Joining areas

[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.