More enterable buildings, please!

[Shibi]

I find it really dissapointing walking into a big city hub, a small town or other location and having almost all the buildings shut. Not only from a roleplaying perspective, but from a immersion point of view.

As they would need to be behind zone-ins (polygons and people with 9xx series video cards) is it really immersion breaking?

I mean it's a pity, but as soon as they stick them behind zone-ins, most people wouldn't ever bothering to enter.

[KisaiTenshi]

This is pretty clear – it's because they haven't built the whole manor, just the one room that you load into, and because they don't expect you to trudge up and down Syrcus Tower every time the Exarch calls a meeting. (That and they probably don't want to have to resolve exactly where in the tower the Ocular is located, but anyway.)

And yet for the Reaper job and Rogue class, there is also "just a guy out front". Just saying, this is ridiculous. Either the door opens and we have an entire major (a la Sharlayan Leveilleur manor) or we enter into a "loading tunnel" room like with the Waking Sands that just silently passes us off to an instance.

The Crystal tower is the weird exception because technically it is unchanged from Syrcus Tower with "The Twinning". Surely someone would have made an aetheryte to the ocular by now right?

I disagree. I think it's unrealistic to expect to be let into every single locked door, and having them there makes the city implied to be much bigger than the devs can afford to model it.

Towns (and the setting in general) already have a problem with looking extremely low-populated with only a few buildings each. Removing doors that don't go places would be detrimental.

They will look low populated regardless if you can open the doors or not, not being able top open most of the doors gives the impression that it's not a living city but just a series of unfinished buildings at best, or "a facade" at worse. Ul'dah and Gridania are particuarly bad about no-entry doors, but also places like Quarrymill and Onokoro where the deep dungeon's are. You would think there would be large shops and an inn at least next to them, but there isn't. Just some guys hanging out by the entrance to trade the loot with.

As they would need to be behind zone-ins (polygons and people with 9xx series video cards) is it really immersion breaking?

I mean it's a pity, but as soon as they stick them behind zone-ins, most people wouldn't ever bothering to enter.

That really needs to be something they need to fix. Many other games, older games, didn't have this problem. It only became a thing to have "every NPC glued to the floor outside the building" because it meant the developers didn't need to build the interior, but also they relied on the outside instance capacity rather than having either a seamless interior or an instanced interior. We know they can do this because of the Waking Sands and the player housing.

Actual "shops" make more sense when the NPC is inside, not outside standing in the rain. Many of these "empty" spaces could have NPC's in them that appear during certain times of the day, or maybe people sleeping on beds at night. CRPG's Games back in 1990 already had this figured out, and they had to fit on 1MB of memory. NPC's that you "can talk to" should be either wandering around on a schedule, being in different places during the day and at night. NPC's that operate businesses, there should be "Khloe" standing outside during the day, and "Zhloe" out during the night. Maybe it's too much to have businesses look like businesses, sure it's not core to the game but it's kinda silly seeing the 39th "junkmonger" NPC without a name.

[Iscah]

Either the door opens and we have an entire major (a la Sharlayan Leveilleur manor)

The Leveilleur manor is an entrance hall ringed by locked doors.

They will look low populated regardless if you can open the doors or not, not being able top open most of the doors gives the impression that it's not a living city but just a series of unfinished buildings at best, or "a facade" at worse.

Do you go through everyday life thinking buildings aren't real if you're not allowed to enter them?

The door is there, logically there must be a room behind it, whether I can enter that room or not. And I don't expect that I can.

[KisaiTenshi]

The Leveilleur manor is an entrance hall ringed by locked doors.

And what I expected upon trying to open the door was Alisaie or Alphinaud to come running and going "Um, maybe leave my room alone please." Please some hijinks like Mario RPG where exploring makes the NPC's come over and stop you.

Do you go through everyday life thinking buildings aren't real if you're not allowed to enter them?

The door is there, logically there must be a room behind it, whether I can enter that room or not. And I don't expect that I can.

I kid you not, I've seen "closet door opens to just a wall"

When you are in someone's home, they have closets, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens. Most of the houses in this game range from "empty room" to "living room with no doors to anywhere else".

Having just a facade is just worse, because it creates the environmental storytelling of "this place is unfinished." Not ruins. If a place is ruins, there shouldn't be a single locked/unopenable door, either it's immobile (Eg solve a puzzle) or the entire entrance is collapsed.

Like let me show you something that is a head scratcher.


This door. Right outside the adventurer's inn in Uldah. is barricaded from the OUTSIDE. What is behind this door? What is it keeping inside? Why can't I go inside?


Then right around the corner, there is this "no entry" door. If this door opens, it opens to over TOP that other door in the previous screen shot.


When you don't make full geometry, you start getting weird things like this.

Then we have this:


Ahem:

This place has never been open.

[Burmecia]

Yes. Yes!
I hope I am not weird for liking ARR a lot because you can enter so many of the very inconsequential seeming buildings.
The shack at outer la noscea being one of my favourites.
I wish I could enter the ships in western la noscea like we can in limsa.