Why we cannot have Exploration zones instead of regular zones?

As I have mentioned in the title. My question is simple: Why don't we have Exploration zones instead of regular zones?

Think with me for a moment. Almost everyone enjoys Eureka, Bozja, and now Crescent to a varying degree. If you're going to argue with the term "Almost," then do so, but one cannot deny that many people do enjoy this kind of content.

• The map is open for everyone to explore at their leisure, regardless of quest progress (Except in Bozja).
• The mobs are dangerous enough to kill you if you mess up, but not much that they're hard to kill either.
• Bosses are capable of massacring dozens of players (Although S-hunts can do that too which is good).
• Treasures/boxes can be found/dropped around that hold valuable items.
• Players are encouraged to party-up with others to kill mobs for their currencies (Example, Bozjan clusters and gold coins).
• Raids require preparation, coordination, and communication because mindless zerg won't help out most of the time.

So tell me, why do we have the base expansion zones instead of these? I believe the game would be so much more fun if we replace the base expansion zones with exploration-like zones.

Is it going to break the devs' favourite expansion formula? Yes, but I'd rather care about the quality than the quantity. If an expansion introduces two exploration zones to go through at a base expansion, and adds more in the patches then that's great!

Weave the story-telling and fun with the zone itself. Let us have fun memories. Let the MSQ have "We need you to do that CE, or do that FATE" and make us involved with exploring and advancing onwards!

I know this is unlikely to happen, but it would be great if this is included in the devs' plan of 8.0 and their plans on what to do after level 100.

Almost everyone enjoys Eureka, Bozja, and now Crescent. Are you trolling?
I do agree with the general spirit though, normal maps would probably feel better.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Almost everyone enjoys Eureka, Bozja, and now Crescent. Are you trolling?
I do agree with the general spirit though, normal maps would probably feel better.

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I already answered you

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If you're going to argue with the term "Almost," then do so, but one cannot deny that many people do enjoy this kind of content.

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Proof? The dozens of dedicated Discord servers, communities, and instances of zones reaching player limits.

You can try to compare these with the almost always-empty base zones outside of people doing MSQ or in on a A/S-ranks hunt.

Yeah sure the dozens of those mean "almost everyone enjoys it".
Yeah I can compare it to the base zones when they do release actually. Unless you have short memory, do you recall how full of fate trains they are in the first couple of months after an expansion drops? How do you think OC is going to look in a couple of months when the next new content drops?

Yoshi-P said he remade the game, rather than salvaging 1.0, so that we could have cross-world gameplay and a matching system to go with it. So you see, a homeworld-only Field Operation would go against that, and reduce the number of participants greatly.

Although it's just speculation, I believe doing everything in instances allows them to better control the number of participants ie. limiting to 72, which they can't do in the Open World. Although we currently experiencing scaling issues with FATEs still, in most contexts, the cross-world duty system prevents there being too many or too few like you get with hunts.

As for why there aren't dangerous enemies and complex systems such Logos/Lost Actions/Phantom Jobs in the open world, I believe it's because SE wants to keep the status quo for the people who just do MSQ then quit, because not everyone wants complex systems and challenging enemies. Instead, it's made something optional that people can unlock if they want that stuff.

Going back to Eureka, they were willing to allow the developers to make it really brutal in there provided none of it left the confines of the content (and it was, with enemies like Dragons 1-shotting people, and enemies being tougher than in OC on release).

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Originally Posted by Valence

Yeah sure the dozens of those mean "almost everyone enjoys it".
Yeah I can compare it to the base zones when they do release actually. Unless you have short memory, do you recall how full of fate trains they are in the first couple of months after an expansion drops? How do you think OC is going to look in a couple of months when the next new content drops?

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How do you think Eureka looked prior to the release of Crescent? It sure wasn't anywhere near empty for a 7-year-old content.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Yoshi-P said he remade the game, rather than salvaging 1.0, so that we could have cross-world gameplay and a matching system to go with it. So you see, a homeworld-only Field Operation would go against that, and reduce the number of participants greatly.

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Look. I know some people love to think this way, but I'd rather not worry about the technicality like a dev because that's their job and is what they are paid for. To find solutions to implement creative and fun ideas rather than "We cannot do that".

However, just to humor you with a quickly thought solutions that may or may not work. They could either go with the path of merging all worlds of the same physical DC (and work out stuff like housing) or they could make any players entering the zones within the same physical DC be on the same instance so they don't worry about world hopping.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Although it's just speculation, I believe doing everything in instances allows them to better control the number of participants ie. limiting to 72, which they can't do in the Open World. Although we currently experiencing scaling issues with FATEs still, in most contexts, the cross-world duty system prevents there being too many or too few like you get with hunts.

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What makes you think that's not something they can do easily? If I'm not mistaken. The cap of regular zones are around 250-300 players, which is something they could reduce and introduce permanent instances (1,2,3) to compensate for the size.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

As for why there aren't dangerous enemies and complex systems such Logos/Lost Actions/Phantom Jobs in the open world, I believe it's because SE wants to keep the status quo for the people who just do MSQ then quit, because not everyone wants complex systems and challenging enemies. Instead, it's made something optional that people can unlock if they want that stuff.

Going back to Eureka, they were willing to allow the developers to make it really brutal in there provided none of it left the confines of the content (and it was, with enemies like Dragons 1-shotting people, and enemies being tougher than in OC on release).

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Which is a shame. The MSQ may have a really strong and excellent points throughout its run, but I don't think it should hold the game as a hostage. Afterall, this is a video game, not a visual novel.

Agreed. The field operation zones are a much better and more efficient use of development time than the empty MSQ zones that exist solely to look nice for 1-2 days.

I would happily trade Tural for another zone of Occult Crescent or Bozja.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Eww, no, I didn't even enjoy Eureka and have no desire to ever touch Bozja or Occult Crescent because the experience was THAT bad and boring for me out there, and that was just from completing Anemos. (Once I heard about the 1-shot dragons and dumb cliffs in the next area I nope'd out completely.)

The worst part though is how people lied to me about Field Operations being "casual" content so I got tricked into going in the first place, when if they had told be the truth from the start, that it's objectively hardcore content with regards to challenge and grind, I would have just kept on happily ignoring it instead of wasting time and having to toss out 100s of crystals and lockboxes afterward. (No, I didn't even bother to upgrade anything or open stuff, that's how done I was.)

If the whole game's (or even just one expansion's worth) of regular zones had been like Eureka, it would have just drove me to quit sooner, or not even pick up the game in the first place. If I wanted to play Final Fantasy 11 I WOULD HAVE GONE TO PLAY FINAL FANTASY 11. Giving me a "slice" of it here just made me toss the plate in the trash.

Not to say Field Operations content can't exist and other people can't enjoy it, or that basic zones couldn't use more reasons to care about visiting them outside of MSQ and dailies, but this is one case where I definitely don't want your chocolate in my peanut butter.

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Ah yes, here comes again the "it's too hard for meeee". You're trolling at this point. By your own admission, you find endgame Stormblood msq dungeons to be too hard, despite starting near the end of EW (which means a lot of things have been streamlined already). You cry even at the most casual contents (while avoiding trying getting better), your opinion is invalid.

As someone who has recently started to do Eureka again, and fell in love with it again, I can definitely say I like the idea of it.

I don't necessarily think it needs to be as rough or as hands-on, but there definitely needs to be more reasons to visit the overworld -- Sometimes I forget I am even playing an MMO, and that's pretty disheartening.

When it comes to physical zones, yes I'd much to prefer to have something like South Horn instead of MSQ regions. Large interesting areas that aren't randomly gated off.

I'm less interested in the enemies. While they are more threatening they're still just kind of there. I think the problem is that FF14 combat being so heavily rotation based gets dull when enemies die quickly and there are breaks between short bouts of combat. There isn't enough time in combat with field enemies to go through a full rotation and there isn't enough time for the enemies to do anything beyond casting one or two simple AoE. I end up avoiding them because that's the most fun way to interact with them - don't. Bosses are properly threatening and engaging though as repetitive and obscure as your typical FF14 boss.

A FATE driven area could work but FATEs themselves need some revisions. Some of them should be longer. Much longer, bordering on persistent. They could be multiday events that players could join and leave without needing to rush to them all the time. More could be done with FATE positioning as well. There are some mobile FATEs in the MSQ areas. Take the concept and add fights that can be dynamically moved around the zone. If players are losing the FATE moves on way, if they're winning it goes the other, and as locations change different environmental effects come into play.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

They could either go with the path of merging all worlds of the same physical DC (and work out stuff like housing) or they could make any players entering the zones within the same physical DC be on the same instance so they don't worry about world hopping.

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Although I don't understand their exact setup, in theory each world and its associated IP is to separate the connections and their associated data transfer, so merging it becomes problematic when you get a situation like a patch or expansion release especially. They don't want to bottleneck too many connections, so they have multiple bottles, so to speak.

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What makes you think that's not something they can do easily? If I'm not mistaken. The cap of regular zones are around 250-300 players, which is something they could reduce and introduce permanent instances (1,2,3) to compensate for the size.

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I've seen 600 players in an instance before. We get 400 at hunt trains on Aether at an expansion release. But they rate limit the amount that can enter more and more the closer it gets to 600.

Now they could cap it and divide it into instances, but since each instance is an extra server program, I suspect they would not want to run instances permanently for all zones just for the off chance that they reach cap due to a hunt train or S rank or other event. If they don't have a way to allow everyone into an open world zone, it potentially prevents someone progressing the MSQ which isn't so good, and currently although 600 is rough to get into the few times it's happened, it's still possible.

In contrast, they maintain instances forever for Field Operations and that's less overhead because they are shared across worlds. Their duty servers are designed to handle multiple instances for the event that content gets farmed or has a lot of people doing it. Even then, I have seen the cap reached for Amdapor Keep instances once in my 10 years of play. Due to bots farming it, I literally couldn't queue for it.

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Which is a shame. The MSQ may have a really strong and excellent points throughout its run, but I don't think it should hold the game as a hostage. Afterall, this is a video game, not a visual novel.

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I actually think their aim is to make the MSQ a visual novel, because some of the people who do the MSQ are not really gamers (ie. they are the partner of someone who plays and not a gamer nor very tech-savvy).

The concept of a visual novel is valid as well. It's long been theorized what an "interactive movie" or "interactive series" would look like, but it's never taken off - guess why? Because it already exists in the form of video game stories like FFXIV's MSQ. It's the same reason the metaverse didn't take off. Because anyone with sense knows it exists in the form of video games already.