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

[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?).