A Lived in World?

[caffe_macchiato]

Is this intentional by design?

Yes. The whole point of FFXIV is that, once you finish it, you can go back to playing other games. The MSQ has been streamlined so you can speedrun the Hydaelyn saga as fast as possible without talking to anyone or going anywhere that isn't necessary. That's the entire brand of FFXIV. That's why people play this game. The devs don't want you to spend time here like it's a "lived-in" game. You know what game has that? World of Warcraft. Yikes!

[Ath192]

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.

Talking about this:



At one point in ARR, Mor Dhona was super packed with people like 2013, and yeah... there was some lag and stuff although it wasnt that bad imo, but honestly that was funner and more livelier to look at than these instanced zones with 10 people each on them.

[Jeeqbit]

Oh, well each zone is its own server program and in a case like this they would be likely to be on separate machines as well. I think it's because although it may not have many in on most worlds, it could on at least 1 world in the game due to new MSQ or beast tribes (maybe in Japan) and that means they apply it to everywhere.

I think that the only time I see anything like 100 people in each instance is after an expansion launch, and that is only for 2-4 weeks.

I've also seen it exceed 150 due to hunt trains or the Chi FATE, but in that case nobody is wanting to be in separate zones because it takes place in a specific instance.

[Ardeth]

Talking about this:



At one point in ARR, Mor Dhona was super packed with people like 2013, and yeah... there was some lag and stuff although it wasnt that bad imo, but honestly that was funner and more livelier to look at than these instanced zones with 10 people each on them.

I miss back then. Everyone running around doing fates for their relics, etc. The 2.0 world felt alive.

[Ath192]

I miss back then. Everyone running around doing fates for their relics, etc. The 2.0 world felt alive.

Yeah I don't why they decided on this approach. It seems really lazy, if the number of people on a single zone was stressing some limits out then optimizing how many characters appear on screen or making other types of optimizations would've been preferable to splitting them like this.

And maybe, this was an emergency the first time, and that would've been okay, but after the first time they should have planned on a long term solution the doesnt split the zones like this instead of making this the norm. It's been going on for years.

It's almost like they want the zones to feel lonely, but the objective should be the opposite.

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah I don't why they decided on this approach. It seems really lazy, if the number of people on a single zone was stressing some limits out then optimizing how many characters appear on screen or making other types of optimizations would've been preferable to splitting them like this.

It's just temporary though.

It doesn't seem to be related to the amount of characters they want to display on screen, because there is already a hard limit on this, so it is probably related more to the amount of people they want in a zone generally at a time.

[Ath192]

It's just temporary though.

It doesn't seem to be related to the amount of characters they want to display on screen, because there is already a hard limit on this, so it is probably related more to the amount of people they want in a zone generally at a time.

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

[Jojoya]

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

That's what causes latency issues and even client crashes for some players. Many design choices are less what SE can do or wants to do, and more "what percentage of the player base will have technical issues if we stuff too much in at one time".

A zone doesn't feel lively when it takes 5 minutes to get off the loading screen. Hunts are not fun when there are so many people present that your graphics card can't render what's happening until 3 minutes after it happened (very awkward if you're conducting so you're stuck asking your party if the hunt is dead yet so you know to relay the next one).

You don't need 300 players in a zone to make it feel lively. I think most of the problem is that SE leaves the zone instances running longer than they're needed. Usually by the second week, you're not going to find more than 60 players combined in a zone's instances unless a hunt train is active and if it is then you've got 90% of players in one instance and the remaining 10% in the other one or two.

[Kaurhz]

By design.

They've traded a more lively and active 'world' for higher convenience.

[Shurrikhan]

It doesn't seem that temporary to me if they amount of times I see it is more than the amount of times I don't. But you just described the issue, they don't want a large amount of people in a zone at a time, and they should, that's what makes zones feel lively.

No matter how many players there are in the zone, if you don't see them, they're not going to make the zone feel livelier. A mere 40 players are still often plenty to make an XIV-size zone feel lively simply depending on their distribution.

As you start pushing beyond those points of diminishing returns, latency and lost access to competing desired FATEs, etc., turns more players off to staying in that zone than it increases their desire to be in it, at least until you start giving players a hell of a lot more reason to hang out in those zones and/or do something new about said latency.