Non instanced dungeons. An under-looked game design method in XI

[Quesse]

FFXI had the most amazing world of any MMO i have ever played. Not only that, but every zone had tons of cool places with different mobs to level on.

Leveling beastmaster surpassed any experience I have had in any other game. Having to seek out new camps, find secret caves, create my own camps (before they made mobs respawn) and survive, always ensured I was having a lot of fun.

I remember getting to Lufaise Medows for the first time, and how amazing it felt being one of the few on the servers to make it there. Exploring the sanctuary of zi'tah for the first time as a low level whitemage trying to sneak-invis past everything and eventually making it through Ro'Maeve to the hall of the gods. Finding out there are sewers underneath sandoria and windurst, and much more.

In FFXIV on the other hand, within the first few days of open beta I had pretty well gone -everywhere- in the world, including all the atherytes, all the areas with high level mobs, etc. I literally ran around trying to find cool unique things. Meaning i covered pretty well 100% of the world (running to every cave, every corner, etc).

Overall, I was really disappointed. I honestly hope 2.0 captures what FFXI was able to achieve. However, from the pics they have shown it looks like 2.0 will be a bunch of small interconnected instanced-like zones. Which honestly looks really disappointing.

I was BST in FFXI and that was my experience as well. I had a blast. Toraimarai Canal was one of my favorite zones for BST leveling and I remember how much fun it was to do the quest to gain entrance the back way. Such a wealth of little discoveries waiting to be made. Also challenges. Soloing or Duoing certain NMs. All that magic is completely missing in FFXIV, replaced really with one activity - the instance grind. Grind an instance. Repeat. That's all there is. Probably why I haven't played much in the last 3 weeks.

[Phen]

Really this concept was magical. Honestly I think the XIV mechanic lends itself to this well. The lack of sneak, invis, etc could make dungeon exploration a real amazing thing. I was unaware of silent oils and prism powders when i first made a run to Jueno. At the right pacing it could be a thing where you can duo your way through or just pound out some levels to get to where you are going. They need some explore dungeons and really just more danger in general.

I went back to Nanawa Mines recently to find not near as much aggro. I was kinda disappointed, I had learned where the mites stopped, routes to avoid etc. Now mind you there are limits to this (my levequest is behind an NM and 2 39 elementals and my duo group is 30) but some danger makes it exciting.

This concept is kinda close to anima. I realize its a dead horse at this point but theres some middle point I think. Being able to immediately get to some point is nice in avoiding the old "the whm is on the airship" problem. But it can also make a place too small. Do i have an answer on anima? Not really maybe less, maybe just more ways to get around so it can be used for big things only. I dunno, I'm interested how 2.0 will handle this.

Xi had a lot of beautiful zones and lore. My copy of XI's World Concept is a prized possession of mine as a result. I would note that I was in a vast minority on loving either of those in most crowds I ran with. The world needs that place feeling which really cant happen till 2.0.

[Biggs]

Even the beastmen strongholds that are in the game now are crap compared to the types in XI. I feel like Ghealsba outpost had more style in just the front part of that zone than all the current Beastmen camps in XIV combined. The minor camps for beastmen in Xi were twice the size of the ones we have been given in XIV that are labelled "strongholds", while the major camps were full blown zones with many complicated layers. Don't even get me started on how much I came to love going to Castle Ostroja (spelling, I know) or Beadeaux to help others that needed to raid deep into those territories for items or quests.

I can't tell you how very dissapointed I was to discover that some of the AF pieces in this game could be gotten by simply riding out to some place fairly easy to get to and clicking on a ??? marked box. I am not saying that I miss farming keys (athough some twisted part of me kinda does) but ANYTHING would have been better than the minimal effor that was put into some of the AF quest portions in this tied to locations.

Bring back open world dungeons, leave the instanced stuff for primal fights and boss fights.

[Biggs]

I call BS, Bastok was never fun.

It smelled liked bum pee on a hot day, was full of blatent racism and bigotry,and resided in one of the bleakest zones in the game, what the hell isn't fun about all that?! It was like the American South without all that pesky Spanish Moss

[Andrien]

Having played ffxi at north american launch, there really wasnt much to see or remember. there was even less to see before rise of the zilart expansion. going all nostalgic over ffxi is a mistake in this sense, because it took months and years to get better.

That shouldn't be an excuse to make the same mistake twice though.

[Ruisu]

Yet if you ask anyone who truly played FFXI

hurp durp hurrr I played a game more than you and you can only nostalgia over a game if you've played it as much as me.

Stop saying that. I never really touched any of XI's endgame and I still find it incredibly memorable. There's no need to act as though you're superior to the average FFXI player.

[Gramul]

What can I say but, I agree.

And to expand on the idea of connecting dungeons to the rest of the game. Separating dungeons into instances separates them from the game world. They become an isolated mechanical entity, rather than organically meshing into the setting. A sort of prosthetic stage, made to supplement the world as an attraction and it makes the environment feel fake, for a lack of a better term.
A sort of preliminary gauntlet like the wilderness zones of XI would be an excellent way to bypass the disconnected feeling.

It smelled liked bum pee on a hot day, was full of blatent racism and bigotry,and resided in one of the bleakest zones in the game, what the hell isn't fun about all that?! It was like the American South without all that pesky Spanish Moss

What have you against Spanish Moss?

[DarthTaru]

I love this thread because it really nails a huge aspect of what's missing.

Imagine if Cutter's Cry was not a crappy 8 man ezmode instance with .05% drop rates on bodies. Imagine instead that Cutter's Cry was 8 times the size and open world. Imagine if things like the Explorer's Choker didn't drop from a stupid chest but instead from an NM that popped somewhere half way through the dungeon every 4 or so hours. Imagine if there were coffer keys. Imagine if Chimera was instead an HNM at the end of this dungeon, far more difficult than the Chimera that now wraps up the instance, that popped twice a day but had a much better drop rate. Imagine if you were running through all of this while at the same time seeing others doing the same.

Now that would be far more entertaining than this 18 minute tedious dungeon everyone is sick of.
I can't believe i'm saying this, after once being laughed at by a Galka troll because my Taru buddy and I couldn't open the doors by ourselves (you needed 3 Tarus lol), but I miss the Quicksand caves....

[Denmo]

Sense of discovery is severely lacking in this game, but it's something that's hopefully being addressed in 2.0.

Don't forget, XI had its share of instanced content. But you had to earn the right to do even them (beastmen seals), and they had guaranteed rewards (though not always good).

I'm all for raids, but I think there should be an even amount of instanced raid/open world content. Build me a world first, then populate it with raids.

What we're seeing right now is the only thing SE can do while they build the new worlds. We're playing in a game that will get scrapped by the end of the year apart from the instanced content. They can only give us a very small taste of what to expect from 2.0.

[Zyph]

Sense of discovery is severely lacking in this game, but it's something that's hopefully being addressed in 2.0.

Don't forget, XI had its share of instanced content. But you had to earn the right to do even them (beastmen seals), and they had guaranteed rewards (though not always good).

I'm all for raids, but I think there should be an even amount of instanced raid/open world content. Build me a world first, then populate it with raids.

What we're seeing right now is the only thing SE can do while they build the new worlds. We're playing in a game that will get scrapped by the end of the year apart from the instanced content. They can only give us a very small taste of what to expect from 2.0.

I'm hoping that with the zone redesign that the open world becomes much more interesting, with unique zone music for each area, new sights to see, etc.

Also no unnecessary parts of the zone. Look at this map:


Why would anyone want to go to these areas on their own? There's no reason to except for maybe like a quest or two.