The zones we have now are to small.

[RowanLauron]

The zones are just as big. They are broken up into smaller sections. 1.0 you had the Shroud: North, South, east and west all on the same map. 2.0 has the same but broken up into smaller sections. It's really not any different. Just seems smaller because of the some breaks.

[Alhanelem]

Why can't we have zones that were as large as they were in 1.0 but still be filled with things to do like the current areas?

Those zones were split into SEVERAL different serverside areas, and they couldn't have areas that big without

1) lots of copy pasta
2) ability to load them on the PS3 with its limited memory.

Besides, what's the point in having gigantic areas with nothing to fill them with?

[Dreamer]

The small zones are my #1 issue with the game currently. It's not just PS3 limitations - they're also trying to hit the poor people with toasters for computers demographic, like WoW. It's not just size; as others have mentioned, verticality, an overabundance of choke points, and far too much segmentation in general. The current map designs belong in game from 2005, not 2013.

The copy pasta in 1.0 is a bit overstated. Yes, it was basically a tiling system for much of the zones, but it did have its unique points where necessary. Take the Shroud for example - eastern shroud looked different from central shroud looked different than western shroud. Everything was very nicely spread out. Unlike now where I don't even use my chocbo half the time cause everything is right bloody next to everything else.

[Zafrei]

Zones look fine to me, I love the way high and low level content has been mashed together too as it stops early areas from becoming ghost towns.

Only issue I have is there's too much zoning. It would be great if that could be cut down. Less load screens and more seamless landscape

[Naunet]

Silly people,

2.0 was scaled back to work on console, yes, but also on low end PC's.

You do realize that the PS3 has less RAM than the minimum requirements for a just a standard operating system on a PC, right?

[Pinworms]

The biggest thing I miss is the fact that 1.0 did not really have loading screens and everything seamlessly flowed into the next zone. I miss that SOOO much. The way the game is now with broken up zones makes it feel smaller and sucks...good thing I like the game overall because this is really my only complaint minus the red circle lag.

[KiriA500]

The zones are just as big. They are broken up into smaller sections. 1.0 you had the Shroud: North, South, east and west all on the same map. 2.0 has the same but broken up into smaller sections. It's really not any different. Just seems smaller because of the some breaks.

No, there is a difference. Now the areas look different instead of being bland repeats of everywhere else.

The biggest thing I miss is the fact that 1.0 did not really have loading screens and everything seamlessly flowed into the next zone. I miss that SOOO much. The way the game is now with broken up zones makes it feel smaller and sucks...good thing I like the game overall because this is really my only complaint minus the red circle lag.

Did you even play 1.0? There were loading screens between zones (e.g. going between The Black Shroud and Thanalan). There was nothing seamless about 1.0.

[indira]

yeah zones are way too small. no way to farm for weaver or leatherworker since there almost no mobs in the zone, feels like im hunting HNM's in FFXI.

i hope the expansion zones are bigger. no reason they can make big zones, BUT i think they decided to make straight .bsp with no portal volume that can make the world look seamless thats why we have to load between zones. as for mmo's WoW has it, thats why you can run across a whole continent with no loading screens game only shows whats in proxmity & in that portal volume and it only draws whats in your screen saves mass amounts of system power. think of portal volumes are visually like A* but with .BSP.
i think they made the zones small because of time constraints.

[RynaultB]

(2) I'd rather we get completely new zones added, rather than a patch/expansion to make the existing zones bigger.

I'm sure we'll get some new zones but I can bet we'll see extensions to the zones you can currently discover on the map are small compared to where you can drag the map around in the Map UI.

After the mess that was 1.0, I'm actually fine with the size. However, I do have a problem with the lack of things to do in zones. They feel small to me because all there is to do are FATEs, leves, and gathering. Nothing to explore since the world is pretty much flat, nothing to discover, nothing fun to do....nada.

This is kind of how I feel, I like that they are smaller but it feels like there isn't much to do and thus they feel smaller than they actually are. I think they tried to streamline everything too much this time round which ended up hurting the feel... overall.

[Mhaeric]

They are very small.. and not only that.. very linear and corridory. Rubbish.

This makes me laugh given the old Black Shroud zones. Those were the epitomy of "corridory." They also may have been large, but the maps were made up entirely of about 6 set pieces that were just rotated and repeated ad-naseum. Not to mention the whole zone wasn't actually one zone, but a series of small zones that were connected by a very long completely empty transition corridor while the game loaded in the next area... which was made up of exactly the same 6 set pieces rotated and repeated ad-naseum. And a good 50% of the map was not even playable content. It was just filled with creatures up to 50 levels higher than the max level a player could reach with no quests or anything to do other than finding teleportation shards:

Vs. what we have now:
(Notice the similarity in size overall, and the intelligent level design. Also compare the fact that every area in this map has a different feel and look to it, compared to every area on the old map looking exactly the same.)


The other areas of the game were exactly the same, although it wasn't as obvious since the set-pieces were not corridors but rather designed to be open spaces when pieced together: