Expansion cities feel too empty, especially Dawntrail ones

[Doki]

Tuliyollal & Solution 9 (and some older expansion cities) have very large maps that take a while to run through without mounts, even with the new jog update. One of my first impressions of running Tuliyollal was "why is it so empty here?" Even with the rush of launch day, it felt empty even then, and now with less people needing to go to some of these zones often, it is even emptier.

Please consider adding something else to add more feeling of population to these zones. Maybe something that could be toggled off, or even auto-toggled based on number of players in a zone that adds non-targetable NPCs or something?

Without something like this, it gives a "dead world" vibe a lot of the time, since all vendor\quest\etc NPCs are static.

The existing non-targetable NPCs are great and add a lot of personality to the game, and more of them should be added everywhere!

[Tatiana]

They should just have a lot of nameless and un-targetable wandering NPC's that at least give the visual representation of it being a bustling city like WoW does because I agree even when there's a lot of players, the spaces are so large that it feels sterile and empty in places where it doesn't make sense to be if it's a city.

[ForteNightshade]

They should just have a lot of nameless and un-targetable wandering NPC's that at least give the visual representation of it being a bustling city like WoW does because I agree even when there's a lot of players, the spaces are so large that it feels sterile and empty in places where it doesn't make sense to be if it's a city.

Baldur's Gate 3 not only does this, but has an option to limit it for lower end PCs. It does wonders to make the city feel as huge as they've been building up throughout the game. Comparatively, XIV's scale always feels so small because it's just a lot of empty space and corridors.

[Tatiana]

Baldur's Gate 3 not only does this, but has an option to limit it for lower end PCs. It does wonders to make the city feel as huge as they've been building up throughout the game. Comparatively, XIV's scale always feels so small because it's just a lot of empty space and corridors.

yeah I forgot about that, I think that's something RPG's generally do and I've been saying for a while now that SE should borrow some ideas from single player games when it comes to visual presentation. FFXIV has beautiful cities but this is definitely an area where they could massively improve their atmosphere.

[Jeeqbit]

They are able to have NPCs wander around because they even did that in Ishgard and Kugane.

[LilaIronman]

They are able to have NPCs wander around because they even did that in Ishgard and Kugane.

The NPCs dont have schedule, an NPC walking 2 feet to pick up and drop down a chest is not wandering around.

Although expansion cities would be more alive if you could actually server hop in them but nah

[Xactly]

If they did added the ability to world visit. I can imagine the population in old sharlayan maybe also increasing as that is the second city with the closest market board around the aetheryte.

[Underscore]

I agree, Solution 9 feels like a ghost town with how massive yet seemingly unpopulated it is.

[MsMisato]

honestly if they did apts in cities versus their own zones, kind of like how BDO did it, it may make other cities feel a bit more lively.