open world zones?

[Shougun]

I've been thinking they could revamp their leve system, such that you get a few mega leves (placeholder name lol). These mega leves will come with many steps (occasionally going across multiple zones) and some of the more difficult ones can come with optional steps to make the end part easier, for example a one leve might be an attack on an outpost and if you're going to solo it then you could do the optional content to gather more NPC allies (vs if you were going to do it in a group you might avoid that & increase the difficulty). These mega leve would have some very good rewards, but due to their limited nature SE doesn't have to worry about you spamming them (they're on intervals, you can choose when to do them in the week but you can't spam them forever).

These mega leves can happen all over the world and as there will be only so many a week with a decent variability in the scripting and structures that script can form from there will be new activities all the time. Things that happens in the open world, that wont feel too repeated from the last, with very high rewards, in a different location, every week.

Like picture the hive fate in South Shroud turned into a conquest/hamlet "mega leve" that can happen in many locations throughout the world, the fight taking into consideration where it takes place (what monsters you face, where and what you do to build up to the fight), many variations and steps that you could take to get to the final point (some optional some just being different because the script chose it). You could complete hamlet in the same area twice and both play out a bit different.

Another could be a far more personal and involved hunt, like picture the FFXII system and how that worked. You went to the hunt board, you talked to the npc, you figured out how to draw them out, etc. Draw that process out to a personalized just for you monster, with optional ability to bring trust/squadron if you can't bring friends (although the exp / gil boost might be lower then since you couldn't jack the difficulty up as high, it would however be very much worth your time). Sort of a BCNM experience, draw out your own mini-boss/boss like open world fight.

Anyway, if they had this global context aware leve system I feel that could help the entire map system feel more used. Since these are leve monsters you can spawn higher level than normal monsters in areas normally for lower level, in this way the system can take you back to old areas and still be relevant to your experience.

Perhaps you get one mega leve a week but if you complete challenge log based on leves you get an extra one. Such that the low tier leve system feeds into the high tier. Two challenge log examples: complete X leves. Complete 5 unique leve, each in a different zones. There are some decent rewards in some of the leves to be honest, they're just easy to ignore because there tends to be better / easier choices (but baking in the very high tier mega leve with a low tier leve makes the low tier leve extra valuable now as well).

[Haxaan]

Back before there was flying and there was just "one giant map" there was a lot more actual exploring to be had. Especially seeing that Aetherytes were few and far between, so getting anywhere took a lot of work. You had to sneak around certain areas because the mobs in your way were extremely high level and would one shot you if you took a wrong step. Once the game added on ps3 capability it took on the burden of restricting a lot of its capabilities. This made the maps much smaller and easier to navigate because of said restrictions.

Once Flight became available it was exciting and people were exploring all the time so they could see the new maps and what they held for us. As time went on, people finished their quests and had no need for those zones anymore, minus gathering or leveling other jobs. It is kind of sad because aside from /GPOSE, Gathering and Leveling there really isn't much left to do in the open world... oh and maps and hunts. I really hope that the devs will figure out a way to make the open world more exciting again, but to be fair, this is kind of the way it goes in a lot of mmos once older areas are well past their prime. If flying and teleporting wasn't a thing and everyone had to run everywhere or take airships and boats, you would definitely see more people populating certain zones as they run through, but those same people would most likely creat a hub that was more centralized to the current content so you would be right back in the same situation.

I think that "Limited Jobs" like Beastmaster could be a fun way to make the over world relevant again, at least for a little while. But only time will tell.

[Leanna]

Because the server and the game isn't ready to keep a huge amount of people in the same map, so the only solution was instanced maps with a cap of 144 players. Potato servers.

[guardin]

I've been thinking they could revamp their leve system, such that you get a few mega leves (placeholder name lol). These mega leves will come with many steps (occasionally going across multiple zones) and some of the more difficult ones can come with optional steps to make the end part easier, for example a one leve might be an attack on an outpost and if you're going to solo it then you could do the optional content to gather more NPC allies

These mega leves can happen all over the world and as there will be only so many a week with a decent variability in the scripting and structures that script can form from there will be new activities all the time. Things that happens in the open world, that wont feel too repeated from the last, with very high rewards, in a different location, every week.

Like picture the hive fate in South Shroud turned into a conquest/hamlet "mega leve" that can happen in many locations throughout the world, the fight taking into consideration where it takes place (what monsters you face, where and what you do to build up to the fight), many variations and steps that you could take to get to the final point (some optional some just being different because the script chose it). You could complete hamlet in the same area twice and both play out a bit different.

Another could be a far more personal and involved hunt, like picture the FFXII system and how that worked. You went to the hunt board, you talked to the npc, you figured out how to draw them out, etc. Draw that process out to a personalized just for you monster, with optional ability to bring trust/squadron if you can't bring friends (although the exp / gil boost might be lower then since you couldn't jack the difficulty up as high, it would however be very much worth your time). Sort of a BCNM experience, draw out your own mini-boss/boss like open world fight.

Anyway, if they had this global context aware leve system I feel that could help the entire map system feel more used. Since these are leve monsters you can spawn higher level than normal monsters in areas normally for lower level, in this way the system can take you back to old areas and still be relevant to your experience.

.

this is a great start. now we need the ability to climb slide and explore like botw. real adventuring not some fetch quest. find hidden caves, under water tunnels. hidden npcs that appear at certain times like majora mask. tie the relic behind that. find stuff in the world like other open games. ff14 open world is point a to point b and "fight" some trash mobs along the way.