Open up the world, please! Part I

[KisaiTenshi]

Have nothing to do with 2.0, the same did the airships also in 1.0

It's pretty clear from the Gridania opening cutscenes that they had intended on Airships being how players got to these locations at some point rather than the Aetherytes, but I sat and watched one of these locations for quite a while in V1.00 and never saw any airship arrive, so maybe it was something that was abandoned before being just a cutscene. I had expected a similar effort that the ferry had where you actually were on an airship for at least a minute with other players. The only place they brought this back was with the ship to Kugane. (The very same ship model from V1.0 no less, if you watch the cutscene while you're on it below deck.) Other versions of ships in the game never let you go below deck other than the one at the Wolves Den.

What I really want is a large Airship like FFVI's Blackjack where you have a top deck, a lounge/quarters, and an engine room. But all airships in the game are these tiny rowboat-sized things that clearly weren't designed to fly around the world. Give me my large airship that I can either pilot manually or set a course and then go below deck and do other things.

As for the space between La Noscea and Thanalan, I think the Ruby Sea area was rather disappointing in terms of scale, they even lampshaded the fact that you could swim across it. The space between La Noscea and Thanalan is about the same.

[BigRed5392]

So you're asking me to choose between long tunnels to act as loading between zones or a black screen with the name of the zone splashed on it? I'm going to choose the black screen. Most players would just whine that the long tunnels are too long and they want to get through them faster while having no idea that those tunnels are just there to slow the player down so the next area can load. It's like elevators in Mass Effect. People hated them because they were slow, but they existed to hide loading screens.

don't forget thpse mid zone lines out oin the middle of the zones. Like the one in thanalan. those lines that you would see ppl disappear at.

[JunseiKei]

Black Desert Online is one, giant seamless map...

...And it's so incredibly empty with 0 fast travelling save for how high of a tiered horse you have. The game actively forces you to "enjoy" the scenery (which was truly enjoyable the first couple of times and quickly became a chore). To be frank, unless you want to travel everywhere on chocobo, there's no reason to implement this at all. If a majority of players fast travel, why make the maps seamless?

[BigRed5392]

I don't know how anyone can fight this idea.

It's wonderful, I'd love for the world to be truly open. It would be wonderful indeed.

1.0 players know what happen.

large empty zones with halls and tunnels. Look at 1.0 black shroud.

the bigger the map, the less they can put in it.

[Galka_Rock]

The logistics of your idea are just off the charts. Having an option to disable tunnels would just make tunnels an absolute waste of resources as very few people would ever use them. Not only that, but your "Quick Transit" idea is just a loading screen! While I personally enjoyed the tunnels, I did have gripes about them. I don't think I'd want them back, but then again I rarely do anything that requires me to actually zone to different areas outside of teleporting.

You're saying just what I meant, though I should have put it into better words. "Quick transit" would just be the loading screens with everything as they were with the release of 2.0.

Everyone TPs everywhere in the first place, so it wouldn't take so long to get around, even with transition zones. It would just be nice to see things get bigger again. Like in the Heavensward and Stormblood zones. Transition zones would make the world feel bigger again.

[Galka_Rock]

That's why I mentioned Ul'dah should not be seamlessly connected. Not being allowed to walk in through the front gates is annoying because they are totally connected to Thanalan. However, Limsa had bridges, and Gridania had canopies.

[Hazuki87]

Hell No! The end!

[Naunet]

So you're asking me to choose between long tunnels to act as loading between zones or a black screen with the name of the zone splashed on it? I'm going to choose the black screen.

Personally I prefer when zones are completely seamless and you can freely cross over borders - a la WoW, Rift, TERA, WildStar, etc.

I'm not against instanced zones, per se, but you have to make use of them well... Guild Wars 2 zones are absolutely massive and rich. FFXIV zones are stifled by invisible walls and feel very isolated from each other. It's especially bad in the ARR zones, but even HW and SB zones suffer from this. It feels like we don't really get any of the supposed benefits that come with instanced zones.

[KisaiTenshi]

Personally I prefer when zones are completely seamless and you can freely cross over borders - a la WoW, Rift, TERA, WildStar, etc.

I'm not against instanced zones, per se, but you have to make use of them well... Guild Wars 2 zones are absolutely massive and rich. FFXIV zones are stifled by invisible walls and feel very isolated from each other. It's especially bad in the ARR zones, but even HW and SB zones suffer from this. It feels like we don't really get any of the supposed benefits that come with instanced zones.

No games aside from minecraft and similar clones are actually fully seamless. Minecraft and similar are procedurally generated (and often awful, if not unrealistic looking) and these games are very-very-very empty other than a few choice prefabricated biomes that appear in places.

Games that have lore and storylines actually need to have "baked" scenery, at least as far as the places the storyline takes you. However the need to do gathering/hunting for crafting is another reason why zones are fixed a certain way.

I'd love to see a game correctly use procedural landscapes (Landmark was actually a non-ugly minecraft if you believe it or not) but it was also just a bunch if tiny instanced procedural, morphable, self-healing, landscapes rather than anything with lore potential. Also it turns out that letting users create buildings/dungeons, just has them create a lot of dead-ends for people to get stuck in.

The thing in FFXIV V1.0 was that Ul'dah was one map. It wasn't a north and south section. Likewise with Gridania. You frequently end up having to do quests that cross the zone boundary, and even if you play the game from SSD, the fact that you have to wait several seconds to cross it, and then have to cross it again later feels jarring. Like, for some reason they decided to put the crafting sections in one half of the map and the Central Aetheryte and GC building in the other half. It's especially annoying in some quests where you repeatedly cross the zone boundary. It might only take a few seconds for me, but someone playing on a laptop probably sits there for 30 seconds.

I could see the developers try to restore the single-map versions of the cities, as I don't really see any point, to how they're broken up. There's never 200 people standing in one spot except when new content places a new NPC (as was the case with RDM) and even that didn't matter because it was the solo-instance that bottle necked it.

[Kalocin]

No games aside from minecraft and similar clones are actually fully seamless. Minecraft and similar are procedurally generated (and often awful, if not unrealistic looking) and these games are very-very-very empty other than a few choice prefabricated biomes that appear in places.

Seamless generally refers to the loading screens not permanent world space. For instance there is no loading screens outside of going underground in Shrines for Breath of the Wild. Yeah there's a giant low poly mountain model in the distance you can't get to but there's no loading in what you CAN get to. That's seamless, which makes it feel more like a world rather then a series of "maps" or "boxes". There are immersive elements in every game as much as there are in movies (in game emotes and animations are immersive elements for instance), seamless borders is just another aspect of it.

That being said, WoW alone had to remake their world just to allow flying in it, and that is a game with seamless borders. FFXIV would be a nightmare by comparison. I think it's a good idea moving forward to have bigger zones (Kugane is a whole city compared to Ishgard), hopefully they can improve on it for future zones.