Architecture that doesn't fit

This is not a complaint, but isn't it a pity that the inside architecture of some buildings just doesn't match the exterior at all?

Take the Baldesion Annex for example - that building is pretty small from the outside, yet it's supposed to house the huge entrance area (which actually matches the exterior for obvious reasons), the main hall (that doesn't fit into the building at all - the door that leads into it is next to the exterior wall, yet the room itself stretches quite a bit to each side of it; and the windows on the inside don't match any configuration on the outside either), plus several rooms for people to sleep in plus a hallway (can be seen in cutscenes) leading to them.

So unless all the windows we see on the inside are fake and the complex has several subterranean floors, there's no way this works out.

It's a minor detail and doesn't affect anything - but I would still love for these things to actually make sense. Anyone else? haha

This is the same game where we can place windows on the basement and the small housing does not have another floor/attic on top despite of it looking like that from the outside for any of the housing design.

Magick my guy, Magick.

I think at a certain point you just need to accept that there’s limitations to some of the zones and to stop thinking too hard about it. Limsa Lominsa is obviously meant to be much bigger than what we see for example. In artwork and in stuff that’s mentioned by characters, it’s more than just this tiny collection of paths on islands and a handful of buildings, but they seem to have been limited with what can be depicted so we got what we got.

The decision to put the Baldesion Annex in the middle of the Sharlayan map instead of off to the side was an interesting one, but if we had the full size of it on the map then it would be White House Ballroom levels of awkward and oversized compared to everything else around it.

Gotta suspend your disbelief at least a little bit when it comes to scale in video games, especially MMOs.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Gotta suspend your disbelief at least a little bit when it comes to scale in video games, especially MMOs.

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Especially not MMOs. They are the kind of game which benefits the most from spreading out the points of interest, because it helps combating zone congestion.

The further apart various places are, within sensible limits, the fewer players in the immediate vicinity to synchronise with each other.

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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

Especially not MMOs. They are the kind of game which benefits the most from spreading out the points of interest, because it helps combating zone congestion.

The further apart various places are, within sensible limits, the fewer players in the immediate vicinity to synchronise with each other.

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There’s still technical limitations exacerbated by the nature of MMOs having to load the maps on servers with lots of players and allowing minimum graphics requirements to net a larger playerbase that affects how big the zone can be and how densely populated by NPCs and buildings it can be too. They’re not going to build out an entire realistic city for the game, it’s just not feasible.

We get the main points of interest spread out from each other and filler bits in between, but it’s not the same scale as an actual, functional city.

Outdoor zones get hit with this as well. The idea that everything that ever happens in that area happens only in a single square mile also requires suspension of disbelief.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Outdoor zones get hit with this as well. The idea that everything that ever happens in that area happens only in a single square mile also requires suspension of disbelief.

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That's true, but especially for MMOs they don't have to be that small. As an example, PlanetSide 2's zones ("continents") are roughly 64 km² each, about the size of Manhattan Island, Föhr or Guernsey. This, together with a design which naturally spreads the players out most of the time, allows them to host hundreds of players in each zone at the same time.

FFXIV's zones are, if anything, an anomaly in how tiny they are.

The most egregious one to me is the Carline Canopy. There just isn't any place for even ONE inn room, let alone dozens of them.

Limsa, I think, has a lot of the hidden parts of the city only accessible by boat, or hidden in the cliff sides. If you stare out over the water, you'll see windows inside the cliffs.

Ul'dah's small houses making up the actual city walls makes the most sense architecturally. There are also extra layers of the city upwards AND downwards that are presumably inaccessible housing. The Waking Sands used to be underneath where the Hall of Flames is in 1.0 - it was damaged during the Calamity, allegedly, which is why the Path of the Twelve got shoved out to Vesper Bay during the renovation.

Yeah the nap rooms are hysterically oversized but the exterior's windows hint that there were meant to be many little studio apartments on the upper floor. The meeting hall is most likely a basement with the lack of windows and myriad volcanic caves they use for everything from the library to Labyrinthos.

It's not even unreasonable to imagine Krile and G'raha specifically gave the WoL that enormous room to use because it's the WoL.

Maybe instead of being underground, it is just TARDIS technology, it is bigger in the inside.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

There’s still technical limitations exacerbated by the nature of MMOs having to load the maps on servers with lots of players and allowing minimum graphics requirements to net a larger playerbase that affects how big the zone can be and how densely populated by NPCs and buildings it can be too. They’re not going to build out an entire realistic city for the game, it’s just not feasible.

We get the main points of interest spread out from each other and filler bits in between, but it’s not the same scale as an actual, functional city.

Outdoor zones get hit with this as well. The idea that everything that ever happens in that area happens only in a single square mile also requires suspension of disbelief.

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Sure, but I'd rather have more instancing/zones (e.g. split the cities into multiple areas like Gridania/Limsa/Ul'dah) and to-scale/full 3d designed locations.
It would be amazing if every place in the game was designed as one functional building and then put on the map as is with certain areas (like the main hall) still being instanced. And if they can come up with a city the scale of S9 (which feels way too empty unfortunately), they could also make places like Sharlayan bigger and actually work...
Personal perference obviously, but that would really add to the immersion imo.

Moreso than having fully modelled buildings, especially when they're only used a few times anyway, I'd rather NPCs have actual daily routines. That would do a lot more for my immersion, I know then the devs would have to put time of day flags into dialogue that points to specific people so that it points you to where they are at the time the dialogue is given but I think it'd be worth it, they could add a number of semi-random events then to towns and cities that coincide with certain fates and hunts spawning.

There's a handful in Heavensward, my faves being the naughty children doing the shopping, and the man who is late for his shift then goes home for a pint or six.

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

Maybe instead of being underground, it is just TARDIS technology, it is bigger in the inside.

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They'd have to be quite a bit bigger in some cases. Did you ever fly up to the upper floors of the Beaconhill Lighthouse in Western Thanalan? That place looks cramped even for Lalafel from the outside.

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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

They'd have to be quite a bit bigger in some cases. Did you ever fly up to the upper floors of the Beaconhill Lighthouse in Western Thanalan? That place looks cramped even for Lalafel from the outside.

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So I made the comment as a joke, but now I am curious, if you are willing to entertain the idea it is simply magically larger in the inside, why are you setting a limit to how much larger it can possibly be? if you are already manipulating space and time to your benefit, it can simply be arbitrarily larger as needed, no?

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

So I made the comment as a joke, but now I am curious, if you are willing to entertain the idea it is simply magically larger in the inside, why are you setting a limit to how much larger it can possibly be? if you are already manipulating space and time to your benefit, it can simply be arbitrarily larger as needed, no?

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Magic manipulates aether, and the stronger the effect the more of it you need to concentrate in a single spot. We can see what happens when this goes to the extremes - most notably in Mor Dhona, or what's left of it.

So that's the upper limit, above which spontaneous aether crystalisation starts making the effect impractical.

“It’s bigger on the inside”

Trailer for "The Backrooms" feature film dropped yesterday.

Having an unlimited interior has its drawbacks...

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

Moreso than having fully modelled buildings, especially when they're only used a few times anyway, I'd rather NPCs have actual daily routines. That would do a lot more for my immersion, I know then the devs would have to put time of day flags into dialogue that points to specific people so that it points you to where they are at the time the dialogue is given but I think it'd be worth it, they could add a number of semi-random events then to towns and cities that coincide with certain fates and hunts spawning.

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That would be pretty cool, especially after Starfield dropped the ball