An ideal overworld zone

[Ath192]

To me the ffxiv overworld is obsolete. Not only does it feel ridiculously small thanks to all the teleportation points but its even made completely ignorable thanks to flying.

However, more so than point out what is wrong with it I'd like to point out what would make me like it.

For one the current mobs they may as well delete. To really convey a sense of adventure/danger mobs should be dangerous enough that you wouldn't want to engage with them, but you could beat if it came down to it. This causes you to navigate areas in a more calculated way. To me the best tuned mobs for this aren't Eureka's, it's actually Orthos/DDs. Those mobs are all beatable, but you wouldn't necessarily want to engage them unless you had a reason to.

This alone would automatically make zones a million times more interesting to navigate instead of boring me to sleep.

Then, we would need quests that would give us reasons to travel the land on foot or by mount. It could be transportation delivery quests or retrieval quests that weigh you down as an explanation why you can't fly and make a snooze fest out of everything. an easy currency that you can accrue to purchase cosmetics for these types of quests would be plenty of entertainment.

The game could also stand to gain remote areas that have either small villages/ shrines /locations that are not accessible by teleports or flying, the journey which is also paved with these dangerous mobs and the NPCs in said locations could sell unique wares that are expensive and act as gil sinks.

-Another example that would be interesting is that these shrines or points of interest could contain unique buffs that would not break the game but make the pilgrimage worth it for those seeking adventure. Say one of the shrines upon reaching it and receiving its blessing your gear no longer wears down for 48 hours causing you to need to repair it. I can see this being of use to raiders before savage and they could easily party up to make the journey safer. These would be overworld zones, just off beat paths. Not instanced.

Other examples could be one making all your teleports free for an X amount of time, another increasing movement speed outside instances, negating fall damage in the overworld even during combat or exploration zones like Eureka.

As you can see none of these are game breaking and it adds a sense of life/adventure for those who like to travel and give them perks that are enjoyable, but people wouldn't throw a fit they have to do this content to get it if they don't want to.

[Darkstride]

You've described Final Fantasy XI.

[Ath192]

You've described Final Fantasy XI.

Not at all. XI's mobs mainly auto'd you to death and a lot of them were certain death and there was nothing you could do about it. That is more Eureka. Deep Dungeon mobs are dangerous without having to rely on heavy auto's and give the player more of a chance. Early XI had some of that feel NGL but I feel the encounters weren't all that intriguing.

I liked XI a lot but I hated the fact that an Easy Prey or Decent challenge rabbit could downright annihilate some jobs a la Rabbit of Caerbannog really sucked.

[Kaurhz]

A controversial opinion but...

Flying is by far one of the worst things to happen to this game.

I would also be a fan if they reworked how the game worked fundamentally in that... I think your gear should be relevant only for duties e.g., raids and dungeons, granted I think these should be reworked too, the experience of doing dungeons and raids does feel woefully underwhelming.

Have the rank system from Bozja be reworked and implemented into the monsters in the open world so that no matter how strong your gear, or how high your level, the monsters always present some threat - Relatively speaking.

[Ath192]

A controversial opinion but...

Flying is by far one of the worst things to happen to this game.

I would also be a fan if they reworked how the game worked fundamentally in that... I think your gear should be relevant only for duties e.g., raids and dungeons, granted I think these should be reworked too, the experience of doing dungeons and raids does feel woefully underwhelming.

Have the rank system from Bozja be reworked and implemented into the monsters in the open world so that no matter how strong your gear, or how high your level, the monsters always present some threat - Relatively speaking.

Flying definitely made the game worse. Like the game already felt small because of teleports, which, fine I get the need for convenience. But Flying on top of that was just too much.

Even without flying there is probably no where in this game you cant get to in under 2 minutes. Just Teleport, and maybe ride a mount for 30 seconds.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Not at all. XI's mobs mainly auto'd you to death and a lot of them were certain death and there was nothing you could do about it. That is more Eureka. Deep Dungeon mobs are dangerous without having to rely on heavy auto's and give the player more of a chance. Early XI had some of that feel NGL but I feel the encounters weren't all that intriguing.

I liked XI a lot but I hated the fact that an Easy Prey or Decent challenge rabbit could downright annihilate some jobs a la Rabbit of Caerbannog really sucked.

FFXI's design was based around encouraging interactions between players. That's why they intentionally made enemies grow stronger faster than players. However from personal experience every job could handle easy prey and decent challenge solo if they were geared appropriately to solo. This coming from one of the first people on my server to own a Maat's Cap. Though if you were one of the people unlucky enough to aggro something like Bloodtear Baldurf on your first adventure into that zone at like lv 10 that's just bad luck lol.

The damage scaling by level was funny in some instances too as I recall seeing some really low level person accidentally stumble into a really high level area just to get auto attacked by a bat for something around 2700 damage.

[Kaurhz]

Flying definitely made the game worse. Like the game already felt small because of teleports, which, fine I get the need for convenience. But Flying on top of that was just too much.

Even without flying there is probably no where in this game you cant get to in under 2 minutes. Just Teleport, and maybe ride a mount for 30 seconds.

I don't mind teleports so much, as you're still required to navigate and traverse the world, but flying, as you've said gives everything a sense of feeling smaller than it actually is. If I were to compare, let's say traversing Old Sharlayan with a zone, e.g., Radz at Han, I always find that the former feels much better than the latter, just because of how I need to traverse it.

Flying works, but I think it only works in games where every area isn't instanced off from each other, Sea of Clouds works because you have the depth to work with, but that's about it. It's not to say I feel that the zones themselves are bad, but instanced + flying just feels incredibly small.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I don't mind teleports so much, as you're still required to navigate and traverse the world, but flying, as you've said gives everything a sense of feeling smaller than it actually is. If I were to compare, let's say traversing Old Sharlayan with a zone, e.g., Radz at Han, I always find that the former feels much better than the latter, just because of how I need to traverse it.

Flying works, but I think it only works in games where every area isn't instanced off from each other, Sea of Clouds works because you have the depth to work with, but that's about it. It's not to say I feel that the zones themselves are bad, but instanced + flying just feels incredibly small.

I can't recall the name of the title as it was back around 15-20 years ago but I do remember playing a F2P MMO that actually had flying enemies that could attack you while flying on your mount and you'd either have to flee from them or fight them. If a game that old could do it, it just seems like a missed opportunity with newer titles that feature flying via mounts.

[Ath192]

I can't recall the name of the title as it was back around 15-20 years ago but I do remember playing a F2P MMO that actually had flying enemies that could attack you while flying on your mount and you'd either have to flee from them or fight them. If a game that old could do it, it just seems like a missed opportunity with newer titles that feature flying via mounts.

I also like swimming and diving. I get underwater encounters have never been super awesome in MMOs but I wish they've would tried to come up with something original instead of just giving up on it. I do appreciate, however, that they are adding swimming to old zones. Whoever is doing that on the dev team, you are a hero.

[Kaurhz]

I can't recall the name of the title as it was back around 15-20 years ago but I do remember playing a F2P MMO that actually had flying enemies that could attack you while flying on your mount and you'd either have to flee from them or fight them. If a game that old could do it, it just seems like a missed opportunity with newer titles that feature flying via mounts.

I think they could, frankly speaking, if they tried, but so much potential from many games gets stripped away for the convenience factor, and sometimes this convenience factor is simply just... Too much.