Really miss locations that are no longer accessible (When there were no load screens)

[Aeyis]

I'm not sure how you can call "exploration" when the map was an entire copy/paste of the same section over and over.

Use that example one more time please. And then I will make my own strawman as the guy in 1.0 did: take a screenshot of the MAP and show all the copypasted areas ON THE MAP.


I'll take it you have not played then. How was the Limsa bridge copypasted? How was walking outside of Ul'dah? How were the overworld dungeons copypasted?


And blimey. The more time passes Balmung is really starting to get that whole 'Outland' feel.

Also the 'no loading screens in 1.0' is a myth as well - there were loading screens, they were just cleverly hidden by the labyrinthine city and zone design

It's no myth. And its a comparison to say ''compared to now there were few loading screens and the total time was less'', which it was; not the ''no'' you claim.
Loading screens now take ages, and we have many of them. My favorites are the ones in Ul'dah where you have to load twice just to visit the boards, and the ones in Limsa where you have to load twice to visit the adventurer's guild.

I can tell you for someone who started in Gridania in 1.0, the copy-paste was EXTREMELY visible. You ran through the one setpiece that was a corridor with a small bulge in the middle where a river ran through about 11 times just on your way to Camp Tranquil.

That's like the map strawman guy. He used the Black Shroud even tho it was kind of the place that was ment to have that look to begin with. La Noscea and Thanalan were quite different. The Black Shroud was easily the worst example of 'copy-pasting' yet oddly enough its the only one ever uses as argument for ''it had a lot of copy-pasting''

Ifrit's eruptions (Japan-based servers = that AOE latency issue affecting most NA players)

Haha, that's exactly what its like for EU players in 2.0 and even now tho.