any chance of Sky/Sea type areas?

[Ryans]

I found the complete opposite to be true about exploration in FFXI and WOW.

In WOW, leveling via questing takes you through multiple zones, and you explore them in full. Leveling via dungeons takes you through pretty much every dungeon, and there is no magical dungeon that lasts you 20 levels; it's 5 at best.

Compare that to FFXI, where there were only a few viable exp camps per level, and level progression almost always looked the same. People found the "best" exp camps by some arbitrary factors, and nobody else did anything but level at those camps. I knew people who dinged 75, who had never been to the Zi'tah area, COP areas, or practically anywhere else besides the zones that had good exp camps in.

I never said a dungeon would last you 20 levels... I said you would do a single dungeon 20 times to get a level. I'd be fine with being able to do quests to level as long as they weren't something you did from level one until the cap. There are only so many ideas for what a quest can have you do before it gets repetitively tedious and the fact that you are doing it by yourself makes it a step further into the boring category and even worse party grinding.

What you are saying about "best" exp camps is, to an extent, proving my point. People without much knowledge of the game believed in the idea that there was one best camp and if it was taken, exping wasn't worth it. If you spent the time and learned the zones, you could get unbelievably better camps that weren't common knowledge. Sometimes it took unorthodox thinking to get a place to level and that only strengthened your bond to the game and the community, and in turn made you better suited to handle end-game content.

[RemVye]

I would like to see a Sky type area but with new claiming rules so people couldn't steal your spawn or MPK you. Maybe make it so other mobs despawn or return to there territory after getting XX yalms from the NM.

"Crazy Wild Nannygoat is intimidated by Kirin and returns to its territory!" <-- example

[Vahzl]

I don't like that NM's link anything around them. It just leads to unnecessary complications during the fight, for example fighting a level 25 NM and a level 80 mob about a mile away decides it wants in on this too. Yes Black Shroud, I am looking at you -.-

[Wolfie]

Not at all, im being very receptive, you keep blockading the conversation.

"You're just a boring person" isn't blockading the conversation at all, then?

I never said a dungeon would last you 20 levels... I said you would do a single dungeon 20 times to get a level. I'd be fine with being able to do quests to level as long as they weren't something you did from level one until the cap. There are only so many ideas for what a quest can have you do before it gets repetitively tedious and the fact that you are doing it by yourself makes it a step further into the boring category and even worse party grinding.

My bad, I misread that. But is it really so bad if people did the same dungeon X amount of runs until the next one was available? How is that any worse from killing Y amount of monsters at the same exp camp before you were able to move at the next one?

And I totally agree with you on "quests" becoming boring, repetitive, and low on content, but Blizzard has found a way to work around that. Quests now progress you through a zone, and they're all tied with each other in terms of story. So while an individual quest might be worthless in terms of lore or cool tasks, when you look at the chain as a whole, it's actually quite nice.

If FFXIV were to have quest based leveling, I would like to see something similar. One longer quest chain, with smaller quests that all build on each other.

What you are saying about "best" exp camps is, to an extent, proving my point. People without much knowledge of the game believed in the idea that there was one best camp and if it was taken, exping wasn't worth it. If you spent the time and learned the zones, you could get unbelievably better camps that weren't common knowledge. Sometimes it took unorthodox thinking to get a place to level and that only strengthened your bond to the game and the community, and in turn made you better suited to handle end-game content.

Proving your point in what way? 90%+ of FFXI players stuck to the same camps. When I tried to move people around at other camps, I was told no, even when I was playing a job with a lot of sway in a party setting (WHM, RDM, and SCH). This is especially true after TOAU came out and people did colibri parties. People flat out didn't want to do anything but the tried and tested methods, and it's an absolute shame that it was that way, because the game went unexplored for a huge amount of people.

And it's not even instancing that did this. It's the fact that there WAS a clear and definite best way to level. All of the other, unpopular camps had some disadvantages (like being in a COP area, or long run to get to, or had to sneak by high level mobs, or required unorthodox party makeups, or whatever). What disadvantages did the popular camps have? None. The people with combat log parsers cherry picked the mobs that died the easiest, that had the best respawn rate, in the least dangerous corner of a map, and with the least dangerous TP moves.

Other MMOs have balanced their levelup methods and made them all accessible, and people spread out among the different styles. Using WOW as an example again, I've leveled characters by straight mob grinding, by questing, and by dungeons. If I liked PVP, I could level a character that way too. The fact that Blizzard made it easy to get started on any of these activities (but not necessarily master them, end-game dungeons and PVP are still difficult), there is not one bit of content in the game that goes unused.

Instancing isn't what ruins a game. Poorly balanced rewards and play styles do. Instancing just helps with balance.

Why would anyone want anything besides that?

[Bearforce]

See, in one post you raged, called people names and showed how aggressive you are. In other words, the very people you seem to want to be instanced away from.

l2r and he didnt called names. if you cant argue and responding with denial then how can you make your point across the boards?

[elreed]

good idea,s from XI? prior abyssea or after? i wont argue there, because its obvious where the idea,s of endgame abbysea came from

Instead of just being a jerk taking every idea to the ground why dont you care to share what would a good endgame content would be?

We are already getting best of both worlds in the future of FFXIV you dont have to be so clever to find out, no matter what people says we're getting most of the ideas from FFXI, i. e. We have some lore about 2 gralean commanders, they say where they are at the moment, Sky (Ala mhigo?) not exactly on the sky but definetely a new area to be added and maybe not accesible without a chain of quest. Hamlet defense, FFXI campaign? with the FFXIV taste, dungeons?

Actually saw a lot of videos from a ppl on youtube of several dungeons that already exist and are probably being implemented later on, WoW type of instance? maybe for casual playing, we already know by now that the gear we get from drops on dungeons are lesser than the ones that are crafted, and as we saw at the begining of the game some NM's drop mats to make those pieces, so yeah basically theres gonna be gear for casuals and gear for hardcore people, PvP between companies, conquest from FFXI? Battleground from WoW in WotLK? we already know it will be, PvP in colisseum is almost the same PvP that we had in XI too.

and i can go on in a few stuff just by playing the game and checking the constant lore that SE release.

[Coldbrand]

Yeah, why would anyone want anything but what he wants? [/narcissism]

[Wolfie]

Yeah, why would anyone want anything but what he wants? [/narcissism]

Instancing content, in a worst case scenario, supports the same kind of play styles offered by open world content. Best case scenario, instancing is like a hundred-fold more flexible and complex than open world.

[Griss]

If i remember correctly many many moons ago there was mention of a story locked area.

It might still be in the games future. Defiantly would not expect to see it until the post 2.0 eorzea though.

[Zumi]

This is what people typically did in ffxi to level once ToAU was out before abyssea. What it boiled down to was getting the best camp for that level range. Oh when they added level sync people basically wanted to stay at colibri camps forever.

1-12 starter city areas
13-16 Valkurm Dunes - crab/fly/goblin
19-24 Qufim Island -crab/fish/worm
24-27 Yuhtunga Jungle - mandy
27-34 Yhotor - mandy
34-54 Crawlers nest (worker crawler, nest bettle, solider crawler, rumble crawler, helm bettle) With garlarige the alt camp
54-59 Bhaf thickets - Lesser Colibri
59-68 Bhaf Thickets - Colibri
69-75 Bhaf thickets - Greater Colibri

Its not like people had some grand adventure exploring all the areas in the game they just stuck to a few camps, only if coliribi was taken people would go to a less desired camp or try and run a party out by camping on top of them