No "Zones"

I guess easist way I can relate this one would be much like how Fallout 3 works (or how any other game with this mechanic works).

There are obvious zones; however, there is no explicit transistion for the majority. The outside world (field & city) seemlessly flow into each other and dungeons have relatively short load times to access.

Yeah, this is similar to PWI... However... That world is significantly smaller than Vana'diel and I'm guessing Eorzia (or whatever other name they're calling the world of FFXIV) will be similar in its size. While the 'draw distance' would only show npc/pc up to a certain distance, the way the game is coded may be different.

You know how the zones after Besieged / Dynamis are very long? That's the game unloading all of the data that was loaded during the fight.

The reason why there are zones is to reduce lag, and allow a larger explorable area overall.

Also, how many times has zoning saved your life?

I HATED the no zones thing in WoW and places.
But zones is something that makes FFXI feel like home >.>

Yeah, but the saving your life part could be unnecessary if mobs didn't become so fixated on you.

And then some mobs you'll pull... And 50' later they're despawning. >.< Different topic though. >.>

In EQ2 zoning into a town had a guard that would kill incoming mobs lol

How about, I can actually out run a *** rabbit without the use of flee or hermes

O.oa Have you ever 'actually' tried to outrun a rabbit...? You'd lose EVERY time. >.>

I guess we should add the new suggestion topic "A Rabbit Can & Will Kill You No Matter What Level You Are"

The noun already exists and is true.

No matter how big you are, there's always a bunny in Vana'diel that can f*ck you up.

Fixed.

Who sais there will be bunnies in Eorzea?

I agree with the no zones topic, there should be no reason for zones to exist except for entering into instances, warping or teleporting.

The zoning component of losing hate/agro is technically an exploit because that's the way the game is built.

The zones themselves are only in place because of the hardware/technology at the time. Games like GTA4, Fallout 3 (as the OP mentioned) are open world but still have distinct "zones". Monster AI stops things from chasing you after a certain point. It's not a lag point because the server is always running the zone regardless of if a player is there or not, what's the saying "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to see it...". The player side only experiences things within their immediate vicinity, not the entire zone.

Guess you werent around back when mobs didnt depop when you zoned or warped away.

I was actually. :)
They changed it because of PK'ing, nothing to do with what i said.
People pull NM's to a zone, blast it, then zone hate. It's an exploit. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that the game has allowed it to be so.

I dont think it an exploit.
couldnt they just make it so the mob remembers it hates you?

no hate resets when you zone

and people still do it in [S] capital xD

I got mpk by some peeps when I decided to go camp in La Vaule and was like wtf?

Ludoggy meant as a fix for the zoning "tactic".

They wouldn't need it if there was better distance from spawn mechanics for mobs.

I'm yet to see a good reason to have zones that can't be fixed through game mechanics.

100% agree. Zones are out-dated and unnecessary. The only reason for them now in FFXI (gameplay wise) is for zoning mobs that are waaay too fixated on you (seriously, if it was common for level 1 mobs to whack you and run off, how long would you spend chasing them?) and as an alternate strat to killing mobs. I don't think you really believe that SE intended you to kill mobs by nuking it then disappearing via a zone before it can hit you.

If they can't erase zones they'd better at least allow you to not miss out on LS chat and such when zoning -_-

To me, zones takes me out of the experience, and staring at loading screens just reminds me I'm playing a game. An open world retains a feeling of adventure..for example, making your way to the top of a hill and seeing a castle, or temple, or village way off in the distance and wondering what's there. Doing stuff like that together with a bunch of friends is what I want in an online rpg.

As much as I enjoyed FFXI for the first while(before it de-evolved into the series of nerd-on-nerd shout matches and stat arguments that it is today), the one thing I always missed from the 'other' PS2 mmo-Everquest Online Adventures- was that sense of freedom. Being able to swim across a lake to another town, climb mountains to get a sense of where you are or where you need to go, or just wandering and exploring.

Sure, it was ***-ugly, but in alot of ways, it was more fun. And even though I'm not a big fan of WoW, I like that it and games like LotRO and at least attempting to keep that sense of adventure.

Just my 2 cents.

Well... This 'is' a FFXIV thread... And who says there won't be bunnies?

As for the zones part, doesn't matter to me one way or the other tbh. If it's necessary to reduce lag and such then I'm all for it. I sure don't want my game to be keeping data stored from all the things I pass. You'd have to log out and do your own 'zone' after awhile just to clear things.

Also... We 'could' potentially just have regions with the dotted line zone lines and have them be much larger than zones in FFXI. You could have ~10-20 regions instead of many more zones.

Forgive the simplistic nature of the pic. >.> Took a whole minute.
Imagine the region lines are the arcs and the circles represent city areas.

As far as technology goes, they're simply just not needed, as much as I hate people that refer everything to WoW, WoW does it, so do a heap of other MMO's, zones are no longer relevant.

As for your picture, that's really just a different way of designing the landscape. They could still make the terrain exactly as it is in FFXI and remove the black loading screen between zones, although I would hope for something more along the lines of your image, as Sketchkat said, being able to climb mountains and see a town waaaay off in the distance and all that sort of stuff really gets you involved in the game on another level.

I think SE just got lazy and didn't want to make the "In between zones." As an example how does La Theine all of a sudden turn into a desert when going to Valkurm. Same with Konstacht.

Or... Maybe it's not being lazy, maybe it was just that their engine at the time with the technology then couldn't support the textures needed to 'gradually' change from grasslands to desert.

Now, obviously the engine can support something like this.

I think that's part of it. Also, having every single zone surrounded by sheer cliffs with very narrow openings for the zones is also a really easy way of modeling. I think it was also another case of PS2 limitations as well though, as the massive draw distances, and perhaps to a lesser extent the dynamic zoning (or however they go about erasing zone lines) would really tax the PS2 (and a lot of pc's when this was released). The format of sheer cliffs and skinny zones is also to avoid modeling (and loading) a whole heap of background models, rather than model half a mountain range that's just for looks, you make a sheer cliff and put nothing behind it: DONE!

One of the first things any decent 3D modeler/animator learns is that cheating is a good thing, why do X when I can get away with Y? Always do the bare minimum required to get the desired effect. When you're working on video games, this is not just a good tip, but a necessity (not so much today as it was 5+ years ago).

So yeah, while it may look like laziness (and I'm not saying there wasn't some of that too, a little sand around the konschtat > valkurm zone or grass around the valkurm > konschtat zone would have been nice), a lot of the restrictive environment we see in FFXI today would have been a necessity.

However, if we look at something like Tbest's lovely map, we get a beautiful environment with massive draw distances and total freedom of movement, but we open up the issue of TOO much freedom. Having a completely open environment could possible, but not necessarily allow a level 1 nooby to accidently wander into a level 50 area. Basically, it just means that the design team have to put a lot more thought into how the landscape is designed, you can longer rely on having a level 1 zone next to a level 10 zone next to a level 20 zone etc. You have to actually sculpt the sea and landscape surrounding the areas to create this geographical leveling up.

Having said that, even if FFXI's zones were modified to open them up and give you more freedom, they wouldn't require much to adapt them to this geographical leveling. So yeah, while I hope (and expect) no zones, I still can't wait to see just how they do it.

I agree with the no need for zones part but zones do make things easier for players imo. "let's go exp in dunes"
"wanna kill bune? he's in Gustav tunnel"
cuz u have a clear exact line of the zone.

that wasn't why I posted though!

all I want is none of:
"/l zone"
"/p zoning"
"/l zoned, did I miss something?"

I really hope ffxiv doesn't have stupid chat system :P

More like a network code limitation than a "stupid chat system". If SE could "fix" this so easily, would have done it for years. Pretty certains that FF XIV won't have this.

That's not a big deal. To go back to my previous example, the ugly but extremely fun EQOA for PS2, it always said in the menu which zone/area you were in. There was just no tiny tunnel linking each one with a stupid loading pause.

Here's a link to a world map of that game:

http://www.eqoamaps.com/maps/World_Map82.jpg

It's that sense of freedom that I always wished for in FFXI.

You can still have "zones" without having a black loading screen.

Vanguard was completely open. no narrow openings, literally each continent was a single zone. There was regions so you could still say "meet at X outpost, or by the lake in Y region". Each continent would be around the same size of the all the zones currently in the WotG areas.

But to get from level 10 to level 20 areas was a 5-10min walk. So you could trip into a level 50 zone as a starter.

The continents were broken up into section (like zones) you could see the lines on the floor some times there was a half second lag spike when you cross the line and some times mobs would have difficult crossing the lines at all, so you could 'zone agro' in a lose way. But in vanguard you could normally deaggro mobs by running far enough.

Was exactly the same with DAoC, no narrow opening, no loading, completely open. Only had loading when going from an add-on to another one (for obvious reasons). Could see lines on the floor also and had a small lag when crossing border (hdd seeking).

Mob lost aggro also after running like for couple minutes, unlike FF XI where aggro system is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

At lv15 my brother got lost and ended up in Altepa desert. If you're gonna be an explorer and end up in an area higher than your character, it's gonna happen.