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Is FF:ARR large and seamless or largely instanced?
Sarariel
Member UncommonPosts: 301
Can you go from zone to zone without instances and loading screens?
Or is the game very instanced and coated in loading screens and painted on backgrounds (Similar to SWTOR)
Comments
The starting cities are full of loading screens. It eases up when you get out in the world. There are more than Id care to see. Not a deal breaker, but not that great either.
Each city is in 2 parts. It's not horrible. Just saying it's full of loading screens makes it sound way worse than it is.
Each part has multiple entrances so if your'e getting used to the layout you can run into a lot of leading screens.
Dungeons are instanced.
Key solo missions (where you have NPC help) are instanced in open world maps. There aren't many of these - one every 5 levels or so. It's not quite the same as phasing because you do load into them.
As others have said, the rest of the world is zoned, not instanced. There are not shards or phases - if your in a zone, your in that zone with every single other player in that zone on the server. If it gets crowded, it gets crowded, there won't be copies of that same zone.
The open world zones are fairly large (5-10 min to walk from end to end, about 2 min on chocobo), the cities are generally split into 2 zones. I would say if you hated SWTOR zoning, it's about on par with that, and you would probably hate it here too. Early on (first 10 levels), there is a lot of zoning, as you run around the city doing the introduction quests, and the first few quests are from city NPCs to kill stuff in the immediate zone over, but once you get out of the city and stretch your legs (and link up a lot of the teleport crystals) the quest hubs and zone-based leves do a good job of not having you zone all the time, and you can pretty well teleport to within a few steps of where you need to be inside the city itself.
There is not a lot of instancing (which is not the same thing as zoning). Fates, Leves, and 98% of your missions are out in the open world.
Devs are in a no win situation here. Look at the s**tstorm following EQN's reveal regarding their art direction. It's one of the biggest complaints over the game at the moment. And the more open and seemless an MMO is, the more it will have to be able to render with what's loaded at that time. And the days of MMOs with the more easily rendered art styles are pretty much over. SoE has an uphill battle with their decision now.
They have first hand knowledge on this subject.
Players spent years unable to gear up due to monopolization cock blocks in FFXI.
Give me full open world with slightly lesser graphics over instanced with beautiful graphics, another instanced pile of *^%#. Think I might leave this one alone like all the other instanced rubbish.
there is a lot load times and world map is whorst i ever seen.
Yes to both of those questions.
Weather/time of day affects fishing.
It also has "neighborhood" zones in cities for housing, not instanced like EQ2, Rift, FFXI etc.
It has areas like hot baths, and beach resort areas where people can go to hang out.
It is zoned world like FFXI before it and EQ1, not instanced. Some people here don't know the meaning of the word instance.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
I would be fine with zones, kind of sad to hear that the dungeons are all instanced, I really miss open world dungeons, not saying they all have to be, but would be nice to have some.
I still plan on getting my wife to check the open beta out for us (I am going out of town and cannot do it, was hoping that it would be this weekend so I could).
The zones are just as often as SWToR. Even major cities are made up of more then one instance. This is one of a few things that bug me about this game. But the game really makes up for this fault. Really worth playing.
Let's clarify what you mean by 'instanced' - if you meant 'zoned' then yes it is zoned and not seamless - if you meant 'channeled' (where each zone has multiple instanced copies of itself), then no it is not. There is instanced dungeon content, otherwise it is zoned open world where everyone on the server is together.
Btw, it's worth noting that the loading screens are not very long (they average about 3 seconds in length) AND you can still use all chat functionality while they are going, which I've not seen in any other game thus far.
to sum it up in simple words to the OP:
Yes final fantasy 14 ARR is heavily instanced. you can simply google for more info if you like but there is absolutely no denying the fact that it is.
Random Forum Poster: I want an MMO that is different, original and fun.
Me: So you want something like EQN
Them: Nah dude, I want a Holy Trinity, Tab Target combat, Instanced Raiding, and Rigid classes.
Me: Double Facepalm.
That's great! You have fun waiting and I'll have fun playing.
Weather/time of day affects fishing.
It also has "neighborhood" zones in cities for housing, not instanced like EQ2, Rift, FFXI etc.
It has areas like hot baths, and beach resort areas where people can go to hang out.
It is zoned world like FFXI before it and EQ1, not instanced. Some people here don't know the meaning of the word instance.
Weather also affects background music as well - it's kinda neat. Y-P has said they want to includ emore types of weather as well - I know I've seen rain around Gridania, and wind storms around Ul'dah.
See Q10/11
And, again, yes to the last statement. So many people on the hate train are hung up on "instancing" when it's totally different from zoning.
Zoning is a function of the graphics engine. If you hate it, don't play it. I'm wondering why I've even responded to this now-obvious troll thread anyway.
Many games have claimed to be this and fallen flat on their faces. Have fun waiting forever for something that will probably never come while the rest of us enjoy the present.
Agreed 100 percent striderbob. Every time someone tries to go out of the box, it usually gets screwed in some aspect. I'm looking at you guild wars 2.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
It does more than just rain. Right now from the phase 3 content there are 11 different types of weather/types of day you can encounter and that is not including blizzard and snow .
clear
clouds
darkness
fair
fog
gloom
heat wave
rain
sand storms
thunderstorms
wind
http://xivdb.com/?weather
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2