Architecture that doesn't fit

[KiraRavens]

This is not a complaint, but isn't it a pity that the inside architecture of some buildings just doesn't match the exterior at all?

Take the Baldesion Annex for example - that building is pretty small from the outside, yet it's supposed to house the huge entrance area (which actually matches the exterior for obvious reasons), the main hall (that doesn't fit into the building at all - the door that leads into it is next to the exterior wall, yet the room itself stretches quite a bit to each side of it; and the windows on the inside don't match any configuration on the outside either), plus several rooms for people to sleep in plus a hallway (can be seen in cutscenes) leading to them.

So unless all the windows we see on the inside are fake and the complex has several subterranean floors, there's no way this works out.

It's a minor detail and doesn't affect anything - but I would still love for these things to actually make sense. Anyone else? haha

[MikeCake]

This is the same game where we can place windows on the basement and the small housing does not have another floor/attic on top despite of it looking like that from the outside for any of the housing design.

[Diablo_Eichenwald]

Magick my guy, Magick.

[MikkoAkure]

I think at a certain point you just need to accept that there’s limitations to some of the zones and to stop thinking too hard about it. Limsa Lominsa is obviously meant to be much bigger than what we see for example. In artwork and in stuff that’s mentioned by characters, it’s more than just this tiny collection of paths on islands and a handful of buildings, but they seem to have been limited with what can be depicted so we got what we got.

The decision to put the Baldesion Annex in the middle of the Sharlayan map instead of off to the side was an interesting one, but if we had the full size of it on the map then it would be White House Ballroom levels of awkward and oversized compared to everything else around it.

Gotta suspend your disbelief at least a little bit when it comes to scale in video games, especially MMOs.

[LeCorbeaux]

Gotta suspend your disbelief at least a little bit when it comes to scale in video games, especially MMOs.

Especially not MMOs. They are the kind of game which benefits the most from spreading out the points of interest, because it helps combating zone congestion.

The further apart various places are, within sensible limits, the fewer players in the immediate vicinity to synchronise with each other.

[MikkoAkure]

Especially not MMOs. They are the kind of game which benefits the most from spreading out the points of interest, because it helps combating zone congestion.

The further apart various places are, within sensible limits, the fewer players in the immediate vicinity to synchronise with each other.

There’s still technical limitations exacerbated by the nature of MMOs having to load the maps on servers with lots of players and allowing minimum graphics requirements to net a larger playerbase that affects how big the zone can be and how densely populated by NPCs and buildings it can be too. They’re not going to build out an entire realistic city for the game, it’s just not feasible.

We get the main points of interest spread out from each other and filler bits in between, but it’s not the same scale as an actual, functional city.

Outdoor zones get hit with this as well. The idea that everything that ever happens in that area happens only in a single square mile also requires suspension of disbelief.

[LeCorbeaux]

Outdoor zones get hit with this as well. The idea that everything that ever happens in that area happens only in a single square mile also requires suspension of disbelief.

That's true, but especially for MMOs they don't have to be that small. As an example, PlanetSide 2's zones ("continents") are roughly 64 km² each, about the size of Manhattan Island, Föhr or Guernsey. This, together with a design which naturally spreads the players out most of the time, allows them to host hundreds of players in each zone at the same time.

FFXIV's zones are, if anything, an anomaly in how tiny they are.

[Catwho]

The most egregious one to me is the Carline Canopy. There just isn't any place for even ONE inn room, let alone dozens of them.

Limsa, I think, has a lot of the hidden parts of the city only accessible by boat, or hidden in the cliff sides. If you stare out over the water, you'll see windows inside the cliffs.

Ul'dah's small houses making up the actual city walls makes the most sense architecturally. There are also extra layers of the city upwards AND downwards that are presumably inaccessible housing. The Waking Sands used to be underneath where the Hall of Flames is in 1.0 - it was damaged during the Calamity, allegedly, which is why the Path of the Twelve got shoved out to Vesper Bay during the renovation.

[RedLolly]

Yeah the nap rooms are hysterically oversized but the exterior's windows hint that there were meant to be many little studio apartments on the upper floor. The meeting hall is most likely a basement with the lack of windows and myriad volcanic caves they use for everything from the library to Labyrinthos.

It's not even unreasonable to imagine Krile and G'raha specifically gave the WoL that enormous room to use because it's the WoL.

[VeyaAkemi]

Maybe instead of being underground, it is just TARDIS technology, it is bigger in the inside.