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

[Magis]

I actually think the world building in XIV is superior, in a strictly zone-related sense (I'd love actual ferries and the like).

Eorzea feels lived in. You walk outside Ul'dah and it feels like you've walked out of a bustling city. You walk out of San d'Oria and it's wilderness. All the odd camps like Rabao were so isolated and I have zero sense NPCs did any travelling in Vana'diel. XIV has done a superb job of making a world which actually feels lived in, where as XI made a world you could live in, but felt like it had undergone an apocalypse as far as NPCs were concerned. That made sense for places like Tavnazia (and from what I've heard the new expansion location), but for all the other places? No. It was absurd. More so when Wings of the Goddess came around and we got glimpses of actual infrastructure outside of the city walls, and then are told that our Vana'diel is the hope filled future. Really? Their hopefully future is cowering behind their cities gates while wilderness takes over?

Well, the Crystal War did wreck shit and the three nations didn't exactly like each other. However that is probably the story being built to the established world, not the other way around. Wasn't that the point with Rabao? It was a oasis in the desert, settlements clump up to fresh water in desert areas. The world of FFXI was one to explore and find out for yourself. FFXIV everything had been explored, with safe spots everywhere to hide in and no danger after you've "grown". It's like trying to go off on an adventure in the suburbs. Now with some things Yoshi said about Heavensward and a zone called the "Outlands iirc?" maybe we will start exploring the wilderness and have some danger once again. Also the more interesting of areas are locked behind instances, which players teleport straight into. There isn't even a point to the entrance of a dungeon other than to remind people that "actually, yeah this place does exist in the world even though you never have to see it to enter". It just disconnects those areas from the world.

[Nalien]

Well, the Crystal War did wreck shit and the three nations didn't exactly like each other.

IDK, it's just something that really ended up bugging me before I finally quit... "Oh, so you had a ramp up this cliff in the past but you just demolished it after the war? Thanks for making me take the loooong way round", granted we did eventually get to use Timelord hacks to skip up cliffs like that IIRC. Even Wings of the Goddess zones didn't really feel lived in, though they did feel like there was a war going on which was the point. I think the new Windurst side zone (Fort somethingsomething?) was probably the best example of what I'd have liked more of in XI (and am getting more of in XIV). XI never did zone transitions well IMO though, with the exception of caves, all the zones looked the same, whether you were travelling from a mountainous region to a jungle, forest, or beach, they all looked the same. North Shroud to Coerthas is a perfect example of zone transitions done right.

Also the more interesting of areas are locked behind instances, which players teleport straight into. There isn't even a point to the entrance of a dungeon other than to remind people that "actually, yeah this place does exist in the world even though you never have to see it to enter". It just disconnects those areas from the world.

This is actually one thing I have consistently begged for in XIV; Dungeons to become part of the open world following their completion. I guess ultimately it didn't gel well with their "Lets recycle these for Hard Modes" strategy, but I still think it would have been an awesome addition to the game. It really does sadden me that so many of the zones are locked in instances, I can just imagine going fishing in Brayflox's Longstop (prior to the Hard Mode ruining the place). Keep the "scenario" that played out there in an instance, sure, but give me the actual zone to enjoy after... /sigh

[OMEGA_HACK]

This is actually one thing I have consistently begged for in XIV; Dungeons to become part of the open world following their completion. I guess ultimately it didn't gel well with their "Lets recycle these for Hard Modes" strategy, but I still think it would have been an awesome addition to the game. It really does sadden me that so many of the zones are locked in instances, I can just imagine going fishing in Brayflox's Longstop (prior to the Hard Mode ruining the place). Keep the "scenario" that played out there in an instance, sure, but give me the actual zone to enjoy after... /sigh

Sadly the reason is because those instanced zones are not scaled to fit the open world. Here is a project I am working on, I had to scale down all the dungeons in order to make them work/fit in the world.

[Nalien]

Sadly the reason is because those instanced zones are not scaled to fit the open world. Here is a project I am working on, I had to scale down all the dungeons in order to make them work/fit in the world.

Sadly the maps (since we have about 3 different ones?) in this game are fairly poorly done in general. Here's something I made a while ago highlighting an issue with Coerthas/Shroud;



I'd love to have a world map like this, though they'd need to fix this issue. Honestly though, when it comes to the individual maps I'm not all that bothered if they don't fit in place properly. I just need to look at Wanderer's Palace and that issue is already plainly highlighted; From Bronze Lake it has no real base, yet that is what we fight our way through in the dungeon. I expect more of that in the future and at this point I don't particularly mind it anymore.

[Magis]

IDK, it's just something that really ended up bugging me before I finally quit... "Oh, so you had a ramp up this cliff in the past but you just demolished it after the war? Thanks for making me take the loooong way round", granted we did eventually get to use Timelord hacks to skip up cliffs like that IIRC. Even Wings of the Goddess zones didn't really feel lived in, though they did feel like there was a war going on which was the point. I think the new Windurst side zone (Fort somethingsomething?) was probably the best example of what I'd have liked more of in XI (and am getting more of in XIV). XI never did zone transitions well IMO though, with the exception of caves, all the zones looked the same, whether you were travelling from a mountainous region to a jungle, forest, or beach, they all looked the same. North Shroud to Coerthas is a perfect example of zone transitions done right.

Windurst side zone? Might have been after I quit. I don't see how you can say all zones "looked" the same when their environments varied greatly as well as their layout. How does Yahtunga Jungle, Valkrum Dunes, and Xarcabard look the same to each other? Even similar environments were different, such as Ronfaure and Sanctuary of Zi'tah which while both forests, were both different in their asthetic (also that music, both sooooooooo good).

This is actually one thing I have consistently begged for in XIV; Dungeons to become part of the open world following their completion. I guess ultimately it didn't gel well with their "Lets recycle these for Hard Modes" strategy, but I still think it would have been an awesome addition to the game. It really does sadden me that so many of the zones are locked in instances, I can just imagine going fishing in Brayflox's Longstop (prior to the Hard Mode ruining the place). Keep the "scenario" that played out there in an instance, sure, but give me the actual zone to enjoy after... /sigh

Even WoW did this better than FFXIV did. You still had to go to the entrance of the dungeon, but the zone line generated the instance. When "hard modes" came out, you chose which zone it would enter you into after crossing the zone line IIRC... that or there was multiple entrances I forget.

[Nalien]

I don't see how you can say all zones "looked" the same when their environments varied greatly as well as their layout. How does Yahtunga Jungle, Valkrum Dunes, and Xarcabard look the same to each other? Even similar environments were different, such as Ronfaure and Sanctuary of Zi'tah which while both forests, were both different in their asthetic (also that music, both sooooooooo good).

I mean the transition into each zone in a zone are the same, not that Yahtunga and Dunes look the same. If I showed you a picture of, lets say, the area used to transition from Meriphataud Mountains to The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, how do you know it isn't the area used to transition you from Meriphataud Mountains to Sauromugue Champaign? I don't think you can. The areas used to zone you out of Meriphataud look identical to one another, this was true for most of the "overworld" zones in XI (only exception I can think of off the top of my head involve you travelling into cities, though even for that you'd probably only be able to tell the difference between West San d'Orias gate and Easts is by the NPC names), and when you consider what Meriphataud looks like in comparison to Zi'Tah, that difference becomes even more jarring. You're clearly skipping over a large area when you zone in XI, just like you do in XIV. The difference is in XIV you can tell the difference. Again; Compared any of the XI examples I've given to North Shroud to Coerthas. In XIV you can tell you're heading to a different area. If I took a screenshot of every zone line in XIV, you could tell the difference between them, each one is visibly unique. If I did that for XI, every zone (invisible) zone line for a given zone (eg. Meriphataud) looks the same (with the exception of cities/caves). Meriphataud to Zi'Tah looks identical to Meriphataud to Sauromugue. There is no indication that you're travelling into an ancient forest for Meri>Zi'Tah, for example. That's an issue with the age of the game, sure, but it's something XIV has excelled at.

Even WoW did this better than FFXIV did. You still had to go to the entrance of the dungeon, but the zone line generated the instance. When "hard modes" came out, you chose which zone it would enter you into after crossing the zone line IIRC... that or there was multiple entrances I forget.

Well that's the price of convenience. Technically you can still walk up to the entrance of Amdapor Keep and pick the regular one or the hard mode, but when it's more convenient to queue up from the Market Board no one does. Making things more "believable" in this regard would directly mean making things more inconvenient. I'd much rather just have an extra zone unlocked after which I can travel to to enjoy the dungeon itself, rather than speeding through. That keeps the convenience of the Duty Finder while still making dungeons a part of the open world, win-win. For instances like Primals I'd love for them to actually be server based when FC summoning is a thing, so if you want to try and earn Ifrit to summon with your Free Company, you have to travel through to his crystal like you did to unlock Hard/Extreme.

That's basically what I'm talking about when I'm saying XIV needs more quality open world content, rather than bigger zones (sadly we only seem to be getting the later). We don't need large zones like XI. XIVs zones are perfectly fine. Until 3.0 proves otherwise, all I'm thinking we're getting with it is bigger zones that will suffer the exact same issues the current ones have; They're poorly used. Sadly the most people seem to ask for is just bigger zones. Beastmen Dailies are probably the closest this development team has gotten to making use of the zones properly, sadly that is extremely casual content. What this game needs more than anything is an "endgame" tier series of content akin to Beastmen Dailies which actually makes use of the world they've created. Doesn't even have to be free of instances; They could give us an Ifrit Trial where you obtain an item from a FATE, trade it to the Crystal used to unlock Ifrit Trials, and get ported to a BCNM style instance. That would work wonderfully.

Instead, a lot of people just insist that "The world is small, we need bigger zones", when what they should be saying is "The world is unused, we need more content that doesn't use the Duty Finder". I'm cautiously hoping FC Airships will provide something like that I suppose, but that seems to be providing its own set of zones, rather than making use of existing ones, so I wont hold my breath. More Hunts, FATEs, Levequests and Treasure Maps are the only other thing I've heard, and they haven't cut it so far so I doubt they will at Lv60 either. They could, but they'd have to be of a substantially higher quality.

[Warlyx]

I mean the transition into each zone in a zone are the same, not that Yahtunga and Dunes look the same. If I showed you a picture of, lets say, the area used to transition from Meriphataud Mountains to The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, how do you know it isn't the area used to transition you from Meriphataud Mountains to Sauromugue Champaign? I don't think you can

because the entrance to zitah looke like this



and the other one is totally different?

[Nalien]

because the entrance to zitah looke like this



and the other one is totally different?

That's far more than the entrance and we both know that. That's the path you walk on your way to the Zi'Tah zone, the actual zone point was beyond the tower in a narrow little passage; Just like every other zone point the that area. Even if you want to take that picture and claim it's relevant, something like North Shroud to Coerthas still seems vastly better... Even from that far back I have no idea I'm about to enter a giant and ancient forest.

I can't really believe I'm even having to argue this point... It's a veritable fact, though through no fault of XI itself, that was just the limitations at the time. All I am stating is that XIV has excelled at map building where XI frankly fell flat. Time and time again I see people complaining about XIV zones while holding XI on some glorious pedestal... The key difference between zones in XI and XIV is that XI actually made relevant use of the zones through content, where XIV falls flat in that regard. Taken just on the merit of their craftsmanship, XIVs zones vastly outclass XIs. It is a more believable world with far more attention to detail, XI might as well be the same copy/paste mess 1.0 was. The content in the zones in the critical difference here, not the actual zones themselves.

For its time, XIs zones were perfectly fine and acceptable and it had the content in them that kept them relevant. For its time, I'd say XIVs zones are pretty outstanding, it's just missing the content. The world is a glorified lobby for the Duty Finder at little else as far as serious content goes.

[Felis]

How the 1.0 maps looked connected together:

Even WoW did this better than FFXIV did. You still had to go to the entrance of the dungeon, but the zone line generated the instance. When "hard modes" came out, you chose which zone it would enter you into after crossing the zone line IIRC... that or there was multiple entrances I forget.

It's the same in FF XIV. Only that it is not forced, but an option. You can go to a dungeon entrace and click there on the portal. If it have a hard mode you can choose which mode after unlocking them.