Give us a reason to visit the now neglected Passages

A long time ago, players had to go to the various passages to collect the various regional gems found within the various passages. Now players obtain all the gems in the game from Trolls from the overland map, Vertas Pass or player dungeons. (I don't have a problem with that though).

Do some changes to these scenes to give us a reason to go back through these scenes again.

Just some basic better resources or other various reasons would be nice to see as an incentive to go back and visit these (mostly completely unused) scenes.

Thanks!

 

Even just cranking the fragment drop rate on gem nodes would get me back in there, and perhaps adding some deco color variants using different ones.
Other than gems, resource density in the passages is pretty poor which makes them poor mining spots and poor producer spots.
I.e. shogun string lights with a blue tint using sapphire instead of garnet or a red tint using rubies ...suddenly I need thousands of gem fragments..nom nom nom

 

Oh, man, you're just trying to get me to rant about this again, aren't you?

I always thought instead of opening the passes on the overworld, they should have made the passages into t1 zones, with t2-t5 side passages behind breakable walls. It'd be quicker to go through the passes on the overworld, but lower levels could run through the passages more safely.

Given that ship has sailed... the passages seem like a perfect place to include mini-expansions. Drop in a new breakable wall somewhere from time to time, with new sections of cavern to explore. Change some of the nodes to t6 nodes. (And add a bunch more of them!) Maybe the next Bunker scene accessible from the passages. Or a new mining scene. Or lava fishing area. If List or @Sannio get need a break from what they're doing, they could throw together a new hard-to-find wave battle or daemon summoning chamber, stash it down in the passages, and see how long it takes people to find it.

I mean, if they just added two new rooms and a few corridors each release, it wouldn't take long for the passages to become a huge complex rivaling the Underworld of old.

 

I’m completely fine with the current tier 5 level of the passages. But the current resource output there isn’t worth the time to even visit them.

 

Oh, yes; I wouldn't change the difficulty of the passages now. That was only as part of my idea to make them the "safe" way to get around the overworld passes for low level players. Since that is now moot, leave them t5, but use them to expand the world in small bites every release in an easy-to-implement manner using existing assets and tech.

 

It would be really cool, like you suggested, just add some small new tunnels and areas to these from time to time (this actually adds an element of exploration to the game) and possibly one day they might be even connected to Mistrendur.

 

Agreed. I actually really enjoyed trying to do the main story while avoiding PvP areas; exploring the passages and trying to find my way through. Well, the second time; I was a little too low-level for some of the passages my first time, and mostly just ran around trying to avoid the mobs. Second time, I was high enough to deal with them, and could properly explore.

 

Some great ideas although hearing of wave battles I feel like omg this tech is so over-used well imo. Now quests that take us to all scenes in the game to find lore, resources, and having something different happen. One reason we were told very long ago for not having an open world was that we could just drop in scenes and change them up. I don't see this happening or neither does it sound an easy thing to do. What new is ever happening in scenes to entice us to visit? Is it possible to have a schedule of interesting things happening? Are there achievements, tasks or anything to entice us to visit? Not really game created stuff. It is same old same old.

A cool thing in FFXIV was creatures appeared that were special every once in a while perhaps the locals know of something new happening to search out. Drop in occasionally a local NPC who can tell you of hearing something strange. These creatures were kind of like our glowing creatures. They looked a bit different when spotted and gave better loot and were a bit more difficult to take down.

We do have reapers and I love the concept of reapers and how hidden they are. I think they are adorable but loot could be better as with most things in the game. Perhaps different reapers of different tiers of difficulty too that look a bit different. Like as an example only Pine Reapers, Maple Reapers, Spiky reapers. Just examples.

Also treasure hunting if done right could take us to all areas of the game. X marks the map with our survey tools. How about treasure hunting skills or even just tools that allow us to see? Having to search out areas using our map and compass for the red X would truly be interesting to some. When the red X is finally spotted get out those shovels for a dig animation and dig away until the treasure is uncovered and sometimes treasure comes at a cost of a battle for it. Opening the chest could have gotten some love too with lock picking difficulty and chests colors or names telling difficulty, so mob difficulty to fight over the chest perhaps, but lock picking that would be another thing not in game either.

Fishing could have done more with different areas having different types of fish, but grinding for trophies and fish can get old and without new fish loot like message in a bottles that give maps or map pieces or quests or a clue or just treasure chest or small cache, something to make fishing much more interesting was not done or completed like most everything in this game.

 

Plus, how cool would it be to bust open a wall and find a chamber with ruins similar to the bottom of Hilt...

 

Don't need to be extensive changes, just spitballing. I think ideally, they would be small quick additions here and there.

 

Wouldn't it be fun if occasionally kobolds showed up in one of the passages, and next time you went down (i.e., after a later patch) it had grown a bit, with some new resources and occasionally a new connection?

 

Thanks @Sannio for at least looking into this!

Just some better resource gathered in here would be good. I do actually like how they are all matched to each region for each type of gems (and ore).

In doing one complete run around of the Spindrift Passage, and then looking at my inventory I was like..... why am I even in here?

 

But, yeah, even just resources would be awesome. We need some more places to mine with decent returns. I know I'm getting tired of Crag and Elysium.

 

Here's a problem that I see. If you improve the resources just a little bit, nobody will bother with the zones so it was just wasted effort. If you improve the resources too much, they will become the next hotspot zone, making previous content wasted effort. If the passages become the best place to get fragments, the troll zones will see less traffic as they become a bit less desirable. One scene's appeal become another zone's demise.

I think that a broader vision is needed where, ideally, each zone will have a distinct purpose that ties into the overall adventuring or crafting vision. The underworld passages should definitely play a part in that and offer up something unique. It is the underworld after all, it should have a different role to play in the vision of the game than any of the overworld scenes.

 

That is a very good point. What happened was this was where you had to go to get gems. But those now all come from trolls, and that’s fine.

There’s now no reason to go here now, because it doesn’t have that specific reason to go there...

 

Also @Sannio I don't think everyone is asking for big deal changes or additions necessarily to episode one. Discoveries and added resources has always been way too limited in this game.

It's always felt like quite a few scenes had that un-finished feel or little reasons to visit more than once.

Wave battles do not make a scene, grinding does not make a scene. That you can climb to the highest mountain and discover something, a clue even, a quest even, or a mystery matters.

Areas slathered with lore, discoveries, and an occasional npc's that knows if something happened in the area. That can be randomized to change out scenes.

We would so appreciate some more attention to detail in all scenes to give them more reason for us to explore them. Task driven system would be awesome too.