Invisible walls everywhere.

[NathanZ]

I can understand why some are in the game, but wow there are so many that are just there for absolutely no reason. Why?
The game would flow so much better and feel sooo much more alive if the players could just go where they actually wanted.

[Ryannex]

They had this in 1.0, just open zones, however this led to a lot of problems. For one, the strain on PC's was insane as the graphical quality of the game and never-ending zones made it incredibly hard to generate zones fully. This meant the world was full of 'corridors' so that you couldn't fully see the world outside while it loaded (take a look at some old 1.0 maps on google and you'll see). You would end up walking from one zone to the other in a massive walled corridor (whether it be a cave or a tree'd path) in order to avoid the loading screens. In quite the opposite to what you would expect, it meant the zones had even MORE walls than right now.

Against what you say, the game would experience a lot of lag, the graphics would have to be toned down, and computers would struggle a lot more. The walls/zones are there to give the game a better flow.

[Joe777]

Invisible walls are meant to keep people from getting stuck by falling through some crack or something in the terrain. It's also intended to keep players within bounds. Sure they can suck but they're for our own good.

[Zojha]

There was a time where we couldn't even jump.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about how the devs think you should engage with the game's environment.

[Kule]

What's worse is when the physical boundary of an object doesn't relate to what's visible on screen. Pretty sure this comes from them using older methods of boxing in the environment using place holder assets first as a way to speed up the dev time and then just dropping in objects later without giving them physical properties.
Makes the jumping puzzles look weird too as you can stand off the platform which looks like you're floating in the sky.

[BillyKaplan]

And here I was sure this would be another Kugane Tower (Savage) thread.

I wonder how much of this is wanting to go where you're not allowed to, compared to really wanting to go there. Some places seem interesting, but then again there's so much to explore already in the game, we just have so few reasons to go there already.

[NovaLevossida]

The main time this really bothers me is when it prevents me from making a jump and forces me to walk down a slope or something.

[AlexanderThorolund]

I can understand why some are in the game, but wow there are so many that are just there for absolutely no reason. Why?
The game would flow so much better and feel sooo much more alive if the players could just go where they actually wanted.

Is this a necrod thread. Is it 2015 again?

[Antonio_Xul]

And here I was sure this would be another Kugane Tower (Savage) thread.

I wonder how much of this is wanting to go where you're not allowed to, compared to really wanting to go there. Some places seem interesting, but then again there's so much to explore already in the game, we just have so few reasons to go there already.

I don't know if you ever been out of bounds, but it is so much fun exploring terrain that's been walled off. When I discover a new escape, I literally take hours exploring the zone. Some places are huge beyond the walls. I really wish they wouldn't patch the escape areas, but nothing I can do. I just make sure to take lots of pictures before they are locked away forever.

[SicariusSeven]

I wanna say tech limitations but last time I said that, someone on the forums got upset. Games like WoW can do it because their engine is built to be like that. That and they have a distinct art style which allows them a sort of cartoonish look without having the graphical details of FF XIV. While I'd love a nice seamless world for FF XIV, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.