Possible story-based areas for end-game

[JillyBean]

So I've been playing a lot of FFXI while waiting for ARR beta to start and I had a sudden thought, "How amazing would it be to see an area like sky or sea with ARR's graphics engine?" Now, I was a die-hard FFXI fan for about 4 years, and even though abyssea and GoV parties really ruined the game for me I still find Sea to be one of the most incredible areas in any video game, even with XI's 10 year old graphics.

What I would love to see are areas similar to sky and sea, unlocked after progressing so far into the story missions, and have them be dedicated to end-game. FFXI pulled this off really well because you only had to do the missions and unlock the areas if you were interested in end-game. And I don't know about any of you but I like working for my end-game content, not just slapping a party together, going to the dungeon/primal fight, finishing or wiping, and then disbanding like is seen in so many modern MMOs. You miss out on that sense of community that playing in an MMO should give you. Besides not only does it add end-game content but it also adds to the feel of the storyline, especially in 11, being able to actually go to the places that are mentioned throughout the story was pretty badass.

The sad part about it though is I kinda don't think ARR will have stuff like this, mainly due the fact that they're focusing more on instanced end-game, and I think that's a big mistake. It's way too linear with instanced content, for example, you have the choice to run dungeons A, B, or C, you go finish the dungeon, and that's that. It's the same everytime you run it. With end-game zones though, like sky for example, it's more like, ok we can go farm these NMs and finish a genbu or byakko pop, or try and get both items for a seiryu/suzaku pop. Sea was the same way, but it even had an additional end-game zone inside of it. Both areas offer much more variety in how you want to progress over the course of several days, and you don't get burned out nearly as fast as you would grinding the same dungeons I think. These are just my opinions on the matter, but what do you guys think? Would you like to see unlocked areas as part of the storyline? And Yoshi-P, I trust you with ARR and think you're doing a great job, but if you see this post please, PLEASE, consider what I've said

I think this is my favorite OP ever. I played and loved XI for 6.5 years. I have to hope and believe that we will get the same expansion treatment for XIV, and that we will get plenty of open world content, in addition to the abundant instanced content. I also love XIV and many of its differences/improvements over XI. Anything to add to the immersion and the community imo is the best ingredients for a game to be loved, played and subscribed to for years. If you don't feel like you are there, and if you don't feel like you are with friends, no matter how great the gameplay and/or story is you may have fun for a while but no one will stick around for long.

This is off topic from expansions and new areas, but there is one thing that I remember Yoshi saying in the final night Live letter that housing would be limited at first to encourage community building. Sheer brilliance in recognizing what really will continue to drive people to play for a very long time. A strong community is the number one aspect to build on. I bet everyone who played XI (perhaps any mmo?) would say the reason they kept playing so long is simply their friends.

[Zenaku]

yoshi-p said they be a sea and sky area for FFXIV i remember the old or maybe new dev team talking about a Castle in the sky. Yoshi-p said that people really enjoy sea area more but he enjoy sky so he may end up doing sky first then sea later so there you go.

[Exn]

Also Dynamis is still technically an instance, it's just that only one was available at a time. You had all the characteristics of an instance: other groups couldn't come in and join you or steal your stuff, the mobs were generated fresh each time, it was a totally separate zone, it was on a timer, etc.

Actually I see Dynamis as another zone. And other groups could (and sometimes would!) come in anytime after entry if they got their hands on your hourglass. This actually happened to one of my dyna LS's twice in row when we (and every other major dyna shell) were spamming Dyna-Xarc. Things got kinda nasty when LSs started disregarding the Dynamis scheduler.

Multiple instances, whereby I imagine the term 'instance' is coming from, were never used for Dynamis, Einherjar, Salvage (I believe), etc in XI. A single zone (that was actually searchable from outside and inside the zone showing which group was using the zone) was used for each location/wing/tier or whatever, that would only refresh once it was empty. In some of them (ie Einherjar) you could actually still target (not-actionable) and see party members in the event, while standing outside. Unlike Nyzul, where there were multiple instances running at the same time, and seaching it would just list every who's running the instance at that time, with no way to separate who's in what instance with who. Anyway, I guess it's an arguement in semantics which isn't important, and I think we agree that we'd both like to see some more non-instanced content.

[Allesasi]

Hmmm, in this case, I don't know about that. As I said above, I would love to see this. But it doesn't really mesh with their stated vision. Accessibility is the hot word of the year for FFXIV:ARR, so restricted content like this is something I don't think they would agree with. Yoshi-P - admittedly over-quoted - said that they want this to be a themepark game. Themeparks rarely have a You-Must-Be-This-Tall... wait, bad analogy. Themeparks rarely have gated communities.

Don't worry, this will not be a theme park by any means. SE always states that these kind of games can be played casually and you can get a lot done that way but make no mistake SE always makes their games very challenging and time consuming for those who want to achieve the most they can. The best things in the game will not come easy and will never be achieved whyle casually in a short period of time.

[ZakarnRosewood]

Ishguard, al'mihgo, and the garleans? Have you not followed any lore? I'm sorely behind on knowing whats going on and even i know there are areas they have yet to introduce...

[Duelle]

@OP: You forget that in FFXI (specially in the case of CoP) you had zones that were designed for the story rather than the story designed around the zones. Most of those zones were too far out of the way to be of any real use to players at large.

In the case of Al'taieu and Tu'Lia, sure you had bosses that you could pop and fight the bosses out of order, but it wasn't that different than running a raid. You're putting too much value on being able to fight the bosses out of order and devaluing the fact that because instances are designed with the bosses in mind, the fights tend to be much more mechanically involved.

I'm not against having zones connected to endgame, but I am more in favor of world-relevant zones over story-relevant zones. This is not mentioning that with quests being one of the main ways to level in 2.0, you technically do get zones that are unlocked as you advance the story. This should not stop the devs from introducing well-designed and memorable zones, though.

[Klefth]

What I would love to see are areas similar to sky and sea, unlocked after progressing so far into the story missions, and have them be dedicated to end-game. FFXI pulled this off really well because you only had to do the missions and unlock the areas if you were interested in end-game. And I don't know about any of you but I like working for my end-game content, not just slapping a party together, going to the dungeon/primal fight, finishing or wiping, and then disbanding like is seen in so many modern MMOs. You miss out on that sense of community that playing in an MMO should give you. Besides not only does it add end-game content but it also adds to the feel of the storyline, especially in 11, being able to actually go to the places that are mentioned throughout the story was pretty badass.

THIS.

I'd love to have something like this, too. Finally gaining access to those areas felt great, and it actually gave end-game, you know, that end-game feeling, unlike pretty much every other game, where "end-game" is there as soon as you hit max or near max level and is basically the start of the game (which is kind of contradictory given the term "end-game"...).

[Elexia]

I honestly never really had a problem with CoP, but then again I ran the parties and found my own people. Sure there were times I got a horrible group and we wiped a lot but I still wouldn't trade that experience. It was fun, and I definitely hope they create areas that require party oriented storyline to be unlocked.

^ I did CoP when getting off of the first 2 floors of Promyvion were near impossible as no one had any idea about anything. Aka in 2004.

I'm full in support of this as I love going through challenges and using storyline (with people, MMORPG remember.) and unlocking final areas. Zilart and CoP is why I felt like FFXI was actually a FF game. You don't just wander up to an airship, talk to an NPC and go straight to the Red Moon, nor do you go straight to the northern crater in FFVII not to mention I'm pretty sure you don't talk to Queen Brahne and get sent to the Crystal World, especially "by yourself."

The only issue as stated is when most are said and done with it, but the problem with that mainly is in comparison to FFXI, XI added a new expansion every year basically, Zilart in 2003, CoP in 2004, ToAU in 2006 and WotG in 2007, so people who moved on went to the next line of missions and new people were stuck. XIV we don't even know if they'll have one expansion (for argument sake) or updates that are expansive enough to push everyone forward like that so there's a good chance the same issue wouldn't happen.

In XIV the only real issue was trying to do early GC missions where no one liked helping people, THAT is a more likely problem than from a game design perspective, you can offer 8 million gil to repeat it and people still won't help after awhile.

[Zezlar]

^ I did CoP when getting off of the first 2 floors of Promyvion were near impossible as no one had any idea about anything. Aka in 2004.

I'm full in support of this as I love going through challenges and using storyline (with people, MMORPG remember.) and unlocking final areas. Zilart and CoP is why I felt like FFXI was actually a FF game. You don't just wander up to an airship, talk to an NPC and go straight to the Red Moon, nor do you go straight to the northern crater in FFVII not to mention I'm pretty sure you don't talk to Queen Brahne and get sent to the Crystal World, especially "by yourself."

The only issue as stated is when most are said and done with it, but the problem with that mainly is in comparison to FFXI, XI added a new expansion every year basically, Zilart in 2003, CoP in 2004, ToAU in 2006 and WotG in 2007, so people who moved on went to the next line of missions and new people were stuck. XIV we don't even know if they'll have one expansion (for argument sake) or updates that are expansive enough to push everyone forward like that so there's a good chance the same issue wouldn't happen.

In XIV the only real issue was trying to do early GC missions where no one liked helping people, THAT is a more likely problem than from a game design perspective, you can offer 8 million gil to repeat it and people still won't help after awhile.

The biggest problem I have with XIV currently story line wise is I don't feel challenged. There's nothing the game has that reminds me of doing the "Airship" fight or hell even those stupid pots in Sea. Van Darnus was fairly "average" in terms of difficulty, and the riding the airship to the final encounter like you said was sort of dull. Perhaps it would have been cooler to fly that pile of rocks and have us go through a raid or something then fight a beef van darnus. Then again obviously given the overall situation with XIV and ARR, we all know that never would have happened.

Not everyone will agree, but personally for my story content I want the highest difficulty version first. I don't like running through easy mode, then hard mode. Stop wasting my time and let me choose hard first (betters my experience). Then let me unlock future areas that have NMs and/or end game content. That's what I hope to see in ARR.

[Elexia]

@OP: You forget that in FFXI (specially in the case of CoP) you had zones that were designed for the story rather than the story designed around the zones. Most of those zones were too far out of the way to be of any real use to players at large.

What you forget is that the majority of zones in XI all were designed that were based on story elements as well. In CoP there were some zones purely made for story purposes, but that was outweighed by the regular zones introduced. The only story related zones are:

R. Site A01/B01
Sacrarium (doubles for NM fights and subligar farming)
Phomina Aquaducts (though doubles for other stuff like subligar farming)
Promyvions
Pso`Xja (doubles for other stuff)

This is ignoring the BCNM areas and regarding the capped period. Otherwise a lot of zones were designed to be unlocked and explored through the story then later on your own (you know, like a FF game tends to do.) Everything in XI was world relevant and story relevant because the lore and storylines fit into the world like a good RPG.