I have a simple hope for 8.0: The return of single-zone starting cities! (+Ishgard?)

[Hasrat]

i wouldnt be surprised if they kept zone dividers up but surely rejoining (lol) the segmented cities wouldnt be that taxing? it feels weird looking down at limsa aetherite from the upper decks and seeing it deserted

I'd say this is very likely underestimating the work involved. It wouldn't be a "rejoining." This would require remaking the entire city, ensuring every single quest NPC is accurately placed, and there's lots of those in the cities; somehow not breaking things in the process for players in the middle of those quests, since this is in effect deleting the quest marker and creating a new one; not causing errors/crashes for any players that left the game in the old city zones before attempting to remove them and replace with the remade one; to just start the list of potential issues.

I really can't see them ever going to that effort for what little would be gained. Worse, nearly every time they've gone back to re-adjust old content like that, there's almost always been significant problems and oversights from the dev team not taking every single possible situation into account.

This will likely always fall under "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[Xirean]

I'd say this is very likely underestimating the work involved. It wouldn't be a "rejoining." This would require remaking the entire city, ensuring every single quest NPC is accurately placed, and there's lots of those in the cities; somehow not breaking things in the process for players in the middle of those quests, since this is in effect deleting the quest marker and creating a new one; not causing errors/crashes for any players that left the game in the old city zones before attempting to remove them and replace with the remade one; to just start the list of potential issues.

I really can't see them ever going to that effort for what little would be gained. Worse, nearly every time they've gone back to re-adjust old content like that, there's almost always been significant problems and oversights from the dev team not taking every single possible situation into account.

This will likely always fall under "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

It is still possible to do without adding more map terrain or messing up the quests. Vindictus is a decent example of a starting zone that was two seperate maps that later was merged into one. Their solution? They basically hid a buffer zone in the hallway connecting them. It's relatively seemless and hard to notice unless you are looking for it. The mini-map would still show that you went from one map section to another. A similar thing could be done here. I do however agree that it's not something I would expect to be fixed. As you said, it's not broken.

[Xbob42]

I'd say this is very likely underestimating the work involved. It wouldn't be a "rejoining." ...

(Snipped because I hit the character limit, please see the actual quote!)

Regardless of how likely it is or isn't, it is not my job to concern myself with the technical details, only to offer up my hope of what I think would be a relatively simple, tangible improvement to the game, and that would enhance the new player and veteran player experience alike. And I do think it would be more beneficial to new players than most might think. Especially those familiar with more open MMOs. The idea of a city with 2 different loading screens that connect only at weird points along with the map (which a lot of new players seems EXTRA confused by, though I'm not new so I'm not sure what exactly confuses them so much) is probably a stopping point for many potential players.

Frankly every single thing you can recommend in an MMO can be viewed as a huge PITA that the devs wouldn't want to undertake. "Redo the old zones for flying!" followed by a list of 700 reasons why it's not worth it and why it's fine to just run around. "Redo old dungeons with better graphics and less lame bosses!" "But that would be so much work for barely any difference for just little 10-15 minute snippets of content!" "Build a new zone with spells you can switch in and out at will and 1-on-1 boss duels! Also you can't use those spells anywhere else!" "You want them to build a bunch of spells that only work in one zone?! New mechanics?!"

I've heard all of these same counter-arguments before in every MMO I've ever played and I've played many. The bold developers unafraid of some challenges tend to lead (as we saw with 1.0 -> 2.0) while those who stagnate because they can't imagine a high enough ROI on improving this or that aspect of the game often... languish. I think we all know of some examples of that.

That isn't to say my idea is super worthy of attention or anything as audacious or self-centered as that, as I said it's just a simple hope not a demand or an expectation. But I like bold Square Enix best. And this thread is for them, not really an invitation for counter-arguments on why it's infeasible. Although of course it's not my forum, all are welcome to provide feedback to the idea! Now I'm just going in circles, so I'll just reiterate once more that for me, stuff like this is absolutely worth it as a longtime player of MMOs.

[Ilisidi]

I have no particular interest not being able to enter Gridania just because the player numbers are a bit higher than usual at a time. You already occasionally have issues to enter parts of the starting cities when seasonal events start. I don't want even more of that. There's a reason those events usually involve more than one zone and that rain is the same reason the MSQ has three different paths for ARR and two for the expansions.

[Starshower]

It would be really nice to have this in the 3 main cities! I actually thought they were gonna do this in Endwalker, but next expansion, with all of the upgrades they have no reason not to! It would be really cool to have a seamless limsa for example. The time we'd take walking the corridors to the other side would be similar to the current load screens. I don't know how that would work on Ishgard though, because unlike the 3 starting cities the 2 sides of Ishgard don't seem to be really connected... There are the staircases inbetween the zones but I don't think they lead anywhere.