[Vent] What you guys think should change on ARR?

[Freyt]

#1. Seamless zones.

1.0 had these and it was understandable at the time why they were done away with, but ARR zones are so weak compared to what we have now, that this would really start to make ARR as impressive as the rest of the game currently.

#2. Larger zones.

There's not much to say about this. It goes hand in hand with #1, since a lot of these zones wouldn't connect well seamlessly without expanding them. The size of zones in ARR is pathetic compared to anything beyond it.

#3. Condensed MSQ.

We could honestly condense 5 MSQ quests into one, and just have cut scenes play one after the other where they make sense. Would do a lot to speed people along past ARR content and alleviate the tedium that it's always presented.

[Esmoire]

I would like if they took the normal Binding Coil Of Bahamut series of raids, standardized the difficultly to be in-line with Alexander, got rid of a lot of the really bad ideas to make them actually interactive (like why is this series of platforms a raid?), then add them to the Normal Raid Roulette as a proper introduction to normal raids. I also think the writing should be changed like newer content where the story exposition occurs before and after the raid, rather than freezing people up in the middle of it, to facilitate people getting to experience the story at their own pace without feeling pressured to skip. I think these raids honestly have some cool ideas, nice music, a cool aesthetic, and a really nice story, and it's a huge shame most people will never experience it.

The savage versions should be left as is.

[Shurrikhan]

#1. Seamless zones.

1.0 had these and it was understandable at the time why they were done away with, but ARR zones are so weak compared to what we have now, that this would really start to make ARR as impressive as the rest of the game currently.

#2. Larger zones.

There's not much to say about this. It goes hand in hand with #1, since a lot of these zones wouldn't connect well seamlessly without expanding them. The size of zones in ARR is pathetic compared to anything beyond it..

I doubt we can have both, to be honest. Aside from in making each cities seamless, I'd much rather have larger zones than seamless zones at this point.

[dinnertime]

An unpopular opinion, but I actually think the 2.0 zones are better designed than the newer zones. Although they are small, there's a lot of personality in it from having a lot of points of interest, not feeling incredibly barren, the settlements feeling like people actually live in them and their buildings were largely accessible. Newer zones lack these.

I don't see them revamping the 2.0 zones to be neither seamless nor larger because there's not much of a good reason to do so, but if they ever do that I hope they still keep its charm.

[Silverquick]

Binding Coil Of Bahamut series of raids. I think these raids honestly have some cool ideas, nice music, a cool aesthetic, and a really nice story, and it's a huge shame most people will never experience it.

Yeah I always thought the same thing about those.

Its what really ties up the loose ends from 1.0 to ARR. The story is actually fascinating and explains a lot about what happened in the opening movie sequence to ARR.

[Enla]

They need to remove the time gate on 6 year old content.

And completely revamp the Ixali to boot. The need for specialized gloves /and/ the proprietary crafting stations being all across the North Shroud is an annoyance that makes actually completing their reputation grind one HELL of a chore. Then there's the fact that the experience gained is such a pittance you might as well not bother, like literally it's a snails crawl per turn in, especially with the availability of the Ishgard Restoration Project. The latter of which can zoom you from 1-60 in less than 20 minutes if you have all the mats ready.

[Avidria]

Frankly, I don't get why people are so bothered by Vesper Bay lacking an Aetheryte. Going from Horizon or Limsa Lominsa to there will only take up a couple minutes of your time.

The real issue here is the MSQ design of ARR which made you kept going back and forth to the Waking Sands. That's what they should fix. Adding an Aetheryte patches up some things, but doesn't fix the root of the issue.

The lack of an Aetheryte was... well, I'm struggling to think of a less dramatic way to put it, but a bit like adding insult to injury. :P

The really annoying part was the constant running back and forth, but the lack of an Aetheryte just made it even more irritating every time.

Frankly I'd be happy if they just fixed the quests themselves, but happier if they changed both.

[Gemina]

I honestly don't care for them to do anything to ARR, and fail to comprehend why anyone would when the alternative is the dev team using their time and resources to produce new content.

Don't get me wrong, I know how long it is, and how a railroad spike to the noggin would be preferred to some of those fetch quests. However, I would sooner have them trim the fat off of the Castrum and Prae instances than rework the ARR MSQ, and the reason behind this is because I would be hard pressed to believe anybody continuously goes through the ARR MSQ. It's one and done for every character you play, while Castrum and Prae are ran repeatedly in the roulette and also have been tied to event rewards when they come out.

I hear about some players being upset that we are no longer getting multiple dungeons in a patch cycle; then I hear the devs actually are reworking the ARR MSQ, and I can't help but /facepalm

[Kaiserdrache]

I'd rather keep my book and the current gameplay, thanks...

And I'd rather see a Summoner Job that is unique and doesn't try to copy n clone an other job with same class mechanics, while using even the same weapon type, instead of using sonething makes actually sense as weapon to be used - a tool with that you call things with and support the morale with it of your allies with in combat actually - the warhorn fullfills all this, a book not, a book is a tool for scholars, doctors n historians, not that of a summoner, if you like books to much, you would lose nothing - all skins that the Summoner has currently would be moved over to Scholar, the only thing that would chang is, the the book user in this game after this change would be only a healer, not a healer and dps together, because SE designed the classes around two more or less pointless NPC, instead of focusing the design of both jobs after what makes actually sense, fits to the themes of jobs and makes fun to play, the jobs shouldn't use both books, only because of two silly NPCs being twins, where even one of them changes over the course of the story its job and with that the used weapon naturally too.

SE has begun alteady a bit to separate both classes drom each other by giving both different skill progressions based on the abused green mage skills within level 1-30, to give players the impression that both classes are more unique and different, but thats not enough for me personally.

i want to see the Green Mage implemented, which uses its rightful belonging skills Bio, Miasma, Trisaster ect, while scholar and summoner should get their complete own individual skill sets based on own individual beginning classes which use both individual DIFFERENT weapons and have both individual gameplay mechanics snd not this shared ether stuff, only because of two twin NPCs that play mostly with these design choices only a role for the ARR bahamut raid due to thein twin book half playing there a role in the story, which is why scholar b summoner were made like they were designed and thats the whole issue with kon designs based oncharacters, it leads only to mostly irreparable story issues

[Yencat]

And I'd rather see a Summoner Job that is unique and doesn't try to copy n clone an other job with same class mechanics, while using even the same weapon type, instead of using sonething makes actually sense as weapon to be used - a tool with that you call things with and support the morale with it of your allies with in combat actually - the warhorn fullfills all this, a book not, a book is a tool for scholars, doctors n historians, not that of a summoner, if you like books to much, you would lose nothing - all skins that the Summoner has currently would be moved over to Scholar, the only thing that would chang is, the the book user in this game after this change would be only a healer, not a healer and dps together, because SE designed the classes around two more or less pointless NPC, instead of focusing the design of both jobs after what makes actually sense, fits to the themes of jobs and makes fun to play, the jobs shouldn't use both books, only because of two silly NPCs being twins, where even one of them changes over the course of the story its job and with that the used weapon naturally too.

SE has begun alteady a bit to separate both classes drom each other by giving both different skill progressions based on the abused green mage skills within level 1-30, to give players the impression that both classes are more unique and different, but thats not enough for me personally.

I would've loved for them to have taken SMN back to the drawing board and given them a different weapon, no Egi's, no DOT based gameplay but maybe cycle through wind/fire/earth spells and then do a big finisher Summon of your choice (cosmetic only or you'd see a bunch of unused summons). But I think it's simply too late to do SUCH big changes 3 expansions into the game to a job people have gotten accustomed to and enjoy, they can of course do as they please but I think the sweet spot would've been to do it for Heavensward or Stormblood.

OT, like others have stated connecting the ARR overworld zones and cities to not have loading screens would be lovely.
(and trim some of the quest fat but they're doing that already)