A moving/dynamic zone would be cool (e.g. a ship or train)

[KisaiTenshi]

The ferry was instanced, yes, much like those in WoW, but with a long-running "in transit" instance as well. I remember players frequently requesting player-count-based random encounters and unique fishing types be made available over the in transit instance, but can't actually even recall if regular fishing was available therefrom.
The city airships were indeed instant, and nothing was ever done with the gridanian airship landings.

Yep, I remember running into one of the Gridanian airship landings during the beta for V1.0 an patiently waiting around to see if anything came. Nothing did. I did use the ferry several times however as I made beta characters on all starting cities so I could see the opening cutscenes and quests.

When I later played Archeage I kinda wanted that kind of airship/taxi/ship system where there is just a piece of transport you can get on. However you also have to understand why these existed in Archeage. One of Archeage's core game concepts is trading materials. So you'd buy something from the guy in the desert city, and then sell it to the guy in the port city, and such. So the most direct way of doing this was via the airships, however the airships also moved through PvP areas, so the second you hit a PvP spot, the other players would kill everyone. Now I do want to point out something that is more funny about this. You could leverage the PvP against the other faction. So what you would do is hide in the airship docking area of the enemy faction and wait for someone with a backpack to wait for a ship to come. Wait for the ship to come, sneak onboard, and then once you're away from the dock, jack their stuff. Once you got something jacked, you also would likely have the ship to yourself. That's when you kill everyone who boards at the next stop, repeat until you get to the closest fixed route to an area you could sell the packs.

That is literately how that game was supposed to be played, though more emphasis was placed on ship warfare. Players didn't like losing their ships, so they'd unsummon them at first sight of the enemy.

Now that kind of stuff I always found a bit more interesting than the "open world pvp" aspect. Defend your deliveries from bandits (AI or PC) in transit. You can't just teleport with a package, you have to physically take it from NPC to NPC. I didn't stick around archeage long enough to see any parser wars that would have made sneaking impossible, but suffice it to say, I think this is still something that would justify these things existing in FFXIV.

Let's say that, the custom deliveries that already exist in the game was expanded to include taking crates or backpacks from one area to another. Because this game doesn't really have any kind of openworld PvP, there is no risk of player bandits. Basically we already have one version of this with Vase off. So to complete a delivery, you have to complete one of three things:

1) Deliver the small package, on foot, the slow and safest route, with only regular overworld mobs to deal with, being attacked drops the pack, and the pack can be picked up by other players should the player who initially picked it up, teleport, use a mount, board a chocobo taxi, or use any other variation of quick-travel (including the tri-city airships.) All mobs will attack players carrying specific things, and players must drop the pack to attack back. The best strategy is to bring at least a friend to take care of any mobs. Carrying a pack across a zone boundary change will lead to instanced fights, depending on the value of the item being taken.

2) Deliver the medium packages by cart (behaves like a mount), a faster means, but it will be targeted by bandits during zone-boundary changes. So in effect it adds instanced fights to zone boundary crossings that you can not solo. You need a party. Or you can try to solo and are gauranteed to lose some of your stuff. Zone boundary changes on a cart will sync to the cart/goods level.

3) Deliver the small, medium, or large packages by airship, ferry or caravan. This leans back to what the OP was asking. Where there would be fixed transportation on a schedule. So one of these routes would be from some place like Quarrymill, that you'd have to take on foot or cart to gridania, and then at the airship/ferry port you and X many other players in the port area would be transported to an alternate version of the airship, which is a larger cargo ship. So this ship would also behave a bit like "hamlet defense", where there would be waves of sea/sky pirates depending on the total value of goods on board. Between each wave, the ship can be repaired by DoH jobs. Players are free to not repair the ship, but if the ship's durability reaches zero, it crashes and all goods are lost. Where as pirates can just straight up steal goods if left undefended. Unlike other duties, failing these duties does not get a do-over.

The ideas above are partially inspiried by how this mechanic exists in archeage or mabinogi, but really those games had various issues that made those things a lot less fun than they should be:
- Archeage's Openworld PvP areas would pretty much guarantee you lost your cargo, because the flight mechanic allowed players to glide onto moving transport. There was no NPC based bandits.
- Mabinogi's version of this would feature AI bandits, and harder ones the higher level cargo you took. However since the bandits spawned in the regular areas of the game, having an entire party of strong players was the only practical way to do it, and it was a faceroll that way.

I'm sure this entire trading thing came from another game in a better way (probably from EVE) , but suffice it to say, it would give a reason for these areas to exist beyond just sight-seeing.

[Shurrikhan]

Snip

So much of this sounds like what 1.x was pushing towards, pre-Yoshida....

And yeah, I'd love to see stuff like that, so long as the open world, and its purpose to XIV, could be similarly beefed up.

[Kaisha]

I don't believe ARR has anything in place to handle physically attaching and moving a character to an object about outside of up/down in an elevator. Boats in XI/1.0 were just smoke and mirrors where the boat is completely stationary and it's just animating a zone model around the players.

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't believe ARR has anything in place to handle physically attaching and moving a character to an object about outside of up/down in an elevator. Boats in XI/1.0 were just smoke and mirrors where the boat is completely stationary and it's just animating a zone model around the players.

Well in V1.0, you never actually boarded the ferry, you just stood around in dock area and when the ferry docked, you were transported onboard. And when it got to the other side, you were transported off. It never worked like Archeage did where you physically had to move.

The thing I hate about Archeage's version was that they were closer to moving platforms (a la mario) , but had no physics to them, so you could ram them full speed with your glider and just hit it like it was a wall. You could jump off the airships to your death, or glide down. It was pretty tricky, but you could also bounce onto the top of the airship (thus providing another way to ninja onto a ship mid-flight. Archeage's ships however went through effectively seamless zones, which was somewhat better than FFXIV V1.0's handling via loading tunnels. Archeage actually has loading tunnels, but they take the form of "long valleys between maps", when you're in an airship, you actually see the scenery pop-out and back in as it crosses those zones. It's not terrible.

ARR zones would likely not pull this off just because they're too small. They would likely take "alternative" routes that only cross through one zone, and spend the rest of the time in the clouds. (See void ark storyline), and then arrive at their target zone. That at least makes it look like the ships exist to the outside (which currently is very static.)

If we're really going into the Garlemald region in 5.0, there is a huge desert to cross that we already saw a glimpse of in the cutscenes, and the garleans already lost one airship to the area. So that does tell us that there is an opportunity to here to put something in that isn't just another fast-travel shortcut, seeing as that significant time has to be spent to get there, just like with going to Kugane.

[Elixirboy]

but to make basically EVERYTHING instanced was not. FFXIV, at least in it's current incarnation, is lazy in design, and lacks creativity

I remember camping land kings in XI, and if you didn't have someone with a claim bot, you had a zero percent chance to get some really useful gear pieces. Ever.

I remember farming pop items in Sky, and watching RMT camp and claim Ullikummi, in an attempt to force people to buy the pop item if they wanted to fight Kirin. That was awesome.

Open world bosses had their pros and cons, instances have theirs.

[Remedi]

Tbh they do have the technology ot make something like that
Remember the first part of sirensong sea?

[Mwynn]

Tbh they do have the technology ot make something like that
Remember the first part of sirensong sea?

It's an Illusion just like Bismarck, Dun Scaith or the Phantom Train Zone.
What is actually happening there is, the Object you stand on doesn't really move but the Zone itself loops infinitely, making it look like you would move.

The Sequence of moving to the Island in Dun Scaith is just a Illusion aswell, I'd be not surprised if they took the entire Island, shrunk it and basically let it grow so it seems like we would "Fly" to it with that Airship.

It's also used in the Praetorium Lift Sequence where you fight Gaius or the Ultima Fight.
At a certain Point, old seen Structures of the Zone will be loaded the moment it can loop and from that Moment, it'll clip and infinitely loop.

It's pretty much like looping Music or in the end, how Skyboxes work in Games, they do loop aswell.

Ever stood in Ultima Trial for 30 Minutes without triggering the Fight? Sure at a Point you'd reach the top but that's not the case in that scenario.

[Remedi]

It's an Illusion just like Bismarck, Dun Scaith or the Phantom Train Zone.
What is actually happening there is, the Object you stand on doesn't really move but the Zone itself loops infinitely, making it look like you would move.

The Sequence of moving to the Island in Dun Scaith is just a Illusion aswell, I'd be not surprised if they took the entire Island, shrunk it and basically let it grow so it seems like we would "Fly" to it with that Airship.

It's also used in the Praetorium Lift Sequence where you fight Gaius or the Ultima Fight.
At a certain Point, old seen Structures of the Zone will be loaded the moment it can loop and from that Moment, it'll clip and infinitely loop.

It's pretty much like looping Music or in the end, how Skyboxes work in Games, they do loop aswell.

Ever stood in Ultima Trial for 30 Minutes without triggering the Fight? Sure at a Point you'd reach the top but that's not the case in that scenario.

I know how it works, perhaps I misunderstood what ppl really wanted

[Zojha]

What is actually happening there is, the Object you stand on doesn't really move but the Zone itself loops infinitely, making it look like you would move.

And doing it any other way would likely look like the old ferries vanilla WoW used. Auberdine<->Teldrassil comes to mind, or the one that drove to Feathermoon Stronghold back when it was on Sardor Isle. I think the other ferries ended in a loading screen sometime after leaving shore, but those two had a complete loop where you could jump off any time (at your own risk).

Not exactly advanced tech, considering it's like 14 years old now. But it requires the space you traverse through to actually exist. I could imagine that breaking through the invisible walls around Limsa into the water would just cause you to fall into nothingness until you hit some invisible failsafe floor down below, because the entire harbor is just smoke and mirrors. Or, fall into infinity, if there is no failsafe.

Personally, I don't see it happening in this game. Certainly not in the open world, because that'd be inconvenient and this game is HUGE on providing things conveniently. In an instance, maybe. But they'd just go for the illusion route and prevent you from jumping off via invisible walls.

[Melichoir]

I feel like that the doom train fight is good and bad because it kinda embodies this a touch. They couldve gone farther with it (where the doom train slowly destroys the train your on, and if youre not fast enough, you run out of train.) Among other mechanics like needing to switch tracks or even trains possibly (havent done the Savage version, so if that is a thing on savage, woo. Gotta go do that then :3).