Ghosttown's and stupid mobs

[MissPagen]

Ishgard feels alive due to all the new players and the firmament. Idyllshire feels alive because most people go there for Khloe and other things. Crystarium can feel very very dead due to it not being a endgame hub, same for Kugane.

Mobs are line of sight. If you want tough mobs go to Eureka or Bozja. The regular areas are mainly for leveling.

You have completely misunderstood my text; - I don't mean players (IRL). I think there is a great shortage of NPCs in general in the FF world. I mean, one should feel like the world is alive, even though I'm the only person on the server.

[Naoki34]

Blablabla Ghost town and stupid mobs

It must be your first MMO or you were not paying attention to this detail, before.

[Rae88]

This is pretty common in a lot of MMOs. Once people have progressed and outleved an area it comes more or less irrelevant and no use to visit it unless due to farming materials.
And it's for this very reason I enjoy ESO as much as I do.
As they scale each zone with the player no zone becomes irrelevant due to levels and everything is can be gathered everywhere.
So people are free to go anywhere they feel like whenever.
I can find myself just traveling around different maps due to what I wanna experience at the moment.
This isn't something a level-based zones game really can do.
As once you're done there the game doesn't really give you much reasons to go back.
I think more MMOs should give scaling a chance.
But not all MMOs are built with that in mind so ofc it wouldn't work for all.

The flip side of this is that people were sharing pictures of the new endzone town, Leyawiin, being absolutely deserted a few weeks after the expansion launch. Literally deserted. As in pictures of no people at all. Granted this was probably during non peak periods, but this was the new expansion. Doing the new expansion zone was extremely underwhelming when nobody was in the expansion zone a few weeks after launch. They all went digging for water nodes, or back to hanging out in Vvardenfell's crafting center, or maybe back to the Reach. That to me was extremely disappointing.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the lack of NPCs in Leyawiin also contributed to it feeling ... actually, ACTUALLY empty without players.

ESO has every zone relevant but there's far too many people spread out over so many zones. You meet far more people in FFXIV leveling, even without ESO megaservers, and you don't get the huge crowd of people flocking to do the new expansion content. There were more people hanging out in Eulmore last month, 2 years after the last expansion launched, than I could see in Leyawiin's hub less than a month into the new expansion and that was horrible.

Here is a picture of ESO's new expansion Hub TEN DAYS into launch - https://i.imgur.com/CpC6zdJ.png

Taken from this thread here https://forums.elderscrollsonline.co...wood-a-flop/p3

More people did tend to hang out in the crafting areas, but that's not sustainable because most people head back to Vivec to do their crafting because it's quicker, and there's no loading screen between them and the bank. So yeah, Blackwood ... empty as all get out. Was extremely, extremely disappointed.

[Evergrey]

The flip side of this is that people were sharing pictures of the new endzone town, Leyawiin, being absolutely deserted a few weeks after the expansion launch. Literally deserted. As in pictures of no people at all. Granted this was probably during non peak periods, but this was the new expansion. Doing the new expansion zone was extremely underwhelming when nobody was in the expansion zone a few weeks after launch. They all went digging for water nodes, or back to hanging out in Vvardenfell's crafting center, or maybe back to the Reach. That to me was extremely disappointing.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the lack of NPCs in Leyawiin also contributed to it feeling ... actually, ACTUALLY empty without players.

ESO has every zone relevant but there's far too many people spread out over so many zones. You meet far more people in FFXIV leveling, even without ESO megaservers, and you don't get the huge crowd of people flocking to do the new expansion content. There were more people hanging out in Eulmore last month, 2 years after the last expansion launched, than I could see in Leyawiin's hub less than a month into the new expansion and that was horrible.

Here is a picture of ESO's new expansion Hub TEN DAYS into launch - https://i.imgur.com/CpC6zdJ.png

Taken from this thread here https://forums.elderscrollsonline.co...wood-a-flop/p3

More people did tend to hang out in the crafting areas, but that's not sustainable because most people head back to Vivec to do their crafting because it's quicker, and there's no loading screen between them and the bank. So yeah, Blackwood ... empty as all get out. Was extremely, extremely disappointed.

True, the players are spread out more.
But imo that just adds to the feeling of a living world.
Sure, a buzzling endgame hub in a new expansion feels lively.
But what about the rest of the game where zones are now deserted since it's no longer relevant.
I enjoy traveling around and see people wherever I go instead of just all gathered in a handful of carefully selected locations due to it being relevant to endgame.

And yeah, Leyawiin was pretty empty on people in a week after launch.
I was actually surprised by it myself, I quite enjoy that zone.
But one has to remember that the expansion was only 1 map which honestly could be done in a few days without even grinding it.
So I'm not surprised that once people bombrushed it, as we know people love to rush new content and then complain there's nothing to do, people left to do whatever they felt like doing.
And you gotta remember that Eulmore is still where you trade in all the endgame stuff like Tomes, tokens etc so it's still a relevant endgame hub, where Leyawiin is just another town added with nothing special to it than any other town.

No game can tend to everyones fancy, but I enjoy ESO for the feeling of freedom the world has where one can travel where ever when ever without restrictions and how living it feels with how detailed the maps are and all the NPCs walking around and the random encounters one can see while just exploring.
And I enjoy FFXIV for the good story telling and the more structured pace the combat has.
No game is perfect, so I'm playing different games for different reasons and have found a balance I enjoy through it.

[Neoyoshi]

I think it depends on the server really; some places are more livelier then others because a particular server will have many large groups of people who focus their daily activities in certain places.

[Rae88]

I enjoy traveling around and see people wherever I go instead of just all gathered in a handful of carefully selected locations due to it being relevant to endgame.

The problem is you don't really, because there's not enough players to populate zones wherever you go. So you see a handful of locations populated, base game cities like Auridon, Crafting hubs like Vivec, anywhere an event is currently going on, places like The Reach currently, and whole swathes of maps which aren't populated like starting islands (great for picking nodes because few people are usually around with a couple of exceptions and they're tightly packed) Northern Elswyr, Bangkorai, even Coldharbour is pretty deserted. I don't recall seeing many people in Rivenspire, Western Skyrim, Wrothgar (though it became popular for a couple of weeks when TamrielTradeSecrets showed a treaure chest loop to pick up gear you could sell for midyear mayhem, but otherwise pretty deserted) and others.

Edit: Clockwork city outside an event. I mean sure, there's a few people hanging around ... the Brass Fortress I think it's called? Maybe cause of the transmute station. But try and do the darn world bosses, nobody's there

Edit 2: Auridon not Alinor. Whoops

[TheMightyMollusk]

Nobody tell Spirit Halloween about all these abandoned buildings.

[MissPagen]

It must be your first MMO or you were not paying attention to this detail, before.

I am 56 and have played(tryed) ALL MMO in the market since 1990. :-)

[Payadopa]

In termsoverworld design Guild Wars 2 gives XIV a run for its money, hands down.

The big flaws with MMOs in general is that people are so used to bad ones. If they had bad stories -> 'What do you expect, it's an MMO. Duh.' If the zones are boring -> 'Who cares, all I care about is eNdGaMe'
So on an so forth.

I really appreciate that XIV fleshes out its world more but, let's be honest here, the overworld is really lacking.

[Jandor]

Oh yeah, critters.
Insignificant but they do bring life to the wildlife which otherwise is only based on hostile mobs.

One of the things that I like in ARR that I don't recall seeing in the expansions, some of the mobs aren't automatically hostile. Animals like the antelopes and stuff will just mind their own business unless you attack them.