It's why despite the hate, I still find XI the superior game - With XIV, once you're done with a zone, you're done with a zone. You literally have no reason to go back into it unless you enjoy FATEs. In XI, you don't always have to go to some zones either, especially some dungeons, especially later in the games life, but it's much akin to how in most RPGs, you never have to go back to many of the dungeons/story places again outside of a side quest but XIV currently lacks those reasons to go to a zone, since most side quests are usually self-contained.
That's why it'd be perfect if say a line of weapons actually utilized the zones either for spawned fights similar to XI's Fracture Pull/Voidwatch/Unity Concord, or a set of areas designed specifically for it. I mean, look at what XI did - This new moogle event you can ignore (if you want) they let you fight a version of a great wyrm and Bahamut...even introduced a brand new area and extended content system solely for a set of missions because the story called for it and they have almost no dev support.
So they really need to utilize the zones more than have us rerunning old obsolete dungeons for lights or an item drop...maybe itll be different with 3.15, but there's definitely got to be more of a reason to leave your housing ward or a city. I liked that XI's zones were story based or were built around the story, so even after you did your quests/missions/leveling/whathaveyou if you still ended up exploring the zone, it still felt like it was there for a reason..and an actual location in the world. In XIV, it sometimes feel like it's there out of obligation to have an outside zone lol. Like the Allagan place in the last 3.0 story, it gives a nice atmosphere, but literally no reason to ever go there. It could have been akin to Sky from XI where it added a content system..or something. That's why I was disappointed with Heavensward because it didn't really add much. I know people hate the XI and XIV comparisons, but when you truly sit and think about all SE did for/with XI, even now, you'd really hope they would go above and beyond with XIV.
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