Quote Originally Posted by HappyHubris View Post
The thing is, a traditional MMO typically weaves more open world combat into it's quests. So you might have to fight your way to an objective in the open world to proceed, giving the player something to do. Whereas FFXIV tends to have a sparse world and prefers to instance combat or spawn a token mob during quests. Some of the fun of other MMOs is fighting your way into a temple to grab the object or scouting a jungle and beating back beasts to find the lost princess or whatever.

Whereas FFXIV loves its "standing around and endlessly talking" cutscenes.
I do miss zone story telling. It's not entirely absent from FFXIV, but it's close enough to being that way that I really don't find the zones compelling.

As a result I never really get attached to a zone or end up having a love/hate relationship with one. Even the fantastical zones like the Tempest still managed to be boring for 90% of your time there.

Most zones seem to have one or two interesting features and then a lot of patchy grass. A lot of them are also color desaturated moreso than actual reality. Seems crazy that my own outdoors is more interesting for me to look at than some of these zones.

I think the other thing that I really miss from zones is verticality. Most of the zones are pretty flat. They certainly don't have multiple levels, cave systems, etc. When I first got to Faerieville I was really excited at the idea of doing the whole zone in fog. I thought that would have been really cool. I've had a few letdowns between hopes and reality when it comes to zone design.