More prominent Open World Music in Heavensward?

[Enkidoh]

Right now I don't think we have any memorable open world music.

Dungeons/Trails, Incredible compositions, but the open world just feels dull.

Most of the time it's silence unless you're in a town area.

We need memorable area music like in FFXI, I mean, we have the same composer on the sound team, I'm surprised this hasn't been advocated.

I don't mean to correct you, but Naoshi Mizuta actually isn't on ARR's sound team - he did a couple of tracks for FFXIV version 1.0 which returned in ARR (the O'Ghomarro kobold stronghold track Quick as Silver, Hard as Stone, the Maelstrom Grand Company HQ theme Maelstrom Command, and, for ARR, a remix of a track he did for the FFXI add on pack A Shantotto Ascension - the FFXI crossover event FATE battle theme Reign of Pain ~ originally called Feast of the Ladies in FFXI.)

These were the only tracks for FFXIV he's ever done - everything else was almost exclusively composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Masayoshi Soken, with a couple of exceptions by Ryo Yamazaki, Tsuyoshi Sekito and a third party company named 'Film Score'.

Also, FFXI didn't actually have BGM in every outside zone either - in fact, most outside zones didn't have any music period - it just had a generic wind sound effect. Only the starting zones like Ronfaure (Ronfaure in fact had one of the few Uematsu tracks in the game), the areas next to Jeuno like Batallia Downs, the original 'final' zone Xarcabard, and expansion zones and dungeons had backing music. Everything else just had wind FX.

I can understand why Soken made ARR's zone music in a similar way - a lot of FFXI music got so damn repetitive hearing it loop for the thousandth time (if I ever hear that stupid Irish jig for Selbina again I'll scream! And Kazham outlived it's welcome long ago. ><), and thus Soken tried to make ARR's music more ambient than as a leitmotif in order to avoid repetitiveness.

Naturally this hasn't been too popular though with players who are more used to single-player FF games with distinctive area music. So it remains to be seen whether Heavensward will feature true zone music or a similar ambiance that is already in existing zones.

[ZanzhizExaverion]

snip.

Ah, I wasn't entirely sure about that.

While I understand your gripes with the "looping" music, as someone who greatly appreciates ambiance and memorable moments, music truly helps create that.

While FFXI did have it's quiet zones, they usually had the ambiance surrounding a quiet zone. The areas also had more visual beauty within them so that they less required music to make it seem more lively. Music creates a feel for the area, and gives it more unique stature among other areas.

For example; would you enjoy it if all primals had Ifrit's music now that they have developed their own ambiance? Probably not. Would you REMEMBER these trials if they all had the Final Boss of the Dungeon music we have in the lower level dungeons of XIV? Of course not.
For me and probably everyone else, when you hear Titan's theme you probably remember dying to Extreme for a couple hours. You may have wiped to say, that boss at the end of Thousand Maws five times, but you're not going to remember that struggle because it doesn't have anything surrounding it that makes it really stand out.

As it stands in XIV, I'm lucky if I NOTICE the music for more than fifteen seconds if I'm not in a township or whatnot that plays music throughout.

[Gardes]

Huge text

My main issue with arr's open world soundtrack is that it's mostly forgettable to me. They just don't hook me as much xi's sound track does. I think I only played about 3+ years of xi which got divided in two. 1 year starting from NA launch, and the rest before xiv 1.0 happened. During those gap years I already have those songs in xi stuck in my head and I can hum those tunes from memory and identify most songs i've heard before when it's played to me. Then there's arr..I can't pull any open world song from my head at all and I can barely identify which tune is which tune save for a handful. Hell, as I'm typing this, a song popped into my head and it's the song for la noscea from 1.0 and that's not soken's..

Right now, I'm trying to hum the city and housing themes (was there not 10 mins ago) and I can only remember uldah's. I've been playing arr since launch non stop! And I remember bastok, windurst, sandoria and my mog house tune more! What the hell?!

[Itseotle]

I can't pull any open world song from my head at all and I can barely identify which tune is which tune save for a handful. Hell, as I'm typing this, a song popped into my head and it's the song for la noscea from 1.0 and that's not soken's..

Twlight over Thanalan was my favorite from 1.0. It really imbued the sense you where starting your adventure into a massive new world.

And then there was the hours and hours of pounding out Iron Visors to Navigator's Glory from Limsa.