Square, what was the point of giving us massive zones if were barely going to revisit them for anything outside of gathering or events?

Staring at landscape is hardly interactive.

I'll just give a few examples of "interesting exploration", taken from SE's own mmo FF11.

-An area that is essentially a labyrinth, where proceeding to certain areas requires triggering of mechanisms found in certain places of the maze.

-A volcanic mountain with magma geysers blocking paths. The geysers will periodically stop, or you can throw an ice cluster in to manually cause it to stop.

-Beastmen fortresses with many hidden chambers and door opening/closing mechanisms. A beastmen 'boss' hidden somewhere in the back.

On top of having said gimmicks, the world itself was much more hostile. Travelling alone through a few of these zones was a dangerous trip. Most jobs/classes would struggle to fight a single monster solo if at all possible; but at least most job/classes had options to sneak by. Even then certain monsters detect either by sight, sound, the usage of magic, or if someone is in critical hp, and others have 'true sight/sound' which can detect even through abilities masking said sense.

The zones aren't barren like ff14 either, there are treasure chests (which either requires a key, or a Thief) with loot not found elsewhere, entrances to 'trials', quests that require loot or tasks completed within those zones, and sometimes even world affecting things like liberating a story object that grants buffs to everyone in town.

Beyond that there were beastmen fortresses that would only spawn their boss if certain worldwide conditions were met, like controlling relevant battlefields for the week. Other small things like healing injured monsters in the past (one expansion threw in a time portal to visit the world a dozen or so years in the past) would suddenly make said monsters appear in the present that never existed before (fairies being this example).

I could go on with other games, but I feel like ff11 is a good comparison to it's little brother. FF14 lacks any REAL interactivity, as in the player has no effect on the open-world that is observable by other players. The closest thing ff14 has, is the ability to spawn s-rank mobs by performing a specific action.

/r/ffxiv Thread Parent