"Future content will be heavily instanced" ...not sure i like it...

[Perrin_Aybarra]

My feeling of them saying instanced is the oposite of what you have here, i REALLY hope they mean stuff will be done out in the open, but thats what comes to mind when they say that, everyone plays in their own worlds most of the time....which would be a HUGE bummer.

Has anyone not enjoyed running by somewhere and watching a group take down a giant monster out in the open (or watch them die a horrible death lol), stuff like that needs to happen and hopefully they will make use of the new spaces they design.

btw...wth happened with hamlet defense? they talked about it a long time ago and we have not heard a peep about it in forever. Did they just scrap it?

No they have not scraped it ^^ while not having a lot of info this was in the producer letter XVI :

Missions catering to higher levels are scheduled for patch 1.20. Caravan escort will pave the way for the upcoming hamlet defense content.

Also, if it makes you feel better, I am pretty much 95% sure that when they say instanced content it doesn't mean in a seperate instance where others can't see you (like dungeons).

leves(all kind), behest, story/class missions and a lot of quests, all these things are instanced where only you and your group can see the mobs until they are claimed but other people still see you and see you fighting the mobs once the fight is started.

[Okiura]

Having most thing instanced sounds like a bad idea to me. but then i started thinking why does it sound like a bad idea and is it really such a bad thing?

So after a bit of thinking i came up with just about as many bad points as good. one the biggest problems i thought of (and this is just IMO) is the comunity will suffer, i know the argument is there that you aim to set up a group before you head out and that's true quite often and i can't fault that.

But when i was playing XI i met many people in my travels who happenend to doing the same quests as me at the same time and a {team up?} request turned into a new friendship, infact some of my better friendships started this way. these were the kinda quests that are able to be completed solo and a waste of time for anyone who was not on, or had already completed to do it with you. so bumping into random ppl is a good thing as it's more fun to do things with other players in a online game.

if we all palyed in our own little bubbles this could never happen, and IMO that'll be my biggest issue. now if will this even become a issue or not guess only time will tell this all depends on the type of instanced content that being planned and not included yet, though i can give one example that is already in the game and that is the main region quests.

another problem though this isn't all that bad is you won't be able to watch random fights in your travels, it's good to actually see how another group does somthing and how well it works for them. this happened alot in ffxi when my LS was doing HNM's a few members of other LS's would turn up to see how we handled it and a few of our members whould turn up view other LS's take them down too. this is a good way to learn how to do things diffrent and refine you're own tactic's.

As long as SE watches what content they make instances/open world, and try to keep a helthy ballance between the two i don't see a real issue atm. i do share some of the OP's concerns but i think i'll remain on the fence for now pending more info