Quote Originally Posted by Alex_Lenderson View Post
It is always crap. Always. Just look at the joke of Hunts and Fates. When I play a game I want to be immersed in the experience... not be watching Netflix so I don't cry tears of boredom.
The problem isn't that its always going to be crap, its how they implement it that causes it to be crap.

Lets start at XI's Sky for example. A 'raid' pop system actually worked very well in the open world. A Hierarchy system of force spawn mobs, each progressively harder (except genbu). The only problem with the whole system was the initial NM's to gain pops. Mother Globe, Faust, and the others proved to create competition/drama between people.

This same hierarchy system was added again in ToAU with ZNM's. The big difference was how the initial pops were purchased with a currency. Something the XIV team is EXTREMELY fond of. XIV's team could easily duplicate this system in the open world by adding additional GC ranks and allow the pops to be purchased at the max rank with some fairly high amount of seals. Lets say 250k? Nothing to crazy, but nothing absurd. After that just do the same as ZMN's. Make the next teir require a few kills from several of the base mobs, and make the drop NOT 100%. Not 1% either. Maybe 50%?

Boom. Open world content.

And lets face it. A large amount of XIV players use to be XI players. Nostalgia FTW.