One to Fifty, One Zone - Long OP

[Kidkaze]

@Draven: I dont think its about adding new areas and aetherye camps. Its about mob distribution in the already given areas. In FFXI, You went from (taking Windurst as starting point, like me ) Sarutabaruta to Tahrongi Canyon to Buburimu to Valkurm to Konschtat, etc fighting mobs appropriate to level rang. In FFXIV, you go from Thanalan to.... well Thanalan, to grind mobs in leves and behests. The sense of progression and adventure through exploring different places as you travel simply is not there, and I feel that this needs to be fixed, as soon as. IMO Its boring and after 9 months of putting up with it, Im not sure Id want to spend 2+ years doing that for all classes/jobs.

[tachikoma]

People please check your expectations of things that they might change for realism. These zones are not gonna change to transition better.

This is not the point of this topic, OP is not saying "I want better transitions!" LOL he is saying I want a progression of each zone to create the sense of accomplishment as you adventure along the road from 1-50. This is a major problem and something they better fix/adjust w/e. They could create all new expansions or they could just fix the mob placement. Make a big world map and organize the layout of mobs to create natural progression. If they kept the 1-30 mobs as Richard said broken into subsections within the 3 main regions so that as you adventure out of Ul dah and take a right hand turn you don't run into lvl 90 fire drakes. This is just shitty planning and design.

Solution
Central Thanalan: 1-10 [marmot,coblyn,WORM,bees]
east thanalan: 10-20 [dodo,puk,spider,ladybug]
west thanalan 20-30 [goat,vulture,beastman(ogre?),cactuar]
--------------------------------
coerthas: 30-40 [antelop,wolf,piesty,bird]
etc etc..

In order for this design strategy to work they would need to make a few changes to other systems to promote the idea of party play and encourage you to group up and adventure in this fashion rather then just leve linking from camp to camp.

Solution
-Add chain bonus for efficient killing OUTSIDE of levequests
-adjust sp caps to promote killing harder mobs (remove 10 lvl gap as max)
-add basic party search/seeking feature
-add a form of transportation outside anima (mounts system) to allow players to travel to camps and explore

[Richard]

Everyone glorifies XI for what it did correctly. No one wants to see XIV make XI's same mistakes they only want to take what was amazing from it and utilize it here. If SE was smart they would do the same. If you are satisfied with how the exploration and level progression of XIV is right now then I feel completely sorry for you as it must not take much to please you.

XIV has the potential to be an extremely well liked game as long as SE rebuilds it correctly. That is all people want out of this thread.

[Richard]

This is not the point of this topic, OP is not saying "I want better transitions!" LOL he is saying I want a progression of each zone to create the sense of accomplishment as you adventure along the road from 1-50. This is a major problem and something they better fix/adjust w/e. They could create all new expansions or they could just fix the mob placement. Make a big world map and organize the layout of mobs to create natural progression. If they kept the 1-30 mobs as Richard said broken into subsections within the 3 main regions so that as you adventure out of Ul dah and take a right hand turn you don't run into lvl 90 fire drakes. This is just shitty planning and design.

Solution
Central Thanalan: 1-10 [marmot,coblyn,WORM,bees]
east thanalan: 10-20 [dodo,puk,spider,ladybug]
west thanalan 20-30 [goat,vulture,beastman(ogre?),cactuar]
--------------------------------
coerthas: 30-40 [antelop,wolf,piesty,bird]
etc etc..

In order for this design strategy to work they would need to make a few changes to other systems to promote the idea of party play and encourage you to group up and adventure in this fashion rather then just leve linking from camp to camp.

Solution
-Add chain bonus for efficient killing OUTSIDE of levequests
-adjust sp caps to promote killing harder mobs (remove 10 lvl gap as max)
-add basic party search/seeking feature
-add a form of transportation outside anima (mounts system) to allow players to travel to camps and explore

+1 Tachi agree with a lot of these ideas

[Harly]

Well written and a bit poetic. You have indeed captured the essence of FFXI and what we all hoped would be the essence of FFIV.

"Oh, war is the common cry, pick up your swords and fly
The sky is filled with good and bad, mortals never know

Oh well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
The drums will shake the castle wall, the Ringwraiths ride in black (ride on)

Sing as you raise your bow, (ride on) shoot straighter than before
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold

Oh, dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back, bring it back"

Battle Of Evermore by Led Zeppelin

[Greencactaur]

This I feel is the biggest issue with the game.

[Shyd]

From Bastock to the tunnel then into the desert and then getting lost in the desert.
Or exploring outside windurst in the towers, finding the secret path into the sewers then ending up in Windurst.

I miss these things to name a few x.x

[Draven]

This is not the point of this topic

I didnt say that was the entire point of the topic. I was making a general comment that people need to keep in mind what possibilities are really worth pushing for. That person (not the OP) not only is forgetting the realities of already existing MMOs (and console RPGs) that have the same lack of transition between zones, but probably has no idea what it would take for them to change the zones without massive amounts of work for trivial gain.

I understand OPs talk because I played XI too, and he's right. But I'm tired of people talking about how great XI was, rarely ever acknowledging something SE did right about XIV and making little to no effort in contributing something constructive to the improvement of THIS game.

Btw I'm in no way shape or form a fan boy of SE. In fact I think they made some of the worst MMO design choices for both XI and XIV. However many of the participating players in the forums here are making the game sound worse than it really is and making XI sound better than it really was I think. It's completely unconstructive around here 70% of the time and it's time to hear more constructive critisizm.

I like Kidkaze's suggestion of spreading level progression to already existing areas, but I'm concerned about what the consequences of that might be for the existing areas.

[Daedae]

You gonna tell me, and we could compare both XI and WoW, that these games didn't have drastic zone differences when they changed? Valkurm to....anywhere? Or Ashenvale to the Barrens?

People please check your expectations of things that they might change for realism. These zones are not gonna change to transition better. Better get that in your head, accept it and let the team worry about something that they can accomplish worth doing to make the game better larger than on a cosmetic scale.

I'd prefer the team spends more time on creating new areas for exploration rather than spend time remaking areas to transition better right now.

Why would they create new zones for exploration? NEWS FLASH! A tremendous part of the current map we have is filled with monsters we cannot hope to kill. So there are your 'new areas for exploration!'

I never understood why they made the zones as massive as they did, and filled them with so many useless things likes R99 basilisks when they couldn't even give camps like Drybone landmarks. If they cut off 50% of our current world and map, I doubt anyone would notice for weeks. Seamless is overrated, I'd rather have a variety of zones, I don't care how unrealistic it is. Giant, overgrown canaries are unrealistic and I want them too.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

I agree with pretty much all that was said in this thread and I read each and every single posts. I may add that the fact that we have these HUGE ass "seemless" zones is maybe the issue but it could also be used to fix the problem. Black shroud for exemple, each zone within Black shroud could (should have been from the start) be different from one another and requiring the adventurers to be stronger and stronger as they progess. The reason that it feels like we are in the same exact zone from 1-50 is that the WHOLE zone is exactly the same everywhere; same color, same outlay, same trees, same rocks, same mobs, just the same everywhere. If the shroud was broken into sub-zone that esthetically looked like "saruta-baruta, taronhgi canyon, Giddeus, buburimu" all in the same seemless zone, then we wouldn't fell like we do right now.

To sum it up, yes it does worry me that we do not leave the zone, but that is what a seemless zone is. It would not cause any worry, in anyone, if the same zone was diverse depending on where you are within that zone, and that goes for all the zones we have right now.

And saying they got limitations and therefore required that each zone is relatively alike and copy/pasted, well this is bullsh** in my opinion. Hell, WoW is pretty much seemless for each continent they have and each of the continent have various zones with very different esthetics to each one of them. Sure they use copy/paste for some elements as well, but it sure is less apparent than in FFXIV and it doesn't require a very good PC to play it. FFXIV could do the same with the stunning graphics they have, it would just require a better PC which pretty much everyone had to get to play the game anyways.

I really wish FFXIV to succeed, I really do and would love to play a successful FFXIV, but right now as it stands, and reading this thread actually made it worse, it's really not up to my expectations even tho the graphics are stunning.