Need to address the Eureka in the room.

[TaiyoShikasu]

Solo Eureka is miserable pre-Pyros and I know "hurr durr that's not how its supposed to be played1!1!!" I don't care. It's incredibly unfun and downright inefficient. Logograms massively helped with this, and they (or some other equivalent) should be included from the get-go. Not in the 3rd installment of it, after the longest most depressing section.

My favourite was when Eureka was released it was said it was something that could be done solo.

Of course the devs would also say BLU is a solo job, so.

[Kalise]

You can see the main problem with more activities in the open world at the beginning of every addon.
They had to make 3 instances per "open world zone" for SB to carry the burden of many players being there.
When Ixion spawned and everyone portet there, the servers just crashed. Thats why we have instanced Eureka with a limit of 144 players.

Would it be nice to have more activities in the open world? Yes, but we have to be realistic.

Step 1) Open World Zone Instances
Step 2) Player Limit on Open World Instances
Step 3) ???????
Step 4) PROFIT

Just being realistic here >.>

Yes, you devalue things like Ixion spawns and Hunts because you no longer enable thousands of players to all leave their preferred AFK City to all jump in on a spawn, but to be honest the way that things like S Ranks and Ixion spawn are not particularly well implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, you'd open up the possibilities of you know, actually creating open worlds that matter, by having FATEs, chains, A Rank and B Rank hunts, Raid FATEs and the like actually being valued. Without having to shove all this actually worthwhile open world stuff into a separate Eureka zone while leaving the actual open world to rot when it's only ever used by people doing MSQ or gathering (Outside an S Rank/Ixion spawn when everyone flocks to the same place and crashes servers >.>)

[Physic]

Step 1) Open World Zone Instances
Step 2) Player Limit on Open World Instances
Step 3) ???????
Step 4) PROFIT

Just being realistic here >.>

Yes, you devalue things like Ixion spawns and Hunts because you no longer enable thousands of players to all leave their preferred AFK City to all jump in on a spawn, but to be honest the way that things like S Ranks and Ixion spawn are not particularly well implemented anyway.

Meanwhile, you'd open up the possibilities of you know, actually creating open worlds that matter, by having FATEs, chains, A Rank and B Rank hunts, Raid FATEs and the like actually being valued. Without having to shove all this actually worthwhile open world stuff into a separate Eureka zone while leaving the actual open world to rot when it's only ever used by people doing MSQ or gathering (Outside an S Rank/Ixion spawn when everyone flocks to the same place and crashes servers >.>)

server based open world content will fail due to different server populations/time zones and interests. Open world needs to be like mega server/cross world.

[Kalise]

server based open world content will fail due to different server populations/time zones and interests. Open world needs to be like mega server/cross world.

Which is fine.

I mean, that's what they're working towards with the coming "World Visit" stuff coming in ShB right?

As well as the changing of Datacentres and the like.

[Physic]

Which is fine.

I mean, that's what they're working towards with the coming "World Visit" stuff coming in ShB right?

As well as the changing of Datacentres and the like.

world visit just allows players to play on friends servers, megaservers place players with players from any server automatically. Maybe in the long run megaserver is thier plan, but we havent seen them say that yet.

[Kalise]

world visit just allows players to play on friends servers, megaservers place players with players from any server automatically. Maybe in the long run megaserver is thier plan, but we havent seen them say that yet.

You have to presume so, given how archaic single server overworlds are in MMO's.

It's been almost like a decade since it became pretty much staple MMO design (Partially because of the decline of MMO playerbases leading to "Dead Server Syndrome")

[Alucard135]

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Now that I think about it, that's actually right. Instead of players spamming the open world quests, fates and levequests to level up, it became an instanced duty farm all over. Whenever I would level up an alt in another MMO, the most rewarding thing to do was to grab a bunch of quests and do them simultaneously. But here, for DPS, it's just spamming PotD and HoH. A friend of mine decided to grind level all his classes to 70 and all he did was PotD and HoH for days. If leveling other jobs was more profitable in the open world, it would populate it. I think SE has realized that the game became so heavily dependent on 4-8 man instanced duties when they designed Eureka and created BLU (yes, I know Eureka isn't everyone's cup of tea lol). The trust system can be a good start for a more challenging open world experience also if it was rewarding enough to keep players in the open world (time to kill Minfilia).

[Reynhart]

Whenever I would level up an alt in another MMO, the most rewarding thing to do was to grab a bunch of quests and do them simultaneously.

The thing is that, in most MMO, leveling an alt means leveling a different character, thus, going back to 0 and having all quests available again. For FFXIV to do that, it would have to multiply its quest amount by an absurd number...or create the New Game+ mode.

[Alucard135]

The thing is that, in most MMO, leveling an alt means leveling a different character, thus, going back to 0 and having all quests available again. For FFXIV to do that, it would have to multiply its quest amount by an absurd number...or create the New Game+ mode.

Oh yeah, I forgot about new game+ feature they announced. If it retains the EXP I might get encouraged to level up more characters lol.

[Kalise]

Oh yeah, I forgot about new game+ feature they announced. If it retains the EXP I might get encouraged to level up more characters lol.

Though, the issue with this is, it doesn't actually help promote filling the open world. Given how much of the MSQ involves you going into your own solo duties for notable fights as well as actually needing you to go through actual duties (Often with DF if not Squadron capable... Or, these days, just run the duty unsync'd and hand the quest in on your low level class )

That and you know... When people hit that point in the ARR MSQ where it's just Minfilia calling you back to the Walking Sands 4000000 times to give you crappy errands many people will be like "Oh right yeah, this exists... I forgot I repressed the memories of this..." and give up with NG+...

Really, FATEs and Leves are FFXIV's version of "Spam quests in a location" for overworld leveling... The former just got outgrown by the rewards from duties for an exp:time ratio and the latter were kind of lame to begin with and then ditched altogether in SB (Also, solo orientated too)

At best, maybe they could allow sidequests to be re-doable on alternate classes? That way you could level using the sidequests and FATEs within a zone (Provided of course, their rewards made relevant for the time they require).