[SPOILER] Resources wasted in final zone?

[Andevom]

Nothing is wasted; the art design is preserved no matter how frequently it appears in the game and it's purposeful. It's no different from the light drenched areas in Shadowbringers or the Final Days of Endwalker. They've been making temporary variants of locations since the beginning.

[LittleArrow]

Nothing is wasted; the art design is preserved no matter how frequently it appears in the game and it's purposeful. It's no different from the light drenched areas in Shadowbringers or the Final Days of Endwalker. They've been making temporary variants of locations since the beginning.

I have to disagree with this, though I'm open to changing my opinion. The light areas in ShB didn't have nearly the depth and extent of design that the final zone in DT had. We're talking full on carnival ride attractions, solid assets like popcorn buckets, ice cream, drinks and the like. ShB just looked like a filter they put over the zone itself. I agree that there are some uses of variant zones but it's usually always additive never subtractive. The final days for instance, there was added rubble and a light effect over the base map - that doesn't seem very intensive to me. The final zone, as I said before was beyond more extensive than anything I've seen in the past.

Again, I'm happy to change my opinion on this because I really want to be wrong, that's why I made this thread. I'm hoping to hear, Oh yeah a lot of those assets are easy to put in there, it wouldn't have taken them a long time to do that. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than I have will come in and say that.

Still, I don't think this comparison is totally valid due to the extreme number of assets lost between the change compared to how little is changed in the examples given.

[SherriCrimson]

(snip)

It's a very ambitious zone. Every zone in this expansion has pushed graphics and assets used beyond anything before it. Most of Ultima Thule was a skybox, with fog and a bit of other stuff added in after. To tell a good story, they gave us a grand theme park, complete with every asset that they have. Every zone is chock full of life and sights to see. When we're done and we've turned off the supply of aether to the area, we see it for what it is: a massive hulk of Electrope, the thing that the society warred over to begin with. It is by far the best zone they've ever put in the game story wise, and its loss is to be felt intimately as you progress through it. Its existence is a comfort to no one except the dead, and some of the residents themselves don't even want to exist in it. It all still exists on characters who have not finished the zone, but as of now, it is a drab, grey zone with not much in it except some fates, some elite marks and a few gather nodes. That is a good thing, and I'd prefer those things didn't exist there either. It should be a place we close up and leave forever. But, lorewise, the scientists of our planet will most likely be studying the shard extensively, and introduce electrope to Eitherys.

Yes, it's ambitious. Yes, it is horrifying. Yes, it feels horrible to progress through the zone, get to know these people, and summarily delete them. But they shouldn't exist to begin with. They should be dead, with the only thing remaining of them being books, memories and monuments. The answer is: No, it's not simple to build a zone like that. I'm betting a large part of the development time was dedicated to making it the way it is. I'm glad they gave us the zone as it was, and I'll forever remember that it existed. I can experience it again on alts, and I might just do that when I'm done leveling all my jobs on my main. But for now, I'll keep it as it should be: a memory.