Was reading the last development message by Junichi Murata and i was inspired to make a suggestion thread to give ideas and stuff to improve maps in the 3.0.

What do you think is missing in the actual maps and what should be improved in the new ones?

My suggestion list:

- Areas should be a bit more wider, to improve the feeling of 'distance/far/solitude' from civilized centers and to alleviate (and make them a bit more challenging) contents like Hunts or new ones in 3.0 and beyond. And also to 'spread' more people around.

- Aetherythes should be much more sparse or in some areas totally absent.
You could add some areas without Aetherythes with a new system of exploration in which you have to procede with a party or in solo (maybe instanced to not create crowd?) to find paths, landmarks, secrets and stuff. While you procede you could use the famous Tent or Cabin to rest (there could be a 'fatigue' system) and regain 'good status' without being attacked by random mobs around. During night you could use torches and lanterns to see around and find stuff. And you could have the possibility to 'build' your own Aetherythe in specific places with gathering and crafting.

- There should be more dungerous places in the maps to explore, with very hi-lv mobs around that you can kill but they are very HARD in solo.

- Open dungeons (ala FF11) should be a must have during building new areas (caves, temples, ruins) and in which you can add also new 'soft' content like Collectibles stuff (ancient lore writings, artifacts, etc.) or random Treasure Chest appearing around. You could think about a sort of 'Archeology system' too *hint a new gathering class * (with unique rewards of course, mounts, minions, gil, 'vintage' housing stuff).

- Add much more 'life' around (jumping frogs, sneaky sneakes, more flying birdies around and in the trees -not only seagulls and eagles in the sky-, butterflies -that are disappeared from 1.0 - and so on) and maybe also random events like migration bird bevies in the skies, etc.

- Add more natural random events (there are only rainbows now) like falling stars, tornados, etc.

- Make sky colors with 2-3 different random gradient 'configurations' during sunsets and dawns. So not to have the same sunset/dawn colors everytime.