More enterable buildings, please!

[Keumjo]

I have one question for all that want to go in alle houses and rooms:

Do you can do it in real life? Are all doors in your neighborhood open? Would the people that live in the houses not call the police if you go in them? Why should a game work differently?

I mean, I can't run a long distance without having an asthma attack in real life, doesn't mean I don't want to be able to sprint in game.

[JohnLakeside]

I have one question for all that want to go in alle houses and rooms:

Do you can do it in real life? Are all doors in your neighborhood open? Would the people that live in the houses not call the police if you go in them? Why should a game work differently?

God, I hate takes like this. Its a braindead argument at best and bad faith at worst. I seriously put a lot of blame on this community for CBU3 moving away from ARR zone design. If you personally don't want to explore anything or don't care about environmental storytelling and all you care about in zone design is aetheryte location and having a "pretty" background for your selfies/gposes, okay good for you. Don't explore, don't go inside buildings. But don't indicate to the devs to not put something in the game just because you don't personally care for it. If going inside random buildings is immersion breaking for you, then don't go inside. It's as simple as that. But christ, let people who care about that at least have the option to.

[Barwara]

In general I would want to see more access to locked buildings, but also no loading screens when you move from one area to the next… that’s the immersion killer for me.

[Valence]

Being able to go wander inside personal houses is silly, but being able to actually enter public buildings, stalls and whatnot like you could in real life, what's the problem with this?
Although I'm saying this as someone that literally loves spending half-afk time in those nifty S9 apartments...

[Hallarem]

Imagine Skyrim or any big RPG where you can't enter NPC houses, the whole "morality" angle of it is silly. This isnt real life.
Equally silly things:

"Oh, we can't be a thief, its a villain job" - Yoshi-P. Sooooooo.. former Final Fantasies are bad with their thief main characters, and now we got Reaper and Dark Knight lol.

"Oh, it would be silly to have a black mage running around in paladin gear" meanwhile they give us plate glam for all jobs, and silly glam like animal suits and modern clothing. But won't let us mix glam up crossjobs.

[Underscore]

ARR zones stay winning.

[Catwho]

There have been a few actually locked doors that were opened up at some point. The crypt in Uldah was locked until they added the second chunk of alchemist quests, and suddenly you can go into it at any point, no gatekeeper required.

That said, the majority of the gatekeeper NPCs in front of doors are because they didn't want to have a bazillion player characters when that content was added, and by allowing it as a separated instance instead, you can maintain the privacy of the area. It's bad enough to have 100 players crowded around an NPC when it's outside. It can become unmanageable in a small room.

OP's initial point is right though: Part of the fun of MMOs is exploration and little easter eggs, and there are too many locked doors. One example that comes to mind is the Pelupelu society - all those cute little cottages for the visitors, but there is not a single one we can enter! Not as part of a quest, not as part of a cutscene. I tried to get into them all. They're pretty set decoration, but they don't even feel like they are being used or lived in because of it.

There are lots of places in the game that you can enter, and if the NPC sees you, they shout "GET OUT!" That's awesome! Not every door should be locked with a "NO ENTRY" sign if some people do need to be there for legit purposes.

[Burmecia]

Yes. Yes!
I hope I am not weird for liking ARR a lot because you can enter so many of the very inconsequential seeming buildings.
The shack at outer la noscea being one of my favourites.
I wish I could enter the ships in western la noscea like we can in limsa.

[Doopliss]

God, I hate takes like this. Its a braindead argument at best and bad faith at worst. I seriously put a lot of blame on this community for CBU3 moving away from ARR zone design. If you personally don't want to explore anything or don't care about environmental storytelling and all you care about in zone design is aetheryte location and having a "pretty" background for your selfies/gposes, okay good for you. Don't explore, don't go inside buildings. But don't indicate to the devs to not put something in the game just because you don't personally care for it. If you don't want to go inside buildings, then don't go inside buildings. It's as simple as that. But christ, let people who care about that at least have the option to.

I agree completely. While I do think Dawntrail has done a better job at making areas feel lived-in (seriously, villages in Thavnair and Yanxia, for example, look like pitiful set pieces compared to the layout of villages in Tural), there are still far too many long stretches of empty space and unenterable buildings.

When it comes to the immersion of feeling like an adventurer in a lived-in world, nothing has beat ARR zones in my decade of playing, which is...honestly unfortunate. The areas are still beautiful for screenshot-taking, too, so it feels like the zones that come after only win in the "being larger" department.

And I don't know, but, personally, being able to enter buildings makes the world feel more immersive, not less. Lots of little, tight-knit villages in the real world will leave their doors unlocked and invite people inside all of the time, and this sort of thing varies from culture to culture. And, well, if that's not good enough, just use your imagination. They don't have to program an NPC mechanically inviting your character in every time with some stiff speech bubble, lol.

All the buildings in ARR are great for open world RP, too, and I'd really like to see that extend to zones in other expansions. ...And maybe have them have fewer NPCs take up seating for players. At least in my data center, it would likely give people more reason to hang around in the overworld.

[JohnLakeside]

And I don't know, but, personally, being able to enter buildings makes the world feel more immersive, not less. Lots of little, tight-knit villages in the real world will leave their doors unlocked and invite people inside all of the time, and this sort of thing varies from culture to culture. And, well, if that's not good enough, just use your imagination. They don't have to program an NPC mechanically inviting your character in every time with some stiff speech bubble, lol.

Agreed. More than that, nothing is forcing these people who don’t want enterable buildings to actually go inside them. They cry about it being immersion-breaking, but if they really believe that, they can simply choose not to enter.

And if they have to go inside, it would logically be part of a quest—meaning it’s literally part of the story, not something breaking immersion. So the argument against enterable buildings makes no sense at all. It's peak "erm actually" logic.

All the buildings in ARR are great for open world RP, too, and I'd really like to see that extend to zones in other expansions. ...And maybe have them have fewer NPCs take up seating for players. At least in my data center, it would likely give people more reason to hang around in the overworld.

Yup, I've noticed that the majority of open-world RP takes place in ARR zones. Yeah, maybe its partly for lore purposes or whatever, but I also think its primarily because ARR zones are infinitely more conducive to RP than anything else that followed.