Message to Developers about Map redesigns...

[Zanfire]

In FFXI, I could tell where I was and where to go just by looking around me. In FFXIV, I don't control my character, I control the little arrow on the map screen.

A-god damn men.

[Vahzl]

Honestly, you cannot defend the design of the Black Shroud. It is miles and miles of the same cut/paste terrain. It is ridiculously over sized, and holds no purpose than to extend a 10 minute quest into an hour.

The cities as they are have too much empty space too, like Gridania, try being a Conjurer and having to run up and down that pointless corridor to the guild and bank every time you need to hand in a quest. It's just silly the amount of running I have done this week on my character. Frankly if the exp system was more realistic, my Lalafell would have legs like tree trunks now, from all that exercise.

[Dallie]

Wall of text hits you and crits for 24,124 damage!
You are dead!

You absorb 0 intelligence from the Wall of Text.

[Anty]

you must be kidding... There is nothing perfect about the maps... "learn how to read and use the maps".
I love the general design of the BlackS but... its too copy pasted, its all the same, and not only in the blackS. everywhere.
And the post is useless since they are working on the redesigns already anyways and for a good reason....

[Lucinda_Lecore]

I have to put my hands up and admit that the copy and paste thing is a bit insulting. Not only that, but it adds no gravity to the world, everything in it just looks, so-so.

As for navigation, I have no personal grudge with the Black Shroud, or any other area for that matter. However, there needs to be some changes with the current zones AND the introduction of new zones.

Personally, I would love it if the split the current zones into 2, maybe 3 smaller zones. This will make them easier to digest, as well as giving the devs the oportunity to change some of the features. As an example: the Black Shroud could be split into 3 main areas. The first, being as it is. Another could be perhaps like a "dead forrest", a place where all the leaves have long died and the trees are black and bare. the 3rd zone, IDK, I'm sure many of you would have some ideas.

Secondly, I would like to see new zones give a bit more punch to the astetics and the scale of the world. Large mountains would be nice. Riddled with caves and crooked wooden bridges. Or perhaps closer to the top would be covered in snow.

Also, settlements would be great. The world seems so small at the moment, and i beleive that is due to there only being a small number of settlements in the game. Why not a couple of towns, or a village or two.

To summerise (my personal wishlist at least lol):

*Keep the current zones, but devide them up into smaller, easier to manage zones.
*give them a small make-over. Nothing too drastic, but something less insulting to our intelligence.
*a world which actually feels like a world, mountains, rivers, lakes, snowtops etc (maybe the odd ruined castle)
*more settlements, Let's get this world more populated (with npc's and buildings)

Lucinda xXx

[Preypacer]

I do apologize for my long winded and unparagraphed original post. I apologize for the wall of text but got a kick out of the comment pertaining to "The wall of text hits you for 24k+ damage!". Again, sorry about that. My post was made because I like the maps the way they are and maybe it's just me, but I have no problem with the way they are currently set up even if there is a lot of copy/pasta terrain.

Improvements to this would be welcome and I would love to see more diverse environments rather than the same set of designs for areas being used over and over all over the map. However, I don't want environments to lose any detail. I want XIV to remain as beautiful as it currently is without losing any of the lushness of the lush environments like The
Black Shroud.

Pyrix, or Ayaka, I do apologize if my desire for unchanged maps and terrains is upsetting to you. I completely understand your disappointment with copy/pasta terrain and your desire for the maps to be updated so that the terrain doesn't look the same in each particular zone. Also, I completely respect your desire for the maps to be changed. I personally like things the way they are and started this thread, aimed at the developers, in hopes of keeping them the same.

I see that they are already working to change the terrain so my post was in vain, but at least I tried. Again all apologies where apologies are due and Pyrix, or Ayaka, I'm not an idiot. I had an opinion and I wanted to express it on these forums. I apologize that my opinion differed from yours and I have faith that SE will make the maps, terrains, even more awesome and easier to navigate than they currently are. Thanks again for your time everyone in reading and responding to my post!

I don't think you have to worry about the areas being any less "lush" or interesting than they are now. In fact, I'll contend, they'll likely end up being even more interesting and more diverse and lush. For one, they're giving each sub-region its own feel... I don't know if you caught the quick screen-cap that Yoshi put up during his live Q&A, but you can make out enough between the color schemes of the map itself, and the small thumbnails detailing each location to see there's going to be a bit of variety now in the areas.

For another, the way the maps are set up now looks fine graphically. There's tons of detail to be seen in the texture art, the environment models, etc. The problem is, there's no personality, nothing distinguishing one location from another. There are no key landmarks to look for (in most cases) to get a bearing on where you are... because everything is the same. It's very homogeneous.

Yes the map is very handy, as it should be when you're in more unfamiliar territory and don't know your way around as well yet. But when you've passed through the same areas dozens of times and still need the map to get your bearing, simply because there's nothing to set it apart from any other instance of that same exact map section... that's a bit much.

No lie, at one point I started counting the number of little streams I'd crossed to know where I was in Black Shroud without having to open the map as much.

In FFXI, you could blind-fold me, drop me in the middle of almost any zone and within moments of unblindfolding me, I could tell you where I was and, further, whereabouts on the map we were... just by looking around. That's because XI's area designs were more varied, certain "skylines" or land structures became familiar and stood out because they were unique - or nearly unique - within that given area.

Even within dungeons, there was usually enough variety from one area to the next that you could figure out where you were. The only place I seemed to have trouble with that was the area of Eldiemme with the gates, 'cause its design was basically the same layout mirrored 4 ways. The only indication I had in there of what end of the map I was on, most times, was finding out which gate I was closest to.

To be honest, though again, it looks great grapically layout wise, the areas in XIV are boring as hell right now. Way too repetitve, way too homogeneous and way too uninteresting.

Yoshi-P and team seek to fix that.

Better yet, the changes will play into a world event that's going to change Eorzea as we know it, not only geographically, but apparently in terms of the storyline and such as well. So it's not like this arbitrary "Black Shroud used to look like this... now it looks like this" just because. There will be lore to support it.

Personally, I'm psyched.

[Preypacer]

I get the feeling that these areas really weren't designed from the ground up as actual places. Rather, when I look at the Coerthas main map, I get the feeling that these "areas" are a collection of square-shaped map tiles that have been laid side by side. Some of the tiles were rotated, and some were edited a little, and then they were dropped down alongside each other. Plop enough of them down, do a little more editing, and voila!: a field map.

Bingo. That's exactly what it is and how it was put together. Very intuitive!

In fact if you look closely, you can get an idea of where the tiles meet by looking at the overall design in some places. In Thanalan - especially in the narrow pathways between the regions - there are these arbitrary little "nooks" cut into each side of the corridor. They'll always run either perfectly N to S or E to W. Those are tile margins.

To prove it further, you can go to those spots and, looking closely, you'll see where they meet.. The textures don't match up perfectly and you can see a line running through it. It's not glaring and you have to look closely, 'cause SE did a great job with their texturing to make it as seamless as possible. But it's definitely there.

Funny thing is... FFXI was designed the same way. Only thing different with XI is they clearly were much more careful about how the tiles were created and allowed themselves a lot more variety in how they could be assembled. Hence, you end up with much more interesting and far less repetitive maps in XI. There is repetition... it's a bit more obvious in some places than in others... but it's not nearly as much as XIV.

[Genz]

I get the feeling that these areas really weren't designed from the ground up as actual places. Rather, when I look at the Coerthas main map, I get the feeling that these "areas" are a collection of square-shaped map tiles that have been laid side by side. Some of the tiles were rotated, and some were edited a little, and then they were dropped down alongside each other. Plop enough of them down, do a little more editing, and voila!: a field map.

That's how about every games are created.
What FFXIV hasn't done is re-using the same 3D objects with different textures (heavily used in FFXI, for example ; less complaints because players are more focused on textures than 3D objects) and it seems there is only 1 layer of tiles in FFXIV (2 layers should be a minimum - ground + objects like trees, houses, etc. - which allow more variety with composition)

[Venat]

Copy pasted is fine long as theres enough type of rocks and other landscape layouts. Also its important for them to spread it out.

FFXIV did it way too much.

I still see copy & pasted stuff when they redo areas but hopefully its not so bad.

They can also easyly change the copy pasted area by just covering it up with trees, bushes, rocks so it looks then what you seen before.

[Nakiamiie]

I support the map redesign.

The current maps will be obsolete when jumping comes into the game, also the new direction since Yoshi-P has rendered some features obsolete already (airship docks in the wild not being used, auction house in Limsa Lominsa never to be used, Grand Companies/Market Wards/etc. down the same little alley while they should have a physical seamless place in town).

While I believe the maps are great as they are now, I also believe they are not suited for Yoshi-P and devs new direction with the game. We can have better maps for FFXIV, maps that will fully support seamlessly current content and futur content. That's what I hope they are aiming for, seamless maps with a lot of diversity in them. It is possible to do and I want to believe in them. Also, what is for sure, they will not release worst maps, that's a given. So, nothing to lose in my opinion.