Is it too late to make the world in FFXIV seamless?

[Tenku]

I think this game would have a lot more immersion if the world was seamless like in Archeage, Vanguard, Lineage 2, Skyrim, Witcher, etc.

I'm not sure what everyone else thinks, but I feel like I'm not part of this world and I'm just jumping from instance to instance.

Mounts/flying mounts would probably have to be able to travel faster and player controlled airships would actually work.

Also, there would have to be a ton more open world content for rare drops so that people have incentives to travel around the world instead of just teleporting everywhere.

I would definitely not mind removing duty finder from the menu and just making it so that people have to physically travel to the instance and you can party find when walking through the entrance. (This probably doesn't fly with a lot of players)

[UltimateAoe2]

Probably would....require better servers before that would happen.
Otherwise everything goes ka-boom.

[Enkidoh]

Uh, they tried that once before in version 1.0 and well, we all know how that turned out....

The smaller zones and instances is a fundamental aspect of the game's design (which SE specifically designed because of the problems with 1.0's open maps) - it won't be changing I'm afraid.

[Derio]

Would need better servers, and possible PS3 dropped. I dont think the PS3 has enough RAM to render the areas like that.

[Welsper59]

Believe me, there's a lot of us that would enjoy an open and relatively de-zoned world. As the guy above mentioned, servers were (and still are) a huge issue.

[RiceisNice]

...

It's not a matter of being "too late", but "when can they manage it". As long as they're supporting PS3 and using their current servers, I doubt they'll be able to handle the stress of a large open world.

[Gardes]

It's pretty pathetic to reject an idea and justifying it by pointing at the devs' deficiency and accepting and trying to get others to do the same, if you ask me. But then again, the player base is nothing but.

[Zumi]

PS3 only has 512mb of ram so it could not support large open areas which is why they did a bunch of smaller ones.

[Tenku]

Uh, they tried that once before in version 1.0 and well, we all know how that turned out....

The smaller zones and instances is a fundamental aspect of the game's design (which SE specifically designed because of the problems with 1.0's open maps) - it won't be changing I'm afraid.

The problem with 1.0 wasn't the seamless world though... and their maps were really bad. With a seamless world, the map needs to be seamless as well. The problem with 1.0 was the slow UI and all the animation lag. I just don't understand why they can't make a Final Fantasy MMO game that has no animation lock, open seamless world, combo menu (so that you can create a combo key and drag it to a hotkey like in Aion or cast sequence in WOW), and all the little things that other games have done...

I understand Blizzard took away cast sequence, but I think that was a mistake on their part.

WHYYYY?????

[Gilraen]

It's pretty pathetic to reject an idea and justifying it by pointing at the devs' deficiency and accepting and trying to get others to do the same, if you ask me. But then again, the player base is nothing but.

It's not a matter of rejecting it, it's a matter of it's been rejected already. Before work began on 2.0 in earnest the developers asked us, the players, which we wanted more. Large, empty zones similar to 1.0 or smaller, more detailed zones (while not an exact quote, this is as close to what they asked as I can remember). Three guesses which choice won out. Even considering how big 1.0's zones were, they weren't seamless. They just hid the seams in clever ways that, sadly, become obvious if you look at the maps as a whole. Then there were the borders between area types where you actually had zone borders, like that between Thanalan and the Twleveswood.

As an aside, Heavensward's zones are about as big as the individual zones of 1.0 so no, the PS3 isn't incapable of handing a seamless world if they were to go with how it was handled in 1.0. If they implement a genuinely seamless world, though, then I can see the issue.