Why we cannot have Exploration zones instead of regular zones?

[Kranel_San]

Yeah sure the dozens of those mean "almost everyone enjoys it".
Yeah I can compare it to the base zones when they do release actually. Unless you have short memory, do you recall how full of fate trains they are in the first couple of months after an expansion drops? How do you think OC is going to look in a couple of months when the next new content drops?

How do you think Eureka looked prior to the release of Crescent? It sure wasn't anywhere near empty for a 7-year-old content.

Yoshi-P said he remade the game, rather than salvaging 1.0, so that we could have cross-world gameplay and a matching system to go with it. So you see, a homeworld-only Field Operation would go against that, and reduce the number of participants greatly.

Look. I know some people love to think this way, but I'd rather not worry about the technicality like a dev because that's their job and is what they are paid for. To find solutions to implement creative and fun ideas rather than "We cannot do that".

However, just to humor you with a quickly thought solutions that may or may not work. They could either go with the path of merging all worlds of the same physical DC (and work out stuff like housing) or they could make any players entering the zones within the same physical DC be on the same instance so they don't worry about world hopping.

Although it's just speculation, I believe doing everything in instances allows them to better control the number of participants ie. limiting to 72, which they can't do in the Open World. Although we currently experiencing scaling issues with FATEs still, in most contexts, the cross-world duty system prevents there being too many or too few like you get with hunts.

What makes you think that's not something they can do easily? If I'm not mistaken. The cap of regular zones are around 250-300 players, which is something they could reduce and introduce permanent instances (1,2,3) to compensate for the size.

As for why there aren't dangerous enemies and complex systems such Logos/Lost Actions/Phantom Jobs in the open world, I believe it's because SE wants to keep the status quo for the people who just do MSQ then quit, because not everyone wants complex systems and challenging enemies. Instead, it's made something optional that people can unlock if they want that stuff.

Going back to Eureka, they were willing to allow the developers to make it really brutal in there provided none of it left the confines of the content (and it was, with enemies like Dragons 1-shotting people, and enemies being tougher than in OC on release).

Which is a shame. The MSQ may have a really strong and excellent points throughout its run, but I don't think it should hold the game as a hostage. Afterall, this is a video game, not a visual novel.

[Jeeqbit]

They could either go with the path of merging all worlds of the same physical DC (and work out stuff like housing) or they could make any players entering the zones within the same physical DC be on the same instance so they don't worry about world hopping.

Although I don't understand their exact setup, in theory each world and its associated IP is to separate the connections and their associated data transfer, so merging it becomes problematic when you get a situation like a patch or expansion release especially. They don't want to bottleneck too many connections, so they have multiple bottles, so to speak.

What makes you think that's not something they can do easily? If I'm not mistaken. The cap of regular zones are around 250-300 players, which is something they could reduce and introduce permanent instances (1,2,3) to compensate for the size.

I've seen 600 players in an instance before. We get 400 at hunt trains on Aether at an expansion release. But they rate limit the amount that can enter more and more the closer it gets to 600.

Now they could cap it and divide it into instances, but since each instance is an extra server program, I suspect they would not want to run instances permanently for all zones just for the off chance that they reach cap due to a hunt train or S rank or other event. If they don't have a way to allow everyone into an open world zone, it potentially prevents someone progressing the MSQ which isn't so good, and currently although 600 is rough to get into the few times it's happened, it's still possible.

In contrast, they maintain instances forever for Field Operations and that's less overhead because they are shared across worlds. Their duty servers are designed to handle multiple instances for the event that content gets farmed or has a lot of people doing it. Even then, I have seen the cap reached for Amdapor Keep instances once in my 10 years of play. Due to bots farming it, I literally couldn't queue for it.

Which is a shame. The MSQ may have a really strong and excellent points throughout its run, but I don't think it should hold the game as a hostage. Afterall, this is a video game, not a visual novel.

I actually think their aim is to make the MSQ a visual novel, because some of the people who do the MSQ are not really gamers (ie. they are the partner of someone who plays and not a gamer nor very tech-savvy).

The concept of a visual novel is valid as well. It's long been theorized what an "interactive movie" or "interactive series" would look like, but it's never taken off - guess why? Because it already exists in the form of video game stories like FFXIV's MSQ. It's the same reason the metaverse didn't take off. Because anyone with sense knows it exists in the form of video games already.