Why the heavy focus on instance only?

[Jynx]

Want to do Dynamis, too bad all zones but Windurst are occupied. Want to kill Vrtra? To bad he was killed 35 hours ago. You could always farm Diorite in sky with it's awesome 1.5% drop rate. Usually they sane leave that one be.

You act like instanced content is free of flaws.

Want to lowman the new dungeon? Too bad you "Require" more members than you have. Shout for members on your server? Please nobody wants to play with people on the same server. Want to try any open-world content with strangers? That's a shame everyone else is qued up for instanced content and wants cross server players they will never see again.

Huzzah~

it's a matter of perspective, XI wasn't about "Claiming" your content people really blow this out of proportion. We had tons of open world content.

Campaign, Fields of Valor, Beastmen forts, Open Dungeons, vast world filled with lore and content.

All of these didn't require you to "Claim content" and arguably were 10x more fun than I ever had in a instance, because I could do it on my terms whenever the hell I wanted. FFXI had it's share of head mashingly hard content but there were tons of people who found that "Fun" and worth it.

Hell I would never be caught dead farming in sky for the most part, you know what I did without Sky gear? Perfectly fine becuase XI had such an amazing ammount of content I wasn't pointed in a single direction and told "This is what you do now!"

Using Dynamis as a example for instanced content is just...stupid it was instanced content itself a relic from old hardware that couldn't have multiple cases of a instance. It would be a good case of instancing content if it wasn't irrelevant in this day and age.

People arguing that instanced content is always more fun than open world need to understand that we wouldn't be fighting for it if we didn't find open world content much more engaging and "Fun" it's a matter of tastes really and I prefer my content not to be a series of loading screens. I prefer my instances to be at the end of dungeons or in special areas I still need to reach.

Assault is a perfect example of what I think instances are good for, content that is specialy designed for certain situations. I like to be able to explore the world as one class and not worry about my progress being blocked by scripted events or monsters that are designed to block my path without a 8 person party of specific jobs/classes.

No, it really isn't.

And yet people don't all agree it's the best way to do things...in other words totally subjective.

*edit*

Like many others I want a good balance of both instanced and openworld content, XI had a nice balance it had plenty of instanced content as well as openworld stuff to do. Perhaps it leaned towards openworld a bit more but it was fairly close to being a medium.