Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Then let's get back to that core problem, instead of reflections ultimately irrelevant to it?

We'll skip the whole discussion on the joy of movement or such, as that's mostly related only to flight*. In its place, let's consider just how we might better populate the world and distribute player activities as to increase the chances of player interaction in the open world without it feeling forced.

(You might consider this to be finding, for instance, a happy medium between maximizing the availability of player meetings and minimizing the chance that those meetings are of no note [just passing by each other or merely traveling to the next node of significance].)

* Note that while ground mounts aren't as crippled by a lack of physics as are flying mounts, they could have still have significant opportunity for improvement. Apart from the obvious example of GW2 mounts or the like, just think of what might be accomplished with terrain that features fewer invisible walls and, instead, more gaps to leap, or revised mob camps or dynamic mob packs through which one might, alternatively, dismount and sneak or simply ride at full tilt (think of Witcher 3's double-sprint on mount, with accordant Stamina limitations).
We need zone backtracking. We can't be treating the whole world like we treat the MSQ - Linearly only going forward.

We also can't survive by separating the playerbase along a decade of content. It didn't work for WoW, it won't work here. I don't know why Yoshi thinks we can just strongarm it into working for us, when it stopped feeling lively around Stormblood.

FF is about innovation, it's time for CBU:III to do just that. They've created systems, but they refuse to expand on them and branch them out. Like how Critical Engagements would be amazing for random open world Hunts instead of the horrible hunt trains we have today. There just needs to be more systems for player interaction and engagement, and more reasons to backtrack as a higher level player going to lower level areas.