Thread: Why did they changed this from version 1.0 ?

Originally Posted by rabbitzero

Oh man, that takes me back. I wanted to like 1.0 so badly, but so much just seemed so baffling with why it was designed that way. Like they were proud of ignoring the innovations in mmos that made them better, for some reason.

I do miss the mini-games in gathering, while the new system is easier and faster. The boat rides too, but i don't miss that clunky menu system, control scheme, and lack of auction.

I do think they're supposed to be adding in optional airship and boat ride sequences eventually. But looking at the zones I think I can name two reasons they feel much smaller.

1.) They took one large zone and broke it up into smaller pieces. Look at a number of the zones, there's a Central Shroud, East Shroud, North Shroud, South Shroud, and so on. While the whole "area" is actually larger due to it being broken down into smaller zones it feels a lot smaller. Comparing the Black Shroud to say the Sarutabaruta in FFXI for example, Sarutabaruta's zones were larger but on the whole it was also smaller. The Black Shroud zones combined are actually larger. Same can be said for say Gustaberg vs Thanalan. I believe on the whole it's La Noscea that is by far the largest of the zone clusters compared to Thanalan and the Black Shroud. The whole world only feels smaller in comparison to 1.0 because they're broken into smaller, multiple zones.

2.) Teleporting is much more used than before. Previously to get around in 1.0 you'd spend much more time traveling via Chocobo or running as to avoid burning up all your anima too quickly. People who overused the teleportation system were then either stuck wandering around by foot all the time or saving their anima for necessary trips only. Now that teleporting can be done with ease but requires gil you're only limited by your source of income available. This in turn makes the world feel smaller since you can just teleport to any given region you want once you've been there.

There are two exceptions to the first reason however and that is Coerthas and Mor Dhona. While I understand Coerthas may be frozen off and opened later on I don't understand why only 1/3 of Mor Dhona is currently accessible. Is the other 2/3 of it completely inhabited by the Garleans? Was it utterly and completely devastated by the Calamity that it's too inhabitable for travel? The odd part is they don't call it Northern Mor Dhona but simply Mor Dhona nearly implying the small chunk of the zone we've got is all there's to it.

Originally Posted by Galliano

They should have taken a leaf out of XI's book. That had a mixture of both open zones and tightly packed zones and also had lots of little interesting nooks and crannies with things tucked away for you to discover while you explored.

They started on the right track in 1.23 with places like 'Shposhae' that were open dungeons that anyone could run into and had things to do inside like NM's, quests and treasure chests, but now 99% of things are instanced which completely takes away from the world size. In fact; if all the instances in ARR were made open world and you had to at least teleport to a camp then run to them, the whole world would feel much more alive and much bigger.

theyd have to get rid of the DF system first then

Originally Posted by Taruranto

I call bananas on "PS3 limitations" for the zones since FFXI PS2 had bigger zones.

It had nothing to do with PS3 limitations at all, I cannot remember what letter it was discussed in but 1.0 had so much copied terrain because of memory limitations and the overall strain on the servers. Having such a massively large world spread out before you it would actually take too much memory and resources to create individual terrain in every area so they were forced to improvise and use copied terrain. The problem I believe with it however is the world was too massive for each zone which lead to giant open areas with little to nothing living in the area. No buildings, no unique flora or surroundings, just wide open space with a few mobs roaming here or there. So much of the area went unused that the copied terrain was overly apparent.