The world feels too small.

[Taruranto]

It doesn't help that everything is instanced. There is no sense to go though an underground area, remember visiting the Horutoto Ruin or Bastok mines, knowing these places where actually under the city? Copperbell is under Thanalan, but you barely notice it because you can teleport inside the dungeon from Gridania without spending no more than 5 seconds talking to the NPC at the entrace.

[Sephirah]

Honestly I'm against instancing overworld maps. Does it make things easier from a design standpoint? Yes. But it also leads to people being on the same map, in the same spot, and not being able to see eachother. Which just ends up with the game feeling less populated and empty.

[Dliver]

Agreed, and +1. The world is about half the size I feel it should be, for an MMO, even as a first try.

This is still a small issue compared to the lag/animation delays/graohics engine/whatever issues, but it's still a big issue.

[Leenk]

I dont understand the reason people seek difficulty in things that dont need to be difficult.
The reason people remember that trip to jeuno is because it sucked. The mobs were too strong for the player who needed to make that trip.
Im aware the world is relatively small, but we have quite a bit of solid content to begin with. Much of the content is competently difficult, so talk of things needing to be harder is just a joke...for now. If you want hard, turn 5 of the coil is waiting on you.

That LARGER world went mostly unused by the majority. Is this just nostalgia speaking? because i went into shroposhae, copperbell and mistbeard cove you would be lucky if there were more than 3 people in there at any given time. The world was huge and empty before and those non-instanced zones were done away with because they were a waste.
Think back to 1.0, how much of the black shroud did you actually use and how much was travel time for the sake of wasting your time?

[SaintAjora]

There's nothing fun to me about having to meet someone somewhere, and having to tell them it'll be at least half an hour, including a 10 minute ferry ride, after waiting 10 minutes for it to even show up (I've cried a couple of times upon finally getting through to the dock just as the Al Zahbi ferry was leaving :x). I will agree that what we have is also a bit much, in the other direction.
However, the game just opened up. I am completely confident we'll get more to the zones we have, and more additional areas, and eventually the world could be huge again (but legitimately so, less copy/paste XD).

[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.

[Balbanes]

Instant porting makes this issue worse. I guess it can't be avoided at this point though.

[Terius]

Yes I miss larger, open worlds to a point. The world does feel small because you abandon most areas after leveling as well. (By FATES anyway)

For alts: 1 - 14: Starting Area Zones
15 - 20: Aleport
20 - 30: South Shroud
30 - 35: Costa Del Sol
35 - 42'ish: Coerthas
42'ish to 50: Northern Thanalan

Everywhere else is abandoned apart from class quests and gathering. :/