OMG please remove some of the aetherytes, the world feels tiny

[Logo]

For every person repeating the same thing "Don't use them".
You are missing the point.

The point is, coming across other people while traveling builds immersion and community.
Which this game has none of (do to a number of factors).

I think there just needs to be a better balance between ease of playing and a structure that develops and fosters a community.
Thank you, drive through.

[Jynx]

The problem is much larger than the aether nodes themselves.

The world itself needs a reason to be traversed instead of skipped. I unfortunatly have to inform people often that this game is nearly 100% focused on instanced content and they have put the open world the created to no real use.

The only hope we have is if they have a shift in gameplay direction in the coming expansion pack, it's possible showing the current appearance of players burning themselves out on instanced and locked out content. You can only tell people how often they are allowed to have fun before they decide to pack up and go to a game that let's them play whenever/wherever with whoever they want.

[RakaMaimhov]

For every person repeating the same thing "Don't use them".
You are missing the point.

The point is, coming across other people while traveling builds immersion and community.
Which this game has none of (do to a number of factors).

I think there just needs to be a better balance between ease of playing and a structure that develops and fosters a community.
Thank you, drive through.

And you're completely erasing all the players who don't have time to waste with "immersion and community".

A lot of players have had their fill of "immersion and community". Please respect that.

(FYI, I travel by mount a lot of time when I want "immersion" or just to be langorious)

[Hulan]

If you will excuse me, I'm going to be purposely obtuse for a moment. I disagree. The world is, in fact, quite enormous. The Eorzea that we inhabit is a small portion of a small island in a small archipelago, situated in a moderately sized continent on an earth sized planet. If anything, the relatively confined nature of the currently accessible portion of the world only goes to further illustrate how massive the world actually is. The Garlean Empire, by all accounts, spans 2 to 4 times again as much space, and is far from holding the entire world. A few expansions down the road, and I doubt you will be able to say the world is too small.

[Dark-Saviour]

As for the comments of it just being an issue of there not being enough to do in the world...

While I do agree that the lack of people doing open-world content is disheartening, having everyone flood the surface would actually make the original problem worse. At that point the world not only feels tiny and constrained, but instead is now tiny, constrained, and crowded.

If you will excuse me, I'm going to be purposely obtuse for a moment. I disagree. The world is, in fact, quite enormous. The Eorzea that we inhabit is a small portion of a small island in a small archipelago, situated in a moderately sized continent on an earth sized planet. If anything, the relatively confined nature of the currently accessible portion of the world only goes to further illustrate how massive the world actually is. The Garlean Empire, by all accounts, spans 2 to 4 times again as much space, and is far from holding the entire world. A few expansions down the road, and I doubt you will be able to say the world is too small.

Considering the scale of Eorzea compared to the rest of the world from the maps we've seen, yes... what we're seeing does make the world seem tiny (IMO at least). Had it actually been the case that we really just got a tiny patch of the entire world (at the proper scale), I'd be more open to it, but the supposed size of the landmass we do have access to needs far more room to work properly.
Villages less than a minute jaunt from one another with half a dozen houses each does not a compelling world make. :-\

[ShinkuTachi]

A few expansions down the road, and I doubt you will be able to say the world is too small.

I think that's the point people miss when it comes to a MMO. These games aren't supposed to be complete games on release, like an 8 hour action game or a 200 hour RPG. These are games that evolve, expand, and grow over a very long period of time, like more than a decade. You have to give these sorts of things time.

Anyone who bought this game expecting Pre-Zilart~Seekers or Vanilla~Mists level of content, this early on, is a damned fool.

[Hulan]

You know, that's quite interesting. After you mentioned that, I went and did some digging, and the only world view we have to date shows a distinctly different view from what I an sure I recall hearing about Eorzea being part of a larger archipelago. That image displayed Eorzea as somewhere between the size of North America or Africa, so we can assume it makes up somewhere between 1/5 and 1/8 of the land mass. On the other hand, that image was taken from an early trailer to ARR, and could be inaccurate (though I can't recall this particular team messing something like that up before).

[Dwill]

For every person repeating the same thing "Don't use them".
You are missing the point.

The point is, coming across other people while traveling builds immersion and community.
Which this game has none of (do to a number of factors).

I think there just needs to be a better balance between ease of playing and a structure that develops and fosters a community.
Thank you, drive through.

Immersion and community are still play styles which might not cater to everyone, therefore bringing it back to the point. Don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple.

[Gextiv]

OP should use less aetherytes, then. Also, imo, there's nothing wrong in adding flying mounts because no WORLD PVP takes place in Eorzea.

[Noshpan]

For every person repeating the same thing "Don't use them".
You are missing the point.

The point is, coming across other people while traveling builds immersion and community.
Which this game has none of (do to a number of factors).

I think there just needs to be a better balance between ease of playing and a structure that develops and fosters a community.
Thank you, drive through.

Speaking from personal experience, passing others while traveling does not create immersion, nor does it foster any form of a community. I've been playing MMOs on and off since Ruins of Kunark launched for EverQuest in 2000. During that time, I've not made a single friend, or formed any sort of bond over someone I happened to pass by as I was running (or riding a mount) to a destination.