Geographical Landmarks

[Akuun]

I'm totally for land marks. Spacial distance is harder to navigate by in game.
Also heavy use of terrain blocks makes it that much more difficult to tell where you are.
Most game solve this with land marks, something that helps break the repetitiveness of scenery.
I think this is a great suggestion.

[Munba]

I posted some suggestions in this similar topic (with the same purpouse)
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-world-to-life...

[Seif]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesY1XssACM

Two years of adventures in XI and I haven't seen even half of those beautiful places yet.

I saw every zone in XIV in few weeks and none of them have anything interesting to look at. =(

[Munba]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iesY1XssACM

Two years of adventures in XI and I haven't seen even half of those beautiful places yet.

I saw every zone in XIV in few weeks and none of them have anything interesting to look at. =(

I always loved that video. Vanadiel is so beautiful..

[Nilheim]

I believe the zone design for FFXIV is as follows:

Several key areas within each zone that have their own unique theme/design.

The problem is, they are connected by copy/paste and an extremely boring landscape.

Now, heres the real problem. Many people spend most of their time travelling through the boring parts to get to the interesting parts.

For example, if you travel from gridania to uldah, most likely you will be traveling along the road. So all you see is the same layout of forest for 15 mins then you get to Thanalan, and you spend another 15 mins of seemingly, and often times actually, the exact same landscape.

When you finally reach your destination, you're like WOW this is awesome, but that last 25 mins of landscape was total crap.

So, I think improving the areas along the road and the paths people take to travel should be a priority. And adding special landmarks would certainly be one of many tools that could be used to accomplish that.

I don't think the problem is that they lack landmarks, I think the world is just so huge that you never see them. You can actually find really interesting corners of Eorzea (there's a video on Youtube for XIV scenery as well), it's just the average player who only has to go to the same 3-4 aetheryte for leves and has no reason to explore those corners will never see them. I think what they need to do when they redesign the zones is make them significantly smaller.

I agree completely. I rarely find the motivation to visit landmarks because most of them are in the corners of the zones, and they're just so huge it's tiring to get there. Maybe when Chocobos and content arrive it'll be different but I doubt it. Take the Black Shroud for example, it's probably the size of Zi'tah, the Boyahda Tree (plus Dragon's Aery) and Ro'Maeve combined, but what's the use of large zones when they are lifeless? The FFXI areas I just mentioned all had personality and felt alive, and I'd rather have 4 small and varied zones than one big forest that's full of nothing.

PS: That FFXI scenery video is amazing
Sadly it also shows what a poor job Square Enix did when they designed Eorzea, it doesn't even come close to Vana'diel...

[omnibahumut]

I really wonder if the Designer for The Black Shroud has ever entered an actual forest. Its designed almost like a city... In a forest you're going to have hills, fallen trees, old huge trees, saplings, glades, rodent holes in the ground...

Just one giant tree, or one aged, fallen tree (or maybe a tree that appears to have fallen before its prime), all adds wonder and and interesting things to the zone with relatively little effort and resources. Why would a young tree fall? What might have made its home in an old fallen tree that is now rotting?

How about the giant redwood-like trees from Zi'Tah that you could walk UNDER? What about trees that make a home exclusively on bodies of water?

Honestly... just a little research =\

[viion]

How does that Vanadiel video only have 33k views lol its passed around like its someones birthday.

[AlexiaKidd]

The problem with the current zones it that while they do have some (not many) landmarks there is no reason to go see them and explore, you know you are not going to get any reward from exploring every nook and cranny or Mor Dhona so why bother. Yeah the crashed Airship and Leviathan look great but they serve no purpose at the minute.

Another thing is that annoys me is a complete lack of variety in the zones, this is supposed to be a next gen MMO. When I go from Ul'dah to Gridania it goes from desert to huge forest(horrible layout forest ><)!!!! Why couldn't they make the forest gradually thin out to desert or something to make it a better transition.

I think it is unfair to compare this game to FFXI at the minute as that has a lot of years and expansions behind it but it still doesn't excuse the fact that the zones we have now are lifeless and pointless.

[solracht]

There are quite a few things they could do to add some life and diversity in our current maps without completely changing the terrain layout or palettes. The problem is they didn't even bother doing this.

Take Coerthas, for example: The raptor areas could be full of grass. The grass is already there, just take the grass object, paste it all over the place in different sizes and angles, and you have a unique grass-field within Coerthas without altering the terrain.

Making a pine forest could be just as easy in the stag areas. It was definitely easier to just paste the generic group of objects all over the place without thought, however.

Personally I don't even care about landmarks unless they actually put some thought into it: Take Coerthas again, for example. There are a lot of structures scattered across the map (mills, buildings). The problem is they feel more random than something that was actually put there on purpose to me. Mobs run into them, and there isn't any sign that anyone either lives there or ever did.

Our current world needs a lot of love, and I'm not only talking about layouts. While the Black Shroud needs the most, it's definitely not the only. I don't know how much of a priority going back to every area and making sure most corners feel "right" should be for the development team at this point, however.

[Soda]

There definitely needs to be "landmarks" or things that particularly stand out in the world. That's for sure. But an extension of that would be the addition of NPCs out in the actual world to interact with. It's sad knowing I'm entering a land where I'll never find any humans besides those around crystal camps. There needs to be an incentive to get out there explore around. How about some escort quests? Or a warrior NPC near an enemy encampment who needs help defeating the enemies there. How about a little village with a whole slew of NPCs with problems and quests and things to do in the area?

Right now there is none of that. Just maps.