A Lived in World?

[Jeeqbit]

It's weird that they haven't put much effort into touching up the overworld.

Hunts, FATEs, treasure maps, gathering and beast tribes are their effort.

that effort is better spent on "new content," as if it's a tradeoff that must be made.

This is accurate. Every game I've played has had a major focus on new content, and hardly any on old things. Because you could endlessly improve old things and answer every little spec of dust a player finds with it, but that isn't going to make you money, new content is going to make people pay money to login (or in many games' cases, buy DLC).

Even if they do change old things regularly, they will always get someone who "missed" how it used to be, which reduces the benefit of improving it even more.

which I don't personally see as significant pieces of content

To those who spawn or conduct hunt trains, they are significant content.

I hate that I have little to no incentive to engage with the overworld content

To be honest, it's almost just luck if something ends up a zone instead of a dungeon. There are a lot of dungeons and solo battles that could be zones, but somehow aren't, so when they do end up being zones, they are mostly finished with after they are made like dungeons are.

[Eastwall]

gw2 is designed to be an open world game. I don't think this game is designed to be that kind of game which l am fine with. I play gw2 as well, but besides raiding with my friend on Thursday night, l just get on my core guardian, do my pvp dailies then get off.

[Ardeth]

This games open world is a corpse in the grave. Let's be real. I wish it was better, but it's not.

In games like Wow it's only ever the most current zone/thing. And even then it's clenching your cheeks to get to the rare in time. GW2 is the same thing honestly. It's just meta's over and over. It's fun the first time, but it gets old fast.

So sadly I don't know what would fix it, but I think ours is substantially worse.

[DiaDeem]

They already have a solution, but they're just sitting on it. Bicolor Gemstones should be given by FATEs in EVERY zone of the game, with maybe random bonuses that change every hour across all regions, maybe two at any given time. They should also have more untradable items that you can only get with said gemstones.

Not saying that that's the only thing they need to improve the world zones, but the gemstones are already in the game, we only need more incentives to get them and have them implemented across all regions.

[Ardeth]

They already have a solution, but they're just sitting on it. Bicolor Gemstones should be given by FATEs in EVERY zone of the game, with maybe random bonuses that change every hour across all regions, maybe two at any given time. They should also have more untradable items that you can only get with said gemstones.

Not saying that that's the only thing they need to improve the world zones, but the gemstones are already in the game, we only need more incentives to get them and have them implemented across all regions.

One thing I hate doing is grinding shared fates. I don't see this being that effective for players like me. Plus SE needs to put better things behind those systems do drive players like me to them. The only one of recent memory is that minion that summons the S rank, but there is always like 100 people who have it so I don't need to grind it out. So I don't care to do the shared fates in that zone. There needs to be something better. Not more of the same.

[CidHeiral]

After playing GW2 for a spell, I noticed that even old zones from the initial release are quite lively. With an almost Eureka | Bozja feel to it as a multitude of folks cycle through content that was released years prior. Thus giving everything a more 'lived in' sensation.

With FFXIV, I've noticed that after the initial burst of excitement with new zones it emulates an entirely empty feel. Like your WoL is by their lonesome with only the occasional glimpse of a fellow adventurer. Housing even reflects this, with it being somewhat rare to cross paths with another player in the district unless you're attending a venue.

Is this intentional by design?

GW2 is an outlier in the genre as a whole. Typically in any MMO the zones are pretty dead outside of their initial release period. I would certainly enjoy if FFXIV implemented features to breathe some life into them though. Perhaps they could expand the FATE system to be more than just "AOE a bunch of mobs." Add more dynamic and interesting events, like assaulting a keep over several stages or something with different objectives.

[Volgia]

I don't know who here played Hearts of Thorns, but I loved that expansion in GW2 where completing stuff would lead to a massive boss battle in the map, that had groups of people all around it clearing stuff to get to the map super boss... I wish 14 had something like that.

[Enjuden]

They have that for various reasons, mostly legendary farms require you to go through every single zone and clear everything on multiple characters. It isn't what you want unless you want to spend over a year to actually do anything 'casual'. It's just a lot of endless farm for glamour or other things that may or may not be useful.

Grass is greener etc.

[Ath192]

This game also has to stop splitting zones. Find a way to handle the lag better or at least mitigate it but I'd rather see a bunch of people in a zone (even with some lag) than 3 semi-dead ones. I also extremely dislike all the shared fate and hunt zone hopping because quite honestly it should be one zone per server.... Surely they can figure that out.

[Jeeqbit]

This game also has to stop splitting zones. Find a way to handle the lag better or at least mitigate it but I'd rather see a bunch of people in a zone (even with some lag) than 3 semi-dead ones. I also extremely dislike all the shared fate and hunt zone hopping because quite honestly it should be one zone per server.... Surely they can figure that out.

They did stop splitting new city states. For example, Rhalgr's Reach, Kugane, The Crystarium, Eulmore, Old Sharlayan and Radz are each one zone.

We also have a clear contrast in how they design zones now compared to ARR. Amh Araeng is one area instead of Western Thanalan, Northern Thanalan, Central Thanalan, Eastern Thanalan and Southern Thanalan. Kholusia is one area instead of Outer La Noscea, Upper La Noscea, Western La Noscea, Middle La Noscea, Eastern La Noscea and Lower La Noscea.

But yes, they have not got to a point where they would make all 6 of the areas in 1. Considering that was one of the perceived problems with 1.0 that was changed, they will most likely be very careful about going back to something like that and I don't know if the 2.0 engine was really designed for it like the 1.0 one was.