The world feels too small.

[DeceptionsWrath]

Yes FFXI wasn't that big either but come on guys. What other product can come out now with shorting comings that it had 10 years ago and be acceptable? I just do not get this mentality. "Games can be crappy because they were crappy 10 years ago". Just drives me crazy. I understand older games were different but there is a reason we have new technology and engines. Games are suppose to get better with more technology, not be on par with 10 year old games or worse in some cases. Just saying.

[Andrien]

Yes FFXI wasn't that big either but come on guys. What other product can come out now with shorting comings that it had 10 years ago and be acceptable? I just do not get this mentality. "Games can be crappy because they were crappy 10 years ago". Just drives me crazy. I understand older games were different but there is a reason we have new technology and engines. Games are suppose to get better with more technology, not be on par with 10 year old games or worse in some cases. Just saying.

Compare FFXIV:ARR launch with FFXI launch. XIV is larger.

[Dreamer]

The zones in game are unacceptably, ridiculously small. They're smaller than any other game I can think of at the moment off the top of my head. Not just by a little. By a massive margin. For example, in one of the more polarized examples in terms of size, the Shire (a single, non-instanced zone) in the Lord of the Rings Online is as large as the entire Shroud + Gridania City + Coerthas. One non-instanced zone in LotRO, eight instanced zones in FFXIV.

[Maqaqa]

Compare FFXIV:ARR launch with FFXI launch. XIV is larger.

Yet it feels much smaller.

[Wobi]

Yet it feels much smaller.

It looks like they made a mistake lowering repair costs, if you have enough gil to teleport freely the world will feel small. Because why walk, when you can travel through space/time right?

[Maqaqa]

It looks like they made a mistake lowering repair costs, if you have enough gil to teleport freely the world will feel small. Because why walk, when you can travel through space/time right?

The mistake is giving us the opportunity to teleport EVERYWHERE (no matter the price really), so traveling is pointless; if you dont travel you dont see the Eorza, which is beautiful, handcrafted, w/ever... and pointless, its just the place where you spam fates, anything remotely interesting happens in instances.

[vp_cmc]

Yes FFXI wasn't that big either but come on guys. What other product can come out now with shorting comings that it had 10 years ago and be acceptable? I just do not get this mentality. "Games can be crappy because they were crappy 10 years ago". Just drives me crazy. I understand older games were different but there is a reason we have new technology and engines. Games are suppose to get better with more technology, not be on par with 10 year old games or worse in some cases. Just saying.

Could you please explain, what technology and engines are you talking about exactly? There is a lot of manual drawing work in creation of these locations, and I don't think, that methods of 3D modelling are drastically changed in these 10 years. And I think that this manual work is the main limitation factor.

[Baneus]

Yes FFXI wasn't that big either but come on guys. What other product can come out now with shorting comings that it had 10 years ago and be acceptable? I just do not get this mentality. "Games can be crappy because they were crappy 10 years ago". Just drives me crazy. I understand older games were different but there is a reason we have new technology and engines. Games are suppose to get better with more technology, not be on par with 10 year old games or worse in some cases. Just saying.

10 years ago the playerbase for every single MMO was a fraction of what even the worst ones have these days. In those 10 years, the technology and game engines have gotten marginally better and the playerbase has increased to match. So you pretty much end up with the same situation.

Though I have read a bit on the storage situation and the Dev responses to it and I have to wonder; what sort of horrible DB implementation are they using that can't be expanded easily to accommodate large amounts of static storage (stuff in houses and chests, not moving with characters)?

[gadzi_h]

Though I have read a bit on the storage situation and the Dev responses to it and I have to wonder; what sort of horrible DB implementation are they using that can't be expanded easily to accommodate large amounts of static storage (stuff in houses and chests, not moving with characters)?

Good point, I've worked a lot with SQL databases and this sort of movement should be a no brainer, cross table query based on your characters ID/Server ID. Oh well.

[Maqaqa]

In those 10 years, the technology and game engines have gotten marginally better and the playerbase has increased to match.

And the number of servers increased to match the number of players.
Also... "marginally better"? Come on technology and game engines have gotten MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better during the last 10 years.
I used to play MMOs with a 56k, of course i lagged a lot, but i cant believe 10 years later with a cable connection im STILL lagging (or even worse people around me disappears = culling).
I dont see the number of players as an issue honestly its just more income for the devs.