how big did ff11 area grow before and after all the expansion?

[kyuven]

Are you saying "not even close" as in it's not the smallest MMO on the market? Please tell me one that is smaller.

I spend 90% of my time sitting at my FC house, or sitting in The Gold Saucer, or sitting in Mor Dhona while I queue for instances. There is really no use to the open world outside of gathering and hunts.

There are a number of MMOs that use nothing but instanced content with fewer mapsets than we have access to. Guild Wars, at launch and until it gained expansions, was no bigger than XIV is now. EQ2 was the same way, with only about 12 zones at launch. They are all now FAR bigger, but that's after YEARS of content. FFXIV: ARR is only about 2 years old and is just now getting their first expansion.
Gathering, hunts, the road to 50, class quests, job quests, FATEs, treasure hunts, regular hunts, leves, other quests...the game gets a lot of traffic through the zones we DO have. It's rare for a zone to be empty for very long in this game.
Contrast games with OMGHUGE numbers of zones, where it can be MONTHS between player visitations.
SE is currently very good at making use of the space they have, whereas the design mentality for XI and XIV 1.0 was "MAKE MANY HUUUGE ZOOOOONES!"
With very little in them.
Allow me to provide an example:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Ea...pa_Desert/Maps
This is Eastern Altepa Desert.
It is involved in 11 quests, none of which are all that necessary. Its only role is to serve as a teleport point, which are largely irrelevant now.
11 quests is fewer than any single zone has in FFXIV. And this zone is easily as large as some of our zones.
This zone, therefore, has little reason to exist, yet the developers went through the effort to do so.
EQ1 had problems like this too, ironically also with a few desert zones. They responded by merging them some years back.

[Alipoprocks]

This is Eastern Altepa Desert.
It is involved in 11 quests, none of which are all that necessary. Its only role is to serve as a teleport point . . .
11 quests is fewer than any single zone has in FFXIV. And this zone is easily as large as some of our zones.
This zone, therefore, has little reason to exist, yet the developers went through the effort to do so.

I have to disagree with you. Personally, I spent so much time in every zone (except Windy areas) that I still vividly remember each one and it has been 6 years since I played XI. I spent time in both eastern and western altepa leveling many jobs. I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare XI with XIV because the open world was used for everything. There were very few instances compared to XIV.

[Blazer]

I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

The spider NM was awesome, Cactrot Rapido is legendary, but I spent the most time trying to get that damn intruder earring off the 21-24 hour NM.

EVERY ZONE IN FFXI has a purpose and you better believe you would be going there multiple times. White Mages would literately stand around town and shout making money from teleports because of the time save they gave you. The FFXI zones are so massive and ugh... I'll just stop. I miss the good ol' days.

[Alipoprocks]

The spider NM was awesome, Cactrot Rapido is legendary, but I spent the most time trying to get that damn intruder earring off the 21-24 hour NM.

EVERY ZONE IN FFXI has a purpose and you better believe you would be going there multiple times. White Mages would literately stand around town and shout making money from teleports because of the time save they gave you. The FFXI zones are so massive and ugh... I'll just stop. I miss the good ol' days.

Oh yeah, that HNM that was kited around a bush until your friends showed up to help kill it. I still miss that game and those days too.

[Sanne]

While I do miss FFXI at times....

The things I don't miss are the zones, a lot of them felt empty (not interesting) to me, and most zones I never done anything in, expect passing through, now I had never interest of NM.

And I hated traveling them, at first it is great, it gives a really large feel to the world, but soon it gets boring, and took me out of the game, watching youtube and forums etc, to pass time while my chocobo was autowalking most of the time.

I had 3 chars in the end, and all 3 at leats had WHM for the first 3 teleports, and even with that it was still very long travel times :/ (which to me meant, out of the game time)

I do hope to get a lot more zones in FFXIV with the expansions. But I do hope they all make it interesting.

(I played FFXI from 2003 and the last time I played was in 2013, I did have many many breaks through the years)

[Magis]

[QUOTE=Lexia;2934550]

I have to disagree with you. Personally, I spent so much time in every zone (except Windy areas) that I still vividly remember each one and it has been 6 years since I played XI. I spent time in both eastern and western altepa leveling many jobs. I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare XI with XIV because the open world was used for everything. There were very few instances compared to XIV.

Wasn't Altepa also a major leveling area? Recall being there in the early level 30s I think?

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

Bingo. People are applying WoWs system and every game that copied it after to FFXIs more general world system. The game gave you a bunch of things to do in a zone, zones weren't just hubs for quests... Then to die after you completed them.

[Xatsh]

It is involved in 11 quests, none of which are all that necessary. Its only role is to serve as a teleport point, which are largely irrelevant now.
11 quests is fewer than any single zone has in FFXIV. And this zone is easily as large as some of our zones.
This zone, therefore, has little reason to exist, yet the developers went through the effort to do so.

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

[kyuven]

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

But let me ask.
What makes THAT zone special that couldn't be done by just making "Altepa Desert" rather than splitting it into two zones?
This was the mentality that Yoshida and co. adopted when they began trimming down the 1.0 zones, and it's one I wholeheartedly agree with. Denser, juicier zones rather than massive zones with repeating tiles and lots of nothing.


And if it wasn't a quest driven game, what was it? I mean, it had two different entries for "quests" and "missions," and you start doing quests really early. Why have two different entries and cutscenes if that's not the focus?
I mean really, even SE didn't appear to know what they wanted to do with it. Take a look at those old patch notes.

This isn't WoW logic either. Trimming the fat in oversized games had been going on for years prior to WoW. Player complaints about "large empty fields of nothing" had been going on for a long time. Even EQ1 introduced fast travel options in 2003 that made getting around a lot easier. It was criticized at the time (and still is by people who don't remember dying repeatedly trying to get around) but turned into an industry standard.
Even FFXI started to move into the direction of smaller, meatier zones eventually, after ToAU.

[erish]

But let me ask.
What makes THAT zone special that couldn't be done by just making "Altepa Desert"

your overthinking this its really obvious, ps2 limitations. Both zones are massive by any mmo standards that and they came out in what 2004, i mean is this really a disscusion point really?

[Warlyx]

your overthinking this its really obvious, ps2 limitations. Both zones are massive by any mmo standards that and they came out in what 2004, i mean is this really a disscusion point really?

wester was for low lvls had an oasis the teleport crystal and acess to korroloka , mobs from 30-45 ish , and easter was for 50-65 , revelation rock was awesome :3 ,the antican race lived there (quicksand caves) , Titan crystal is here too, + rabao city and access to kuftal tunnel , both zones served a purpouse , and yeah Ps2 limitations.