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

[Lorelai]

I remember the first time I stepped out into La Noscea and checked my map, I was completely in awe of its size. But that feeling quickly subsided when I realised that there really wasn't anything to see, and what is there doesn't seem to have any real rhyme or reason to it, and I think that's the point.

For example, there's a bunch of bridges in the north western section of La Noscea – I forget the camp name – but there are no towns or people, so I can't help but think to myself, "Oh, that's pretty...but why would the people of La Noscea go to the trouble of building bridges here?"

It comes across like the devs were interested first and foremost with making the zones as gigantic as possible, with notions of how they were to fill the space an afterthought, and I don't think that's a good design philosophy when creating a game world.

I also remember being sorely disappointed when I zoned into the Twelveswood from Thanalan; not because there was a zone, but because in the blink of an eye I had went from parched desert wasteland to a verdant, lush forest. It does come across as kind of lazy. :\

Anyhoo~ I'm all for smaller zones and more variety; one of the things I liked the most about XI is the way levelling slowly took you across a varied and interesting world in a logical manner.

This new team seem to get it, though, so I'm confident that any new zones will be both interesting and well thought out. (*'-')b

[Fensfield]

Honestly? They don't bother me.

The sheer resultant scale is something I really enjoy, the map content is itself beautiful despite repetition and, for me, they're just shy of the point where I actually notice easily and it bothers me.

If they opted to remodel the environments to be completely unique across the board, then I would only be happy if this were achieved with the degree of modelling effort they already put into the individual elements. A global procedural height-map, ala WoW and its ilk, with only instances of deliberately modelled terrain poking out of a general, undulating sheet of polygons, would be pretty offensive to me after the detail was put into the terrain models themselves, re-used or no.

That said, though, the blunt transition between the Twelveswood and Thanalan is kind of whiplash inducing, yes ..

[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.

[Galadrios]

Although I agree with many of the posts above, I really think Abriael is right and at this point it is highly unrealistic to demand a complete redesign of the world. There are more urgent matters to take care of.

They will probably improve the quality when they release new areas but I doubt they will change the existing ones.

[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.