What do you think about the current copy/paste maps?

[Nephera]

Have a friend teleport you somewhere in the black shroud, coerthas, thanalan or la noscea , and then try and find your way back to the city without a map/minimap.

ADVENTURE MODE ACTIVATED

oh make sure you bind at the teleport point so you dont take the cheap way back by dying you cheater.

[Raistlin]

I think it is not time to worry about this, you first need to improve the game's content to keep players who are, and attract new players. When we have a stable and attractive game, you could make small changes to the maps to customize certain areas, I now believe is not time for this.

[Silvyaniss]

It also hurts Immersion, Rping, and Adventuring Big time.

[Rhianu]

As much as I want to see changes to the existing landscape, I do have to admit that environment design is one of the most expensive and time consuming aspects of video game development, and as such we probably won't be seeing any changes to the environment any time soon, if we see changes at all. The only way Blizzard was able to justify their redesign of the environments in WoW was by passing the whole thing off as a full-blown expansion pack, and I just don't see that happening in FFXIV.

[Kallera]

The zones lack lore! I agree with that the areas are too sparse, I mean look at the encampments, ok, the city is defending them against the oncoming horde, but why? Do people live there, then where are the merchants? Is the grass valuable or something? Why is that place called Tiger Helm Island and that other place the red labyrinth? Why is that other place chock full of ogres? What is a doomvoid guivre doing in lush forest land?

I know there aren't answers to everything, but the maps need more then a few yellowjackets minding tents and boxes.

[Naylia]

I don't care about the maps being copy/pasted.

But please add things out on the maps! Treasure in caves, farms, fields, outposts, NPCs, caravans, whatever. There is no life!!!

[Vasch]

I would call the world pre-civilized. As in, it looks like no life has risen in it whatsoever, it's raw untamed land. Rather than completely remodel the terrain, I would suggest adding in things to different areas to distinguish them. No one is going to notice that two patches of land are copy/paste if one has a small farmhouse on it and the other has a windmill, etc.

Don't remodel the terrain, add little touches to each area. Look at Ronfaure, it was largely the same but it had little additions to it by civilization that made it distinguished, like the outpost, the water mill, the tomb, etc.

[Reinheart]

The main part I'm getting at say FFXI map was like photoshop with layers

1st you have the ground with terrain and hills, w/e
2nd you have the roads <--- maybe same as objects, I know some games do this as separate layer
3rd you have the objects: trees, flowers, rocks, fence, camps

My main issue with the copy/paste is I'm ok with them copy/pasting #1 the ground/terrain maps that part I can understand, think they need more variety and don't overuse like they did already in the current areas but the problem is mainly #3 the objects using in the same block of map. They copied the entire 1-3 and pasted it everywhere which is why it looks the same every damn spot. If they would just copy/pasted the 1 and then arranged the objects just little bit to make a difference and it would of worked out better; I dunno if that makes my point clear.

I know XI used the same trees, objects; that's normal for most games it saves memory + saves time to work on making new objects, that part I don't have any complaints; They can add more variety in future for these and swap them around as time passes by.

It's WHY did SE copy/paste the exact same objects on the exact same spot of the copy/pasted maps. Just moving the tree in front of the same looking passage way will let the players know at least you're in a different spot since the tree wasn't there before, or adding rock blocking the passage way that looks just like other place, changing the flowers instead of same bunch in the exact same spot... etc..etc...

Off topic stuff... on the actual maps to view I wish they added ability to add markers... like for the caves where it shows you can pass through but in actual you can't...

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And to all saying this isn't required right now, totally agree with you all; SE has more stuff to work on other than this as priority; probably is least important as of right now, but it is something SE shouldn't just ignore in future after everything, or close to everything is being fixed.

I just started this thread just to see if NA players opinions are close to JP players.