Some things I think need to be brought to attention

[Hyrist]

On the point of the Zones Being small...

Ease of travel really does belie the scale of the maps provided, as does the fact that the zones themselves are segmented.

Let's draw up a comparison here a moment.





FFXI's Sanctuary of Zi-tah compared to...




FFXIV's East Shroud.

Note, it's not to scale with one another, obviously we're looking at landforms, not sizes.

Now I note East Shroud in particular due to the issues our current maps have. Note that HALF the map is separated by two bridges and is deep in enemy territory. A level 50 player is going to get harassed by monsters walking in there, and never really pauses to marvel at it. They simply travel from one objective to another riding whatever convenient mount(s) they have on hand to bypass the travel time FFXI forced you to suffer through either through lack of transportation, or lack of navigation.

Note that while Zitah is more segmented, it's travel sections from the segments are usually fairly wide and open. And draw that comparison to something like East Ronfarue...



It's just one block of land mass (Though the map would look different if it did not include non-traversal land masses...) Actual traveled distances are about the same from one end to the other of these zones. And even in FFXIV, you'll never get a zone that is physically larger in scale than what we have. The zones are quartered off in that to allow it to be played on consoles and maintain a functional level of graphic fidelity. And to be honest this does not bother me, so much as the design of the zones themselves feel more closed and quartered off without any truly 'open' zones which to marvel over. (Which I assume is likely due to limits of draw distance.)

So I can't agree that these maps are small in scale. They're cornered off by obstacles so that you can never see more than a singular segment of the zone, which makes the zones themselves feel more claustrophobic.

I'd like to challenge them to design a zone that's designed to make you look over the landscape and go 'wow'. Rather than to focus our eyes on looking at the individual components. The zones we have got that covered.

[KoujiMoreno]

snip.

Though both made by SE, it's still two different games. Should've compared 1.0 and 2.0.