Hubs in XIV are underutilized

play any other MMo and a HUB town is a bustling center of player population and events. But not XIV. despite having some of the most beautiful HUBS in any MMO i've ever played, Hubs are wasted here... one (well two) and done per expansion. I want to see Only 1 main Hub going forward. that all level 1 can access, but have no story in. FFXIV isn't even open world because of this. The Current formula just doesn't work and is a complete artistic waste. also.. 1 new housing zone per expansion release WITh said hub, thankyou :D

Not true...

The main hubs that level 1 players can be are Ul'dah, Limsa Lominsa and Gridania. And these are filled with players. On most worlds, Limsa is especially populated, but so is Gridania and on worlds like Balmung, Ul'dah is as well.

They all have Seasonal Events regularly, as well as getting things like job quests added to them, moogle tome exchange items, etc.

The latest two city states for a given expansion are also usually quite populated. Currently these are Solution Nine and Tuliyollal. They have new quests added to them regular in patches and their merchants get new things to be exchanged for, such as the hunt reward exchange in Tuliyollal or the tomestone exchange in Solution Nine.

The only way we'd "cut it down to 1" is to destroy Eorzea and its lore so that there is only 1. For players that have beat the MSQ, it's important that they have a change of scenery every few years at max. It would get boring if Mor Dhona was still the main tomestone hub after 11 years.

Could use GW2's system that pulls people from different servers to automatically fill up the different hubs and lounges so that they are always populated.

I like ESO's hubs.
However, there's no real "main" hubs since the game uses a scaling system so all zones are "the same level" so people just hang out in the towns/hubs they like.
Makes the game world feel alive seeing people where ever you go instead of having old hubs lie dormant and dead once a new expansion hits the shelves.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

despite having some of the most beautiful HUBS in any MMO i've ever played, Hubs are wasted here...

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Starting cities are quite popular. And because of two reasons: new players can access them freely (this includes alts as well) and only through them you can travel between servers/data-centers. Limsa Lominsa is the most popular one because of market board being super close to the main aetherite.

But I do agree with you on the point of other hubs being wasted. If they would allow at least travel to servers through all other cities, it would have made them at least somehow more lively. But since you can't put new players there, because it wouldn't make any sense, we're unlikely to fix it. Maybe there is a way, but I just can't think of it.

But, honestly, larger issue is all of the zones being devoid of purpose after MSQ is done with them. Gemstone-farming in Shadowbringers, Endwalker and Dawntrail brings some semblance of life to them, but even it is quite limiting. Hunt-trains only work in most latest zones. And it's a shame, really. After you're done with MSQ, you don't have much reasons to leave the city-hubs for any prolonged period of time.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

also.. 1 new housing zone per expansion release WITh said hub, thankyou :D

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Honestly, they really should start to work on proper instanced housing with ability to change outside's surroundings on the whim (so not only Mist, Goblet and so on, but zones as well and, hell, maybe even dungeons to be extra-fancy).

Might be wrong on this, but I assume originally idea in having housing districts was to also have some sense of community around them. To sort of feel people's presence around you and even interact with them. But because house itself provides little practical use (in FC-estates you can build submarines, at least), you extremely rarely there. And even then you are, chances of seeing people are very slim. And if you have some venue near your plot, it's not like people will linger outside of it, essentially going in it and out of it.

So I genuinely see no point in housing districts as they operate now.

The issue is that you're pushed from the first hub to the second then go back to limsa anyway because the MB is close, there's no reason to go to S9 unless the raid series is on

Yoshi-P already explained why they are not really investing in other hubs, simply because they did try and people still defaulted AFK-in in Limsa.

Everything in XIV is underutilized LOL.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

Yoshi-P already explained why they are not really investing in other hubs, simply because they did try and people still defaulted AFK-in in Limsa.

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Anything else than "market board near aetherite + server travel allowed from said aetherite" doesnt really count as "trying" imo

I get happy when Limsa looks empty, and then sigh when the hundreds of people finally load-in. So no.

I find the expac formula at fault here too. Every expac has a pair of new hub towns with very little reason to revisit older ones outside the Eorzean tri-cities, if even that. The current expac's hubs are fairly populated throughout the lifetime of the expac, but are doomed to become ghost towns once the next one is released unless they have major repeatable content to do in them, which really just comes down to Idyllshire and maybe Ishgard.

Also doesn't help none of the newer ones from ShB onwards have company chests, while Inns, Market Boards, Hunt Boards, and token exchange shops are haphazardly split between the two towns.

I'd like for them to reuse an older hub town while expanding the region around it for an expac sometime.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Everything in XIV is underutilized LOL.

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/thread, really. Every area in this game, hub or open world, is just an empty shell, waiting for content to fill it. Most of most people's play time is in instanced dungeons or fights. It is what it is.

It's not just hubs-- older outdoor areas get forgotten as well, unfortunately. I often lament the fact that we have no reason to revisit these areas. There are some of them I genuinely love and miss, but I don't roleplay so I don't really visit them unless I have a good reason to.

Obviously gathering kind of fixes this, though you're milling about one small portion. And the gemstones seems to have been a sort of effort to get us back into the old areas. It can be fixed, but I'm sure it's low priority-- I doubt they're overly worried about whether or not we can enjoy an area from 11 years ago when they have new content to work on-- but I'd love to see something implemented. Maybe more hunts in older areas, making older FATEs give better scaled rewards for higher level players, maybe some new quests that pop up in old areas. You're telling me no one in Kugane needs help anymore? The story there ended so that's it? Hell, give us a set of randomized fetch quests or something. But I guess that's kind of what the Hunt Board is for.

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Originally Posted by JackRazor

It's not just hubs-- older outdoor areas get forgotten as well, unfortunately. I often lament the fact that we have no reason to revisit these areas. There are some of them I genuinely love and miss, but I don't roleplay so I don't really visit them unless I have a good reason to.

Obviously gathering kind of fixes this, though you're milling about one small portion. And the gemstones seems to have been a sort of effort to get us back into the old areas. It can be fixed, but I'm sure it's low priority-- I doubt they're overly worried about whether or not we can enjoy an area from 11 years ago when they have new content to work on-- but I'd love to see something implemented. Maybe more hunts in older areas, making older FATEs give better scaled rewards for higher level players, maybe some new quests that pop up in old areas. You're telling me no one in Kugane needs help anymore? The story there ended so that's it? Hell, give us a set of randomized fetch quests or something. But I guess that's kind of what the Hunt Board is for.

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If there were three weekly elite marks per expac I'd spend more time flying around old zones. The nice thing about the weekly hunt marks is you have to go find them, as opposed to the bulk that are always in the same place.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

play any other MMo and a HUB town is a bustling center of player population and events.

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Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Anything else than "market board near aetherite + server travel allowed from said aetherite" doesnt really count as "trying" imo

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This is honestly the truth imo and more or less one result of the overall problem.

They can’t make other Hubs interesting because they don’t know how to make anything else than the regular anymore.
The fact that Yoshida only sees marketboard and aetherites as what makes a Hub is pretty telling.

Solution 9 could have had a highway where you can drive the motorcycle mount in some kind of racing (and yes Chocobo racing already exists so take that technical limitation).
There could have been a shop where you can dye your mount (there even is a tuning shop but unused).
Even simple things like an inn room there would have been something new.

The only place not empty there is the typica trader place and that one will also be dead as soon as the next expansion comes out.

To answer the thread.
You can make Hubs more interesting by actually not just using them as a “checklist number 49 content that’s needs to be implemented because we always did it”.
That’s the main problem.
A completely over bloated project planing from Yoshida that follows the same formula to the letter.

For all the “DT wants to try something new” it honestly did everything but that.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

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I know you don’t mean it like that but… shouldn’t this game want to be better than the competition?

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

I know you don’t mean it like that but… shouldn’t this game want to be better than the competition?

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I don't think it's a matter of being better. Let's say they added what you suggested about racing. Adding the chocobo racing to the DF was a QoL change. Let's be real and not even pretend that people wouldn't be asking for this be racing to be added as well to DF. So they add it to DF, and thus no need to go S9 since I can queue for it anywhere.

The shop for dying your mount? Gonna be clamoring for that to be available almost everywhere as well.

I'm not sure how long you've been around, but we actually had exactly this situation where old hubs were used in later expansions. Mor Dhona was used (and still used) for currency exchanges. Instead of having Scrip stuff tied to specific expansions, they added representatives almost everywhere because there was QoL changes requested specifically because people didn't want to have to keep going back to old places.

So to make a long story longer, there used to be reasons to go back to old hubs, but based on player feedback for QoL improvements, it seems they've made a design decision to no longer need hubs once we've moved onto a new expansion.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

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Unless they changed course on this since I last played WoW(9.1), Blizzard strips commodities from the previous expansion's hub(s) as soon as the next one is out so that everyone is funneled into Stormwind/Orgrimmar and the new place(s). CS3 has yet to do anything like that.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Unless they changed course on this since I last played WoW(9.1), Blizzard strips commodities from the previous expansion's hub(s) as soon as the next one is out so that everyone is funneled into Stormwind/Orgrimmar and the new place(s). CS3 has yet to do anything like that.

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Maybe I'm missing something, but sounds like we are saying the same thing t hat the end result there is the same here. It's either the current expansion hub or the starting zone.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

snip.

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Hmm I disagree.
If they only developed in the sense of “let’s not do it because the players wouldn’t like it like that anyway” we would never see anything new in this game.

I don’t think players would say that about the mount glamour or the racing (at least not many) but actually say “cool now do that for other Hubs too” and frankly at some point at least with such small things it doesn’t matter what some players say because one of the big criticisms is that this game is too much of an instance simulator at times.

You will always have qol wants from the community (yes I was there back than with Mor Dhona) but that doesn’t mean they should overcorrect everything because honestly we are at a point where we don’t need new Hubs because they don’t have anything to give anymore.

What is the alternative?
Stop giving suggestions and accept the same routine for the next ten years because some people are too lazy to teleport to a city?
Or do we want to see the devs actually trying new things, failing with some but at least surprise us (and I mean small ones like the mount dyeing before someone comes at me with the DT MSQ because such small things wouldn’t uproot everything suddenly)

Edit:
You are also comparing scripts (something you had to do lots and lots of times for several things) with fun sidecontent.
A better comparison would be jumping puzzles and I see no one asking for them to be instanced.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Hmm I disagree.
If they only developed in the sense of “let’s not do it because the players wouldn’t like it like that anyway” we would never see anything new in this game.

I don’t think players would say that about the mount glamour or the racing (at least not many) but actually say “cool now do that for other Hubs too” and frankly at some point at least with such small things it doesn’t matter what some players say because one of the big criticisms is that this game is too much of an instance simulator at times.

You will always have qol wants from the community (yes I was there back than with Mor Dhona) but that doesn’t mean they should overcorrect everything because honestly we are at a point where we don’t need new Hubs because they don’t have anything to give anymore.

What is the alternative?
Stop giving suggestions and accept the same routine for the next ten years because some people are too lazy to teleport to a city?
Or do we want to see the devs actually trying new things, failing with some but at least surprise us (and I mean small ones like the mount dyeing before someone comes at me with the DT MSQ because such small things wouldn’t uproot everything suddenly)

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If you want an honest answer, I would say the hubs serve their exact purpose right now. The reason we have hubs is because they are part of the stories. Once the story is done, the hubs have served their purpose.

Your suggestion about 10 years from now means I'm porting to 11 different hubs to do 11 different things. Instead, I think there are tons of other suggestions that would be higher to me than hubs.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

If you want an honest answer, I would say the hubs serve their exact purpose right now. The reason we have hubs is because they are part of the stories. Once the story is done, the hubs have served their purpose.

Your suggestion about 10 years from now means I'm porting to 11 different hubs to do 11 different things. Instead, I think there are tons of other suggestions that would be higher to me than hubs.

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Agree to disagree then.
I think they are underused and could use more life in them.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Edit:
You are also comparing scripts (something you had to do lots and lots of times for several things) with fun sidecontent.
A better comparison would be jumping puzzles and I see no one asking for them to be instanced.

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To address your edit. There was also HW relic that involved Mor Dhona (depending on if you did the ARR relics), the StB totems, and other pieces of content that made go back to Mor Dhona. Even the bicolor mounts before DT require you go back there.

Feel like there will be alot of pointless drivel, so imagine skip reading most comments.

But say that Each City needs to be able to allow players to Move from world to world from them.

(And potentially once the zone has become "obsolete", and is no longer a Current Endgame City. For a Marketboard to become available in it. Who wouldn't like to see SE make A S9 themed Marketboard, or simply reuse a item that's already there.)

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Also Completely Ridiculous/Asinine, and Illogical/Unreasonable stance/position/opinion to have. That The Three ARR cities are worth replacing or diluting into 1 city, over/all other Cities in the game.

Otherwise, the cities simply just need extra small activities that ultimately don't harm or break other content.

Otherwise, the thread doesn't have much point, but highlighting the fact that you're limited to the three main cities for most things, Hold the cities back, and virtually doom the majority of them to be barren. (Outside of a player progressing through the area.)

(Just like Company Chests, or GC related things also restrict players to the Main Three. When so many players desire to "fully" live in other cities.)

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<Example: Kugane has Company Chest near their Marketboard. but it could have a Embassy as a General GC point for those who don't want to travel back to their Respective ARR city.> It also gives SE incentive to add more to old area or content. Like Expand/Remake/Adjust the GCs. [Completly unlike to have any new ones, for other nations/regions, but i wouldn't be against more content or ranks to push through.]

<HW has complications due to the highly unused Leves from the Knights. But it definetly be expanded into something more. As well as invite a singular representative for "Cooperation/Cross-Training Purposes" with the GCs in the other city-states. They do have the Overarching alliance.>

The places that are largely unused are endgame or old expansion cities.

And lifting or adding features to them will make them much more lively.

The only thing the Starting zones actually need, is basic QoL.

i just wish we could get more faction to join for seals haha and be able to use every aetherite to be able to change server and only main city of every expension

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

This is honestly the truth imo and more or less one result of the overall problem.

They can’t make other Hubs interesting because they don’t know how to make anything else than the regular anymore.
The fact that Yoshida only sees marketboard and aetherites as what makes a Hub is pretty telling.

Solution 9 could have had a highway where you can drive the motorcycle mount in some kind of racing (and yes Chocobo racing already exists so take that technical limitation).
There could have been a shop where you can dye your mount (there even is a tuning shop but unused).
Even simple things like an inn room there would have been something new.

The only place not empty there is the typica trader place and that one will also be dead as soon as the next expansion comes out.

To answer the thread.
You can make Hubs more interesting by actually not just using them as a “checklist number 49 content that’s needs to be implemented because we always did it”.
That’s the main problem.
A completely over bloated project planing from Yoshida that follows the same formula to the letter.

For all the “DT wants to try something new” it honestly did everything but that.


I know you don’t mean it like that but… shouldn’t this game want to be better than the competition?

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i would have loved a virtual arcade in S9. seamed like the perfect place

It's not just hubs, it's every zone. Hubs least of all.

Every expansion the art teams are forced to design, model and texture six beautiful new open-world zones (for the sake of The Formula) only for you to occasionally fly over them for hunt trains or FATEs. Each one interchangeable with the rest, save for the look of the scenery. It's a colossal artistic waste.

This is partially the fault of adding flying in HW which I maintain was a mistake, but that's another matter.

The open world in general is underutilized.

Doesn't really bother me but thanks to the title I couldn't help but think about it.. so here is my idea to that: Each WEEK (or maybe even month) a hub is picked, the game informs you in some way that isn't too obtrusive (perhaps a cute mini-map icon or buff).

This chosen hub gains:

Free teleport

Weekly quests that grant a substantial select-able bonus: like a pile of all tomes (including end game), extra beast tribe quest tokens and rewards from them, increase drop rate for rare/ex items in epic echo content, etc), maybe general tokens to be spent on neat things like special dyes, mounts, token conversions (hunts), rare chance to earn a khole token that allows you to move one stamp to any location and other neat things on completion (like a buff that lasts 24 /played/ hours of free teleports, unlimited spring out of combat, etc)

Substantially faster porter services (the choco, falcon, things we almost never use)

Faster regen and larger rested exp pool

Slightly cheaper tax on the market board (for locations you're buying out of)


Players who are not the appropriate level for that hub will get a weekly quest to visit and interact with players, this will apply a buff onto them to gain pertinent benefits. Interactions will be cheering, repairing gear (for free), and other activities on npcs and players, when targeting players they get an actual buff (and so does the caster so it is not like "polish my shoes" type vibe).

If it goes well can add special NPCs and quests thematically relevant, like while Ul'dah is selected you can earn some nice ... 'miners' gear by completing a quest chain available during that period. Limsa may have special water buffs that cause you to move 200% faster in water.

Major downside is a new person showing up in a hub that is a bit lore unique. Can delay new areas for a while to prevent that a bit (new area isn't a hub for a few months). Alternatively always have one cycle from OG city states and house wards and then one modern, but that splitting across two at that point.. eh.. lol.

Then do that to the area they belong to too (like scaling rewards during that period, so a level 70 is leveling in south shroud- if they wanted). You know.. use the open world space for stuff XD.