to add just a splash of depth), since every other crisis seems to have been caused directly from the storm while Yak T'el was already in place long before Valigarmanda's warning signs. Valigarmanda itself was treated as an afterthought when it could have been a fantastic plot point for all four Promises to use their strengths and rely on each other to cover their weaknesses, getting past the family-feud that seems to be their only issues (and for Lamat's case, the only relatable trait to hardship), but instead it was treated like a hurdle likening to that of the alpaca just down the cliff; barely an inconvenience. A world-ending threat, just 'poof', and released for no real reason either other than to use a weak trope of 'oh this guy is bad, whatever could have he been thinking', where Lamat never made a single mistake other than 'being too trusting'. There was no room for thought-provoking mistakes on our side, and so much tomfoolery on the 'villains' side. All of this was a Turali Disaster, and that was just the first half.

I love that we saw a Mesoamerican themed city and culture but it would have been FANTASTIC to go far north or far south. The cultures around the Arctic and Antarctic are fascinating and we see none of it. We don't even get to see any temperate forests. My favorite area of NA is the Pacific Northwest, which is a temperate rainforest. I was all excited thinking hey maybe we'll see it. But nope. Just Texas.

If they really wanted to do Fantasy North America and Fantasy South America, they really did it a huge disservice by making it all into one expansion. The breakdown is pretty sad. We get three Fantasy South America zones + city. Maybe not so bad. Othard only has one city and three zones to it currently, so it's tied with that continent. But then we get ONE zone for Fantasy North America in Shaaloani, which is just the southwest corner of Fantasy Texas. I don't count Heritage Found as a zone that adds to this, because it's been so heavily merged with another shard and lost most of its landmarks and is now ugly and cloudy all the time and full of electrope crap. Everything in that zone is tied to Alexandria and Solution 9, it's not really adding anything to the "America" part. Solution 9 isn't "Fantasy North America," it's from another shard entirely. And then the final zone is just Dead Computer Purgatory.

It's important to note that while you have big areas circled for the early expansions, we really only experience a fraction of the areas on those maps too.

I've been upset about this sort of stuff since Xelphatol got relegated to a dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Anarnee

It's important to note that while you have big areas circled for the early expansions, we really only experience a fraction of the areas on those maps too.

I've been upset about this sort of stuff since Xelphatol got relegated to a dungeon.

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Yeah, Xelphatol, Yafaem Saltmoor, and Paglth'an are large chunks of Eorzea relegated to instances. Then there's stuff like Bozja, Werlyt, and the Return to Ivalice storylines which take out a large chunk of Ilsabard and Othard that prevents us from going there as well unless we awkwardly dance around the areas that are being locked up in something else. There's no chance of us returning to Dalmasca at all without Matsuno being hired as the main writer or at least a consultant and while expansions often feel similar to other FF games, I doubt they would devote a whole expansion to a region based so completely and utterly off another game.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

And yet, despite having the second-least amount of quests out of all main MSQs, Dawntrail hands-down takes up the most amount of space, geographically.

This is immutable space on Hydaelyn that will never be touched again in the MSQ after the post-MSQ patches, save maybe for 3-quest asides.

Did we really need to eat up all of Tural for this? Couldn't have fit the MSQ into one half or the other? We could have had an entire expansion dedicated to cowboys.

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One thing to remember is that this map did not exist before Dawntrail. Xak Tural and Yok Tural were not separate concepts before the writers invented them for us to go over there and actually visit it. The shape of the whole continent was only just created for this so anything that's "wasted space" didn't even exist before the story did.

It feels like the main argument here is being made more about the map space as a resource for future content but it was already established all the way back in Stormblood with the release of Blue Mage that the part of the New World that is based on North America is controlled by the Mamool Ja and they have hegemony over the whole continent. Anything that would have taken place in a theoretical Xak Yural expansion would have been required by necessity to be intrinsically linked to anything in Yok Tural regardless so there's little room for a story that in Xak Tural that is independent of Yok Tural unless we wanted Garlean Empire 2 situation.

That said, what we did get did feel poorly utilized. The Mamook area of Yak'tel is certainly pretty but the whole zone as well as Kozama'uka don't feel too different from Rak'tika and Thavnair in a way for them to completely stand out on their own. One could argue that there's only so many ways to make a jungle zone but maybe that's why they should have branched out and given us stuff like the pantanal wetland of Brazil that could have had Hanuhanu living on village-sized lilypads or the tepui of Venezuela that could have given us extremely weird and crazy wildlife that aren't palette swaps of other mobs in the game and given the artist team freedom to run wild.

The dev team seems to like sticking to their whole "6th zone is wild and crazy" gig (except Stormblood), but Living Memory would have been much better utilized as an instance instead of a zone which could have given room for Heritage Found to be much more fantastical with better utilization and mixture of Alexandrian city and its landscape being mixed into the prior existing area. Cliff pueblos overlooking Alexandria and spires of glass where lightning has struck the desert sand. The rebels could have been living in a cyberpunk junkyard were electrope is recycled.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The dev team seems to like sticking to their whole "6th zone is wild and crazy" gig (except Stormblood), but Living Memory would have been much better utilized as an instance instead of a zone which could have given room for Heritage Found to be much more fantastical with better utilization and mixture of Alexandrian city and its landscape being mixed into the prior existing area. Cliff pueblos overlooking Alexandria and spires of glass where lightning has struck the desert sand. The rebels could have been living in a cyberpunk junkyard were electrope is recycled.

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Heritage Found is one of the most boring zones in the game. I have my complaints with some Stormblood areas (the Peaks has a lot of interesting things that barely get touched and The Lochs does as well) but there's next to nothing interesting in HF.

The whole of DT should have taken place in Yak Tural, yeah. It's a lot of squandered opportunity.