Requiring a permit to cross the bridge was bad writing, change my mind.

[Cleretic]

Why does this linear structured story enforce linear movement through the world even when you aren’t actually engaging with the MSQ

Blocking something like amurot is fine because that’s actually plot integral. Can anyone give me a valid reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to visit shaaloni or western arm areng

Like why enforce a linear world just because the story is linear

I explained the reason to block off Shaaloani earlier: going there early would force an incorrect and unfavorable reading of Koana's story, by showing certain visual elements before they're ready. Additionally, it'd force addressing the zone transition to Heritage Found, which has both an even higher out-of-universe barrier ('zone doesn't exist yet'), and a considerably weaker in-universe barrier (the train is... actually completely fine, and if it wasn't the path is walkable if long; there is actually no barrier).

As for Amh Araeng, I can make a couple cases; it's situated after you've learned a lot about the First so the existence of Nabaath Araeng can build on that preexisting discussion. In addition, we actually spend pretty much all of Shadowbringers on a clock imposed by Vauthry and Ran'jit; the entire sequencing of zones basically comes from them chasing us and us having to make on-the-fly decisions. Going to Amh Araeng before you're meant to is just absurdly dangerous and breaks the narrative flow of Shadowbringers for absolutely no good reason.

But really, there's a much more base reason that applies more than any narrative: as Exmo pointed out, it's a waste of your time. FFXIV's developers want you to get to the fun parts, and a zone is more fun once you have narrative context, some quests to fill out both main and side, and the assurance that you're at the right level of strength to challenge it all (most people don't actually enjoy walking through an overlevelled hellzone for no reward; if you do, may I suggest Eureka). So, they prevent people from unwittingly making the wrong decision by sealing off a zone before it's ready; this is mostly to prevent people who genuinely might make the mistake of walking into a high-level zone without knowing it, rather than someone like you who's doing it deliberately, but... no, it's also to ensure you don't deliberately waste your time in the corner of a high-level zone doing god-knows-what and then complaining becuase you're three zone transitions away from where the actual content is.

DPZ2 also made a pretty good point on a more functional end a couple pages ago: the more space you give people to explore in without gates that require actually playing the game, the worse RMT bot farms get. That's more Heavensward's gates doing their work than Shadowbringers and Dawntrail's, though.

[Turnintino]

Why does this linear structured story enforce linear movement through the world even when you aren’t actually engaging with the MSQ

Blocking something like amurot is fine because that’s actually plot integral. Can anyone give me a valid reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to visit shaaloni or western arm areng

Like why enforce a linear world just because the story is linear

So, I think it's fine to prefer open world games, as you seem to, but that's also beside the point, because FFXIV simply isn't one. It's a linear RPG. And it stands to reason then that exploration be tied to story progression, so that particular reveals can complement the narrative they're trying to tell. That's all it is.

Asking more from this is asking it be a different genre of game altogether. And again, I think it's fine to be dissatisfied with that, but recognize that your issue is just with the genre as a whole, and that that's subjective. I don't see this game shifting gears on this particular front any time soon, and I don't personally have a problem with that.

I do think that things like zone design and narrative structure could be improved, but my problem is not with story-gating in a linear RPG lol.

[Supersnow845]

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I agree it’s a waste of your time as the game stands now but a common complaint in 14 is the overworld is useless. Is this not part of the problem. The overworld areas only exist so far as the MSQ has use for them, shouldn’t it be the other way around? The world exists and the MSQ takes place in it. Right now I feel like I’m standing still on a stage while an overworked stage hand is pulling zones behind my back constantly because the zones are nothing but pretty set dresses. I guess I’m 10 years too late and should have gotten the memo but this is what ARR was like. Remember when there was the tantalising bridge just past little solace? Or the destroyed area west of the town in north shroud that people in town said was the path to cortheas Why is the games oldest zones by far the best designed from every single standpoint

Isn’t the solution to making the zones better and the MSQ less “fake” to introduce a reason to want to explore the MSQ in a non linear way? 14 is actually perfectly set up for this because the zones only range in 10 level blocks, you wouldn’t be nuked as a level 71 being dropped into the tempest (eureka scales very differently than the main world). If you explored the tempest at 71 you could be rewarded, but you won’t end up in a pagos dragon situation if you wander in unsuspectingly. You could then introduce more limited closures that you find organically. Like imagine if the path to amurot simply didn’t exist till emet selch willed it to. No dumb signs or paperwork, like the path simply wasn’t there

Idk I feel like people are too willing to just give up on the zones. Like for example one common suggestion is putting say CE’s in the overworld. That wouldn’t make the zone MSQ interaction feel any less fake than it currently does

[MikkoAkure]

snip.

Using the Tempest as an example is really odd since we cannot even get there until we have a reason to go there, enlisting the help of a supernatural being to take us there and make the ocean go away.

You can say that about most expansions too. How else would you get to Azys Lla, the Far East, behind enemy lines in Gyr Abania or Garlemald, Labyrinthos, the Moon, Elpis, or Ultima Thule without the story taking us there?

A time may come when they release an expansion that just fully open but I don’t think that will automatically make it objectively better just based on that. And I’m still unclear on how not being able to access 1 zone earlier than the story lets you automatically means bad writing.

[Supersnow845]

Using the Tempest as an example is really odd since we cannot even get there until we have a reason to go there, enlisting the help of a supernatural being to take us there and make the ocean go away.

You can say that about most expansions too. How else would you get to Azys Lla, the Far East, behind enemy lines in Gyr Abania or Garlemald, Labyrinthos, the Moon, Elpis, or Ultima Thule without the story taking us there?

A time may come when they release an expansion that just fully open but I don’t think that will automatically make it objectively better just based on that. And I’m still unclear on how not being able to access 1 zone earlier than the story lets you automatically means bad writing.

Well that’s kinda my point. At this point the zones basically exist to service the MSQ, the world feels fake. As for the tempest I just picked an expansion and its highest level zone not particularly caring about the nuances of the zone but that’s because I wasn’t discussing the zone itself, I was just pointing out that a 10 level difference wouldn’t mean instant death.

But yes in most of your examples (particularly the tempest, the moon, Ultima Thule and elpis) the zone is nothing but a vehicle for the story, the story doesn’t happen in the world, the world exists for the story which feels fake compared to how it was in ARR’s zones. Like rather than trying to create a horrifically bad time loop to justify elpis they could have made it a solo duty where you play as Azem you could freely enter or leave. So the world is not impacted by the needs of the story because elpis is functionally useless as a world zone for the rest of the games existence but they can still send the story back to north shroud if they want

Not being able to access a zone earlier is not automatically bad writing, my original point is badly worded, it wasn’t specifically in reference to the bridge it’s a general refutation to the idea that just because there is a throwaway line of dialogue explaining bad storytelling doesn’t mean it isn’t bad storytelling, I was honestly thinking more about the plot whiplash with the plot speed in living memory. The other persons example of the door in arm areng is 100% a better example than the bridge but my point was more general

[Cleretic]

Remember when there was the tantalising bridge just past little solace? Or the destroyed area west of the town in north shroud that people in town said was the path to cortheas Why is the games oldest zones by far the best designed from every single standpoint

I walked over that bridge, saw everything was in the 40s, and went 'that's a later problem, I'm not touching that'. And I don't even remember going to the north parts of the North Shroud until the Ixal sent me.

But also, you aren't describing what you think you're describing, because those are things that newer zones actually do anyway. They don't level-gate these zone segments anymore, but you can just walk around Urqopacha and Yak T'el right now, and find some weird little places that just aren't part of a quest. Some of those places are going to be quest locations in the future--like your two examples, which are society quest locations--but others probably just... aren't. I can think of a couple in Garlemald and Thavnair that don't have any purpose; Ala Mhigo's zones have whole swathes that they don't really use for any narrative purpose, especially the Lochs. (There's one part of The Peaks that I don't think is used until Endwalker, I suspect because it was the location for a cut society questline.) They're just largely empty places that you'll find when doing hunts, gathering, or even just wandering, and go 'huh, cool', and then moving on.

...In fact, I actually suspect what you want isn't 'an open zone you can explore whenever', it's 'an open zone you're told not to go to.' Those two places you mentioned have giant level jumps overtly telling you that this is A Place For Later; places like that weird northeast corner of The Lochs, or the view of the rebel Yok Huy's terrace farms, they don't do that; they're hidden by obscurity and unimportance, not by a level 'nope' plant monster that'll punch you out if you try.

[Supersnow845]

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In the nicest way possible for someone who opened their first comment to me with “be better with your argument quality” you sure do like to frame your entire argument around what you think the other person is thinking especially given the rest of that first comment basically amounted to you just randomly assuming I was fine with every other instance of poorly explained gating of the zones and that my argument was invalid because of that. Could you maybe argue exactly what the person is saying rather than arguing the most convenient conclusion of their argument to make the point you want to make

Okay moving on. The entire centre paragraph of your point is basically one of the core problems of the open world zones in my eyes. They are completely useless. At best you find a “future quest zone” at worst you find some useless scenery. Like I’ve been saying this makes the world feel fake because for example I can’t go to…….raktika and see raktika just being normal before the story shift makes it a relevant location that enforces its design. None of the zones feel organic (besides ARR mostly), they feel like pointless set dresses. I don’t want to actively be told “don’t go here” by a monster that will punch your lights out but vast level discrepency is a way to in game show difference in relative danger within a zone that can be used for world building (like say gridania patrols east shroud as far as little solace which is why it’s safe. Beyond little solace is uncharted woods where the sylphs live. It’s world building in the zones that makes them feel like they exist beyond the MSQ

If the zones are basically overdesigned corridors to act as story why not just lean into that and actually make them corridors and use the budget to make useful zones that play into the endgame you access after the story. The zones feel fake anyway it’s not like that would change anything

[MikkoAkure]

If the zones are basically overdesigned corridors to act as story why not just lean into that and actually make them corridors and use the budget to make useful zones that play into the endgame you access after the story. The zones feel fake anyway it’s not like that would change anything

What kind of "useful zones" do you mean? And how exactly do the expansion zones "feel fake"? Your keep using subjective terms like "feel" to make an objective point about them being "completely useless". And even if we had endgame open world zones that somehow fit your criteria for "good", at the end of the day the vast majority of the playerbase will still spend most of their time somewhere else queuing for content.

It's not as though all of every expansion zone solely exists for the MSQ. Ultima Thule and the Moon are both later used for beast tribes and Elpis despite your assertion that it's "functionally useless as a world zone for the rest of the games existence" is used for the raids and also you need to go there for DoL quest to help people in the present determine how the aether patterns were in the past and help them work with the changes happening to our world. They all also have sidequests of their own going on including quest chains with cutscenes and stories that intersect at the end. Plus there's FATEs (both regular ones and big boss ones), maps, hunts, and gathering along with those quests to do so it's not as though there's nothing to do and they're completely abandoned after the story is over. That's like saying that all of ShB doesn't deserve to exist and the whole expansion is "bad writing" because none of the places in it can serve a larger role in the story or gameplay after the expansion is done due to it being on another shard.

A zone doesn't need to have the capacity to be reached in a mundane way outside the limits of the story and be freely available for future content in order for it to be a "good" zone.

[Cleretic]

Could you maybe argue exactly what the person is saying rather than arguing the most convenient conclusion of their argument to make the point you want to make

I'm going to be so blunt as to legally classify as a hammer here: this argument we've been having with you is so shallow, and so circular, that I don't see any value in addressing your points. You didn't listen to the last seven times people told you why zones are linearly opened according to the linear story structure, why would you listen to the eighth? Especially when, as Mikko pointed out, your own examples and arguments have been increasingly... odd at best, and frequently full of claiming subjective things to be objective fact; why you think The Tempest is a good example in your favor, a zone that's physically inaccessible and literally makes no sense without context, I have no idea... except that you've decided that it's A Good Exapansion Zone.

I want a deeper and more interesting conversation than that, and if you're not about to bring that, I will. So, I noticed and dug into something: that among all these increasingly-flimsier zone examples you keep bringing up, are examples that don't even make sense in that context: the Sylphlands and Proud Creek. Those are completely unrelated to the central argument of 'I want to go to Rak'tika before the story does*', so I wanted to dig into that; places like that still exist as places like the Glostfired Bank in Kozuma'uka, they just aren't in disparate level ranges... and the only thing that the Sylphlands and an early Rak'tika trespass would have in common is 'the level range is out of wack'.

So that's the part you value; being able to go to somewhere that vastly outlevels you because it's designed for a later level range. Let's talk about that, instead.


*By the way, the reason you can't go to Rak'tika early is 'you would get shot'. Every major group in Rak'tika hates outsiders, and two of the three groups there outright threaten to shoot us when we first meet them (ironically, the third group is the actually hostile one). We only get passage through because the story justifies the Night's Blessed and the viera of Fanow letting us through; 'Rak'tika being normal' before that point is Rak'tika filling you full of holes.

[Supersnow845]

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You have yet to actually explain why a linear story necessitates a linear design other than “it’s the way it is” especially since ARR directly refutes it because ARR is just as linear in its design but it doesn’t actually enforce linear progression through the zones

All stories are by function linear, because they move in one defined direction, that doesn’t mean that the locations that surround the story need to be linear. This is like “non linear world design 101” even looking at other MMO’s, take something like RuneScape, its later installments have a very linear storyline to them, does this make the world linear? No it just says “do whatever the hell you want”. What is it about 14’s story that FORCES the world design to be linear, especially using your example of raktika which you again took out of context the “you will be full of holes if you go there” is just playing into an arbitrary block they themselves created as the level range physically can’t block you

It also leads to you ignoring or misinterpreting points, I never said the tempest was a good design, I said if they went more open they could retool the tempest to be more open while still effectively blocking off amurot. Like let’s say you can hear a rumour in a town in Lakeland if you complete a quest, that rumour is that Bismarck can be awoken with a special rare item in Ill mheg. If you get said item you can awaken him and access the tempest (minus amurot) early, or thus gets skipped if you do the MSQ directly. It makes Lakeland seem more alive, quest rewards are more than useless pity gold and the world is more open. This would also be combined with actually rewarding exploration of zones outside of where the MSQ goes