Linear, linear, linear

[Shurrikhan]

The easiest answer to that is density allows more casual player interaction. The second obvious one is you no longer appreciate the environment because you're always flying around.

I can only think of a few places where that really applied to ARR. But, at the same time, I can equally think of as many in the Sea of Clouds, The Fringes, Tempest, etc. Both before and after flight, player density was very much 'snapped' to particular hotspots. Population wasn't more spread about the world because the world's value was more spread, but simply because any particular snapshot of all players' activity in the zone was less likely to be spent in travel in close proximity of each other (in that time moving to places of actual value to them).

You were no more likely to meet someone actually doing things not along the route between FATEs in South Shroud, Eastern La Noscea, Central Coerthas, or Eastern or Northern Thanalan, etc. than in HW zones (though I largely blame the lower relative density of gathering loops for that, if we are to include this game's shitty 'gathering' as an open world use). People just rode by what wasn't lucrative even then, just as they'd fly by it later.

The problem of most of the world seeming not worth spending time in wasn't new to larger zones. Nor were lively NPC-populated settlements fewer in, say, Dravanian Forelands than the likes of East Shroud.

I'll agree wholly that it would have been great to spread out and vary the reasons for interaction with the open world, but... that's not a mere matter of density. That's a matter of too limited of lucrative activities.

Simply shrinking zones again, for instance -- let alone to the constant invisible walls and claustrophobia of so many of ARR's zones -- isn't going to make the world more lively. It never has been. At best, it was just slightly easier to pretend otherwise before.

If we want a more lively world, we'll need to do more with the world itself, not just to shorten the distances between everything (e.g., to the absurdities of a fort within cannon-shot of another fort within cannon-shot of another fort, all to protect... no one who couldn't already be evacuated equally easily to the central fort itself [compare against the far more sensible 1.x Coerthas distribution of NPC populations]).

Detail in zones, be that environment clutter, points of interest or landmarks.

Except there's at least an equal amount [not necessarily portion or density, but yes, amount] of details (just not as necessarily of a 'populated' sort, since it's supposed to be... well, frontier), and, heck, a majority of the points of interests / landmarks / favorite views from ground level that stick in mind for me... were from the larger zones, even back when ARR's zones outnumbered them.

I guess you could also say the newer zones lost "immersion", as limited as it already is in XIV, because after ARR you rarely ever find random NPCs going about their day

Except in, you know, most of those zones?

I think a step in the right direction towards making players spend more time in the open world of XIV would be to allow the gathering node detecting skills to be on no matter the job.

Agreed. I feel like the complete separation of gathering from combat classes and gameplay was... about the worst decision they could make for trying to situate gathering interestingly in the larger world, but even just giving more opportunity to notice those nodes without having to be dressed prior in your 'mobs, please kill me in two hits' gear would be pretty big help.