What are the chances of ever getting similar sized massive zones/maps that 1.0 had?

[cloverkitty]

No idea where the snow came from in 2.0 however.

The answer to this will come soon enough. Some of the quests for the area already talk about the perpetual winter (ala Frozen) that has fallen on the area over the last 5 years. I do look forward to that. May have something to do with the crystal tower, or other changes as that was one of the areas heavily affected by the attacks in 1.0.

I am also not sure if this is the original dragonhead rebuilt in a more military style, or a relocated dragonhead.

It will be interesting to see if that gets answered as well.


One of the unique things in this game is when they ended 1.0 and started 2.0, they created a story and quest line that covers it.

As far as the zone sizes, I was in agreement during the survey that I would rather have more detail over giant expanse. The odds of getting those giant expanses back are slim to none. However if PS3 is ever dropped i would not put it past them to have newer larger zones. Until then don't expect it.

[Phe]

okay, zones need to be small because of PS3.
i get it. and i prefer more detail > copy&paste.

but.
why can't we have the rest of Coerthas and Mor Dhona even if the areas are divided?

Are they working on it?

[Azurymber]

I'm always amazed at the "1.0 was just copy pasted everywhere" argument.

Firstly it's not true. If you explored the high level areas with 1-shot kill mobs you would realize how unique each area was.. They were just unused for the most part. A good example of this was the area used to collect items for mog king fight.

Secondly go outside of the city. Everything looks copy and pasted. The thing about ecosystems is for the most part, they look similar. La theine plateu in FFXI was just a giant field. But it had it's unique and impressive parts. Valkurm dunes was all sand, but again, it had its secrets, and its unique parts.

Sure, 1.0 could have done without the pointless "hallways" between zones. But other than that, the zone's weren't bad, and were more "MMO" than what we currently have.

[Naunet]

Honestly? Never. 1.0's Landscape was a lot of the same stuff copied and pasted everywhere. The more detail you have in an area AND have it be large, you really need a powerful system to handle it.

A certain almost ten-year-old MMO has large, "seamless" zones with high levels of detail and manages to run on shitty PCs. I can think of another slightly younger MMO that does as well. Hell, I know of a Korean shovelware MMO that does this better than XIV. The fact of the matter is XIV's zones are ridiculously confined.

[Seig345]

If they can thread together massive zones with the unique looks that the 2.0 zones have, sure.

Maybe there were some unique areas, but anyone who grinded leves in the Black Shroud (me!) can tell you that the claims that they used copy/paste are most undeniably true. Everywhere? Sure, of course not, the cities weren't, and certain areas of interest weren't, but otherwise you passed the same tree, rock, hill, and cliff every 30 seconds.

Personally, if we're going to go back to zones that big, there had better be open world content to fill it up with. Might want to solve that issue first before making an even bigger open world with next to nothing in it.

[Naraz]

the issue many people lack knowledge on is the sheer server power that is required to run an MMO.
They re-hauled the entire game engine off of the original crystal tools.
some things were changed for ease of use. for new players wanting a casual game that didnt require a 45 min run from some place like san d'oria to Jueno when you didnt have the funds for a chocobo or the airship pass.

many who played FFXI when it first came out remember how long it took to get from point A to B before they simplified travel.

leveling to 75 when NA launched could take a year for many a hard core gamer.

they wanted that original mentality with FFXIV in 1.0 thus they made the exp limits after periods of play. to ensure people could enjoy everything in the game, and not just a bumrush to cap lvl......which unfortunately they turned around and did.

[Naraz]

they are trying to cater to a larger audience than just final fantasy die hards.

with zones being retrofitted into the new game engine, some effects could be more of a bottleneck onto the servers than others. simple explanation can be said about odin and behemoth pre 2.0 not loading as a priority over PC players data.
its all about coding.

[Naraz]

and as a person who came from Aion after playing FFXI for 8 years, i know what the effects of such over expansive worlds with useless data would cause. Making the zones larger than required could increase load times and lag on many players all around. the specs now are lower than 1.0 to run the game, but thats because of new game engine and simplified visual effects and then getting rid of useless code (as i put it).
by simplifying these very things it allows them to centralize and expand exhisting elements into new ways.
instances are there to keep from over crowding in EXP areas like what happend in FFXI even for the merit parties. This also aloud CPU load to be off loaded to a seperate server to drop lag for the users, but also offer the whole experience instead of running around aimlessly looking for a mob spawn.

[Naraz]

wish it took longer to lvl in this game, and i would love to have experienced 1.0 for myself but i believe this whole heartily that FFXIV 1.0 was rushed to release before the product was finished, and it cost many SE employees their jobs.

and i wish i could have posted that all in 1 post

[Naunet]

and as a person who came from Aion after playing FFXI for 8 years, i know what the effects of such over expansive worlds with useless data would cause.

Aion is actually a pretty terrible example. With a few exceptions, its zones are not as bad as XIV's, but they do have the tell-tale "tunneling" of many eastern MMOs, and the game itself is horribly optimized. I wouldn't use Aion as a standard of what can be done with large, open, detailed zones.