Since lots of people call FFXIV "WoW with FF skin"Follow

When is FFXIV gonna get something this "deep" and creative?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/09/08/world-of-warcraft-players-go-looking-for-secrets-accidentally-unleash-world-eating-boss

Now THATS what I call making an open world explorable and interesting, as of no w the open world is just a glorified LARGE PSO chat lobby that you wait for instance queues in that hardly get used (yes there are things to do in the open world, so dont say I said there wasnt, but 90% of the game especially at endgame/max level is instanced based)

I agree heck even no reward at all,. just seeing something pop up that Ive never sen before and completely didnt expect taking me by surprise would be enough to satisify me and make me wanto explore the world more in hopes that I might find more like it

Never. Because there's no world in XIV to explore.

You seriously think Eorzea isn't tiny and boxed in for an MMO?

And the SS log is more of an Easter egg hunt than exploring a world. There's very little room for exploring in this game because everything is so closed off.

Getting around the first time is annoying, what with all those barricades and quests you need to do to be able to knock down the barricades (which isn't immediately intuitive as to just HOW you go about doing so, etc), and whatnot... but once you've done it, it's just as easy, if not easier, to get around the Adoulin areas as it is anywhere else, thanks to all the waypoints.

Mounts can even be used now in the outdoor Adoulin areas, keep that in mind too.

Rhapsodies actually needs a bit of gearing up or help from people. I don't think it's too much, but some of the fights I was doing absolutely no damage with my welcome back catch up gear hah.

Yes..that's what MMORPG worlds are supposed to be like. You shouldn't technically be able to experience everything if you're not playing constantly because the world is a consistent world and you simply may miss out, or you may get lucky and catch it while you're actually playing. That was never a problem until people started feeling entitled to get "everything" even if it doesn't make sense at times.

We already have FATEs that work in a chain like that, but they make it largely useless and done in a such a way no one cares about it because, well, it's FATEs. People are tired of 3 years of FATEs for the overworld content. Most people have yet to fight Proto-Ultima.



Sure have. What was I exploring? I didn't find any hidden dungeons, I didn't find any rare monsters. I didn't find any world events similar to XI where someone completes summoner you see a rainbow spawn, or a Dragon flying around a lake like in Tavnazia region, heck I didn't find anything lore related doing sightseeing logs because the world is disconnected from the storyline when most takes place in an instanced manner. The world was built AFTER the storyline and not WITH the storyline. There's NPCs and some map objects that shows "something happened" but realistically..there's nothing for Eorzea to offer, which can't be attributed to the PS3 like people try to say, because XI's world offers far more and it was designed in the late 90s. Hell even in the "Summoning system" that was supposed to be something interesting with the primals would have brought an interesting twist to this game's world.

As for Adoulin, the only thing that bothered me was the maps as they were as useful as Yhoator/Yuhtunga jungle maps. Adoulin, as per story/lore is a wilderness not explored by people largely (aside some natives) so it's definitely not something to get around easily. So while from a gameplay standpoint it does get annoying at times, from an atmosphere and design standpoint, they at least pay attention to details and the designs themselves were always on point even if some transitions never made sense (Plateau > Dunes for example.)

Which brings up that despite what's going on in the world of XIV, XI still seem to be far more "magical" and not afraid to "open the world up", whereas there's literally no reason for most of XIV's areas to exist. I mean they turned a region into an instanced Dungeon, something A LOT of people were looking forward to for exploration reasons.

I personally loved things like relics in XI of old, kings, etc. Every time I saw people with items from these events, I was always like wow, you put in some time. Problem was, 24-36 hour respawns became a bot fest with constant bickering between shells. Dynamis relics often ended up with one guy benefiting from everyone else's work (this wasn't always 100% the case, but often enough). In the end, it generated too much toxicity and made these things stressful. If they could somehow limit bots and people taking advantages of others, I'd be all for it. We all know that can't happen though.

Ya, exploration in XI was fun because you could often die and end up in areas where you really shouldn't be. XIV, whatever, you run away and most things don't even bother following you. You never get the sense of, I really shouldn't be here.

Edited, Sep 10th 2016 2:57pm by Montsegurnephcreep

That's why I absolutely LOVED 1.x's relic quest because while you could always go to beastmen lairs, the relic is what really took you deeper into it and you actually had to work together to take out high ranking beastmen. It felt like you were in someone else's territory not just from the aesthetics, but the fact things can kill you. Ignoring the dlevel calculations in ARR+, nothing really poses a threat, we're supposedly at war with Garleans (TECHNICALLY not anymore) and the beastmen are supposedly a "constant threat" especially with their summoning..but they themselves should not be weak on their own. Yes, you're the warrior of light but you're not completely able to curb stomp everything that crosses your path.

..Hell I think in XI's overarching storyline you die so many times because it still shows you're not unstoppable against the right force. That's why Eorzea kinda bugs me..we're still in a small section of the overall world (Eorzea) and it still feels even smaller because most of the interesting things are instances. Remember 1.x and exploring I think it was Nanawa Mines? With all the zombies and bombs? You weren't ever tasked to go there, let alone deeply in there, but there were an occasional Behest and Guildleve that takes you there. It was for all intents and purposes optional (if I'm thinking of the right one..it has been 6 years) but that's something highly missing from ARR+, if a sightseeing log took you to some unexplored or out of the way dungeon system or something it would have been so much better because yea you can normally go there without the log, but being that it's out of the way of everything else it's unlikely until a quest or the log pointed you there, because it'd be a hidden dungeon to find and explore.

That's the one thing I give GW2 credit for with their vistas because it takes you to familiar places but also way out of the way places with actual puzzles at times (and tons of rage quitting.)

Not sure what time has to do with turning MMOs into less immersive and frankly dull worlds. Aside well, people feeling entitled to everything. I have even less time than you based on what you said and I sure as hell don't view the potential to die in the overworld or having to actually work together with your community as a setback, not that XIV has anything to do in the overworld in the first place.

Technically, games should be harder/more dangerous due to the fact it's multiplayer, it's not supposed to get significantly easier. Even single player games hardly has the "sense of danger" because more and more games are catering to "casuals" and relying on far more "cheat" methods like Nintendos "white tanooki suit" or most FPS/Platforming games that rely on an auto-regen health/magic/etc system making it near impossible to die outside of stupidity. People love to bring up "Dark Souls" but even that isn't really "hard" using the same thought of "cheapscate enemy placement", bosses just overpower you 9/10.

What else is it called when you feel you deserve anything and everything no matter what it is inside of an MMO? XIV for example 95% of the content is already catered to that ideal, which lead to an overall kind of dull game. Entitlement isn't a bad word, that's the definition. I don't even pay for XIV (crysta reserve from SE store and 1.0 days) but I'd technically only pay 10.99 a month, you'd pay whatever, but it doesn't really mean you'll get anything and everything just because you pay, since the terms actually state you're pretty much getting a license to simply access the service.



Except...all of the "time spawned" content makes up less than 1% of XI's content base. Especially since prior to 2005 (making up barely 3 years when time spawns, e.g ground kings, were the "end-game") most of XI's overworld content FOR AN EXTREMELY LONG TIME, has been a force spawned system, especially later in XI's life where you have numerous systems tied to the overworld.



There's so much cheating going on in XIV it's unreal, the only reason you don't "see" it is because community interaction really doesn't matter much, however, once SE keeps pushing us back towards Hunts (as they will again in 3.4 and 3.45) that's when you see it come into play. In any MMO people will cheat to get an advantage, PvP is SWARMING with botters and hackers which sadly Yoshida said he won't do anything about beyond changing PvP specific packets..which did nothing. So you can't really link overworld content with cheating when in reality, you're playing an MMO, therefore cheating will happen regardless. There's even leveling bots and content bots (that's how easy and scripted this game's content is) that you'll run into occasionally and they're extremely noticeable too.



XIV already has a few like it, it's linked to FATEs however. The fact you're not on right now means you're likely missing a chance at fighting Proto-Ultima or Coeurlregina (I think that's her english name) because of the specific triggers to activate that FATE. So what I find as a shallow definition of "organic" is XIV's current world.



Besieged and Campaign relied on quite a lot more, the problem is the playerbase didn't really care that much due to the rewards only being so much. You couldn't unlock the "ultimate goal" of assaulting the Shadow Lord without conquering every beastmen held zone and pushing towards Xarcabard. When those conditions were met (+some SCNM kills to kill the generals) you unlocked a special Campaign Operation to fight a BCNM with the Shadow Lord. So it's not that it fell short because of that, it fell short because the only overall reward for campaign were notes and exp and a special BCNM that's actually challenging to unlock (at the time) because the northlands were NOT friendly.

The notes could buy some decent gear but once you had that gear you had no reason to do it other than leveling other jobs or gaining merits. Besieged was mostly to keep the Sanction bonuses active more than anything - it gave an exp reward true, but the premise was a community effort much like Adoulin was solely built around the community effort, which was the only misstep SE took because XIV ARR was launching a few months later so having an expansion rely on the community is an amazing idea done at the wrong time.



HW has some interesting FATEs and rewards for the fates (BiS belts for level 54-57) but the problem is...they're FATEs.

We had FATEs in 2.0
We had FATEs in 3.0
We'll have FATEs in 4.0
We'll have FATEs in 5.0 if the game lasts that long.

FATEs make up the "overworld content" and quite frankly..the more interesting ones go unused simply because it's not going to get you quick exp actually putting in work to unlock it, when you can go FATE chain for some fast exp. They can spawn all primals for a grand FATE and people will still hate it because it's a FATE lol. The game really wasn't designed for overworld content sadly as proven by how it collapses on itself in stuff like Odin/Behemoth/S Rank hunts.



Thing is though, XI's world had more going for it than just rare spawn NMs, hell you had dungeons and certain areas that change based on time of day/season/quest completion, that alone has a more immersive feel. Hell even GW2's world has more going for it than XIV's by large.

Absolutely nothing will make XIV's world feel more organic until they give better overworld content or a reason for the world to exist. You can literally access any and all content without leaving the front door of your house/FC house or the main NPCs in Idylshire/Mor Dohna with the exception of content that forces you to talk to an NPC (Savage, Diadem and PoTD.)

More importantly, the prevailing sentiment is that this sort of 'global danger' simply does not appeal to people like myself. It's wasted content development. Even if you don't agree on the perspective behind it, the reality of it is, people don't appreciate these 'immersive aspects' of a game in the long run. Or more importantly SE has chosen not to appeal to that sentiment.

It's evident that Yoshida and crew have a very clear viewpoint of what they believe to be the identity of the game and what features serve as hallmarks of that identity. And, as I have said three years ago, you're not going to see these features show up in this game - at least not in the manner you expect.

So yes, the development crew will take certain feedback into consideration when refining things, but the course of the game itself, the major core gameplay aspects, are likely to stay the same. Determining these tenants and working around them in my feedback has been part of my pastime when it comes to contemplating the game. If you're thinking anything that would be considered radical, then you should be considering another game. In fact, that's not my words at this point, it's Yoshida's.

Yeah, I'm not even going to try to compare XIV and XI in this regard. Completely different games made for completely different audiences. This kind of goes back to what Hyrist said up above... it's pointless to give feedback about XIV's open world if you're going to do so in the reality of XIV's design concepts.

And I really don't think having a challenging open world fits in with XIV.

Now, that's not to say we couldn't have challenging content within the open world. We already have challenging FATEs (although they're largely ignored, even skipped by FATE grinding parties) and we've had challenging treasure map fights for appropriately sized parties. So SE has shown they're willing to put challenging monsters out in the world. Just don't expect the world itself to be challenging, because that's not what XIV is going for. These developers clearly want us to be challenged by choice.