Why is the Post-MSQ Content so Passive in Endwalker?

[Sjol]

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad. I think this is why we haven't gotten entirely new activities. It can only do a few things and those have been since the beginning:

* watch a cutscene
* kill an enemy
* FATEs
* click on a thing to increase a counter or trigger next stage
* the camera zoom thing
* talk to NPCs at specific points
* use a special action
* act as a character with a special move set (usually once per patch at most)

That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion. It's partly why I think Island Sanctuary was so poor -- their engine didn't really let them do anything interesting.

The idea that you would get a game where you chase someone, or bombing runs, or taking over a super powerful vehicle or entity and laying waste to things seems impossible. Or even just mini games in the overworld or hunting for treasure chests that randomly spawn. Honestly, I find the overworld painfully dull, even visually most of the time. It's partly why everyone's in the cities. Why on earth would you do anything in the overworld unless forced.

[Jeeqbit]

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad.

It's philosophical because look at what they did with FF16 and look at what they did in the FF16 event and look at what they did with the Nier raids.

That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion.

They said they've slowly increased what cutscenes can do and we did get the NPCs follow you around thing in Endwalker, as well as riding mounts with them.

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

I think to change it they would have to look at games like New World and really aim to change the whole way that you do things in the game, so that for example you press Overpower and it collides with nearby objects and pushes them away or chops them into pieces.

[HappyHubris]

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

[AmiableApkallu]

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests.

Even the single-player Final Fantasy games that I'm familiar with feature unavoidable, random encounters when you're walking about the over world. So, FFXIV seems somewhat odd in that regard.

[Arkdra]

The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.

Be the change you want to see in the world and just do some random fates while progressing the patch msq. Like, I am broadly with you in the sense that I think if you just burn MSQ, the game's pacing flies out the window and it sucks. But much to my chagrin, the majority of players treat this game like a visual novel and want to engage with the systems to the absolute minimum they possibly can.

[HappyHubris]

Be the change you want to see in the world and just do some random fates while progressing the patch msq. Like, I am broadly with you in the sense that I think if you just burn MSQ, the game's pacing flies out the window and it sucks. But much to my chagrin, the majority of players treat this game like a visual novel and want to engage with the systems to the absolute minimum they possibly can.

FFXIV doesn't give us an engaging world compared to something like GW2 or Classic WoW. No meaningful secrets to find; no challenging world mobs; low mob density; very straightjacketed FATEs. I do play FATEs during the MSQ just to add combat between endless cutscenes, but that doesn't give us an interactive experience.

[Rekh]

FFXIV doesn't give us an engaging world compared to something like GW2 or Classic WoW. No meaningful secrets to find; no challenging world mobs; low mob density; very straightjacketed FATEs. I do play FATEs during the MSQ just to add combat between endless cutscenes, but that doesn't give us an interactive experience.

Eureka and Bozja is how all open world locations should be desined. this way all they have to do for relics is use the open world and some lore/relic story. Or at least start out with bland story-based open world and then update them with Bozja-like encounters in future patches. It's less work for them than having to create brand new zones like with Eureka