Let's talk about exploringFollow

Forget battle. Forget exp via quests. Forget storyline.

I've spent the last few hours doing what I do best, which is running around trying to find out how to navigate myself around the world.

Stuff I like:

- Mobs are in a more logical progression now. No level 70 monsters blocking a camp inside the level 20 areas.
- The Civ method of map unlocking, where you can't see more than your immediate surroundings in the large map until you've approached the area. It makes the world feel more mysterious and has encouraged me to strike off in a "blank" direction just to see what's over there.
- That the minimap shows your surrounding areas even if you haven't been there before (unlike the big maps.) The minimap's clean UI compass style design is also a lot better than the weird faded circle.
- The greatly improved environments make for easier mental navigation. Camp Drybone looks completely different from Camp Horizon now.
- How teleports are now limited until you personally have visited an aetheryte. That was one of the biggest gripes people had about the cheating and PLing in 1.0.
- Random beautiful places. I mean, places that are outrageously beautiful for no good reason. 1.0 had too few of these.

Stuff I dislike:

- How air travel is limited until you do a certain amount of the main scenario quests.
- How the paths/roads are so faintly marked it's hard to read them on the maps.
- Aggro on chocobos. I hated this in 1.0 and I'm unhappy they kept it in ARR.

What things have you liked or disliked in your travels so far?

A lot of the mob names are throwbacks to FFXI. Fighting Bubbly Bernie in a FATE was win.

As for places, though, nothing really easter-eggy for me yet.

Yeah found her too.

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