Why 4.0 should have a zone with danger, no ports, no mounts, and a hidden town

[dinnertime]

I don't mind more open world things to do, however I would disagree with the topics idea of putting something extra somewhere inconvenient for extra exploration value, or with your statement that new zones shouldn't be developer at all if they're going to be like they are right now.

That's just me being negative. I wouldn't really wish for them to stop developing more zones, but if they're gonna develop them then they should put them into more good use instead of abandoning them and bandaging them with relic grind requirements or whatever, and I'm not really sure why SE persist on reviving FATEs.

I've tried leveling up with only FATEs from level 50-60 and it's really dreadful, but good thing the parties I've been on are very laid-back and sociable (which I think is missing on instanced dungeons because people wanna speedrun it and leave immediately than waste time socializing). It gets even worse when the FATEs scale up because it takes too long to kill monsters and most FATEs aren't that fun at all. FATEs also do not give any good leveling gear so that makes dungeons better doing instead...

[Gardthorne]

I desperately need a dislike button for this.

[Defias]

The issue is that the reason this worked in FFXI isn't because people "Just wanted to explore", it was also compounded by the fact that some of these areas were required for certain things.

For example, getting your scroll of Utsusemi: Ichi (IIRC) required a trip to Norg. Otherwise, Norg was a ghost town - nobody ever really went there outside of their quests or resetting tonberry hate.

Going to Tavnazian Safehold was a great first-time experienece, but once we unlocked Sea access, we would use the Craigs to get to Sea, and sometimes the airship dock in Tavnazia. Again, it was a pretty empty place - no one really ever went there outside of it being a connector to other areas. OR using the outpost to get to where you needed to be.

Most people did exactly what they do in FFXIV - they gathered in a major city. Windurst, Bastok, San d'Oria, and Jeuno saw the highest amount of people and general foot traffic. FFXI also required us to go to areas to camp, wheras FFXIV requires you to never even leave your room once everything's unlocked outside of doing turn ins/buying gear and entering savage.

Simply put, the areas would be nice for a first time exploration, but the world would need to be MUCH bigger to actually accomodate this. Corridor XIV doesn't work well for it.

This guy pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Look at Wildstar for example. It tried to bring back the "Old School MMO" gameplay, exploration, & etc. And it bombed hard.
I have never seen a game go F2P so fast.

Come to think of it....Elder Scrolls Online was the same.
Even now they are adding/changing features to make progression & travel faster.

A lot of this has to do with just how the world has changed. People don't always have time to dedicate an entire day to gaming, and MMOS were dying out before WOW revolutionized the industry by well...taking multiple aspects from Offline games, which is why Theme park MMO style became the preferences style, along with mechanics on boss fights.
Even in FFXI bosses were mostly Tank & Spank HP sponges, juse glorifled trash mobs with unique models.
The "mechanics" were very limited.

And as you can tell even WOW changed because the cost of developing content that less than 5% of the playerbase participates in is very hard to explain to budget analysts (sp?).
Look at Savage content now. AND honestly even now EX Primals and Raids STILL are not at the participation rate they want them at.

[Gemma]

-For RPers-

So you want an entire zone designed just for RPers? The entire game is already designed for you if actually leave your housing wards & go utilize it.

At first I thought RP on Balmung would be awesome considering the world has so many great places to go & RP, but then all I saw was either random lvl 1 people ERPing in Ul'dah or the actual RPers hiding in their housing wards so they don't get disturbed. I'd visited so many places in the world so many times hoping to see people engaging with the world in an RP sense only to find it empty -_-
That's when I realized what I do must not be considered RP in xiv cause I actually like to travel the world & use the environment.

How would adding an entire zone dedicated pretty much to RP do anything other then have yet another zone that RPers don't really use?
If anything I still think RPers need to get back to demanding your dedicated RP stamped server so then you can feel more comfortable going out & utilizing the world SE already designed to be very RP friendly.

[Cherie]

The wonder of FFXI was in a golden time. There were few ways for people to figure stuff out besides extensive research and actually trying it themselves and/or asking friends.

Now, 20minutes after your dream zone comes out... Reddit would blow up with every possible secret as it develops, let's play videos would appear on youtube of all the "secrets" as they are found and I'm sure people would write giant articles on the forums on how to get 100% completion for every secret on the zone.

Sure, you wouldn't want to engage in any of that, it would ruin your fun, so you don't. You take the zone at your leisure, uncovering secrets as you go, just to have people randomly troll you since they know how everything works.... "Oh there is some rare spawn, omg! Let's catch it! It just randomly appeared, who else could know about it?! Run!" But yoink! Someone got it the second it appeared, apparently its on a 12hr spawn timer and they were waiting for it and standing just above it for ideal tagging so they got it before you. :/ People would create web apps and people would fill out spreadsheets with all the timers and etc and secrets....blargh.... it would be unpleasant cause I'd be there with you, wanting to have a real adventure. I thought FFXI was fun. But sadly we are no longer in that more innocent time.

Besides even just that, people would complain about how difficult it is. Back in the past that wouldn't happen either, most everyone that played thought they were doing really well. The lack of information was good enough to make us think we weren't horrible at the game. Now we all know what zones we can't tackle and what bosses we should be able to defeat but can't.... So this forum would just be full of requests for nerfs. Nowadays, MMOS are super accessible and are considered to be able to be picked up by anyone. FFXI (and I guess 1.0 of this game too?) you had to be more of a enthusiast.... The time requirements of that game alone made them put a warning in the game to tell you when you had been on too long.


We don't have this anymore... So I'm sorry, they'd have to add this warning again if they went through with this idea. :x And that makes me sad. Cause I'd totally play your zone.

[silentwindfr]

just a reminder for all the people against teleportation, teleportation only work in Eorzea.... means when we will leave for the other continent.... no more teleportation.

[Canadane]

(they would even put in special RP quests).

Aren't all quests RP quests if you get into it?

[MilesSaintboroguh]

just a reminder for all the people against teleportation, teleportation only work in Eorzea.... means when we will leave for the other continent.... no more teleportation.

And how do you know it's ONLY in Eorzea? Other countries could have a "not aetheryte"

[silentwindfr]

was explained in the lore, it only work in Erozea because of the aetheryte current... the only civilization that was able to work a teleportation devise are allagan and such. i doubt the empire did make one, or they will not use massive ship for send them troops simply 'port them in eorzea.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

was explained in the lore, it only work in Erozea because of the aetheryte current... the only civilization that was able to work a teleportation devise are allagan and such. i doubt the empire did make one, or they will not use massive ship for send them troops simply 'port them in eorzea.

If fat chocobos and turtles can fly, I'm sure the dev team will handwave a way to teleport in the other areas or at least have a form of fast travelling. The other issue is Return is used a core game mechanic when you lose all your HP and return to your home point via teleporting. How is that going to work in areas that don't have aetherytes? How is it going to work without a current?