Zone transitions

[Magic-Mal]

Totally agree, this is the worst offender in my opinion.

Worst offender?? Have you tried Coerthas Western Highlands <--> Sea Of Clouds? xD

[Pomelo]

Is that the one from the gate to the weird floating island? :/ Yeah thats really bad too....xD

[SilkaN]

Does OP really want "proper" zone transitions?

He'd have to walk...

...quite a...

...bit.

[Astyrah]

Does OP really want "proper" zone transitions?

He'd have to walk...

...quite a...

...bit.

tbh i dont mind having those ingame if it means pleasing a certain group of people (like the OP) for immersion. we have mounts and teleports for people who don't want to travel that much anyway

but from those images (are they from 1.x??) i can see that they're way too bland and boring.. could use more detail in the environment

[Masekase_Hurricane]

As it currently stands I would rather not have more land to walk on. There is not much to do in the open world, so adding more to the map(transition areas) would be a waste of time.

[Pells]

tbh i dont mind having those ingame if it means pleasing a certain group of people (like the OP) for immersion. we have mounts and teleports for people who don't want to travel that much anyway

but from those images (are they from 1.x??) i can see that they're way too bland and boring.. could use more detail in the environment

They're likely from escaping the normal paths and exploring the out-of-bound areas. They're meant to be background and not seen close-up, and so aren't as detailed.
Of course if you could walk everywhere instead of zoning, they'd need to fill in details for all those long boring stretches or it'd look pretty much like this. Lots of work.

[SilkaN]

tbh i dont mind having those ingame if it means pleasing a certain group of people (like the OP) for immersion. we have mounts and teleports for people who don't want to travel that much anyway

but from those images (are they from 1.x??) i can see that they're way too bland and boring.. could use more detail in the environment

I merely posted these to show OP that the North Shroud being devoid of snow is justified. There's just too much distance between it and Coerthas.

As to where these screenshots have been taken or whose screenshots they are... who knows?

[Holy-chan]

Worst offender?? Have you tried Coerthas Western Highlands <--> Sea Of Clouds? xD

That's different. There is a large distance between Ishgard and Sea of Clouds. One does not just walk to the Sea of Clouds. You go there in a traversible. It is implied that there is considerable distance.

[Antonio_Xul]

What if instead of fade to black with the zone name when we change zones, we get an image of what is between the zones. Maybe have character walking the path or something. Just to give us an image of the transition.

[bass9020]

I found the interview with Yoshi talking about zones in October of 2011!(and other things) enjoy,

Yoshi-P:
Yes. Even with the loading screen, we've come to the conclusion that it's more important to create large, dynamic maps.
For example, when you attempt to climb a mountain in a seamless map, in most cases you will literally have to climb from the ground floor and up. I don't think everyone wants to climb mountains when they're playing a game. All they really want to do is experience the actual content present on top of the map like, say, a Falcon's Nest that's located on the very peak. Climbing then becomes an unnecessary task that needs to be done before players get to tackle such content.
Also, if we try to actually implement the road towards the mountaintop, because of memory issues the road will be more like a narrow corridor than an actual 'road'. And because a narrow corridor is just that, narrow, so monsters will have to be packed in tightly. And because they have to be packed in tightly, it will then be difficult for players to slip by noticed and thus be forced to fight the monsters. While we can solve the problem by not putting monsters alone the road altogether, this in turn creates another problem in being a rather boring journey climbing towards the top.

source: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...er-GAME-Watch)