Are we as players afraid of a challenge?

[Windi]

Yeaaaaaaaah no.

Aside from how the dev team would need to overhaul a lot to make your idea work, the general problem with a high-risk open worlds like that is that they are difficult to create a sense of pacing with the difficulty. The quickest way you can turn off new players is to immediately punish them before they get properly adjusted to the game's mechanics; that's why (in my own analysis of this game's design) monsters start out as mostly static.

Also, I'd like to know why you think getting from one town to the next should be that much of a challenge to begin with? Like, if the only real reward or satisfaction you receive is simply "I got to the next town, now I got to do it again for the next!" then what's the point? I really don't think trivial tasks should have any more risk than what's already presented in this game.

[Keramory]

Also, I'd like to know why you think getting from one town to the next should be that much of a challenge to begin with? Like, if the only real reward or satisfaction you receive is simply "I got to the next town, now I got to do it again for the next!" then what's the point? I really don't think trivial tasks should have any more risk than what's already presented in this game.

There should be an middle ground with this. The reward of traveling to a place far off, is it gives a sense of the scale of the world. The danger does indeed give an accomplished feeling. I still joke with FFXI players about the first runs to Juneo to this day, 10 years later...something every FFXI player knows about. Granted it's a small thing, but to talk about 10 years later is quite worth the hassle. It was a JOURNEY. I don't think I'll talk about anything like that with this game sadly.

Honestly that goes with most of FFXI in general as well. Aside from daily grinding, I recall fairly well every event I had in that game, due to its difficulty and reward for completing it. That horrible grind to level really made the missions/cutscenes/completion special to me and others.

[Welsper59]

There should be an middle ground with this. The reward of traveling to a place far off, is it gives a sense of the scale of the world. The danger does indeed give an accomplished feeling. I still joke with FFXI players about the first runs to Juneo to this day, 10 years later...something every FFXI player knows about. Granted it's a small thing, but to talk about 10 years later is quite worth the hassle. It was a JOURNEY. I don't think I'll talk about anything like that with this game sadly.

Honestly that goes with most of FFXI in general as well. Aside from daily grinding, I recall fairly well every event I had in that game, due to its difficulty and reward for completing it. That horrible grind to level really made the missions/cutscenes/completion special to me and others.

Don't forget to credit the fact that the quality of the story and soundtrack together made for a far grander adventure to experience than what we get in modern MMO's (including here). While this game has a great story, it isn't told in the same way. Here, you're just a rather cheesy tool that is intentionally cliched (i.e. The Warrior of Nodding). It's odd to really think about, but the fact that our characters are some important focal point of the story doesn't seem to mesh as well.

I guess the best example I can think of is the fact that we're generally more interested in the other characters than we are with our own. In games like XI and WoW, your character becomes a recognized figure of importance, but still a "normal" person. In light of that, the story doesn't necessarily center around you, but rather the happenings of others. Granted that the finale for XI's story centers around that same concept, it's done in such a finely tuned way that it actually makes some sense... over a decade of story build up can certainly ease a cliche plot into being a lot more memorable. While we do experience that here, the inclusion of the WoL focus from the very beginning is where it results in being cheesy at times and thus, an odd thing to think about.

One other thing to note is that the reward never changed from start to finish (for the most part). XI managed to keep the status quo constant without players really noticing. Because of the inclusion of things like Merit Points and, to a lesser degree, a need to keep a high amount of exp on your capped level so that you don't de-level (yes, that was definitely a thing to anyone who didn't play), your sense of reward was long lasting. Not only did you get gear, you also kept the sense of reward for "leveling" going thanks to Merit Points making your character stronger. In another instance, XIV suffers similar to WoW by comparison, but a far greater way when you hit max level, simply due to the limitations of doing old content (not to mention WoW has over 10 more years of content compared to XIV).