[suggestions] About new MAPS in 3.0 and beyond

[Munba]

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.

[TheUltimate3]

My unimportant thoughts in bold.

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. Agreed. Just for the love of the Twelve don't make me have to run that distance multiple times for little reason, cause then wide open area can suck it.

- 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. Less Aetheryte, yes. Everything else here...i don't see it actually working. If you could eventually just build your own Aetheryte, why not just have Aetherytes already there? for example.

- 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.Agreed to a point. Twelve forbid they stick something like story quest deep in No Mans Land that it would be very very difficult to get to solo. And while I am aware this opens my comments up to "This is an MMO", once the initial rush passes, new or returning guy now has to get through No Mans Land solo and they will either be dying a lot of giving up.

- 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). Agreed

- 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. Works well in single player games, not sure how they work in MMOs where all that stuff has to be rendered. Appearing in 1.0, and then not appearing in 2.0 seems to support this.

- Add more natural random events (there are only rainbows now) like falling stars, tornados, etc.Agreed, this game could use more weather.

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

[Shioban]

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.

The biggest problem they face is the Playstation 3 (Which has approximatley 512MB of RAM to work with (256MB System / 256MB GPU), that's not a lot of texture/model data on top of everything else the game has to cope with.

This drastically reduces the amount the size that each area can be (without a little technical adjustment).

There are options such as more aggressive performance counter measures such as; shorter draw distance/procedural loading methods, but for their current setup a procedural area loading system would be VERY difficult with their limited memory real estate. (If you've used a PS3 you'd already know it's pushing the limit on performance saving methods to the point where the game is barely even there)


As a result of this hardware restriction, making wider areas would mean sparser design/detail to the world which is something the development team wanted to avoid. They wanted a balance between world composition/detail and map-size, so until support for the Playtstation 3 is dropped this map size restriction and design is likely to stay in it's current form.

- 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.

I completley agree that Aethertyes are all too common in ARR, they've in-turn made the world feel even smaller, albeit convenient.

Fatigue systems have been known to cause a lot of problems in the past, they'll be avoiding this. As maps won't be getting any bigger than they are currently, things like this simply wouldn't be needed as complex, large and heavily detailed areas simply won't be possible (See above).

- 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.

Tornados/Meteor Showers/Tsunami's would cause a huge world-impact and some massive changes to the world around you, it's unlikely we'll see this happening in general areas, as the development time to adjust assets to suit this would be insane.

HOWEVER! For new maps as you said, there may be specific weather they'll add in for certain places that could trigger weather events or dangerous conditions to make certain enemies/FATEs/nodes (whatever) appear, we'll just have to wait and see.

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

Again, the skyboxes take a lot of time to perfect, adding in more of these would be an un-nessecary time consumption but we might see new ones for the areas in the game (as you may have already noticed certain areas have different skyboxes to suit).


"What the hell is a skybox?"

Essentially it's the trick used to make the sky you see, where either a box or a dome/sphere is used to create the upper atmosphere and horizon you see using a neat low-performance impact trick;
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_List

http://www.realityisagame.com/archiv...t-is-a-skybox/

[Nalien]

- 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.

Only problem I have with suggestions like this is that, well... Eorzea isn't some new frontier. It makes sense for civilization to be spread across Eorzea. Maps like 1.0s and XIs made absolutely no sense to me; you have a world people have lived in for decades, yet the most civilization you see outside the city gates are small outposts and the occasional small settlement. There was zero sense people traveled between cities in either world. ARR has done a phenomenal job in that regard.

That's not to say I wouldn't want to see larger, isolated areas. I just want them to make sense. Something like the Tavnazia zones in XI for example, that made sense. It was cut off from civilization for years and the only settlement belonged to a small group of survivors. Somewhere like Coerthas Western Highlands could mirror that. As can various other locations, like Sagoli Desert. Areas like Tavnazia are great, but sticking them everywhere just breaks immersion; there should be infrastructure, settlements, and patrolled routes between Ul'dah and Gridania. Given how long people have been in Eorzea, there really should be in all but the most inhospitable of areas.

- 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.

Gods yes... Even the birds we do have in ARR, is it just me or are the flying unnaturally slowly? Every time I see them I can't help but think "That's a set piece they've got moving to slow", and it completely breaks the immersion. Not helped by the fact that there are so few birds around.

- 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).

This I don't get why they haven't done from the start. The open world dungeons in 1.x were perfectly serviceable for ARR. Slap some FATE bosses around, keep the Key/Coffer system, make the rewards similar to dungeons and perhaps slap a lockout similar to virtually everything to prevent mass overcrowding a'la Hunts. I'm hoping the various locked off gates in Beast tribe territories eventually give us some open world content.

Also, some of the dungeons are absolutely amazing zones, and I feel the world could be made a lot larger if you just turn some of them into open world zones after their completion. This could add more open world areas easily, as well as providing a few new areas for side quests, Hunts and gathering, to name a few. It wouldn't be exactly the same as open world dungeons, but it would go a ways to making the world seem larger; you complete an instance and then that instance becomes part of the open world. That just makes sense to me. The implementation of hard mode dungeons kind of destroys that possibility though, I suppose.



One thing I would like to pass on to Junichi Murata; Revenant's Toll is absolutely great. Seeing that settlement build over time is one of the highlights of this game. I'd love to see the maps evolve like that in the future, even if it's just slightly. When we move onto dealing with Ishgard and the Dragons, it would be absolutely amazing to see the damage and repairs being carried out, for example.

[Duelle]

- Aetherythes should be much more sparse or in some areas totally absent.

This is dependent on the setting used. If we're going to be colonizing an untamed continent, then yes it makes sense for aetherytes to not be there, or become available as you progress in the story or your server reaches a certain level of participation in colonization-like event. If you're thinking of FFXI's system for Adoulin, let me stop you and tell you that was a terrible way to implement colonization.

Now, if the setting is within Eorzea, then yes I expect there to be aetherytes in major hamlets and cities. Granted, if I'm not mistaken the idea behind the aetherytes is that it's possible within Eorzea because of the high concentration of aether, suggestion it would be more difficult to use aetherytes outside Eorzea, but this remains to be confirmed.

- 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).

In other words, open dungeons being more for side activities rather than progression. I like that. Archeology as a new gathering class would be a nice addition, but it would take a lot to make it work without designing it to be vendor fodder.

[Dark-Saviour]

I definitely support wider, more isolated areas, but I think my desires in that direction probably exceed most others...
I don't want them to be full of enemies, let alone super-strong ones though. Combat is annoyingly-distracting enough as is; I just want to explore.
Maybe new gameplay systems related to spelunking, canoeing, rock-climbing (A Disciple of Exploration class?), etc. would be nice (though with as rigid as the controls feel in this game and as blatant as the invisible walls are, I don't really see it working)...

But yeah... I would like to be able to wander for 30+ minutes in a given direction without hitting an outpost. And it would be nice if outposts were of a more sensible scale and far enough away from one another... Quarymill to Buscarron's Druthers to Camp Tranquil is just bloody stupid.

[ruskie]

Some interesting ideas that I like. Yes ot archeology as a gathering class. I would like to see open world dungeons(with maybe the same cooldown as the maps - thus 18h) - among gear and other stuff maybe provide similar rewards to the maps as well.

Aetherytes lore wise fit fine for Eorzea. But I would expect any further aetherytes outside of Eorzea to be sparse or even in need to being built as part of the main story quests(make it dual doable - either DoW/DoM to fight off attempts or DoH/DOL to craft/gather mats for them(similar to the ixali beastmen)(frankly these work great so wouldn't mind seeing them as an option on certain quests).

The skybox sadly is not all that great(it seems to be 3 120 degree arcs that are copy pasted). Would be nice if it would be a fully unique skybox.

As for more dangerous places I would like to see mobs going over lvl50. But these should really be far out of place areas - stuff we don't have yet and this would tie into the aetheryte lore as well. The lore reason I think we can beat most stuff is because there is civilization near by so stronger beasts tend to go away.

I really hope they make a Sagoli desert area where it's actually the size of current coerthas with no aetheryte and you access it via a bridg or something from south than.

[Avraym]

Calm Lands map ratio. <can i have it>?

[Sadana]

I like the idea of more areas to explore, open world dungeons, and more challenging areas (not all over), but am not interested in fewer aetherytes. I don't want to be annoyed in the name of 'adding challenge'.

I would love to see more actual variety to the zones in terms of plant life and animals. Right now we have open, rocky areas and areas with some trees, and that's pretty much it. The sand desert of Southern Thanalan is closest, I think, to being truly different from all the other areas. We could use mountains (I want to see MOUNTAINS, Gandalf!) and a swamp that is dark and stifling. Having different environmental noises would go a long way too. Use different bird calls, wind sounds, water dripping, bug noises, animal cries, whathaveyou (there is some of this in the game already. More is good. )

[Shioban]

Calm Lands map ratio. <can i have it>?

Notice how that area has VERY little topology to actually render.

It's the only reason that area existed on such a large scale in FFX.