Yes, This has been in the "Other" section of "Gameplay", but "General Discussion" has more views that "Other" and I want these ideas to get through to the devs.

These ideas are to increase the likability of the cities and towns as well as the surrounding areas.

Some Added Ideas by:
DoomCky's
Smokie23

[SIZE="5"]Aesthetics of the city;[/SIZE]
-----Summary of Aesthetics-----
- Cities don't have a lot of character :/
- As DoomCky said, need more NPC to Environment interaction.
- This would include Behest Battle Wardens walking from town or a different small city/camp to their designated camp to begin behest.
- I've seen talks of actual seasons; on a 2-4 week RL time scale, this could be freakin awesome.
- More random animations (stretching, yawning, sneeze, coughing, pace around, react to weather conditions)
- If a player hands in a quest and gets a rank up or level up have the NPC cheer or clap
- At camps, NPC should stand around under the tents and night time they should walk over to fire-pit and actually lite the fire instead of the it just magically lighting itself when it becomes dark.
- Do the 'standing at fireplace' animation. Day comes and they should put out fire(or it burns out) and they walk back under the tent/tree shade.
- Random clothing changes. Seeing the exact same looking NPC for months, years on end gets really played out, really soon.


Ul'Dah - Now yes, Ul'Dah is in the 'desert', but this is a game
and there are tree's outside the city, even if they are small in size.
With more crates, sand, erosion, a few well placed tree's it would bring it alive.
Have a group of kids/people NPC's crouched in an alley playing dice (Could have a mini game like a simple dice game like /random and have to get doubles or equal to a number where you could win gil/armor r1-r15ish), an NPC stacking/carrying crates and bringing them to a person or place. Mice running around the market area and un-populated areas.

Limsa Lominsa - just because the city is located on giant pillars of stone doesn't
mean that a garden or a good few trees and plants cant be placed around to
make it seem like it's an actually city instead of a brand new city. Like the little area
by the seagull statue should be decorated with a lot of plants and such. More benches wouldn't hurt either. There could be whales or dolphins nearby that would be visible in the city. Some dolphins may swim within the city. Also could add birds that fly down and walk around and fly away. Could also have them perching on ropes and such. Have a NPC sitting on a bench feeding them. Could even possibly sit down with the ole NPC man/woman and try and befriend the birds to get items they carry with them (low rank random items, r1-r15ish, sometimes junk) Would be perfect. Have NPC's carrying barrels and crates down to the docks to load them on boats. Have NPC's working on boats, ships coming into harbor other than ferry boat. Little boats for residents to travel about with the doors and mini docks beneath the city with a character paddling along.

Gridania - to me it doesn't feel like a forest or a city, it's weird. It's in a limbo lol. I feel like there should be more trees. Especially gardens. A few animals as well. squirrels running up trees, birds landing in trees and on rooftops. NPCs could be watering the gardens or plants, kid NPCs feeding some cute little animals and/or trying to climb a tree. Could have a mini-game on water flowers and depending how pretty/good they are get different random assortment of items (plant, armor, etc r1-15ish).

Smaller Towns
- They have even less character than the main cities...if that's even possible.
- The NPCs in the towns would be doing what the name suggests.

Wineport should have people, quite literally, making wine. Perhaps a shop that has fruit/wine/drinks that you can only get from there that affect stats and such. Two mini games could be made from this - the squishing of the grapes; see how fast and how much grape juice you can get out by stomping on them in a barrel without wasting all the grapes. So it's a balance of speed/force. Second mini game would be something involving barrels (ideas anyone?)

The Golden Bazaar should have a small bazaar that sells things such as gold,silver,copper, armor and minerals that you can mine in the Thanalan area. Could have a mini game where you have to weigh certain minerals against others and see if you can get the right exchange rate/price of it on the scale. Also could volunteer to help a salesman sell stuff and you have to sell it for more than its worth by selecting choice phrases/words and depending on customers personality to see how much you can raise the price or if you fail all together by making them mad (NPCs of course). If you were succesful, you would get the difference of starting and sold price ex: start 5,000 gil - sold for 7,300 gil = 2,300 gil for you.

Areas/Zones
Thanalan could be done Essentially the same as with the talks of the black shroud being redesigned via Garleaneans burning it down. In this case, the Ifrit prime could just let all hell break loose and destroy/alter the area, again this would tie in with the story alongside a redesign of the area. Not a scorched look all over or anything, but new mountain(s) from a volcano(s) that arose and subsided just as quick or only certain area's having a scorched look but terrain be moved around all over. Just something story-side that would tie in with the redesign.

The Black Shroud; Their is an idea floating around dealing with the Garleaneans (hell if i know how to spell it) burning down the black shroud - this could be a HUGE step forward for FFXIV. Why? Because if it was burnt down, the story would tie in with the talks of SE redesigning the whole area. Eventually or somehow magically(although not cheesily) the forest would renew itself. I'm not a fan of WoW, but SE should take a lesson from Blizzard and attempt to mimic it to their needs for the black shroud.

Mor Dhona. So supposedly there was this epic battle above this zone and yet there is only one airship, the one with 'Bahumut' wrapped around it. Seeing as in the opening movie there are dragons and airships crashing and such to the ground -- where are they? That's an easy way to add some land diversification right there. Add a few somewhat intact ships laying around, then have pieces of ships scattered across the zone. Also, since some of the dragons were being killed, there could be varrying sizes of dragon bones laying around the zone as well. Possibly have the rare few dragons vaguely visibly flying over the zone if it was to fit with the story progression.

[SIZE="5"]Ambiance[/SIZE];
- lack of city noise. They are all guilty.
- lacking environment noise as well(trees, boats, animals noises, etc)
- the Adventure Guilds need to have sounds of a bar inside them. Drinks slamming down,
some gently too, light chatter.
- Weather ambient needs to be added. When it rains it should sound like rain. Just using ambient sounds you can give a effect of a really bad thunderstorm or just a light rain. Different weather intensities, sometimes its raining hard with lightning or raining lightly, really fast windstorms to soft windstorms. That's just with sounds maybe very little animation for lightning. Can even tie in greater element bonus during harsher weather.

Ul'Dah - For sounds, Ul'Dah could use a light crowd roar of talking on the outer streets and gets quieter if not silent the further inside the city you go. Have the rare sandstorm so bad it gets in the city and this can be accompanied by a change in music and strong wings. Eventually, when you get higher up in Ul'Dah have sounds of birds and the harsh winds of the desert. Outside the desert could be rattle snake sounds, wolves howling, etc.

Limsa Lominsa - This is an easy one, of course again light crowd roar of people talking throughout most the city, but also seagulls squawking in abundance (but not to the point of annoyance), people blowing their horns as they come into harbor to alert the docks. Whales blow hole noise in the distance would be cool as well along with the animation for it. Creaking boat noises if you are near the docks and such.

Gridania - When near the outside of the Adventures Guild, the roar of the water and creaking of the wheel turning should be decently audible seeing as it's giant. Animal calls echoing from the forest into the city, woodpecker sounds, tree's swaying/creaking in the wind. Crowd roar would be quieter and in pockets of the city compared to the others. And when the Garleans invade could introduce the sound of falling tree's and a faint burning sound.


I'll leave it at that. Because this is ridiculously long.
I hope you guys do read it though and give your thoughts
and what you feel could add to this!
I hope they consider to implement things like this later on.