This may be a longer one than I think it is so skip to the middle if you think its too long I guess.
As an extremely long time player that has been able to really take in each zone for their entire expansion cycles I always found it beyond saddening and annoying that we just dont have any real reason to go back or deal with inconveniences of various degrees if we do go back to hang out.
We cant truly pick anything beyond a starting city state to be a long term hang out and I was told years ago that each new city state is made to suck just enough to keep the starting city states populated so new players dont see a ghost town, which feels like a load of crap.
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Now why do expansion city states ultimately suck to be in?
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-GC turn ins cannot be done in any of them and squadrons cannot be interacted with
-No long term activities like Wondrous Tails to semi regularly return for
-Everything is dried up once you complete the MSQ and the handful of side quests
-A strange feel of emptiness in design either by aethernet layout or just not enough NPCs
-"Shops" that are just non interactable NPCs with pop up dialog, a very odd amount of NPCs that could be useful to any degree at all but are just part of the (lacking) population space
-
Back to the starting city states must be prioritized for new players to avoid feeling empty:
Given that the idea would be all city states would have equal reason to be in them it would in theory be impossible to have any city state be an actual ghost town and people who like that area would still be there.
There is also the thing that new players will spend a lot of time not farting around in a city state when doing the MSQ so the population is just be there for freshly new players before they start being tossed back and forth between the outer zones.
And since cutscenes dont do that cool thing which nearby players are put in the background the areas end up nearly barren anyway when anything important is going on.
-
So then: What should expansion city states be allowed to have? And what else can they be given to give them post story (or even mid story) purpose?
-Honestly, give us "Embassy quests" or whatever to allow GC turn ins. Maybe as a construction effort style thing which we spend company seals on items we then trade in at the expansion's city after the X.0 story is done and an embassy/house of trade is built. It could at least give an excuse to finally let us get new promotions again.
-
-Make all or at least most of the restaurants, cafes, food stands actually let us buy food.
Hell have them give two options: One which we can buy (Non HQ) foods as inventory items and another which we can pay less to eat immediately for one of two selectable effects: Standard food buff or the durability loss reduction food buff that can even have a small (Skippable) cutscene showing us eating it, we have plenty of one off eating cutscenes to pull from too.
-
You can even throw in the ability to invite the scions or anyone in the relevant city to hang out in that cutscene.
It honestly almost feels like a stab at us whenever an NPC says to come back again for more food but the NPC is not a shop keeper so you cant actually buy.
-
Obviously not the answer to all the issues but I am just a bit tired of the whole 10 years of going "Man what a cool city, too bad its freaking dead" with the exception of Radz during endwalker and adding anything would be an improvement at this point.
So should 8.0 be the time expansion city states start being more than just a stop along the way?
submitted by /u/Rysir
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...
As an extremely long time player that has been able to really take in each zone for their entire expansion cycles I always found it beyond saddening and annoying that we just dont have any real reason to go back or deal with inconveniences of various degrees if we do go back to hang out.
We cant truly pick anything beyond a starting city state to be a long term hang out and I was told years ago that each new city state is made to suck just enough to keep the starting city states populated so new players dont see a ghost town, which feels like a load of crap.
-
Now why do expansion city states ultimately suck to be in?
-
-GC turn ins cannot be done in any of them and squadrons cannot be interacted with
-No long term activities like Wondrous Tails to semi regularly return for
-Everything is dried up once you complete the MSQ and the handful of side quests
-A strange feel of emptiness in design either by aethernet layout or just not enough NPCs
-"Shops" that are just non interactable NPCs with pop up dialog, a very odd amount of NPCs that could be useful to any degree at all but are just part of the (lacking) population space
-
Back to the starting city states must be prioritized for new players to avoid feeling empty:
Given that the idea would be all city states would have equal reason to be in them it would in theory be impossible to have any city state be an actual ghost town and people who like that area would still be there.
There is also the thing that new players will spend a lot of time not farting around in a city state when doing the MSQ so the population is just be there for freshly new players before they start being tossed back and forth between the outer zones.
And since cutscenes dont do that cool thing which nearby players are put in the background the areas end up nearly barren anyway when anything important is going on.
-
So then: What should expansion city states be allowed to have? And what else can they be given to give them post story (or even mid story) purpose?
-Honestly, give us "Embassy quests" or whatever to allow GC turn ins. Maybe as a construction effort style thing which we spend company seals on items we then trade in at the expansion's city after the X.0 story is done and an embassy/house of trade is built. It could at least give an excuse to finally let us get new promotions again.
-
-Make all or at least most of the restaurants, cafes, food stands actually let us buy food.
Hell have them give two options: One which we can buy (Non HQ) foods as inventory items and another which we can pay less to eat immediately for one of two selectable effects: Standard food buff or the durability loss reduction food buff that can even have a small (Skippable) cutscene showing us eating it, we have plenty of one off eating cutscenes to pull from too.
-
You can even throw in the ability to invite the scions or anyone in the relevant city to hang out in that cutscene.
It honestly almost feels like a stab at us whenever an NPC says to come back again for more food but the NPC is not a shop keeper so you cant actually buy.
-
Obviously not the answer to all the issues but I am just a bit tired of the whole 10 years of going "Man what a cool city, too bad its freaking dead" with the exception of Radz during endwalker and adding anything would be an improvement at this point.
So should 8.0 be the time expansion city states start being more than just a stop along the way?
submitted by /u/Rysir
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...