Do you think that there's a lack of focus on our open world areas?

[Skivvy]

My thoughts exactly.
I'm willing to bet its usually the older gen people that grew up off the grindy classic mmo's where you just farm overworld monsters or something.

Like other than fates, what do people even want them to do for the overworld? I see a lot of demands for open world actives and no ideas.

I'm in my upper 30s (no idea if you're grouping that in the older gen or not), but I love having an active open world.

As someone else hinted at, GW2 does amazing things with their open world. I pretty much stick to open-world content only in that game. They have a ton of various events happening across the map at any given time, some may be simply killing mobs, some will be escort quests, some may be something else entirely. Then you have the big META events which consist of a long string of linked events that lead up to a big finish. There are legendary hunts you can participate in. Also world bosses.

Mount races can be found throughout the day. Repeatable heart-quests that are never just a simple "kill this batch of mobs". One has you helping scientists with research, another has you helping a chef prepare a meal, another has you scaring off groundhogs, then there is one where you are feeding/giving medicine to people in a camp, one that has you boosting morale of an army, one that has you trying to fit in with an acting-troupe, and it goes on.

You can also find challenge courses scattered throughout the world which, like everything else, has a rather wide variety of what you have to accomplish. And can't forget jumping puzzles! There's probably a whole bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting to mention as it's so early, but what I'm getting at is that their open world has a massive amount of variety, and it makes things feel far more alive and enjoyable.

Compare that to XIV where it's open world is not too far off from a glorified waiting room while you queue for instances. Yes, you can gather, do hunt trains or FATES (which are pretty one-note), but there's not much else going on and it feels incredibly lifeless as a whole.


e: The post just above mine added some additional items for XIV, thank you! But the only things that will generally persist after you've completed your leveling/MSQ are the hunts, FATEs, gathering and maps. If you're new, you'll have things to keep you busy for a while in the world, but it soon loses a lot of it's activities once you level out of it.