Quote Originally Posted by Rane View Post
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.