Hubs in XIV are underutilized

[YumieYumiki]

Yoshi-P already explained why they are not really investing in other hubs, simply because they did try and people still defaulted AFK-in in Limsa.

Anything else than "market board near aetherite + server travel allowed from said aetherite" doesnt really count as "trying" imo

[technole]

I get happy when Limsa looks empty, and then sigh when the hundreds of people finally load-in. So no.

[Azurarok]

I find the expac formula at fault here too. Every expac has a pair of new hub towns with very little reason to revisit older ones outside the Eorzean tri-cities, if even that. The current expac's hubs are fairly populated throughout the lifetime of the expac, but are doomed to become ghost towns once the next one is released unless they have major repeatable content to do in them, which really just comes down to Idyllshire and maybe Ishgard.

Also doesn't help none of the newer ones from ShB onwards have company chests, while Inns, Market Boards, Hunt Boards, and token exchange shops are haphazardly split between the two towns.

I'd like for them to reuse an older hub town while expanding the region around it for an expac sometime.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

Everything in XIV is underutilized LOL.

/thread, really. Every area in this game, hub or open world, is just an empty shell, waiting for content to fill it. Most of most people's play time is in instanced dungeons or fights. It is what it is.

[JackRazor]

It's not just hubs-- older outdoor areas get forgotten as well, unfortunately. I often lament the fact that we have no reason to revisit these areas. There are some of them I genuinely love and miss, but I don't roleplay so I don't really visit them unless I have a good reason to.

Obviously gathering kind of fixes this, though you're milling about one small portion. And the gemstones seems to have been a sort of effort to get us back into the old areas. It can be fixed, but I'm sure it's low priority-- I doubt they're overly worried about whether or not we can enjoy an area from 11 years ago when they have new content to work on-- but I'd love to see something implemented. Maybe more hunts in older areas, making older FATEs give better scaled rewards for higher level players, maybe some new quests that pop up in old areas. You're telling me no one in Kugane needs help anymore? The story there ended so that's it? Hell, give us a set of randomized fetch quests or something. But I guess that's kind of what the Hunt Board is for.

[Mawlzy]

It's not just hubs-- older outdoor areas get forgotten as well, unfortunately. I often lament the fact that we have no reason to revisit these areas. There are some of them I genuinely love and miss, but I don't roleplay so I don't really visit them unless I have a good reason to.

Obviously gathering kind of fixes this, though you're milling about one small portion. And the gemstones seems to have been a sort of effort to get us back into the old areas. It can be fixed, but I'm sure it's low priority-- I doubt they're overly worried about whether or not we can enjoy an area from 11 years ago when they have new content to work on-- but I'd love to see something implemented. Maybe more hunts in older areas, making older FATEs give better scaled rewards for higher level players, maybe some new quests that pop up in old areas. You're telling me no one in Kugane needs help anymore? The story there ended so that's it? Hell, give us a set of randomized fetch quests or something. But I guess that's kind of what the Hunt Board is for.

If there were three weekly elite marks per expac I'd spend more time flying around old zones. The nice thing about the weekly hunt marks is you have to go find them, as opposed to the bulk that are always in the same place.

[Menriq]

play any other MMo and a HUB town is a bustling center of player population and events.

Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

[Voidmage]

Anything else than "market board near aetherite + server travel allowed from said aetherite" doesnt really count as "trying" imo

This is honestly the truth imo and more or less one result of the overall problem.

They can’t make other Hubs interesting because they don’t know how to make anything else than the regular anymore.
The fact that Yoshida only sees marketboard and aetherites as what makes a Hub is pretty telling.

Solution 9 could have had a highway where you can drive the motorcycle mount in some kind of racing (and yes Chocobo racing already exists so take that technical limitation).
There could have been a shop where you can dye your mount (there even is a tuning shop but unused).
Even simple things like an inn room there would have been something new.

The only place not empty there is the typica trader place and that one will also be dead as soon as the next expansion comes out.

To answer the thread.
You can make Hubs more interesting by actually not just using them as a “checklist number 49 content that’s needs to be implemented because we always did it”.
That’s the main problem.
A completely over bloated project planing from Yoshida that follows the same formula to the letter.

For all the “DT wants to try something new” it honestly did everything but that.

Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

I know you don’t mean it like that but… shouldn’t this game want to be better than the competition?

[Menriq]

I know you don’t mean it like that but… shouldn’t this game want to be better than the competition?

I don't think it's a matter of being better. Let's say they added what you suggested about racing. Adding the chocobo racing to the DF was a QoL change. Let's be real and not even pretend that people wouldn't be asking for this be racing to be added as well to DF. So they add it to DF, and thus no need to go S9 since I can queue for it anywhere.

The shop for dying your mount? Gonna be clamoring for that to be available almost everywhere as well.

I'm not sure how long you've been around, but we actually had exactly this situation where old hubs were used in later expansions. Mor Dhona was used (and still used) for currency exchanges. Instead of having Scrip stuff tied to specific expansions, they added representatives almost everywhere because there was QoL changes requested specifically because people didn't want to have to keep going back to old places.

So to make a long story longer, there used to be reasons to go back to old hubs, but based on player feedback for QoL improvements, it seems they've made a design decision to no longer need hubs once we've moved onto a new expansion.

[Daralii]

Pretty sure when I'm on WoW, I don't see a whole lot of people in the old expansion hubs either.

Unless they changed course on this since I last played WoW(9.1), Blizzard strips commodities from the previous expansion's hub(s) as soon as the next one is out so that everyone is funneled into Stormwind/Orgrimmar and the new place(s). CS3 has yet to do anything like that.