More enterable buildings, please!

[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.