Joining areas

[Deslyxic]

With this being the second expansion from the end of PS3 support and the eventual launch on PS5 and Xbox something, I think is time to start considering to start to join back split areas, for starter the main cities of AAR and HW.
Some overworld areas would benefit a lot too, like Upper and Outer La Noscea, you can see both areas from each zone and you can fly over sections of the lake from each but still you have to go back to the transition zones to switch.
I know is not as easy as it sounds and would take a effing lot of rebuilding but I think is worth it, would make the place feel better and bigger.

[GenBroadaxe]

That would be pretty nice, although it would probably require a bit more work then the ARR streamlining/flying updates. Merging independently created areas sounds like it would be pretty resource intensive depending on how everything currently fits together.

[Sove92]

There are two issues with this.

Number one is that doing so would need the repositioning of every dynamic element (NPCs, "wait here" objects etc.) and these are spread across countless quests

The second primarily concerns Ishgard in the example. Foundation and The Pillars are not actually adjacent to one another and you don't want to make the players do a really long climb up the stairs.

Given the loading times are not that long, it's not really worth it. When we take Gridania as an example, it could take you longer to traverse the tunnel between the zones than the loading screen takes. Loading corridors are also how 1.0 handled zone transitions, they were never truly without loading screens, it was just an interactive, empty corridor instead.

[Amnmaat]

Would love to see this, specially for the 3 starting cities, The Ul'dah split specially is a very unfortunate one. As far as the open world? This is less possible because of the distance between each area, some are very very far away from each other so they'd need to create the in between world. The next FF mmo however should be seamless in terms of going from one area to the next, these zone lines are a relic of ps2-design era philosophy. Even if you have to cross zone lines with loading screen I'd prefer if the areas were actually connected visually. Would it really kill people to run that connecting path between Middle La Noscea and Limsa Lominsa? I don't think so, you could even just fly past it, but not giving us the option to seamlessly walk into Limsa Lominsa from Middle La Noscea is a shame.

[Kurando]

One thing is though the starting cities are often very populated and having the multiple areas helps to split those up. You only need to look at end name areas (Idyllshire, Rhalgar's, now Eulmore) as an example to how long it can take up load in to those places when many players are present. Extend that to say Limsa Lominsa, you'll end up punishing players with slower systems plus the cities might need to have regular individual instances occasionally to help with congestion.
Would it be nice to have seemless transition sure, but definitely don't see it as being a priority regardless of any tech improvements along the way.

[Amnmaat]

One thing is though the starting cities are often very populated and having the multiple areas helps to split those up. You only need to look at end name areas (Idyllshire, Rhalgar's, now Eulmore) as an example to how long it can take up load in to those places when many players are present. Extend that to say Limsa Lominsa, you'll end up punishing players with slower systems plus the cities might need to have regular individual instances occasionally to help with congestion.
Would it be nice to have seemless transition sure, but definitely don't see it as being a priority regardless of any tech improvements along the way.

That has more to do with your hardware than about the area being populated. SSD + good CPU cures any the loading issues with places like Eulmore. The good news is that ps5 will have the fastest loading of any machine available to us, yes even faster than PC, according to what I've seen (unless Samsung releases faster M factor SSDs by the time ps5 comes out).

Moreover, these issues you described don't happen in Kugane and Crystarium and they're both one zone without loading.

[Kurando]

snip.

Well I can't change how a PS console functions so you know.... Besides you only need to look at areas with hunts in them to even cement the issue further. The other day in a ShB hunt train, tons of players so the hunt wasn't always appearing correctly and if you were to move to another area later than everyone else, you'd get a message saying the area is congestion and to try again later (this will happen regardless of PC or PS because it's a SE server issue). PS4 will also no doubt still be active for a few years before SE drops support and encourages getting everyone to PS5. And of course the issue doesn't happen in Kugane anymore because it's an.older area, while Crystarium only gets a little longer times if people need to go there for MSQ or something, otherwise the end game locations are usually the one sprawling with activity. Eulmore was very busy on the day of the new patch so there you go.

[Deslyxic]

Right now the worst loading time for PS4 players is Limsa, as there is always a crowd right there by the aetherite.
The engine already has a cap on the amount of characters it renders so loading time from players in the same zone will never be worse than that, as for scenery if you stand in the plaza you can already see most of the other zone up there, the only differece would be the interior of the Drowning Wench which has no decorations (can be seen by going OOB) and while having to load a full version of the upper zone would be more taxing I don't believe it will be by much, the current zones where designed to run on a PS3 with 512 mb of ram, how much will it take to render the upper zone fully? only the devs will know but can't be more that other 512 mb.