What are the chances of ever getting similar sized massive zones/maps that 1.0 had?

[Tiggy]

Why leave Mor Dhona/Wineport? Everything you need is in those two locations, and you can queue for all content from there....

Working as intended.

Please look forward to it.

Beastmen dailies and treasure maps disagree with this sentiment.

[Seif]

Let's be reasonable, FFXI maps size would already be an improvement.

This guy has a point. At the same time I have to say that the area would beed actually dangerous mobs to be in there. Just running for a long time means nothing of the road doesn't have killer monsters lurking around.

[PlanckZero]

I also wish the game had zones more on scale with what XI had but I can also understand that this game just isn't built around content that requires large zones at the moment.

In XI you needed large zones. You needed to separate experience camps so people weren't pulling over each other, in contrast XIV focuses more on FATE content in open zones where you benefit from smaller maps where people can quickly commute from a FATE on one side of the zone to one on the other side.

I would love if this game had XI sized zones, but even XI's large zones were a fairly hollow experience. How much of most zones actually got used? Most of the games initial zones were just large roads in between experience camps and cities. For example look at zones like Meriphataud, Sauromouge and Zi'tah. Large zones with some great features... but can anyone recall ever doing much in any of them? Maybe a bit of farming and the occasional Ballista but otherwise the zones were little more than pretty pathways to Garlaige/Boyhada/Ro'maeve where you actually camped out.

I do agree though with the idea that the game needs more open world "dungeon" content right now. The wide open spaces we have are fairly boring and could be immensely improved upon without having to extend the maps outwards if they would add in open world caves and dungeons that extended the world downward.

[Nuinn]

and i wish i could have posted that all in 1 post

You can edit your original (first) post to have more than 1000 characters.

[Kazamoto]

Beastmen dailies and treasure maps disagree with this sentiment.

While I intended a heavy dose of sarcasm in my post, beastmen dailies provide a mount, treasure maps provide a minion, neither apply to 'end game' content. Account customization is nice, and side activities are nice. Heck, I played a good deal of Pankration in FFXI, but my Frost Bunny of doom didnt help in Dynamis or Sea...

[Ildur]

This guy has a point. At the same time I have to say that the area would beed actually dangerous mobs to be in there. Just running for a long time means nothing of the road doesn't have killer monsters lurking around.

No need for monsters, though having a bigger variety of creatures and higher populations for mob farming (for those who like farming mobs, anyway) would indeed be nice. But what you need to make big areas interesting are various things. Mobs to kill. Resoruces to gather. FATEs. But above all of them, landmarks. Places to go to, places to see. They don't work on their own, but having mobs sprawled all over an area doesn't work. Dark Souls tried to pull that off when they ran out of time in the demonic area, and it is one of the blandest zones ever seen in any videogame. Similarly, the old FFXIV 1.0's areas were just as silly because of the copy pasting, cheapening any unique locations you could find (because there were no unique places to see on most of the map). ARR's areas are stupidly small because of one of two reasons: either Squee didn't have the manpower to design big areas, or they hilariously misunderstood what was so bad about the copy-pasted big enviorements.

[Alberel]

ARR's areas are stupidly small because of one of two reasons: either Squee didn't have the manpower to design big areas, or they hilariously misunderstood what was so bad about the copy-pasted big enviorements.

Or the third, most obvious, reason... PS3 memory limitations.

They spoke about this at length prior to 2.0's release. They wanted to make the environments more detailed and more varied but this came at the expense of having to reduce the size to cater specifically to the PS3. The PS3's pathetic memory is to blame for a huge number of this game's issues. I know I'm not the only one wishing they would have just made it a PS4 exclusive instead... the game would have the potential to be MUCH better if the PS3 wasn't holding it back.

[Adrian74]

I didn't play FFXI, neither the 1.0 of this game... So I can't give an expert opinion, but I can give the opinion of a newbie and starter in this wonderful game. The maps are really nice already, you really feel like if you are living it, awesome beautiful graphics with a lot of different places, it takes more than a month to really start to memorize all the areas AROUND the starter cities... I can't imagine yet those I have not visited yet like Coerthas and Mor Dhona...

About long maps... Uh, well... It was a pain, I have to say, running all around thanalan with the Seventh Dawn's first missions where you have to go from the waking sands in Vesper Bay to Camp Drybone, crossing western, central and eastern thanalan... My second character I just used a chocobo to return Ul'Dah and another from Ul'Dah to Camp Drybone... But with my first I did crossed the entire dessert in an epic travel... It depends of how you want to do it... You can't argue about the maps being small if you use teleport or chocobo porters/mount...

Of course, just the opinion of a noob that didn't see the other games/versions... But what I wanted to say is that, at least for newbies, maps are really great and Square-Enix could focus in different areas of the game.

Regards.

[Moheeheeko]

Or the third, most obvious, reason... PS3 memory limitations.

the game would have the potential to be MUCH better if the PS3 wasn't holding it back.

You are 100% correct, but expect a giant inflow of hate for saying what we all knew.

[BlueMage]

While I intended a heavy dose of sarcasm in my post, beastmen dailies provide a mount, treasure maps provide a minion, neither apply to 'end game' content. Account customization is nice, and side activities are nice. Heck, I played a good deal of Pankration in FFXI, but my Frost Bunny of doom didnt help in Dynamis or Sea...

I think her point was that there are things to do outside of instances. Personally, I've noticed a LOT more people out in the game world and doing stuff since maps and dailies were added. Zones that were previously empty, dead, and unused have quite a lot of life in them now.

But you are right that if someone only cares about endgame progression, they have no reason to ever leave their inn room except to spend tomes in Mor Dhona and enter Coil through Wineport (until 2.2). I think ignoring activities in the world because they aren't "necessity" though is like never leaving your house because you can order groceries online nowadays.

Though I agree with the sentiment that there should be lots more content in the world and adding non-instanced open-world content should be something always on the priority list when adding new content, as much adding new instanced content. Afterall, the point of an MMO is having a big world. Otherwise, its just a lobby game like Diablo or Halo where you wait for matches to start.