Quote Originally Posted by Skiros View Post
FF14's open world does not encourage, incentivize, or reward exploration. Other than sightseeing logs, which give measly rewards if you actually organically explored rather than following a guide, there's almost next to no point in exploring the world.
  1. Daily hunt bills take you all over the map.
  2. Finding your weekly mark takes you all over the map.
  3. Scouting A ranks takes you all over the map.
  4. Spawning S ranks takes you all over the map depending on the condition.
  5. Fate farming takes you all over the map.
  6. Sight seeing log as you mentioned takes you all over the map.
  7. Side quests take you all over the place as well.
  8. Gathering takes you to a number of gathering points around the map.
  9. Treasure maps take you all over the map depending on where the X is.
All of these things are popular and done by many people.

1. Put hidden stories and sidequests throughout the zone that can only be seen when you are close. These quests should reward XP, coffers and gil similar to a MSQ quests, and give more lore and information about the zone.
FATEs are supposed to do this and some of them used to only be seen when you were close to them, but the problem is that nobody activated them because they were unaware of them.