6.1 Speculation (maybe spoilers)

[Puremallace]

So looking around the biggest feedback that I see Square Enix and the dev being given no matter where I look is the PS3 limitations caused ARR to have plenty of issues.

As we know this dev team previously burned down the world and restarted the entire thing after 1.0. Yoshi P gave the impression they were not done revamping ARR. The current revamps are not exactly smooth as none of the zones were really designed with flying in mind.

When we look at the Endwalker trailer the entire world is on fire. After 6.1 how is that going to be represented to people who are caught up to 6.1. Like will we see a revamped world and new people still see ARR?

One example is right now people caught up to 5.55 see big towers in most of the zones that none of the sprouts know are there.

Is it possible we are going to see that expected real ARR revamp in 6.1? Maybe later?

[Sotaris]

Depends what you mean by a revamp. If we're going to see a ARR type of revamp (from 1.0 to ARR) we will need a whole new game engine. Currently game is limited by both engine and 1.0 code base. A new expansion will not fix that.

Mind you all of this is a huuuuge time and cost investment and SE as a company don't seem to be the kind that likes to reinvest in this game other than saving face for ARR.

[Ayuhra]

We might end up with a world in flames that is not in flames for people earlier in the game, yeah. Maybe we can traverse to "not on fire" through some sort of echo power or time travel. In WoW some zones have Bronze Dragons that will send you backwards in time to a pre-Cataclysm version of the zone.

[Jandor]

Currently game is limited by both engine and 1.0 code base.

Nah they chucked almost all that out, which is ironically enough partially to blame. You don't whip up near enough an entire MMO in roughly 2 years without cutting some corners.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Doubtful. The fire is likely there in the trailer as a more symbolic gesture to the current state of the world than any actual physical thing that'll be going on in the ARR zones when EW goes live.

If they do any revamping to the zones in the future, it'll be for all players to see like the 5.3 ARR rework did, since running two individual zone meshes based on MSQ progression would be pointless when the two sets of players (pre-EW & post EW) will still have to interact on the same map, so any changes they could actually do would purely aesthetic & aesthetic OOB stuff, which would be extremely pointless to not make visible by everyone.

As far as your towers bit, that's easy to do & change because of the fact the towers are way out of bounds. Same with skyboxes for special weathers, they can always edit the OOB to their whims since players can't interact with anything they do out there. The few times they actually do changes in the zones itself (Alexander in the Hinterlands) you'll notice they placed rocks that look suspiciously like Alexander's body parts where his normal parts are so that way non-unlocked Alex players don't see the unlocked ones landing on thin air or non-unlocked phasing right through Alex's body parts for the unlocked people.

Beyond that, they already just got done re-working the ARR zones 3 main patches ago. Knowing they plan stuff literally expansion cycles in advance + my own dev experience from software projects, if they hadn't planned the current ARR rework to last for a long time, they wouldn't have bothered to go through with it in 5.3. It'd have been a literal waste of dev resources to do such a big rework in 5.3 if they knew they were going to be doing a 2nd major rework later that could easily undermine the work they just did; they'd just do it all at once.

[Fawkes]

We might get some instanced fights in those areas with added fire, but probably nothing major. Maybe we'll get something like the towers but instead it's fires/smoke/flying tentacle women.

For 6.1 I'm kinda expecting to be in a new area. Like it'll be entirely based in Radz-at-han or something. Maybe the secret final zone of 6.0 will actually be the first zone of 6.1's story. Because if we're just doing fetch quests in Ul'dah with the scions then it won't feel like a new story. So there's no point in revamping ARR zones because we shouldn't be spending time there at all if they're actually serious about 6.0 being the end of the current story. If it's the same characters and the same zones it will just feel like a continuation of the same story.

[Puremallace]

Doubtful. The fire is likely there in the trailer as a more symbolic gesture to the current state of the world than any actual physical thing that'll be going on in the ARR zones when EW goes live.

Yeah I tend to agree with everything you typed but if I were Yoshi P and was looking for an in game lore reason to burn ARR down to the ground I wonder if they would use this as an excuse. This is also the first time in FF14's story they will be completely ending it by 6.1 and moving onto something completely different afterwards.

My main guess is because they have done it before with the entire MMO so why not the base game? I figure if they have not started obviously it would be too late but if Endwalker does not do it I wonder if 7.0 would do it. It just seems so interesting that on the map it shows it all burning.

Not sure how you would possibly make it work in a narrative fashion but I do know WoW does change entire zones for people far enough in the story and give an option to revert the zone to whatever pre calamity event like that big Sword thing. They had it also so you could go back to the zone before Undercity got flooded with gas.

The biggest issue with ARR is continuous narrative and how do you change ARR to be more modern without blowing a massive Retcon into the entire MMO lol

[Vahlnir]

I'd like to see the engine upgraded, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon. What gives me hope though is that they seem to be putting a lot of their eggs in FF XIV's basket lately. It's not impossible, just unlikely.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think there will be a revamp, no, it's not really needed.

One thing to note is some ARR zones are not separate in how they were created. For example, Upper La Noscea and Outer La Noscea are one zone, but is copy and pasted to split you into one section or the other. It would still be complicated to merge them because it would present problems like with hunts.

What has been done already is things like AI upscaling of textures.

[Lanadra]

So looking around the biggest feedback that I see Square Enix and the dev being given no matter where I look is the PS3 limitations caused ARR to have plenty of issues.

As we know this dev team previously burned down the world and restarted the entire thing after 1.0. Yoshi P gave the impression they were not done revamping ARR. The current revamps are not exactly smooth as none of the zones were really designed with flying in mind.

When we look at the Endwalker trailer the entire world is on fire. After 6.1 how is that going to be represented to people who are caught up to 6.1. Like will we see a revamped world and new people still see ARR?

One example is right now people caught up to 5.55 see big towers in most of the zones that none of the sprouts know are there.

Is it possible we are going to see that expected real ARR revamp in 6.1? Maybe later?

You will see nothing. No more than you do after ARR. After HW. After SB and after ShB.