Quote Originally Posted by JohnLakeside View Post
I'm playing EW atm and noticed the people of FFXIV just feel empty and culture-less. Like they no longer feel as if they to exist after I exit the game. I realized that what theyre missing is something like a "sociological" heart. So I searched google for Ishikawa and "sociological" and found your comment.

I couldn't agree more with what you said. I LOVED the DRK quests and was super excited when I found out Ishikawa was heading ShB and EW. The people and settlements in ARR-SB had weight to them. They felt real. They had that certain element of soulfulness and life.

I'm still on EW, but starting in ShB, I felt the side characters we meet in the settlements along the way just lost something. They all feel the same. Like the people in Palaka's Stand in EW feel the same as the people in Wright in ShB. Sure, one is Indian inspired, but thats about it. There's just a certain groundedness that's missing. This was really glaring in Eulmore in ShB. I was not convinced at all by their moral, societal, and political transformation.

Edit: I'm in Radz rn and even the people there feel the same as the Crystarium people. Just kinda your boilerplate people experiencing a time of great distress. They just seem to be missing that certain something. I cant even articulate what that is, but its not there.
Nameless NPCs in the settlements of ARR like Swiftperch, Aleport, Golden Bazaar, etc, are written like they have their own little backstories, and the settlements themselves have long pasts leading to what they are when you visit. Meanwhile settlements like the ones in later expansions are basically "this is place where we fish then send fish to city" and the like. To me that's one of the biggest differences.

It also makes the fact after Heavensward the number of hamlets with houses you can enter became a lot more scarce be more than just a coincidence. It highlights how little care they started putting into the design of those locations beyond a surface level.