The World: so Big so Beautiful... But yet so empty

[Hycinthus]

I think it will feel empty for those who used to play other MMOs and play in PvP server. Because during your journey in the world , you will never feel that danger or excitement that you felt before.

[Ksenia]

This has been an issue since 1.0 shut down. SE is still gun shy to the point of paranoid about the OW, Sandbox concept. They go out of their way to crush it in the extremes. You would need 5000 kills to mob level from 60 to 61 and yet when you run through the world you carry a draggro everywhere you go, forcing you to keep moving at all times, never stopping to appreciate anything around you. Even combat leve, the ratio is 30:1 for leveling and has never been a true option in FF14. It's unfortunate.

[LukasRavenholme]

When I was camping Ixion about a few weeks ago, I would sit there crafting, staring from Porta Praetoria across the Lochs and towards Ala Mhigo.

No airships or ground caravans going in or out of that city. It just sits there like it's Anor Londo, pristine but lifeless, surrounded by awful monsters. No signs of life from the outside. MAYBE it's on lockdown or martial law. Maybe there's a curfew and a temporary travel ban due to the war. Maybe it will change in 4.1 but I doubt it somehow. Right now it just seems...off. Other Eorzean cities aren't much different.

Kind of depressing. I wish the cities had more stuff going on around them like other final fantasy games (Lindblum, Rabanastre). Airships, caravans, travelers actually moving about. Maybe once the Empire is wiped off the map (or peace treaty signed), Eorzea will be abuzz with airships and ambient travelers. Again, though, not a lot of hope. This game can barely handle 200+ people beating on one boss without culling. SE has optimization to consider.

[Jhett_Magnum]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...threads/341847

[Driavna]

I spend a lot of time in the open world doing hunt bills, tribe quest, gathering, regular quests, vistas, treasure maps, leves even Fates if I'm leveling a DPS class. The content is there but force people to do stuff they don't want it's not a good idea.

[Gemina]

I spend a lot of time in the open world doing hunt bills, tribe quest, gathering, regular quests, vistas, treasure maps, leves even Fates if I'm leveling a DPS class. The content is there but force people to do stuff they don't want it's not a good idea.

Pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.

There are already tons of ways for players to interact with the open world. It is lush full of content, and they just choose not to do it. Adding fresh content won't sustain interest in it if it does not serve to provide towards player's long term goals, or if more efficient means exist elsewhere.

If more players instead interacted with each other in the open world, it would draw more players into it. The game even adds audio of a noisy crowd when enough players are herded together that I find very encouraging. It sucks when players are shouting at each other when an elite mark is pulled early, but at least they are interacting with one another. It would be awesome if a positive spin could be put on something of that caliber. Right now though, every time I bow and say thank you to a random who helped me bring a mob down, their usual response is to whistle for their chocobo, and fly away.

In short, if we want the open world to be more active, we need to actively spend more time there. Simple as that.

[Alleo]

There are already tons of ways for players to interact with the open world. It is lush full of content, and they just choose not to do it. Adding fresh content won't sustain interest in it if it does not serve to provide towards player's long term goals, or if more efficient means exist elsewhere.

Other than a new treasure map none of the overworld things are new. Its content that was already part of ARR thus people might be getting bored of doing that content again and again for years? Hunts and fates are mindless zerg content that is not fun. And they also spawn in certain places thus you dont need to look at the whole map. If you have max rank with the beast tribes you also wont do much of them anymore, especially if you already have the mounts and items. (But they are at least interesting for a time) Regular quests are a one time deal and only take part in certain parts of the maps. If people are done with them they have no chance to do them again.

So nothing is really new with SB so people might not just feel the need to do any of the content they already did hundreds of time. (Hunt is still done but you are mostly waiting for it to be posted and fly to the place and go away again) So most of the time these zones are nothing more than eye candy and even that is not a good candy. They have a nice landscape but there is simply no real life inside of this.

So zones that have content that is old and overdone with barely anything interesting to look at. Its not surprising that there is barely anyone here.

About your last sentence: Why should anyone wants to spend more time in the overworld if there is nothing really interesting going on anyway? All the NPCs are in the main hubs, the content in the maps are old or one time only and its not like you could go around and truly see something new in the zones. Kugane tower is a really frustrating but at the same time great experience. Thanks to the jumping puzzle, the view and the sightseeing point people are alway trying to get up there. It was fun to finally be able to sit on the top and talk to people and laugh at the failures of the others (while knowing their pain). I was a bit sad to have to do other things since I know that I would not try to do the puzzle again.

If they had more of those things in the overworld I am quite sure that we would have more community interaction too. It does not always have to be about fighting, one could have lore stuff that has to be found, puzzles that have to be solved and things like that. And on top of that you could introduce more events that are taking place in the world. For example in Rift they have the "Rifts" that are always opening all over the maps which you either can do alone or with others joining in (it will scale depending on the numbers of players near it) but its not all. Sometimes you will have bigger events that will take place, like some armies of enemies marching towards certain points in a map. People have to defend places from monsters, have to take certain bosses down and more. It was a great way to level and much more fun than our fates. Also from time to time you will have an nightmare rift in a zone. This is a theoretically unending spawn of monsters. You have your few normal rounds and after that the bonus rounds. Depending on the skill of the people this can go on for a long time. I had groups (you can just join in there) where we only got 12 bonus rounds until the time per round went down. And I had a group of players where we lost after over 400 bonus rounds. It took a long time and it was kinda just killing things but every few rounds you had a boss that would randomly be chosen and that could probably kill quite a lot of people if they did not pay attention. In the end I was sweating, tired but really happy and I am always looking forward to these rifts. There is nothing like that in FF14. You will have some rare fates and sometimes you will have some chain fates but mostly its just all the normal fates that you do over and over again.

[Mysticdraggon]

I spend a lot of time in the open world doing hunt bills, tribe quest, gathering, regular quests, vistas, treasure maps, leves even Fates if I'm leveling a DPS class. The content is there but force people to do stuff they don't want it's not a good idea.

while true, i think the main topic is mostly leaning toward just stuff to do and see within the world.

for example, a carriage system. just hop on any carriage and enjoy a nice ride.

or maybe even a boat rental system, to which player could "rent" a boat and sail on a waters surface at mount speed.

there is also the option to add more small creatures within the world that are not mobs that want to kill you on site.

another big change i would like to see is maybe even a migration and interaction herd system for other mobs.

just small stuff like that.

[GavynG]

They need more world content outside of FATEs (bleh @ FATEs), and Hunts. Hunts can be fun. Treasure Maps are nice. I also gather to get more out of the zones, but I'm sure SE could come up with more content to do out in the open world. So long as it's rewarding. And no, the sightseeing log is barely content.

Although it's arguable how good the content was, it was nice having things like Verminion and PotD added throughout HW. I'm looking forward to what they bring in the major patches throughout SB. Hated Diadem though. The areas were too meh and it started out as a chore/RNG exercise, especially after they nerfed it. What I want is to have reasons to explore the new areas they already added (like with Hunts), not go to more instances to do some sort of grind like Diadem. More things to interact with in the zones would be a good start. More solo content and maybe even expand Companion options some more to run through the content with.

[Alleo]

And strangely most of those things that make the world feel more alive is part of a ARR. (Like the retainers and that fate chain)

Sadly this will not make the world feel more alive in the whole world.