OMG please remove some of the aetherytes, the world feels tiny

[Souljacker]

Some of you guys must literally not do anything but sit in queue and go to Mor Dhona to turn in tokens. I find myself on the mount ALL the time tracking down hunt log monsters and finishing up quests, etc. The world seems plenty big from that perspective. I've never once looked around and thought, "Gosh this place is SO SMALL" - but back when it launched I sure did think "Oh, not that same crop of trees AGAIN."

If the world feels small, it's probably just you. No one is forcing you to use teleportation - heck you don't even have to unlock them! Just don't touch them! Pretend they aren't there. Turning this into another XI where we all had the path from the crag of holla to sandy so ingrained we could set up autorun and make a sandwich while our character ran it is not going to give anyone the "whoa, this place is SO BIG AND AWESOME" feeling you are looking for. It's freaking tedious.

[MattReaver]

I hope they can make the worlds feel larger. I think this can be done by making the zones larger, removing loading between zones, and I want to ride a chocobo (they don't fly). More immersion.

[kidvideo]

What is your opinion on the removal of some aetherytes in order to make us explore, and get more use out of our mounts? Thanks in advance

oh god no! I've already explored the Eorzea once to get the Aetherytes... & also through quests, treasure maps, gathering, achievements, etc. Expansions & unlocks are the way to go.

[Aeonblade]

Ease of travel =/= Small world size.

If you want to ride a mount everywhere, go ahead, no one is making you use aetheryte crystals, but if they weren't there, It would annoy me far worse personally.

[PenutButter]

Mounts are useless? How? Sure you won't be using them to spend hours getting from one map to another but they are still very useful when traveling across a map. God knows I don't want to lose them and I don't give a damn about "cosmetics." I do see how flying mounts would only be marginally more useful though. I also agree that these teleports really dumb down on the "world experience," you can blame casuals for that.

Another thing that really dumbs it down is the fact that you can't travel to instances and enter it yourself, everything is via the Duty Finder. A few months back, I was wondering around South Shroud and stumble upon the entrance to Amdapor Keep and I went, "So this is where Amdapor Keep is." These dungeons are so disconnected from the world, I don't even feel like they're a part of it, its almost pointless to even have them on the map.

[Morningstar1337]

There where also more aetherytes, the natural aetheryal gates

Maybe those can come back (as a player skill that allows a checkpoint)?

Anyway seeing as I mainly use Aethyrites for travel, I'm against the idea of their removal

[Souljacker]

Another thing that really dumbs it down is the fact that you can't travel to instances and enter it yourself, everything is via the Duty Finder. A few months back, I was wondering around South Shroud and stumble upon the entrance to Amdapor Keep and I went, "So this is where Amdapor Keep is."

I might be wrong, but don't we have to like... unlock all the dungeons before they are available in the duty finder? How did you just happen to be wandering the shroud and shocked at a dungeon you had to do a quest to open?

You can enter the dungeons at any time from those locations in a group or solo. Absolutely. The duty finder is used after you unlocked it so you have access to the cross server pool of people and don't have to put together a party which may or may not take hours depending on your server (a huge improvement over XI). Now I can understand if it's been forever since you unlocked it and you forgot that it was there - but that's got nothing to do with SE, the duty finder, and your willingness to make a party and run to the dungeon. All the dungeons appear as unnamed "dungeon" on the map until you do the quest to unlock as far as i know.

[Phyllo]

The name of the dungeons appear on your map right from the beginning, no matter how far you are in the story

[Devrick]

WoW has it, so Yoshida wants it.

would be nice to get tha free roam feeling. . . could we??? I mean to swim and fly all over The world map??? :O

[Kaethra]

I like the idea of making zones bigger. But making them bigger means adding new content. We can't simply add parts to the existing zone with no content. That means only a small percentage would bother visiting it. Not many people are explorers. My suggestion would be to merge zones. Basically take out the zonelines. Make the Thanalans, La Nosceas, and Shrouds all individual zones.

On the subject of fast travel. Those of you who wish to see less of it have to understand something. We've all heard of the quote, "The Journey is the Destination." With that said.. if we remove all or some of the Aetheryte Crystals. What would be the journey in this case? Its an arbitrary time sink. Running from Point A to Point B has no purpose unless there is something to do along the way.

Lets remember that we're playing a game. How much fun would Super Mario Bros be if after beating a level you had a 2 minute walk to the next stage that had no purposeful jumps to make or enemies to defeat/avoid. Just a straight stretch with a slightly interesting background? The game would have lost much of its appeal if it did that. Just like FFXIV would if we did it here.

The original Everquest was well known for its lack of fast travel. It had teleports, but only two classes could use them and pretty much only after visiting the place at hand to purchase the proper spell. But EQ had quite a bit of content between zones. Also it wasn't unheard of for players to travel somewhere, bind there, and then not leave the area for hours or days as they work on the local area. So while it took a while to get somewhere... you didn't have a reason to travel much in a single play session.

So for a minimal fast travel system to work in FFXIV would take a major undertaking to make work. It can be done. Its not impossible. But with the current system as it is, far reaching changes have to be made. Because lets face it. We want to play the game, not look at it as we make runs from one quest area to the other.