Increase of Assets on maps

[Ath192]

How about bigger cities that aren't one or two zones despite the outside showing a literal city. Even fucking ESO has NPC houses you can go in.

I'm down =) I love this game, I've come close to giving up on it from time to time but anything to make it better.

[Evergrey]

How about bigger cities that aren't one or two zones despite the outside showing a literal city. Even fucking ESO has NPC houses you can go in.

I play both FFXIV and ESO.
Have played both for many years each.
And I play them for different reasons now.
FFXIV is for raiding (for the most part now) and when new content is launched.
ESO for when I want to feel more emerged in the game due to the freedom of choice on how to play and how the game world feels so much more living than FFXIV's does.
And I don't sub to ESO when I know I won't play much for some time but I can still jump in and just do whatever.

[Ath192]

I play both FFXIV and ESO.
Have played both for many years each.
And I play them for different reasons now.
FFXIV is for raiding (for the most part now) and when new content is launched.
ESO for when I want to feel more emerged in the game due to the freedom of choice on how to play and how the game world feels so much more living than FFXIV's does.
And I don't sub to ESO when I know I won't play much for some time but I can still jump in and just do whatever.

I don’t think raid logging (log on, raid, log off) is healthy for a game. While it says raiding content is good enough to keep people coming back to it I know way too many people who do the same. To me those are signs of a game in life support.

It would be one thing if they did this because of IRL problems like jobs or other stuff but unfortunately the main reason is there is actually nothing interesting to do.

Ultimately I think the overworld direly needs to look like the developers or someone cares about it beyond its release window and after it serves as an MSQ vessel. These are the sort of things that make games feel special rather than generic and abandoned.

[Evergrey]

I don’t think raid logging (log on, raid, log off) is healthy for a game. While it says raiding content is good enough to keep people coming back to it I know way too many people who do the same. To me those are signs of a game in life support.

Indeed, I think so as well.
I think the difference to me with FFXIV and ESO is how in ESO everything scales so nothing becomes outdated.
FFXIV gives me the same sad feeling like WoW did, watch old zones/towns almost devoid of people due to it being outdated.
Where in ESO I can always see people anywhere from all ranges of levels run around and do stuff.

But that's just me.
Around HW I could stay online daily in FFXIV and still have things to do.
But like everything things changes, and in this it is I who has changed.
I know there are a lot of people who still find things to do in FFXIV and likes it.
It's just not what I need atm.

FFXIV is a good game imo.
Otherwise I wouldn't still play it.
But like everything, nothing's perfect and I've just found a balance between two things that works for me.

[Ath192]

Indeed, I think so as well.
I think the difference to me with FFXIV and ESO is how in ESO everything scales so nothing becomes outdated.
FFXIV gives me the same sad feeling like WoW did, watch old zones/towns almost devoid of people due to it being outdated.
Where in ESO I can always see people anywhere from all ranges of levels run around and do stuff.

But that's just me.
Around HW I could stay online daily in FFXIV and still have things to do.
But like everything things changes, and in this it is I who has changed.
I know there are a lot of people who still find things to do in FFXIV and likes it.
It's just not what I need atm.

FFXIV is a good game imo.
Otherwise I wouldn't still play it.
But like everything, nothing's perfect and I've just found a balance between two things that works for me.

Yeah all of this is 100% reasonable. And XIV is a good game, its just its got a lot of us so hooked on it we just always want to see more of it, and spend more time in it. This causes us to see all the flaws. Hopefully they'll show some TLC to their existing world.

However, I think if you take this game at face value and consider it something you are going to play through the MSQ and run all the content once and move on to other things in your life. This game is amazing. The problem only happens when you don't want to leave. And you linger. Then... the complaints start haha.

[Ath192]

Imagine for a second the developers invented NPC routes consistent with the businesses and activities of said cities and ran them.

In this story very much regardless of your existence Limsa Lominsa is an important trade/port city and there are people who make a living in Eastern La Noscea by growing grapes for wine in Wineport. These farmers sell these goods to merchants who operate a ground based chocobo carriage business and load them up into carts to take them to Limsa Lominsa. After spending a night resting and drinking at the drowning wench these merchants finally transport the goods to Aleport where they are loading one of the big ships headed out into open ocean and you can see NPCs loading these goods onto the ship. The next day in the morning you see one of these ships undock and sail out:

[Packetdancer]

Imagine for a second the developers invented NPC routes consistent with the businesses and activities of said cities and ran them.

While this is cool, I will note it often ends up being a ton of work to do by hand. Having a couple of ships sailing by in the distance is no different than the schools of non-interactable fish (and notable random large shark) you encounter underwater in the Ruby Sea; isolated background elements which can happen whenever, and which are very easy for a map designer to add.

Having NPCs going about their lives in long sequences like that is a great deal more work. Especially as it requires coordination across multiple maps; your example would have NPCs scripted across Eastern La Noscea near Wineport, from Eastern La Noscea either to Lower or Middle La Noscea to Limsa Lominsa itself, on the Upper Decks at the Drowning Wench, then back into Middle La Noscea, up to Western La Noscea, and into Aleport.

That's four different zones -- one of them with two separate scripts -- which you now need to make custom scripted NPC paths and dialogue for. Moreover, you almost certainly need to sync it with the Eorzean time clock, both so that they show up at the Drowning Wench at night rather than midday, and so that if you tried to follow them from map-to-map, they didn't vanish between maps.

Technologically, that's easy. Time-budget wise, it's often far harder to justify, especially when the environment designers could be working on some new environment for current content instead.

[Ath192]

While this is cool, I will note it often ends up being a ton of work to do by hand. Having a couple of ships sailing by in the distance is no different than the schools of non-interactable fish (and notable random large shark) you encounter underwater in the Ruby Sea; isolated background elements which can happen whenever, and which are very easy for a map designer to add.

Having NPCs going about their lives in long sequences like that is a great deal more work. Especially as it requires coordination across multiple maps; your example would have NPCs scripted across Eastern La Noscea near Wineport, from Eastern La Noscea either to Lower or Middle La Noscea to Limsa Lominsa itself, on the Upper Decks at the Drowning Wench, then back into Middle La Noscea, up to Western La Noscea, and into Aleport.

That's four different zones -- one of them with two separate scripts -- which you now need to make custom scripted NPC paths and dialogue for. Moreover, you almost certainly need to sync it with the Eorzean time clock, both so that they show up at the Drowning Wench at night rather than midday, and so that if you tried to follow them from map-to-map, they didn't vanish between maps.

Technologically, that's easy. Time-budget wise, it's often far harder to justify, especially when the environment designers could be working on some new environment for current content instead.

Yeah I wouldn't imagine it being too easy. It probably would be a ton of work. They probably could do other things.

BUT, it is cool.

I imagine a world that would be worth revisiting over and over again. Zones cool enough that merely being in them and watching them is content itself. God knows I would love that so much more than another throw away zone that sits there waiting for nothing or noone.

[Ath192]

In fact I'd say the graphical tax of making said event happen is not that great on the hardware part. But these events happening in the world at a large scale would add incredible life to the game. It's just these things take a while to develop.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

I'd still continue to afk in the flame barracks all day. You can make the overworld absolutely stunning in appearance and it would still be largely useless as a majority of the content in this game is instanced. It would be an incredible waste of funds to spruce up the overworld without also adding longstanding content to it that is not Fate grind related. So I say no to a graphical overhaul of the overworld until they fix the fundamental problem of the overworld being near meaningless in the grand scheme of this game.