How could the developers destroyed Tural like this?

[ExESGO]

Agreed with all of these. I didn't realize it until reading this thread, but the single biggest problem with the Dawntrail zones is that they don't feel like living, breathing areas. Each location is literally crafted to be viewed during your MSQ progression and then doesn't do much outside of that. If you try to explore the maps, so much is open empty space with the same mobs, and none of it tells a "story." Compare that to the maps in ARR and HW, where you could go exploring and see elements in the environment that actually gave you clues as to who lives or lived there, what might've occurred there, or were subtle visual references to lore that wasn't just spoonfed to you via an exposition dump. Places that hint at something more and make you want to delve into what their significance is, because they don't just lead you to each spot for a quest or something. You know you did an area right when someone walks through it and wonders "hm.. what happened here..?"

The ruins of Gelmorra, the mun tuy cellars in the Shroud... the various ruins of New Sharlayan in the Hinterlands... the underwater ruins of Il Mheg... the underwater bubble settlements in the Ruby Sea... there are a lot visual stories in the nooks and crannies of past expansions' maps that I just don't see enough of in Dawntrail, and so it really doesn't entice someone to stick around in an environment like that.

I would very much like to see future zones that have that kind of natural storytelling in them, rather than just being used like a Disneyland attraction where you go from one isolated spot to another and then never return.

It's been that way since Shadowbringers and got worse during Endwalker ie. Thavnair and Garlemald. I think Dawntrail has better more organic zone design versus Endwalker, but it's still not up there as ARR's. For context I do adore ARR's zone design and consider it peak zone design in the game.