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

[DPZ2]

The major problem with 'open world should be X' at this point in time is ... flight.

Once you have unlocked flight, you can fly over danger.

And no, I am not willing to go back to the days when there wasn't flight. That was 5 years ago, thank you very much.

[Xatsh]

Flying is a huge part of the problem that I agree with. I also think adding flight was a horrible idea and it is horrible in any mmo and should be removed. Simply because it negates the whole world.

The other thing is the open world is worthless outside of honestly leveling and some vanity gear. It just has no real purpose in terms of gear progression. It is why people play FFXIV as a lobby server game for the most part. So want to make the open world worthwhile. Stop instancing all of endgame and remove flying. If you do not want to do that... the world will only be alive for a few weeks to a month tops after each expansion launch.

So in all These things need to change to fix the world:

1) Add Relevant Top Tier Endgame Content to the open world
2) Remove Flying from the majority of zones. Unless the zone is specifically designed for flying. If it has currents flying should be removed as the zone functions without it.
3) Add some areas designed for groups in the open world. Aka mobs that take more then 1 person to kill. Objectives that reward people to go into those places. Aka Extreme beast quest or something that reward more then a housing item and flying pig. Guild Leve quest/Forced spawned high tier mobs that are boss/raid tier difficulty fights. and so on.
4) Increase rewards for doing open world content to compare with dungeons. Aka add worthwhile leveling gear as Fate Rewards. Atm the xp gained in the open world just sucks horribly compared to spamming instances. So you get gear and more xp in dungeons, why would you do anything else?
5) Fates are fine... EVERYTHING BEING FATES IS NOT. Make new openworld content that is not fates.

Atm there is just no incentive to go into the world outside maby a rare S rank or maps. Games where the world matters have it where the world is a significant focus of the game. In ffxiv atm all the best stuff comes from instances. So why would anyone want to go into the world for anything besides unlocking the instance and doing the main story line.

But lets be honest... FFXIV has been following this path for this long, nothing is going to change. Making the game world a focus sorta goes against Yoshida's philosophy of ease of game play and being able to jump into it and out quickly. The instance model fits his game design mentality a lot better as people can log in press a button do a few instances and log out.

[Jojoya]

The major problem with 'open world should be X' at this point in time is ... flight.

Once you have unlocked flight, you can fly over danger.

And no, I am not willing to go back to the days when there wasn't flight. That was 5 years ago, thank you very much.

Even without flight, danger is easily avoided in an open world zone. You simply go around it outside of its aggro range. That's what players would do in WoW with creatures like the Fel Reaver in Hellfire Peninsula (which actually had a reason to kill it until they took away raid attunements) and the Storm Giants in Howling Fjord (which were pointless to kill).

If there's reason to face it and defeat it, existence of flight is irrelevant. Players will have to be on the ground to enter combat and earn their reward. You don't get rewards by flying over the content.

Flying is a huge part of the problem that I agree with. I also think adding flight was a horrible idea and it is horrible in any mmo and should be removed. Simply because it negates the whole world.

So do teleports. Entire parts of the world are erased from existence when I use them. At least with flying, I'm still seeing the world and can choose to land to interact with it if there's a reason relevant to what I'm interested in.

You have the option not to fly, except for the rare locations that can only be reached by flying. Choose not to fly if it bothers you.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

If there's reason to face it and defeat it, existence of flight is irrelevant. Players will have to be on the ground to enter combat and earn their reward. You don't get rewards by flying over the content.

This is true if you can fly to your destination, if you had to go through a dungeon like area first which already prohibits flying it would not harm it.

Imagine it in 3 steps.

World, which as flying ... and an entrance to said dungeon like area.

The Dungeon like area which has no flying and difficult monsters that can outrun you and wont lose track of you and alert mobs nearby, this is more or less to prevent a simple, sprint and go.

Final area core of the stronghold or w/e you wanna call it, you can add rare monsters or leaders there, or (omg and i hardly daresay) go the route of FFXI and add a mini trial that can be done to get a loot box of overall decent items and a low rate at a rare ... so ppl would do it ... again and it would not die in 2 weeks.

We don't need a super polished trial, a gimmick mob would do, maybe 1 Version of "Solo" "Light Party" "Full Party" (imagine it like what we currently have a solo duty, a little bit more spiced up), why not a Ixtal that summons birds in a bullet hell style fight ... and if you win you can get a minion, or maybe a key ... and if you had 3 different keys you could do another step for rarer loot. We have to get rid of the "well its not top level so its worthless".

Lorewise ... we have 3 starting areas, you could add an Ixtal Stronghold for Gridania, Amalja (sp?) for Uldah and Kobolds for Limsa. We could totally have a dive into those area, I'm not deep enough into the Lore of those boys, but the areas we have for Amalja ... is basically 2 small camps and a medium sized one ... that's it. Kobolds are loosely thrown into the mountain ... why not have a level deeper? Ixtal could totally have a forest that leads up to a peak (that being said "dungeon" and "core" doesn't always need to be inside a peak for Ixtals sounds reasonable.

And to tack it with a "no you wont bust this at higher lv" smack the dungeon and core part with a job and ilv restriction, the tokens to start the first mini trial could be obtained by doing x amount of levelling dungeons in that area, like 61-69 for SB and 71-79 for ShB.

Get something simple that has staying power rather then polishing something you burry in dirt 3 months later, please add natural ilv and job level restrictions or we will steam roll it 3 months later ... and yes this means ilv 430 for ShB and 290 for SB.

Coil, Alexander, Omega, Soon Eden ... All 50 60 70 and soon 80 raids are pointless once their no longer max level and its a absolute shame.

[DPZ2]

This is true if you can fly to your destination, if you had to go through a dungeon like area first which already prohibits flying it would not harm it.

Welcome to the world of current Dungeon Instances! Your description would require an instanced environment, just like dungeons. So much for the "open world" side of things.

The main problem, as I see it, is Reward. You can get gear in certain dungeon instances already, as well as minions and orchestrion rolls. Do you propose dropping BiS gear in these instances? How are these new "dungeon like" instances going to differ from current maps or raid/dungeon instances?