Feedback/Discussion: Make Open World Content Appealing

With Yoshida stating that the game is going to be focusing on multiplayer aspects again, I think we need to take the time to discuss a few suggestions I have to bring life back into the game's open world content. I am going to just break it down into points to make it easier to read.

-Make Fates give Bicolor Gemstones at all level ranges and expansions
-Let players exchange Bicolor Gemstones for the same items as Hunt Currencies, albeit at a lesser rate
-Give players a chaining EXP/Gemstone bonus for doing Fates back to back
-Take inspiration from Rift's Instant Adventures and let players queue into groups of 4-8 players doing Fates out in the game world. The system will direct them to each Fate and you get a small stacking bonus for each you actively participate in.
-Add in max level solo AND group combat Levequests that provide a unique currency+Tomes to incentivize max level players to use their Leves
-Every patch there needs to be a Tomestone Mount or glamour roughly equivalent to the grind of a Bicolor Gemstone mount; lets just say it costs 50k uncapped tomestones; This will encourage players to do daily activities even when geared
-Create a small instanced area called something like "Treasure Hunters League" where like minded players can get together to form groups for map parties, rather than relying on party finder

The only way to make it appealing to me isn't in the rewards, but the gameplay. Make it actually engaging and we may be talking?

We get GC Seals instead of gemstones at lower levels and those have rewards.

Gemstones and hunt currencies having the same rewards would make people choose the easiest option and potentially obliterate the hunt community. There was a time when I was worried they'd discontinue hunts because hardly anyone did them. Once hunt trains took off and they added a mount grind, hunts were saved. They are big because of the rewards.

50,000 uncapped tomestones farmed via dungeons that are the same every single time. I don't think that would be good without addressing how much the same they are.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

We get GC Seals instead of gemstones at lower levels and those have rewards.

Gemstones and hunt currencies having the same rewards would make people choose the easiest option and potentially obliterate the hunt community. There was a time when I was worried they'd discontinue hunts because hardly anyone did them. Once hunt trains took off and they added a mount grind, hunts were saved. They are big because of the rewards.

50,000 uncapped tomestones farmed via dungeons that are the same every single time. I don't think that would be good without addressing how much the same they are.

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GC seal rewards are so pathetic they might as well not exist.

Probably not happening. A few weeks ago, someone necro'd a 2015 thread asking for the same thing.

I think field operation is their attempt to do it. I wouldn't expect much from fate.

- Add Exploration minor rewards, such as treasures that unlock an Achievement for finding each and give you a minion.
- Add Unique Activities in the Game that are not 'click and wait for cast bar'.
- Add Weekly Quests for each zone.
- Remove the limit from the Society Quests, 3 per tribe and 6 per day is ridiculous.
- Add World Bosses again.
- Add Weather based Fates/Events.
- Add Special Weather Events, such as Odin in ARR.
- Add Events on the zone which adds to a minor storyline and some minor changes in the map itself (Example, Area infested with monsters is cleansed, so now there are NPCs in that spot with unique things to buy from).
- Make mounting more intuitive and allow your friends to mount on the multi-seater mounts without having to right click on you.
- Improve solo maps for them to either have a minor dungeon instance as you complete or have an actual charade to figure out through text within the zone, which leads you to said minor dungeon or treasures as pointed out above.
- Add unique characteristics to Fates based on the Levequests card principle, changing even a known fate over how it works. Variants of the same scenario.

In simple, JUST MAKE THE WORLD INTERESTING.
Fates used to be interesting in ARR, it was tiresome to Fate Grind, yes, but it was interesting.
The Relics grinds being tied to fate RNG was horrible, but it kept people walking in the world and doing fates.
As it is, there's NO PURPOSE to visit any zone at all.

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Originally Posted by Raim

With Yoshida stating that the game is going to be focusing on multiplayer aspects again, I think we need to take the time to discuss a few suggestions I have to bring life back into the game's open world content. I am going to just break it down into points to make it easier to read.

-Make Fates give Bicolor Gemstones at all level ranges and expansions
-Let players exchange Bicolor Gemstones for the same items as Hunt Currencies, albeit at a lesser rate
-Give players a chaining EXP/Gemstone bonus for doing Fates back to back
-Take inspiration from Rift's Instant Adventures and let players queue into groups of 4-8 players doing Fates out in the game world. The system will direct them to each Fate and you get a small stacking bonus for each you actively participate in.
-Add in max level solo AND group combat Levequests that provide a unique currency+Tomes to incentivize max level players to use their Leves
-Every patch there needs to be a Tomestone Mount or glamour roughly equivalent to the grind of a Bicolor Gemstone mount; lets just say it costs 50k uncapped tomestones; This will encourage players to do daily activities even when geared
-Create a small instanced area called something like "Treasure Hunters League" where like minded players can get together to form groups for map parties, rather than relying on party finder

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The key to all of it is having either max-level stuff in all older zones, or reworking level sync so you aren't completely robbed of your job kit doing FATEs. Relevant maps taking you anywhere in the world would help. Some form of daily quest that syncs to your level that can take you anywhere may help.

There's loads they can do to liven up the world, but as someone said, the gameplay does need to be engaging.

They really need to add new fates into the mix. They have just made reskins of the same 6 fates over and over each expac. Even the field zones just rehash the same fates. Fates have been just absurdly boring and tedious since ARR.

And I also want Hamlet Defense back. Those were a hoot and a half, no idea why they scrapped them with the relaunch.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

They really need to add new fates into the mix. They have just made reskins of the same 6 fates over and over each expac. Even the field zones just rehash the same fates. Fates have been just absurdly boring and tedious since ARR.

And I also want Hamlet Defense back. Those were a hoot and a half, no idea why they scrapped them with the relaunch.

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While I agree with you in regards to the ARR fates being quite interesting, I also continue to enjoy the ShB fate chains.
The treasure hunters in Amh Araeng, the Pixie and the Frogs in Il Mheg, and the bunny-squad in Rak'tika.
They all had engaging personalities, an explained motivation, and a general arc to their stories.
Think it also helped that they existed in the worldspace outside of the fates, and actually fought in the fates rather than standing back and watching (for better or worse).

Compared to those, I've felt very little about the EW & DT fate NPCs. If there's personality or a story behind them, it hasn't made itself apparent.

In regards to the overall topic of "making the zones more engaging", I really think we need to look beyond fates.
Much like Garrisons did in WoW, retainers make gathering ingredients (especially from mobs) practically obsolete.
There's also no interesting drops beyond their simplistic loot tables, there's no treasures to find, no soloable rare spawns (both mobs and gathering), there's really nothing to be out there for.
(If they ever did, make it personalised, so only that player could see/interact with it)

Keypoint is having more points of interests, towns, villages, OPEN BUILDINGS FOR TWELVES SAKE, OPEN UP AAAALL THE BUILDINGS.

Please start caring about over world gameplay.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Please increase the difficulty/complexity of mini boss FATEs to be around a similar level as Dawntrail dungeon bosses (or dungeon bosses in general). It seems like both non-raiders, and experienced raiders agree that the dungeon bosses from Dawntrail dungeons have been fun while still maintaining an easy, and accessible difficulty. So I think their complexity, and difficulty would be appropriate for mini boss FATEs. This is the most important request, the below requests mean nothing if FATEs are not fun to fight.

Please add more FATE chains. I think that every ‘kill lots of enemies’ style FATES should always chain into a mini boss FATE. This would mimic how Notorious Monsters, and Critical Engagements are spawned in exploration zones. Also we just get more FATE per FATE.

Please add a world boss FATE to every zone. Six alliance raid level bosses with rewards would be available to players at the start of an expansion. And please allow us to trade in excess world boss tokens for either bicolor gems or bicolor vouchers. It would also be great if world boss FATEs from previous expansions had chance of having the bonus reward buff applied to them.

Please add more Forlorn Maiden interactions. I made a post outlining a rare ‘Forlorn Mistress’ enemy concept, so please consider it. Another change that would be great is dramatically increasing the spawn chance of Forlorn Maidens/The Forlorn in 1 or 2 zones per expansion. Increasing the spawn rate for Forlorn Maidens in a zone will make that zone great for leveling.

Please add more long term FATE rewards. A long term FATE reward I would like to see in the future is like some kind of universal accessory that increases the amount of bicolor gems you get from FATEs. Another would be a consumable item that can be bought with vouchers that forces Forlorn Maidens to spawn in FATEs you are participating in.

Some miscellaneous wants: a FATE log with achievements, and rewards for completing it, get players out of combat faster when a FATE ends, an auto sync option, don’t remove tank stance when syncing for a FATE, add bicolor gems to FATEs up to at least Heavensward zones, and add challenge log entries that reward bicolor gems for completing FATEs within your level range. I genuinely think it would be worth it to apply these improvements to FATEs in zones from previous expansions as well.

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How I would improve FATEs.

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Originally Posted by Raenra

While I agree with you in regards to the ARR fates being quite interesting, I also continue to enjoy the ShB fate chains.
The treasure hunters in Amh Araeng, the Pixie and the Frogs in Il Mheg, and the bunny-squad in Rak'tika.
They all had engaging personalities, an explained motivation, and a general arc to their stories.
Think it also helped that they fought in the fates, rather than standing back and watching (for better or worse).

Compared to those, I've felt very little about the EW & DT fate NPCs. If there's personality or a story behind them, it hasn't made itself apparent.

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I'm not talking about lore or NPCs, I can't actually say I care enough about fates to have ever paid attn to the npcs or lore of them. I am talking about the actual fates themselves. It's the same objectives again and again. Kill all mobs, kill until bar fills, boss fates, collect items > turn in > wait, etc etc. It's always just the same thing again and again, even in the field zones. They need to shake things up a bit and give us new objectives.

Making fates change the world in some way would also be good, like beast tribes or rival factions fighting over control of resources. When one has control the area is much more hostile and when they don't certain vendors are available is a good jumping off point for that. But they would need to put enough worthwhile rewards behind it that it doesn't become obsolete after a couple months, like Odin, Behemoth, Ixion, etc. Large scale, world bosses with actual mechanics would be the good way to incorperate relic items into the world instead of just putting them behind standard fates.

I would want the "Final Cap Level Area" to be the one with the most amount of content.

People are spread too thin across all of the zones. There should be one zone that intends to do this.

Exploratory Missions isn't for another two months, but I'd like to see the L100 zone have more content.

I appreciate you guys posting any ideas you have. Just keep the thread moving and make it more known to the team that they need to work on the open world, preferably at all level ranges.

I just wish the open world were fun to explore. We explore for...aether currents, I guess? Nothing else.

No hidden caves, no treasure chests, no jumping puzzles, no nothing. They're empty spaces we walk through between cutscenes.

You can't even gather in the open world unless you are on a gathering job. You cannot fish unless you are a fisher. You cannot find chests without a map.

I do not want to remove crafting/gathering jobs and maps obviously. But my point is this MMORPG lacks the "Ooooh, I wonder what's over there! What IS that!?" moments.

Not sure if other people would share this opinion but I really think that the speed at which we can explore zones even without flying makes it too easy to ignore the world outside of just getting from objective A to B. And I think because of that they are less incentivized to spend time developing small bits of the world because people just don't want to 90% of the time in the games current state.

If the game was built around exploring on the ground more and having a more natural breathing world then it would make sense to put way more time and resources into these ideas but FFXIV hasn't been that way for a very long time, and I think the team acknowledged that when they put flying in ARR zones.

I think the only options at this point is either rework flying / mounts to facilitate meaningful world exploration or to keep going the path they are on where every zone is a static set piece for the story they want to tell.

One thing that should be fixed though is that every zone feels like a total non-issue to navigate / fight through. World mobs in FFXIV are worthless and only exist to add some sense of ecology to the world and have never posed a threat outside of very rare hunt monsters / fates. All fates are as threatening as bubble wrap and the monsters don't even have the strength to pop it. It would definitely help fix the problem with how the MSQ is more of a movie instead of a video game...

I FATE farm for rewards tbh, have better rewards and I'll do more FATEs. Maybe throw some of the stuff you keep adding to the store as rewards in the game and people will feel more inspired to participate in content. Also need a channel like in GW2 that alerts you to the huge world boss FATES, I don't fall asleep doing those and would go to them so much more often if I didn't have to join a Discord just to get notifications about them.

It would be pretty cool to see "hamlet defense" type FATEs return from 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Raim

With Yoshida stating that the game is going to be focusing on multiplayer aspects again, I think we need to take the time to discuss a few suggestions I have to bring life back into the game's open world content. I am going to just break it down into points to make it easier to read.

-Make Fates give Bicolor Gemstones at all level ranges and expansions
-Let players exchange Bicolor Gemstones for the same items as Hunt Currencies, albeit at a lesser rate
-Give players a chaining EXP/Gemstone bonus for doing Fates back to back
-Take inspiration from Rift's Instant Adventures and let players queue into groups of 4-8 players doing Fates out in the game world. The system will direct them to each Fate and you get a small stacking bonus for each you actively participate in.
-Add in max level solo AND group combat Levequests that provide a unique currency+Tomes to incentivize max level players to use their Leves
-Every patch there needs to be a Tomestone Mount or glamour roughly equivalent to the grind of a Bicolor Gemstone mount; lets just say it costs 50k uncapped tomestones; This will encourage players to do daily activities even when geared
-Create a small instanced area called something like "Treasure Hunters League" where like minded players can get together to form groups for map parties, rather than relying on party finder

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Not sure about all of these, but the first 3 should absolutely be a thing, and I 100% agree with them. Even if older Fates only have a few Bicolors, earning a small bonus while I do my Bozja and Anima relic grinds would be quite nice. You're probably not going to suddenly get a massive upsurge in interest or anything, but random players will likely stop and help newer players with FATES if there's a few Bicolors in it for their effort.

Actually, I just had another idea inspired by something someone else said.

In ESO, you could find random chests scattered about in the overworld. They almost never had anything good in them, perhaps a little gold, some outdated materia equivalent, random crafting materials, etc.

But even a small incentive like that had me exploring off the beaten track while doing quests, purely because I could. It's not even about the reward, but the little hit of dopamine that comes from finding a shiny thing.

I've been reading a lot more lately and struck upon one where doing a quest set off a world event and thought to myself: Why can't we have such cool things? Why weren't the Final Days a week long event? It's not like they couldn't have put a week long pause in the MSQ while the scions did something and we get fates, city defence, event hunts or a plethora of other things. The Alexandrian invasion in DT the same, why wasn't that an event across the DT maps? Then in 6.1/7.1 they could have reconstruction events for the crafters and gatherers and it would have been really neat.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

I'm not talking about lore or NPCs, I can't actually say I care enough about fates to have ever paid attn to the npcs or lore of them. I am talking about the actual fates themselves. It's the same objectives again and again. Kill all mobs, kill until bar fills, boss fates, collect items > turn in > wait, etc etc. It's always just the same thing again and again, even in the field zones. They need to shake things up a bit and give us new objectives.

Making fates change the world in some way would also be good, like beast tribes or rival factions fighting over control of resources. When one has control the area is much more hostile and when they don't certain vendors are available is a good jumping off point for that. But they would need to put enough worthwhile rewards behind it that it doesn't become obsolete after a couple months, like Odin, Behemoth, Ixion, etc. Large scale, world bosses with actual mechanics would be the good way to incorperate relic items into the world instead of just putting them behind standard fates.

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And I agree with you.
Like it would have been neat if before Stormy Weather in Hanuhanu-land, fates appeared oriented around harvesting their crops and securing down their stick-houses etc.
They have an intricate weather system, but rarely use it beyond fish spawns.

Was just saying, given this is a story-focused MMO I'd assume a lot of players, a good story-motivation behind what I'm doing really helps keep me engaged.
I will seek out those aforementioned 'story' fates in ShB when I'm in those zones because I care about those NPCs and want them to succeed.
Just like defending the bridge and freeing the captives in Thanalan felt more impactful because it directly tied into the greater narrative of the zone's story.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Keypoint is having more points of interests, towns, villages, OPEN BUILDINGS FOR TWELVES SAKE, OPEN UP AAAALL THE BUILDINGS.

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Having barely any open buildings completely kills side quests for me. How the hell am I supposed to care about the people in the settlement when I can't even see how they live. When you can’t see how people actually live, settlements stop feeling like communities and start feeling like staged backdrops. The absence of open buildings makes NPCs feel less believable (in no world is an NPC standing idly outside their home as real feeling as an NPC inside their home, even if that NPC is also standing idly inside) and strips away the environmental storytelling (!!!!) . It also really pisses me off when I see people say its not possible to have open buildings. Bruh, its possible! They did it in ARR, they can do it again!!!

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Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

Having barely any open buildings completely kills side quests for me. How the hell am I supposed to care about the people in the settlement when I can't even see how they live. When you can’t see how people actually live, settlements stop feeling like communities and start feeling like staged backdrops. The absence of open buildings makes NPCs feel less believable (in no world is an NPC standing idly outside their home as real feeling as an NPC inside their home, even if that NPC is also standing idly inside) and strips away the environmental storytelling (!!!!) . It also really pisses me off when I see people say its not possible to have open buildings. Bruh, its possible! They did it in ARR, they can do it again!!!

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Many of the settlements feel more like lots at Universal Studios than places where people live.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Many of the settlements feel more like lots at Universal Studios than places where people live.

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Agreed. This is what the houses in Wright feel like lol.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.co...0/IMG_1306.JPG

My brain isn't braining rn so I can't give amy suggestions. I just want to say, I really missed the feeling of ARR zones. They feel alive, and it's like the zone is created for itself first, rather than created for msq quests if that makes amy sense. We get settlements, explorable building, non quest giver npc who creates immersion. That sort of things.

But anyway, I think ever since they introduce flying mechanic, the area have been getting bigger and bigger but also empty. I think if they make it smaller, have more population, it could also introduce new(ish) interesting type of FATE (i.e defending settlements)