XVI and XIV implications

[RitsukoSonoda]

I disagree with this. The world of Eorzea is huge at this point and having to fly/walk everywhere would be a massive chore. Hell, even doing MSQ is a massive chore because you have to walk places. The blame for that lays squarely on how the zones are designed and the fact that there is hardly anything of interest in them. Just bunches of enemies who will aggro onto you if you get too close and...that's it. If you want me to travel through the world, give me something to do. A huge help would be allowing us to enable gathering node detection skills to be on without having to switch to the appropriate job. Walking from point A to point B would feel a lot less like a waste of time if you could gather something useful along the way. I know they tried to make dynamic events with FATEs, but they, for the most part, failed miserably. At least the older ones have fun lore tidbits you can discover (like that girl whose boyfriends get eaten by sand worms so often she doesn't even bother remembering her names anymore), I guess.

Besides, if you made people walk/fly everywhere, the only thing that would happen is people would take the shortest possible route. They wouldn't explore the zones anyway. If you want your players to be doing exploration, you have to give them incentive. Looking at other open-world games, this is usually achieved through stuff like collectibles or achievements. RIFT encouraged you to go to weird nooks and crannies because you could get artifacts. Genshin Impact hides chests with loot all over the place and has something you can gather scattered all over every zone. These two aren't really an option for XIV unless they are willing to make a major overhaul, unfortunately. What they could do are achievements. Climb the highest mountain, visit all the hidden caves, etc. But then I guess they would have to update the achievement vendor first.

Empty world design is a result of the over abundance of fast travel. It's far easier to get away with when very few people actually explore or travel around areas to see it. The initial ideas and incentives didn't work out the way they hoped and it was decided no more effort was needed because people just teleport everywhere and only stick around in most zones long enough to connect the quest marker dots.

[Ath192]

Empty world design is a result of the over abundance of fast travel. It's far easier to get away with when very few people actually explore or travel around areas to see it. The initial ideas and incentives didn't work out the way they hoped and it was decided no more effort was needed because people just teleport everywhere and only stick around in most zones long enough to connect the quest marker dots.

100% agree. Fast travel is the reason the game is so barren and design is so poor. Everyone does it so no need to put effort. This is like cities designed for cars in America, they barren and unwalkable because everyone drives everywhere. The consequence is there are very few places to see.

[CStrife912]

100% agree. Fast travel is the reason the game is so barren and design is so poor. Everyone does it so no need to put effort. This is like cities designed for cars in America, they barren and unwalkable because everyone drives everywhere. The consequence is there are very few places to see.

Part of me wonders if they didn't do fast travel newer players would be turned off or people wanting to play it and not fancy doing the wow method of flight paths etc. We have to in some way understand the old style of play isn't as popular anymore and that's because the times have changed and gaming has changed. Most people that like the old systems are likely early to late 30s or in the 40s. We are a diminishing player group and games must try and foster new interest, that doesn't mean they couldn't compromise a middle ground because I agree the world needs it, they craft these spaces and as soon as you've done the 'story' of that area and your aetherial wind spots then the rest of your time spent there is purely an aerial view...unless your hunt training which even then is stop and go. 16 proves they can craft super detailed landscapes that are very pretty (not going into linearity here just the visual storytelling of the map) I hope with the graphics update and with 7.0 they design areas that make people want to explore and they improve on systems like FATEs and treasure maps to get people to want to spend more time in them. Only gatherers spend the most time in it and that's laughable if you think about it.