Why not improve the 3 initial city-states?

[MsMisato]

It was split because the 1.0 city zones were... frankly... utter torture to navigate (Gridania being the worst of the three, having to tromp down long corridors or tunnels just to get anywhere.... urrghhh.. 'Emerald Labyrinth?' More like emerald nightmare!), and it was due to the city zones actually not really being one large zone, but really several combined together and their zonelines concealed by said corridors (you could actually tell in 1.0 when the zone line changed due to the client momentarily pausing for a split second and the map then updating), and was a major complaint of 1.0 players. So no wonder Yoshi changed this.

The current zones are fundamentally the same size as they were in 1.0 more or less, all SE did was take the blinders off by abolishing those long empty corridors and gave a proper zone change and split the map up into what they really were. So going back to those old days would not solve anything.

not true. because you literally could sit and watch people run back and forth between where the zone walls are now. limsa was famous because of the window on the stair well at the time which is still there on the side that was never filled correctly becuase you can still the outline for it because you can watch run and up down the stair well... the city states were one zone it was atrocious because of the stupid high polycount vases for example they had and the use of retainers to sell before they added the market area across from customs in limsa which is now sealed off.

the zoning you are talking about came when you left the city though. the slower your computer the slower the load. but yea cities were one zone. the only time it loaded was entering the city and leaving. it was pretty fluid until the hi poly vases and the retainers came into play and there were plenty of videos showing the difference between a low, med and hi end computer the difference.

[Atreus]

I'm less concerned about the city zones merging as I am about getting people into the cities at all. I think each city (including Ishgard and Kugane) could use either specific or rotating bonuses for being in them or queuing from them, whatever gets people out of Limsa.

[Grimforth]

The issue with that is that the playerbase seems to be very ungrateful regardless of what the devs do when it comes to "improving stuff" be a character design choices, Nerfs and buffs, Etc. Also this will cost a lot of money, and if they ended up doing it and the fans were still unhappy about it, that would be a clear indication that they're not going to improve anything like that again.

If the devs listen to the fans and grant their requests and the fans are still unhappy about it, that's when the devs stop listening.