Really miss locations that are no longer accessible (When there were no load screens)

[Felis]

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest.../blog/2456953/

i would say you can mount up and ride.

Everything that was possible after last save day don't count.

[Seig345]

Ifrit's eruptions (Japan-based servers = that AOE latency issue affecting most NA players), market wards with no search or category functions (not even in the names), getting lost NOT because the world was vast and unfamiliar but because it was like running around those halls of doorways from the Matrix movie (only "prettier"), 10+ minutes just to clear out junk loot from inventory, double-confirmations required for all actions, rooting around for a 3rd part direct-download option for the latest patch, 90% of the player population being in Ul'dah because it's the middle city in a world far too large for the server population to spread out and still find people to do things with, which was mainly just a handful of dungeons, a limited number of leves, or grinding the same world mobs over and over again with next to no interesting story in between on the way to level cap.

I might miss the old game's graphic engine, a few parts of the world, and the music, but there's no way I'd go back to actually/seriously playing 1.x again, not with 2.0+ here.

[Vurtney]

While 1.0 had a great atmosphere the maps were repeative. 2.0 fixed that with points of interest but smaller maps due to certain console.

A full open world is a pipe dream at this point but i'd like that design (spoiled by warcraft) Map size aside the world could use something to make it more alive. Animals, critters, not just monsters but your typical wildlife. Oh, and better lighting (1.0 lighting was great)

[Kallera]

This is about map and exploration and how to improve it. No one's asking about ui, levequests, and the like.

[Catwho]

One thing I will toss in is that if you play on an SSD, the zone load times are minimal to the point where they are barely noticeable. I think the zone name screen flashes for around 3 seconds on my computer before the zone appears.

#1 thing you can do to improve your game performance, whether on PC or console, is swap in a solid state drive.

[Magis]

Also the 'no loading screens in 1.0' is a myth as well - there were loading screens

I've been playing with the private server someone create for 1.0. Actually the game was seamless. From what I gathered, it was more of a weird design SE did. The client kept a list of "actors" (players/npcs/objects) within to render and track. The server would send info to the client saying "update actor's HP" or "kill actor" or "add/remove actor". Now, when you crossed that line, what was happening was the game was clearing the actor list, and adding in one by one new actors. This is why you'd see characters fade in and out. However on the server itself this was still all seamless with no zone lines (until you switched regions). There was no loading of new assets, but downloading of people around you.

This is of course my guess, but from looking at that guy's code, it seems to be the case. ARR does this as well, but they do it around a radius of yourself, so it's not painfully obvious. This is why Guildworks doesn't "detect" a hunt mob until it's visible.

[Thandronen]

One thing I will toss in is that if you play on an SSD, the zone load times are minimal to the point where they are barely noticeable. I think the zone name screen flashes for around 3 seconds on my computer before the zone appears.

#1 thing you can do to improve your game performance, whether on PC or console, is swap in a solid state drive.

I couldn't agree more. I get around SO much faster since I swapped one in!

[Aeyis]

I'm not sure how you can call "exploration" when the map was an entire copy/paste of the same section over and over.

Use that example one more time please. And then I will make my own strawman as the guy in 1.0 did: take a screenshot of the MAP and show all the copypasted areas ON THE MAP.


I'll take it you have not played then. How was the Limsa bridge copypasted? How was walking outside of Ul'dah? How were the overworld dungeons copypasted?


And blimey. The more time passes Balmung is really starting to get that whole 'Outland' feel.

Also the 'no loading screens in 1.0' is a myth as well - there were loading screens, they were just cleverly hidden by the labyrinthine city and zone design

It's no myth. And its a comparison to say ''compared to now there were few loading screens and the total time was less'', which it was; not the ''no'' you claim.
Loading screens now take ages, and we have many of them. My favorites are the ones in Ul'dah where you have to load twice just to visit the boards, and the ones in Limsa where you have to load twice to visit the adventurer's guild.

I can tell you for someone who started in Gridania in 1.0, the copy-paste was EXTREMELY visible. You ran through the one setpiece that was a corridor with a small bulge in the middle where a river ran through about 11 times just on your way to Camp Tranquil.

That's like the map strawman guy. He used the Black Shroud even tho it was kind of the place that was ment to have that look to begin with. La Noscea and Thanalan were quite different. The Black Shroud was easily the worst example of 'copy-pasting' yet oddly enough its the only one ever uses as argument for ''it had a lot of copy-pasting''

Ifrit's eruptions (Japan-based servers = that AOE latency issue affecting most NA players)

Haha, that's exactly what its like for EU players in 2.0 and even now tho.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

FFXI would of been a great Sandbox game honestly. Not a great Themepark game, it needed a ton of polish and a reworked combat system. The crafting/gameplay/world... meh needed fixed.

Archeage's Gameplay (Different combat, Without the Greed/RNG/100s of bugs) would of made it amazing.

[Theodric]

You can thank PS3 Limitations™ for the need to limit the map size.

To be fair, Heavensward improved the size of zones considerably. I hope that if and when support for the PS3 is dropped then we'll see future expansion content bring us even bigger zones.