What steps could the devs take to better the Open World in XIV?

[Kiurai]

In Shadowbringers, the FATE system received an update in the form of bicolored gemstones. Which work as an almost GW2 like karma system, by completing FATEs in the Shadowbringers open world zones, you receive the gemstones, which you can turn in for various rewards. With this system I see alot of potential once it gets expanded into 6.0 zones and possibly even 2.0 zones and onwards. However, I feel that it's missing something. What would you implement to give players an incentive to engage in OW content?

Personally I would use the roller bettle race concept from GW2,(chocobo races in OW) or airship/sailing content to give players some spice of life.

[Cyreil]

Once people get what they want, they stop running it. It's not just limited to the open world content.

But to answer your question. A bestiary. Something that requires us to go out and collect lore on all the different creatures that inhabit the world. It can be something that the weekly challenge log has for it as well, something that can be expanded on the hunt system and an overhaul on the hunting log itself.

[KageTokage]

Expanding the hunting system into something bigger and more rewarding is what I'd want to see, personally.

Outside of the usual free-for-all hunts, I'd want to see more triggered hunts designed for up to eight players that could be spawned by special hunt bills obtainable from killing the standard hunts or from the hunting board.

[Wyakin]

They just need to stop making every single duty on the DF or raid finder. Once upon a time had to visit zones to raid, now there’s zero need to leave your FC house. So my suggestion is bring that back. Form your party via the PF then all gather together at the raid spot. It’ll create a sense of community again among other things

[Hazama999]

They just need to stop making every single duty on the DF or raid finder. Once upon a time had to visit zones to raid, now there’s zero need to leave your FC house. So my suggestion is bring that back. Form your party via the PF then all gather together at the raid spot. It’ll create a sense of community again among other things

One of my fondest memories of FFXIV was back in the 2.0 beta. I can't remember which phase it was, but DF had yet to be implemented, so if you wanted to party up for Sastasha, Tam Tara, Haukke, etc... you had to shout. It was very common for people to gather outside the dungeon entrance and sometimes make small talk while they waited for a party. It was a nice feeling. Made the world feel lived-in. I remember meeting my first group of friends outside Sastasha. We tried going into it as a party of 8 lol... Obviously we had to split up.

DF is, unfortunately, too much of a convenience to do away with. I feel like it is this type of inconvenience that'd make for a stronger experience. Much as I'd prefer it to go away, I wouldn't dare ask for that, since it'd likely anger many.

[tdb]

One of my fondest memories of FFXIV was back in the 2.0 beta. I can't remember which phase it was, but DF had yet to be implemented, so if you wanted to party up for Sastasha, Tam Tara, Haukke, etc... you had to shout. It was very common for people to gather outside the dungeon entrance and sometimes make small talk while they waited for a party. It was a nice feeling. Made the world feel lived-in. I remember meeting my first group of friends outside Sastasha. We tried going into it as a party of 8 lol... Obviously we had to split up.

DF is, unfortunately, too much of a convenience to do away with. I feel like it is this type of inconvenience that'd make for a stronger experience. Much as I'd prefer it to go away, I wouldn't dare ask for that, since it'd likely anger many.

Besides the conveniences of allowing you to queue to multiple things at once, not having to travel to the ends of the world to do a dungeon and being able to do other things while waiting, the DF also guarantees a high degree of fairness. Different roles can have different queue times, yes, but no one will be discriminated against because of the class or race they play. Players will also get into the dungeon approximately in the order they queued, and no one can skip the queue just because they happened to shout at the right time for someone to notice. I'd probably not even play if there was no DF.

The one failing DF has is that you have to select your class before queueing. Most of the time that's not a problem, but sometimes when queueing for specific raids with a friend it's hard to know which configuration would get us in fastest. I would very much like some way to pick all the classes I'm willing to play and then have DF prompt me to switch to one of them when the queue pops.

[Euphares]

My solutions:
Critters- While they provide no material benefit, they make the world feel more alive. The game could use more wildlife that's not monstrous (also one-shotting things is fun.)

Random Events- Place them in spots that require you to go out of your way to reach (i.e inside caves.) Would reward people for taking the time to explore a map. Have them give worthwhile result for completion (probably just XP/Green item.)

An example off the top of my head:

You travel to the end of a cave and find a glowing sword in stone and a small plaque next to it that give some blurb about a cursed hero and a warning, interacting with it spawns what would probably be a F.A.T.E.

Once completed a ghostly hero spawns and talking to said hero rewards you with a job-appropriate weapon(scaled ilvl preferably) and a 30min buff that gives something meager like 5% dmg/xp while in non-instanced areas.

--
Obviously the novelty isn't permanent and it would be more or less useless to max players, but consider that having more non-instanced ways to get XP is sorely needed. Not to mention these things become more enticing once you begin to add things such as exclusive glamors or making the above events be the result of completing side-quests.

Speaking of which;

Sidequests- Probably one of the biggest factors in killing the world, they are quite bluntly just too worthless. Buff the XP by a very significant amount, make them reward items comparable to dungeon loot or at least very close to it, and it would do wonders. They should also be repeatable on alt-jobs.

-snip-.

There are ways to make dungeon finders more community oriented, you just have to be creative.

If it were up to me:

Each dungeon would have a leaderboard that could only be viewed at the dungeon entrance, could even be an NPC. Would show timings/total # of runs for both standard and undersized parties. Could have being in the top 3 or 10 reward a title similar to something like "Conqueror of X(dungeon name.)" Which I think would open some interesting RP-based ideas.

Each dungeon would have NPC's lined up near it that would showcase dungeon glamor based on job/armor type. Interacting with one would show the player what they would look like wearing it.

Making each dungeon have a shared shout chat, so when one person afk's you could at least talk to other groups running the same instance as well as your party members. Opt-out system included.

Some sort of system-side message that tells you if you've played with someone before when you load-in and what dungeon/job.

Commendations wouldn't be anonymous.

Examining someone would have an additional pane that showed dungeon history (last 5.)


There would have to be some tweaks to the above to make it practical for the devs/game engine, but making the game feel less robotic would alleviate a lot the "deadness" that is experienced when outside of popular hubs.

[DPZ2]

An example off the top of my head:

You travel to the end of a cave and find a glowing sword in stone and a small plaque next to it that give some blurb about a cursed hero and a warning, interacting with it spawns what would probably be a F.A.T.E.

Once completed a ghostly hero spawns and talking to said hero rewards you with a job-appropriate weapon(scaled ilvl preferably) and a 30min buff that gives something meager like 5% dmg/xp while in non-instanced areas.

I see you, GW2 Hero Challenge-on-steroids. Even GW2 didn't provide such rewards.

We already have Vistas (how many people actually took the time to complete that?).

[Kaurhz]

I would like to see Bozja expanded into the open world, putting it bluntly. I would like to see rarer materials added to the gemstone traders.. Sorry but the rewards don't even cover it, not even by a longshot outside of 1-time expenditures, map items would be great, primal drops, minions; quite like the ones dropped in the dungeons

[Voidedge_Ragna]

They could start by reading anything written on this Forum, there are so many valid things here noone will ever look at.

Back to the question, the game would need big changes to make the overworld "better".

Problem 1: No threat, when have you last died in the overworld that was not related to a hunt, fate, quest? Never or close to never? Yep, there is no threat.

Problem 2: Drops, do you remember times when players farmed fleece or diremite webs? It was a thing and made the are feel more "alive", hardly any mob out there drops anything worth killing it, yet alone farm it.

Problem 3: Abysmal exp except fates, there is 0 incentive to kill anything on the map if you have no quest for it or if it is not in a fate, when did you kill something on the overworld for exp last time? Level 1-5? Sounds about right.

Problem 4: You are exploring the map once and unlock flying, Flying itself nulls the entire ground, why would you run around and do stuff? Why would there even need to be any trash mobs?

Problem 5: The World if not for Fates and small camps, while pretty neatly designed but its empty ... yes there's mobs but as listed above ... no exp ... no loot ... no difficulty which means it might as well be empty.

Problem 6: Mobs have no interaction, and this needs to be explained further ... do you remember OG Diadem were a Trex would hunt and kill other things? Why cant we have this in the overworld? There's places were prey sits on top of hunters. Or perhaps the other way, we have some mobs that become icons of the game ... Paisa? Flying Kittens? Have them run up to the player, non aggro and just look confused or have the kitten fly around the player. Basically make me believe the game is not just 100% the same for every single mob from lv 1 to 80 on the overworld.


Things that could work:

#1 Give meaning to the monsters you place, lets talk drops ... retainer haver taken over all of the farming by now ... which is a solution, but a better solution would be to have players farm materials, now I'm not asking the crafter who has 500mil to get in a area and kill mobs. A fresh 80 could kill some mobs to get his foot in the door with some money however. This means however 2 things, the mobs needs to be placed in a way farming can actually work out, if theres 3 mobs all over the map for a standard material ... no one will bother. On that note why not what could be considered a Hunt C rank, a "rare" mob that drops some crafting materials that just ... wanders the map but can be killed by a solo player. Make it drop some relevant to that area glam gear.

#2 Difficulty, please step away from your monsters that are there to fill place, they need to have multiple tiers from "trash" you fight along the road to "elite" that require 4-8 players to defeat, which should drop semi rare craft materials unique to them and also give some relevant exp.

#3 Exp on the overworld, there is a few things here that are difficult, if you overhype the exp. on normal mobs you can can fates, if its not comparable to fates you might as well not add it. You could try to entice players to fight difficult mobs. The main problem is ... most players hit 80 so why would they hunt difficult mobs?

#4 Add Outback areas, not every Zone needs to have a Aetherite, why not add 2 part Zones like ... a Goblin stronghold with actually difficult mobs where you have to pay attention (no flying) and upon attention have the Goblins come in small groups that need Crowd Control. And if you make it past the first Area you enter the inner part of the Stronghold which has rewards ... or a special trial you can do? Reward risk takers and exploring.

#5 Limit flying, every time you go "over" the World you lose what's down there. I'd hate to lose flying the current world BUT i think if the areas are interesting i might be okay if it was more limited, but there defiantly should be outside areas in which by lore you should not fly, think of an outside Bozja basically.

#6 Make more use of Water, there is nothing to do in water ... yea you can gather ... and? Its dead, no risk, no reward. Perhaps add something that drags you away if it managed to catch you ... we have sharks that are like "OWO im a shark but im prolly a vegetarian"

The highlight for me so far was the Azim Steppe ... i could believe the lore the tribes said, the design worked and it felt like it was a place that could be possible. If the animals were in packs and maybe had a pack leader it would work better imo. Imagine an interactive map ... think of 4 corners, have a predator life in the top right ... lair and all, during night/day they come out of their lair and hunt ... when the night/day is over they return ... let them be buff so players feel the need to avoid them ... and if you then add something like "trying to explore the lair while they hunt as there's less mobs in there then" you can achieve a world that feels real.

But as per usual ... no dev will ever look at this ... and no community rep. will forward this, and we will continue to get the same stale overwords ... that look pretty and feel empty and soulless.