Final Fantasy 14- State of the Overworld and Ideas to Improve It

  Final Fantasy XIV has a beautiful overworld. Zones are packed with small details and interesting locations. Unfortunately, once you've finished MSQing and gathering the Aether Currents in a zone, you don't have much of a reason to return. I don't think this needs to be the case, and I believe that by addressing this blind spot CU3 would solve another hot-button pain point currently being discussed by the XIV community.

   Like many other XIV players, I spent the 7.1-7.2 content gap playing other games. A couple of weeks ago I began to feel an MMO itch. I'd already done everything I wanted to in XIV, so what to play? I considered trying to get into WoW for the 100th time. I debated jumping back into EVE Online. I even started scrolling through newly released Steam games with the MMORPG tag- the craving had gotten pretty dire, I won't lie. Then from the recesses of my mind emerged a name. An MMO that I hadn't played for over a decade. One that I had fond memories of. I installed Guild Wars 2 and created a new character.

   Almost immediately I found myself blown away by the overworld design. I was fully immersed in the environments, the activities, the characters. Before I knew it, several hours had passed and my character had gained a couple dozen levels. That experience made me wonder, what makes Guild Wars 2's overworld so compelling to me? The overworld is the primary way you level your character, and I believe the overworld in XIV could serve a similar purpose- that being a fun way to level alt jobs as an alternative to spamming roulettes and grinding field operations.

   To start I'll give a rundown of the types of overworld content in GW2. Zones usually contain the following:
   - Points of Interest - At least a dozen of these are scattered around a zone. They are usually in spots the developers put a little extra time and attention into but aren't necessarily part of any questline- such as a farmstead, an administrator's office, a lake, and so on. Discovering them is not dissimilar to discovering a new area in a zone you haven't explored yet in XIV. You walk to the PoI and get rewarded with XP.
   - Vistas - Vistas are most similar to the Sightseeing Log. Importantly though, you can see them on your map and they aren't hidden behind an unlock quest. Vistas often require a bit of clever planning and parkour to reach and provide the player with a large chunk of XP.
   - Dynamic/Group Events - Our closest equivalent are FATEs. They are activities that spawn on timers around the map and usually involve delivering items, killing foes, and defending an NPC or location. These events scale with the amount of participants by adding unique enemies, abilities, or occasionally even extra stages to an event. They are soloable while not being trivial for larger groups.
   - Meta Events - A meta event is a chain of anywhere from a few to a couple dozen Dynamic Events that are arranged in branching paths. Completing a meta event usually opens up special parts of the map for a short amount of time, granting access to valuable gathering/crafting resources, or chances at rare loot. Failing one occasionally restricts access to a part of the map until another event is completed to reset the chain.
   - Hero/Mastery Points - These don't have an XIV equivalent. They are ways to progress your class, and involve either reaching a hard-to-reach location, fighting a tough mob, or interacting with an object that's in the middle of a horde of foes. If implemented in the current game, they would likely just grant XP (or possibly one of our meta currencies that could be spent at vendors for some cosmetic goodies).
   - Heart Quests - This is the glue that holds the other overworld content together. These quests are not on a timer, and are absolutely everywhere (around 10-15 per zone). Go to an area and complete the objectives to fill a progress bar, and gain XP. Together, Heart Quests paint a picture about an area, who its people are, and what they struggle against (Final Fantasy LOVES to do this already! It would be another way to present this information in a less direct way). Importantly, Heart Quests provide multiple ways to progress them. For example: a researcher wants to study a creature called a Skritt. To progress the quest, you can activate sensors and kill the Skritt that ambush you, Kill Skritt mobs wandering around the quest zone, talk to captive Skritt (and defeat the ones that get enraged), or talk to special Skritt that are a part of an IQ assessment program (which ends up being pretty funny each time). Presenting multiple ways to complete the quest allows you to decide what your level of engagement will be. Feeling a little burned out (or lazy)? It might be a bit slower, but you can run around talking to Skritt and activating terminals and you'll experience minimal combat. Feeling bored? Want to kill some stuff? Fight the overworld mobs. These quest regions often overlap with Dynamic Event regions, so you'll start doing a heart quest and find yourself sucked into an event that's progressing your heart quest but at the same time giving you something new to do. And sometimes, that event will turn into a chain event- and then off you go! Heart quests are like lighthouses that draw you into a location full of new things to do for XP.

   With that out of the way you can see, FFXIV already has many of the things that make GW2's overworld feel compelling. The two key elements of GW2 that make it come together are density and variety. Overworld objectives give an alright amount of XP, but the sheer number of objectives and events keeps you constantly moving from place to place without ever wondering where you need to go and getting bored. Below is a zone you encounter early on in Guild Wars 2 (covers around 10 levels).

   As you can see, no matter where you are on the map you're not far off from another thing to do. Additionally, the game rewards you with experience, items, and their version of Glamour Prisms for getting 100% completion in a zone.

   But Guild Wars 2 isn't the only place to look to for overworld improvements. Final Fantasy 14 can take notes from itself- namely in its Field Operations. It's no secret that the community is experiencing some angst around the release rate of content- namely how long Occult Crescent has taken to drop. I won't pretend this next part is entirely my idea. I'm immersed in The Discourse™. Many people have suggested the re-ordering of content to give players long-term activities to work towards with x.0, or x.1 at the latest. My solution is to, alongside the already discussed additions, take the resources dedicated to Field Operations and push them towards putting that fun and exciting content in the overworld, rather than hiding the players doing the interesting open world content behind a level-capped quest and a separate zone.

  Imagine questing through 8.0 and as you travel through the zones you see players doing Critical Engagements, moving in packs to farm deadly mobs, setting up and queuing for special instances like Dalriada. It may not something you do right now, but you're already beginning to think about and get excited for the content waiting for you post-MSQ. The zones feel alive as players have an incentive to get back out there into the world rather than AFKing in a city grinding duty finder. As soon as you hit the end credits, you have an incentive to hop on an alt-job and begin leveling. The developers are able to effectively double-dip on the work they've already done building out these maps. The player goes through them once for the MSQ, and then again (and again) for the overworld content.

   Importantly, in my hypothetical implementation of this new overworld players would be automatically level and ilvl synced to an intended range per-zone to keep the content from being too easy, not unlike Field Operations. There's a discussion to be had on how XIV handles level syncing and locks away abilities, but that's probably best saved for another post as it's opening another can of worms. I would definitely be open to arguments for a different way to handle content scaling.

   One point of contention some may have is: if the overworld becomes an efficient way to level alt-jobs, would duty finder suffer? My response is that outside of both being valid methods for leveling, they offer different rewards and would be engaged with for different reasons. The Duty Finder gives gear, tomes, and unique battle experiences you don't get in the overworld. Bozja was an effective way to level for the range, yet people still queued for duty roulettes to get their associated rewards (plus dungeons, trials, and raids are just fun to do!).

   Another valid question is "what stops someone from going to an objective like a vista, and activating it on all of their jobs at once?" I don't have a perfect answer, but one solution could be a simple cooldown on interacting with these points of interest. You have to wait 3, 5, 10 minutes between activations- making it inefficient to camp compared to just going for map completion. It's inelegant, but would work.

   Final Fantasy XIV is one of my all-time favorite games. But with that love comes a desire to see it be the best game that it can be. The recent battle content has been excellent- very fun and creative. While we see these big advancements happening on aspects of the game, it makes the overworld design really show its age. There's a lot of potential to revive the overworld- to make it feel alive. Taking cues from Guild Wars 2 and their own Field Operations would be a great place to start. I hope that one day CU3 can realize that potential and transform our currently empty zones into places that feel active, social, and fun.