Should Airship travel be instanced or non-instanced?

[giftforce]

I think non-instanced is more sensical and lets you appreciate the world around you instead of just looking at an instanced background that isn't a true representation of Eorzea. Some people do however prefer instanced flight (like FFXI) ... for whatever reason. Here are some examples of non-instanced travel, in case you don't understand what I mean:

Archeage

TERA

FFXIV

[Richard]

I would love to have non instanced travel as I highly enjoyed it in TERA (was WoW Flight Points 2.0 but it was beautiful none the less). I also find I have that itch to have it be instanced like in XI due to the fact we could get things like random encounters (pirates in XI) or random NM spawns (Sea Horror in XI).

Archeage poses an interesting way of travel and I think if SQEX utilized the z-axis we could have non-instanced mobs attacking us while on the airship. But I don't realistically see that happening with this horrible engine.

Either or would be fine in my books as long as they don't half ass whatever they choose to add in.

[Sephr]

I fully expected this to be a Giftforce thread, purely because it's a request to bring things into the non-instanced environment with no consideration of server strain etc, ala 'bring it to the streets'.

Whilst it would be nice to have a non-instanced version, I'm not going to lose sleep over it either way.

[alexi14]

FFXIV LOL @ hacker.

The other two.. I have to say look seriously cheap. Even Tera who I've heard such nice things about.. It looks like perfect world, or maybe Aion.

These, they are only maybe a couple hundred feet off the ground. In the FFXI instances, they look like they were about 30,000 feet off the ground. I don't know how hard it would be to render graphics that well at such a distance. FFXI airship feels epic becasue you're so high. I don't want to be 100 feet off the ground.

[Corrderio]

I'd rather have instant travel where I don't have to wait to get on/off an airship.

[Richard]

FFXI airship feels epic becasue you're so high. I don't want to be 100 feet off the ground.

You must freak out and nerdgasm every time you fly on an airplane >_>. FFXI airship travel was, in terms of graphics and displaying the world around you, shabby at best. Height =/= excitement. What made it EPIC was the events that could randomly occur on things like boat rides.

[Cendres]

You must freak out and nerdgasm every time you fly on an airplane >_>. FFXI airship travel was, in terms of graphics and displaying the world around you, shabby at best. Height =/= excitement.

Yup being in an airplane is all kinds of cool, sorry you've lost the wonder of it all. The XI airships were neat partly because of the illusion of height too. And not many MMO did it like that, I hope they bring this back.

[Richard]

does not take much to please the mmo crowd these days apparently.

[giftforce]

I fully expected this to be a Giftforce thread, purely because it's a request to bring things into the non-instanced environment with no consideration of server strain etc, ala 'bring it to the streets'.

Whilst it would be nice to have a non-instanced version, I'm not going to lose sleep over it either way.

No consideration of server strain? Pfft, as if I even need to consider that. I think if you refer to a thousand other MMOs over the course of history, specifically Ragnorak Online and Mabinogi, you see that street-vending is not an impossibility. If old games can do it just fine, why can't FFXIV? It's not our fault they chose to run the game on inferior servers. Ugh, but let us let bygones be bygone, shall we?

I think the issue here is not so much server-strain, anyways, but moreso video-card strain. There's only so much you can represent graphically. With a non-instanced version, we may not get the illusion of clouds and height and atmosphere (both literally and figuratively speaking). Also, the draw-distance in FFXIV is kind of odd (the way it doesn't fade between high res and low res textures) so it may just end up being an eye-sore if SE opt to go the non-instanced route.

However, I think it would be much more interesting to actually see the world for what it is, rather than a 2-dimensional representation, and maybe be able to see people scurrying around below you too.

[alexi14]

does not take much to please the mmo crowd these days apparently.

Not very nice today.