A Lived in World?

[xxmiamorecadenza]

After playing GW2 for a spell, I noticed that even old zones from the initial release are quite lively. With an almost Eureka | Bozja feel to it as a multitude of folks cycle through content that was released years prior. Thus giving everything a more 'lived in' sensation.

With FFXIV, I've noticed that after the initial burst of excitement with new zones it emulates an entirely empty feel. Like your WoL is by their lonesome with only the occasional glimpse of a fellow adventurer. Housing even reflects this, with it being somewhat rare to cross paths with another player in the district unless you're attending a venue.

Is this intentional by design?

And is it entirely bad or is there some good to be found in the lack of traffic present in a single instance?

[Shougun]

GW2 zone design, mechanically speaking, is really good and I feel FFXIV has a lot more to learn from them.

Their FATE systems make our FATEs look like 'go kill 10 rats' most generic quest, and our zones as temporary waystations to get to the instances we'll queue up for. There was a small spark of creativity in early FATEs like the Thanalan and Shroud fate where they took over areas but that was the little spark that never became a fire. GW2 has other excellent zone systems too, including great transportation and other environmental interactions that makes wandering the environment feel more like exploration than making your way across a 3d looking 2d plane. I note mechanically since visually I'm full on FFXIV, while I don't dislike GW2's visuals I just greatly prefer FFXIV.

I'm not sure intentional is the right word but certainly appears to be a thing they don't believe in sprucing up unfortunately . I like the exploratory zones in concept, as they try new things, but if you told me I could have quality base zones with interesting systems with nearly if not actually evergreen moments, I'd say "why of course I'd trade some sequestered exploratory space if it mean "everywhere" is an exploratory space!".

As an aside if people have ideas, besides posting them here too, may check out a thread that had hoped to add elements on this: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...9-Zone-for-7.0

[Oizen]

Its more of a consequence of the game's design than an intentional decision. Though some of it is intentional.

A lot of the content in FFXIV has a notoriously short shelf life. Once you clear it, theres no real point going back unless you really like the gameplay experience it provides, thus a lot of players never return to the areas and they die off.
The overworlds are also pretty neglected in terms of content, they more or less exist as a hub for the MSQ, and not much else. Unless you're doing beast tribe quests, fates or gathering, you'll never go back there. And all those things have a short shelf life as well.

I'm pretty sure they also want to keep the activity to the starting 3 cities to make the game feel more alive to new players, all events are hosted there, all job quests are held there, and as a result as soon as you hit Ishgard, Kugane and especially the Crystarium. its basically just a ghost town.

[Raikai]

They said they're planning some new battle content for Dawntrail... I'd love if it was actually something analogue to the Exploratory Zones, but applied to the open world.

[Jeeqbit]

With FFXIV, I've noticed that after the initial burst of excitement with new zones it emulates an entirely empty feel. Like your WoL is by their lonesome with only the occasional glimpse of a fellow adventurer.

It's mostly because the game has you go through the MSQ and then doesn't send you back to them very much.

There used to be a lot of FATE farming to level alt jobs, but this died when Palace of the Dead released in Heavensward. There used to be FATE farm parties for Anima weapons as well, especially because of the FATEs were awful to do alone (such as in Coerthas Western Highlands).

Now, you can just level your other jobs with POTD and destroy old FATEs with Blue Mage or from over leveling.

It's not actually true that there is no activity in the zones though. People do the MSQ occasionally, they do hunt trains, they fight and spawn S ranks, they do relic grinds, they do bicolor gemstone farms in ShB and EW areas (and especially in the last EW area), they fight large-scale bosses such as Chi, Daivadipa, Archaeotania or Formidable, they do gathering, they do beast tribes and they do custom deliveries.

The reason you don't see quite as many people in these areas is because SE puts the majority of content into instances (duties) that you queue for. So all the people that would be flooding these areas in Guild Wars are in duties in this game.

You mentioned Eureka and Bozja and that is a perfect example of this. These are both duties that you queue into!

Housing even reflects this, with it being somewhat rare to cross paths with another player in the district unless you're attending a venue.

Unless it's an FC house. If you teleport to your FC house, usually there are lots of people hanging out there, unless your FC is dead.

is it entirely bad or is there some good to be found in the lack of traffic present in a single instance?

There is such a thing as too many (causing lag) and such a thing as too little (causing it to be empty). I suspect they queue everyone into duties for things because it allows them to know exactly how many people are there and to scale the content appropriately.

[MeanDragon]

I think they need to add Daily style content that aren't just duty roulettes. Offer some incentive to go do a FATE. Each city has a daily quest that needs done: Like go kill this Boss FATE and you are rewarded with tomes or bonus XP or a certain type of currency to trade in to a vendor somewhere.

This is very similar to the Levequests, but there is no reason to do them except for leveling DoL/DoH.

I am just throwing stuff out there. The only other MMO I play is ESO.

[Erinellza]

GW2 zone design, mechanically speaking, is really good and I feel FFXIV has a lot more to learn from them.

Yeah, this is why I always say there is no perfect MMO and I play 3 for different reasons:
XIV - my favorite instanced content but mediocre open world stuff.
GW2 - my favorite open world content but mediocre instanced stuff (no new dungeons in a decade).
ESO - my favorite collectable instanced housing system but boring spammy combat and overly easy snoozefest open world.

[Iscah]

A lot of the overworld zones don't really make sense to be encountering other players in, anyway. You're supposed to be the only person to have gotten in there in a thousand years.

I'm fine with being alone when I venture out into the overworld. If I want to see other people around, I'll have that when I go back to a city.

[LioJen]

Add the Conquest points from XI

[Mayhemmer]

It's weird that they haven't put much effort into touching up the overworld. Maybe they feel like it's not worth it; that that effort is better spent on "new content," as if it's a tradeoff that must be made. I certainly don't buy that they don't have the manpower to lend to it.

Maybe it's a victim of the devs pigeonholing themselves into this strict roller-coaster design the game has. They're very good at ensuring the player is a specific level at certain points in the story, and I'm going to guess that, in part, is due to how little they have to worry about rationing out experience rewards during an expansions leveling cycle during the MSQ. When there's so few sources of significant experience during a new MSQ and they're constantly ushering players along in the story, they can technically more easily fine-tune the experience players do get.

I fear they may look at adding new overworld content as something that would conflict with this design, as they would need to ensure it's worth the player's time to even do, and that means either experience, or currency, or both as rewards. Obviously, we don't really have either, if we're not counting hunt trains (which you won't be doing until level cap anyway), which I don't personally see as significant pieces of content. FATEs can be decent with exp, but they've been around, relatively unchanged, for a very long time now, and I'm frankly burned out on them.

That said, this isn't a defense of their overly-strict design. I hate it, actually. I hate that we don't have more interesting ways to navigate a zone, just because it would go outside of their very strict plan for where you can go and when. I hate that enemies wander around their leashed areas like the literal NPC's they are, instead of at least patrolling around, or even giving the impression that they're doing something. I hate that all flying enemies are prohibited from flying. There are enemies in dungeons that "fly" until they aggro you and come down to fight. Even WoW does that, and quite often. I hate that I have little to no incentive to engage with the overworld content that we do have, because it's so mind-numbingly tedious to me that I would take just about anything as a replacement at this point.