Poll: Seamless+CopyPaste VS. Zones+Variety

[Rentahamster]

I want a bigger world, whit bigger maps and bigger variety without any loading at all.
Tera successfully accomplished this task, and it's even less hardware demanding than this.

Yeah, I know Tera can do that, and it's a damn shame that FF14 can't, but we gotta work with what we got. Just give it time and it can be better.

[Nuru]

Yeah, I know Tera can do that, and it's a damn shame that FF14 can't, but we gotta work with what we got. Just give it time and it can be better.

Especially because Tera doesnt have those PS3 limitations. So just for the sake of having a variety, I'm going to stick with having many smaller zones.

[Zenaku]

Yeah, I know Tera can do that, and it's a damn shame that FF14 can't, but we gotta work with what we got. Just give it time and it can be better.

Tera does not look as good as FFXIV in the sense of FFXIV using more GPU power FFXIV can't even be run without a real video card top of that FFXIV is not yet update to DX10 and DX11 when that happen this game would even need more powerful GPU but by then at least 6000 and the 7000 would be cheap and players can buy them without issue.

[Jinko]

Tera does not look as good as FFXIV in the sense of FFXIV using more GPU power FFXIV can't even be run without a real video card top of that FFXIV is not yet update to DX10 and DX11 when that happen this game would even need more powerful GPU but by then at least 6000 and the 7000 would be cheap and players can buy them without issue.

It's debatable if FFXIV looks better than Tera, personally I don't think it does not overal anyway, FFXIV has great character models but it has no object shadowing or real time lighting which for me breaks the immersion of a game.

It's unlikely that FFXIV will see a direct X update either, and the reason why FFXIV requires such a beast of a PC (although it doesn't in all fairness) is because the engine is still not optimised very well.

[Kyant]

Small and more diverse zones are much better. Not only do they make it more pleasing to the eye, but it also brings much more to the table. SE has the monster "territory" or whatever so that a mob won't chase players for ages... but with smaller zones they will be able to do away with these territories (which is a good thing since it prevents the more traditional way of partying) because the player can just zone and get away. Also, smaller zones divide the world in easy to manage areas... this especially helps when players try to remember routes and give directions. It also helps give an area a feel or a reputation. With the big areas, there is less of a concept of liking or disliking a zone, it is more like liking or disliking a specific place in a specific zone. One of these ways is easier for the human mind to process and remember. Some people like larger areas because for various reasons, but the main reason we should have smaller areas, in my oppinion, is because it makes it easier and more managable for the player. If any of you have played other games with smaller zones then you can probably still remember your favorite places and the layout of those zones... But with FFXIV, I find that it becomes more difficult for people to do those things. FFXIV needs to help players form memories of the game. When everything seems the same, it is harder to form seperate memories since it all seems to mesh together into the same thing.

[Zanfire]

Small and more diverse zones are much better. Not only do they make it more pleasing to the eye, but it also brings much more to the table. SE has the monster "territory" or whatever so that a mob won't chase players for ages... but with smaller zones they will be able to do away with these territories (which is a good thing since it prevents the more traditional way of partying) because the player can just zone and get away. Also, smaller zones divide the world in easy to manage areas... this especially helps when players try to remember routes and give directions. It also helps give an area a feel or a reputation. With the big areas, there is less of a concept of liking or disliking a zone, it is more like liking or disliking a specific place in a specific zone. One of these ways is easier for the human mind to process and remember. Some people like larger areas because for various reasons, but the main reason we should have smaller areas, in my oppinion, is because it makes it easier and more managable for the player. If any of you have played other games with smaller zones then you can probably still remember your favorite places and the layout of those zones... But with FFXIV, I find that it becomes more difficult for people to do those things. FFXIV needs to help players form memories of the game. When everything seems the same, it is harder to form seperate memories since it all seems to mesh together into the same thing.

Quickly, paragraphs are your friend lol. Anyways, i think many people would agree with this. telling people routes, remembering certain spots and making your way around the world in general is so much easier with smaller separated zones. I think the last Dev had it too big in his head that "bigger is always better" and that the new way to do things was to make them huge. Like most of FFXI, good idea, terrible execution.

Changes of scenery and some solid landmarks help big time with people not getting super bored with the world so quickly. Since a big part of this games community came from FFXI, they can all give plenty of reasons why FFXI zones where more memorable and better paced.

At this point they could honestly cut the zones in half and most people would not care, not only because its just tons of copy paste wasteland, but trying to run through it just feels like a hassle, especially when 80% of it has no use and is littered with what feels like random mobs that feel out of place (too much feels like they just tossed them in to take up space before the game launched)

Seriously Devs, cut the zones in half....heck in thirds and most people wont care a bit, as long as you make that space you have useful for some reason. You dont buy a gallon of water when you only need to fill a cup.

[TheVedis]

Im in favor of a bigger world, if this means "copy paste" zones, that im ok with it if it helps us expand the world itself faster

now as long as each of these zones in itself is different too is one of the things id also look at.

[Mack]

#2 hands down please. Don't ever see it changing though, its too much work and I don't think they care about the world that much. And I can't believe me and The Vedis aren't meeting eye to eye! :P

[Rentahamster]

Does this game even support dynamic texture streaming? I haven't really observed my hard disk usage much in-game, but it only seems to work hard when I first log in and when I teleport to different zones.

Then again loading times aren't that noticeable to begin with on my system since I use a SSD.

[Crowley]

Does this game even support dynamic texture streaming? I haven't really observed my hard disk usage much in-game, but it only seems to work hard when I first log in and when I teleport to different zones.

Then again loading times aren't that noticeable to begin with on my system since I use a SSD.

The files aren't optimized for access times. Too many 4k files, which even have crappy SSD access times. I noticed a huge difference in initial load times and teleport load times when I switched to SSD boot drive.

The local game (client) is 15GB, so I think all the graphics are stored locally.

Renta, I still don't get what you mean by smaller zones. Do you want there to be loading screens between let's say Eastern Thanalan and Western Thanalan or scraping those zones and making Thanalan a small zone and adding other zones where Thanalan used to be? Hopefully that last question makes sense.

We already "lose" auto-follow due to zone changes when moving about, so I think they are already there ... just no "loading" screen like most have. This would be a caching issue I guess (caching zones versus caching certain radii?)