so why the devs never use 90% of the content for end game?

[Dzian]

They TRY to do this with the FATE Gemstones, Hunts, and Treasure Maps, but that ends up only helping a little. I agree with you and would love if they figured something out to make FATEs more attractive.

Fates are boring because they're lifeless and they suck. They don't change or impact the world in anyway at all. Oh hey mobs are attacking a settlement. Kill them all or ignore them it makes no difference.

Treasure maps kinda meh. When the big rewards are tied into instances content like canals, aquopolis or others. It's hardly open world content at all.

It’s weird to write it off as not exploration just because you can look it up. There’s still dungeons you can go and explore. People who don’t like overworld exploring can look it up cool, but the option is at least there for people who want to explore and actually have things to explore, whereas that is severely missing from 14. I guess savage and ultimate raiding isn’t really raiding since there’s addons that can do everything for you and buyable clears exist?

Can you though? All those dungeons and things are instances content disconnected from the open world.

I mean how cool would it be if you could actually go mining in the copper bell mines or something like that?

Could be in a group of players running through to kill a boss and spot random people just mining away as you make your way through..

This used to be one of my favorite things about XI in its day. Nearly everything was open world and it made the world so alive. Never knew what you'd see as you went from place to place.. could be running through a zone and come across people in an exp party or fighting a boss that you might never have seen before. Or hunting a notorious monster for a strong piece of gear.. the world was always full of People.

14 by comparison is a barren wasteland. I might occasionally spot someone on the way to the same gathering node I am but thats usually it. If I'm really lucky I might see an s rank being fought. But they die in 30 seconds so that's hardly an interesting fight to watch...