Linear, linear, linear

[Shurrikhan]

We need zone backtracking.

Elaborate?

Are you looking for people to go back to parts of zones they've already outleveled? To go back to zones they've already outleveled? To need to return to a hub after each activity? What is this "backtracking" that you want?

We can't be treating the whole world like we treat the MSQ - Linearly only going forward.

As opposed to? Going from zone A to B to A to C to B to D to A to B to E...? What's the alternative here that you're looking for?

It feels like that's still ultimately going to create no greater number of paths forward, just more loopy of ones. If that appeals to you, then cool, but I don't imagine it'd be any less linear in terms of how few choices are available. Such is a consequence, first and foremost, of the MSQ (and zones in FF only having ever intended to be MSQ backdrops, even in ARR).

We also can't survive by separating the playerbase along a decade of content.

Are you trying to hint at 'We should abolish levels and let players skip ahead in the MSQ'? If not, they're going to be split by their level and MSQ-based progress across zones regardless of whatever you do to those zones themselves.

I don't know why Yoshi thinks we can just strongarm it into working for us, when it stopped feeling lively around Stormblood.

Trying to "strongarm"... new zones onto us? What? What's this thing being strongarmed onto us?

FF is about innovation, it's time for CBU:III to do just that. They've created systems, but they refuse to expand on them and branch them out. Like how Critical Engagements would be amazing for random open world Hunts instead of the horrible hunt trains we have today. There just needs to be more systems for player interaction and engagement, and more reasons to backtrack as a higher level player going to lower level areas.

Okay. What appeals to you about CEs (over unmarked Hunts)? Do you want Hunts also to be signaled to everyone and marked on the map and for people to be able to be teleported in, or is it just the mechanics that appeal to you more from X Critical Engagement over, say, the likes of Go Go Gorgimera (North Thanalan Notorious Monster Fate with multiple waves/phases)?

Are there any other examples that come to mind?

_______

For my part:

Outside of WPvP, if the world doesn't move even when the players aren't a part of it, it's unlikely to seem lively when players are given a part within it, either. As such, zones should have many-layered moving parts in their own right. Players should simply leverage existing momentums, allowing for further escalation where the zone would otherwise balance itself back out.

For instance, let's say we have caravans moving between settlement A and B. There should be NPC crafters that supply those caravans, and gatherers in turn who supply them. More players help out the gatherers -> more craft orders from the NPCs. More craft orders from the NPCs -> more or higher value goods sent on the caravans. Assuming there's no WPvP available, then you'd have solely NPC bandits, but they in turn may scale in count/quality with the total value of goods being carried by those caravans. Caravans may hire some NPC guards normally, but never quite enough to keep the bandits from running off with some stuff, which in turn reduces the maximum number of wagons sent out (which in turn reduces the profits for players supplying or working for the crafters, etc.), but players may offer their services or take contracts to keep them safe, allowing things to escalate yet further (more bandits, bigger caravans, etc.) All that would be one "ring", "system", or "layer" of the living world.

Add to that destructible watch-towers along the route, or bandit camps getting so large that they invite the interest of a neighboring area's bandit lord, causing a territory war between them that may in turn start recruiting nearby beast tribes. With that, you have a second "ring" to that living world, where two systems meet (beastmen or outside camps may interact with this local and otherwise closed system).

Now, start adding some key NPCs, such as the bandit lords themselves and their lieutenants. Give them names, give them personalities. Give us ways to sneak into their base and see how things are run. Finally, give them ways to escape death that players will like more than dislike, so that their story can continue being told, developing as things go.

(Or heck, perhaps even allow for player interactions of... 'alternate' legality, so that players can have a hand in re-cycling those actors, such as in tentatively joining one of those bandit camps, allying with a beast tribe without needing a rep grind to encourage such, etc.)

Involve notorious monsters, named (not to be killed, only pushed back) or otherwise (where the particular species and appearance would be randomized, within reason). Hell, make it so some of those notorious monsters would require a true capped-population-instance effort to kill or rout, and maybe even require player-and-NPC-built-up fortifications and armaments. Perhaps include seasonal events. Definitely vary things via weather. Give us some additional randomization in the form of roaming actors (corporations, faction incursions, GC training, farther-traveling merchant or nomadic raiders, multi-zone beastmen uprisings, and the like). Etc., etc.

That said, such barebone implementations as FATEs as they are now, much like leves, really do constrain what would be possible for more involved systems like those. They'd have to be rehauled.