Quote Originally Posted by Aldwin View Post
I would agree 100% with op.

A very clear example of this would be wow. If you've played it or are familiar with the dungeon finder, then you know what i'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, i think the dungeon finder is a genius idea, but a lot of people don't have any clue where at least half of the dungeons they do are located. There is no reason to. You can sit in town, when a group is ready, you teleport there. In such cases why even have open world zones?

I agree that to me xi had a perfect blend between travel and immersion. But that's my opinion. Having the option to instantly port w/e you want pretty much whenever you want destroys the sence of "adventuring" to me. I have been voting for the removal of anima since day 1. Let people port to a crystal maybe once every 24 hours, I could live with that.

One thing I read people argue against my point on this is that they don't have time, or don't want to spend time, traveling for "no reason". While i understand how it was frustrating trying to trek half way across the world in xi, even if you got a port close, you still had to travel, IMO online rpgs aren't for people with very little time. I'm not saying your time on games like these should be spent completely wasted, but isn't this type of game about exploring a virtual world? I had so much fun on xi sometimes just exploring zones, every inch.
I think you put it nicely there. Playing a MMO really isn't about getting everything by pressing a button it's about the journey getting there.

When I think of my time in the world of Vana'diel that's literally how I think about it. My time in another world and place.

When I think about the time spent playing XIV there is no such connection to the place the game happens in. Nothing in the game makes you think about the locations or distances of the world and that's why they feel meaningless.

I guess in the future this aspect will only be more pronounced since the future focus is only on raids/levels instead of gameplay based on travelling.

Actually now that I think about it this is exactly what made the XI fetch quests more fun because you actually had to plan how to get to places with your character. In a game with anima a fetch quest has no gameplay design as the player will just zap there and feel like his time was wasted because of the quest.