Bit of a selfish ask, Do you think 6.0 zones will return to the high fantasy of HW's?

[Vyrerus]

Personally, as long as the new zones in 6.0 are unique and interesting, then I don't care what we get... though honestly I'm not too crazy about anymore zones like Rak'tika Greatwood, cause that zone is just a mess, like digging up a tree stump, flipping it upside down, and washing the roots off haha. That, and Ronka was supposed to have a floating city, but oh well.

Kinda really hoping for a hybrid float islands with lots of ocean below them sort of zone. Think like... Azys Lla but mixed with the Ruby Sea. Take the verticality of the zone to the max!

[Iscah]

The devs can now take advantage of the fact that the areas have been separated: they proceed to add more small details and tweaks to Memory Amaurot, making it more in line with ARR in terms of map design, all made possible by the loading screen. (Whether Amaurot actually needs said extra details is not relevant to the point so do not bring it up. The area used is just an example.)

Would they want to do that, though? Would they put more work into each zone or would we just get the same thing in two halves without the ability to fly between them?

[Shougun]

Personally, as long as the new zones in 6.0 are unique and interesting, then I don't care what we get... though honestly I'm not too crazy about anymore zones like Rak'tika Greatwood, cause that zone is just a mess, like digging up a tree stump, flipping it upside down, and washing the roots off haha. That, and Ronka was supposed to have a floating city, but oh well.

Kinda really hoping for a hybrid float islands with lots of ocean below them sort of zone. Think like... Azys Lla but mixed with the Ruby Sea. Take the verticality of the zone to the max!

Very much agree on the first part. While I've some bias honestly I've consistently been pretty happy just to exploring whatever, just keep something interesting about it and we're good lol.

I didn't really find as many issues with the tree area as you did, but I would say I was a little sad that they didn't play with the verticality for it. They did in Khousia which is cool, but I feel it would have made a lot of sense in the forest area lol. Like the background potential and exploration was still fun for me, so not saying I found anything wrong with the general vibe (though I did get a good chuckle out of your upside down tree analogy). Still hoping to get a sort of Clerya / Lifa tree experience in FFXIV (which would definitely require the verticality).

Floating Islands that have ground would be amazing. I know you said ocean, which would be neat too, but just the idea that you're on the ground looking up at floating Islands above that you later then get to be on would be pretty neat. So a super massive verticality lol. Sea of Clouds was a fun zone but I would love to get a Zeal like inspired zone with it being a bit more lush / fantasy- little bit of a wistful background track, such sort of experience. On your comment of floating Island on top of the ocean I get the vibe of Laputa from Castle in the Sky... and that would be epic .

[Ultimatecalibur]

So what are the benefits of this, you may ask? Why the loading screen?

The devs can now take advantage of the fact that the areas have been separated: they proceed to add more small details and tweaks to Memory Amaurot, making it more in line with ARR in terms of map design, all made possible by the loading screen. (Whether Amaurot actually needs said extra details is not relevant to the point so do not bring it up. The area used is just an example.)

And you completely misunderstand how development works. Time is what allowed the ARR zones to be so detailed. Splitting the existing zones in half would not suddenly allow them to have ARR levels of detail. You would only get that level of detail if you either halved the total number of zones in each expansion or made all the zones half the size they currently are with no additional zones added.