I guess it's time

[HeavenlyArmed]

Well the new 8 man dungeons would end up being the new raids. Just wouldn't be like it is now just with a single boss fight. Something like AV, cutters cry & Darkhold was in the 1.23b. First Coil was so so but then they just started with just direct boss fights. Raids are actually dungeons, not how xiv calls them. There would still be endgame content. Players would just have to plan out how they did a dungeon and how they defeat the boss on a raid scale, something more complex dungeon wise like the first coil turn.

In terms of the flying, yes it ruins the exploring aspect of a game once you have the ability to fly. In next expansion I hope they had boats as the next new form of transportation & having the zones be the same kinda size as ARR zones are. You would still have the option to ride chocobos, go on foot, or ride your boat on lakes or rivers or part of the ocean till you hit a invisable wall. They aren't going to ever add flying to ARR zones so its not that big of a deal not having the option to fly everywhere. You wouldn't expect all flying mount to dive underwater would you. On foot, on air, on water, underwater, in space. If the next expansion is a underwater expansion then it will probably not need the option to fly.

So on the first part, we basically stand for the same thing, just wording it differently. Raids should actually be raids, as opposed to what they've become which is effectively just Trials that aren't added to Trial Roulette. Raids should be big areas that need to be explored, similar to how it worked in Binding Coil, especially turns 1 and 3 (though there shouldn't be entire sections without bosses like 3, that was dumb and we all know it). Maybe even take it a step further and have the raids no longer be disjointed like they have been since the start and have a raid tier all be in one continuous area.

As for flying, it really depends on how you look at it for if it really ruins exploring. If the zones are made explicitly with flying in mind, as they were in Heavensward, I don't think that flying takes anything away and actually adds to the experience of traveling these zones. But for that same reason, flying would never work in ARR zones. If we get some other form of travel that we use similarly to how we used flying in 3.0, then I wouldn't miss not having flying, but I don't think flying is something that should be avoided as a concept in zone development, as imo this expansion has shown how it can really play to a zone's strengths to have it.

[Beetle]

As for flying, it really depends on how you look at it for if it really ruins exploring. If the zones are made explicitly with flying in mind, as they were in Heavensward, I don't think that flying takes anything away and actually adds to the experience of traveling these zones. But for that same reason, flying would never work in ARR zones. If we get some other form of travel that we use similarly to how we used flying in 3.0, then I wouldn't miss not having flying, but I don't think flying is something that should be avoided as a concept in zone development, as imo this expansion has shown how it can really play to a zone's strengths to have it.

Yeah exactly. But the issue with heavenward zones I find is they have it so big that they can't fill the zone with alot of detail since it has a very wide view of everything in game.
So if they had smaller zones they would be able to fill them more with detail. If you look around in most of the graphics in the heavenwards area its missing stuff like grass. It just has a lot of plane textures with not much overlap.

Personal exp, I jump outta bounds sometimes to explore the view. But they would have to basically remake all of ARR to fix all the background issues and actually give purpose to flying in these zones. Plus it would just ruin sight seeing for the ARR areas if players could just land on everything. Also if they did this they might have to drop PS3 support also.

I really hope they add boats mounts. If they do they could rework a few zones in ARR & even less in heavensward where we can go into rivers & beaches without alot of work having to be done with them. Like the water around Alexander, Rivers in the black shroud, Beaches & Rivers of Costa De Sol. West Thanalan is like the only zone with a body of water.