Why they announced XIV about 10 years into XI

I sure hope 17 is going to be a new MMO, or they are cooking another one. I think it's clear to me that changing XIV to FF online would be a massive mistake.

I think the devs didnt really understand that Dawntrail was supposed to be a fresh restart for the game both in gameplay and graphically. And perhaps they are incapable of executing it.

It wasn't enough to redo the graphics, which yes, it was needed for a longer continuance. The gameplay experience had to evolve with it and it simply didn't. The content release cycles got far worse.

Thus, I think the best route here is to release a new MMO to provide a breath of fresh air and a vastly different gameplay experience most players are craving. This is such a great game, well executed, relatively few bugs that it is actually amazing just how STALE and SLOW the formula to content has to be to be killing it.

My point is, start working a new MMO. I don't think this product will recover meaningfully, but it is a really good game, so maybe another calamity isn't needed, it can go on maintenance mode like XI and that wouldn't be a bad thing. Quite frankly, I can't tell the difference about whether the game is maintenance mode or not anymore.

One question I have about that is whether they can really squeeze any more juice out of the FF universe. The FFXIV "plot" such as it is already gets compromised by call-backs to the series and shoe-horning in earlier material that further compromises the story.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

One question I have about that is whether they can really squeeze any more juice out of the FF universe. The FFXIV "plot" such as it is already gets compromised by call-backs to the series and shoe-horning in earlier material that further compromises the story.

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It's a lazy fan-service and by extension, a lazy writing.

I don't want an expansion inspired by XYZ game, I want an expansion that wants to be XIV

Endwalker shouldve been the end of the MMO. They are clearly creatively and storywise in a corner where they are feverishly looking to copy some villain or concept or story from an earlier Final Fantasy.

The design philosophy and funds / devpower put to this game are clearly on lifesupport. At his point I wish they just gave up. Said they were leaving some servers on forever and just quit making anything but small bug fixes.

And started working on a REAL 10 YEAR PLAN. A new MMO with a new engine. Roadmaps. Stop hiding your intent, stop using weaselwords. True transparency

FF14 began development in 2005 - literally 3 years after the release of FF11, and released 5 years after that.

So if you wanted to pretend they were going to repeat history, a new MMO would have began development in 2016 and released in 2021.

That ignores the entire reasoning behind why they did it. Although I have done literally no research on this, it's pretty obvious that FF11 was designed for the PS2 and additionally began development in 1999 when technology was, let's just say, we were awaiting the year 2000 for the promise of an explosion of digital technology that companies were so obviously preparing for, given we had little glints of it with bad PCs, digital watches, etc.

Given the rapid technology advancements at the time and that it would have been using technology from the 1990s, there is no chance it was built to endure the unpredictable technology advancements through the 2010s, so once there was more of a better idea of that in 2005 it made sense they started on another.

Ironically they didn't have a better idea of it, as it turned out, since they were still having real life models of swords made when other companies were using modeling software, and well you know all the problems 1.0 had. Maybe it's just as well, because that meant it got remade again in an era when computer technology was far, far more predictable - at this point we know how it goes - a progressive increase in RAM, drive space, GPU capability, etc. and it's pretty consistent. We had so much precedent even by that point, so everything could be built with this steady growth in mind (and Yoshi-P has said that FF14 is made with the ability to progressively increase depth on things like the skeletons, from what I vagely recall).

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Originally Posted by Ath192

I sure hope 17 is going to be a new MMO, or they are cooking another one. I think it's clear to me that changing XIV to FF online would be a massive mistake.

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They once suggested they could simply rename or re-release FF14 as FF17 if people stopped playing it purely due to it being an "old" FF game, but I think what is pretty clear now is that isn't an issue and a lot of people go back and play the old FF games, especially after a new FF game releases and gets them interested in the series as a whole.

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I think the devs didnt really understand that Dawntrail was supposed to be a fresh restart for the game both in gameplay and graphically.

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I wouldn't say a fresh restart. The graphics were literally just meant to be upscaling it and adding a bit more detail such as more objects, more realistic shaders. And the gameplay wasn't meant to be a fresh restart so much as opening themselves up to the sort of design decisions they were making in Heavensward.

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I think the best route here is to release a new MMO to provide a breath of fresh air and a vastly different gameplay experience most players are craving.

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I think the current design is to paint as broad a brush as possible.

Let's compare it to MrBeast, who has hyper-optimized his videos and become the most successful person on YouTube. He achieved this by using subjects that are so generic that everyone can relate to them - money (and all the things people dream of relating to it), extreme scenarios from films people have watched, to the point you could call this formulaic to an extent. None of these subjects are exactly the most interesting, but he hyper-optimized it to make sure that no matter who you are, you can watch through the video without clicking it off.

...and that's essentially what a lot of games seem to be trying to do. Paint so broad a brush to capture the maximum possible audience, that they alienate whatever specific niche audiences they once had. Despite anybody's feelings towards FFXIV, they can get through a dungeon or teleport places instantly without it wasting their time and without significant friction, in similar fashion to how YouTubers now try to cut out time-wasting segments.

It may be the case that games just need to choose their niche, stick with it and accept it will be less profitable, so that they can feel they made a great game. But it's a brave company that does that, especially in the gaming industry which often struggles with funding.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

It's a lazy fan-service and by extension, a lazy writing.

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It's completely intentional. They view FFXIV as a "final fantasy themepark" - a coming together of all the final fantasy games. They know that different people have an entirely different definition of what "final fantasy" is depending on which ones they've played, so to solve that problem, they make it a themepark so you can play the elements that are inspired by the final fantasy games you like, and ignore the rest. But of course, any references are adjusted to fit into FFXIV's lore.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It may be the case that games just need to choose their niche, stick with it and accept it will be less profitable, so that they can feel they made a great game. But it's a brave company that does that, especially in the gaming industry which often struggles with funding.

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They are unironically making the game less profitable by trying to sell it to everyone. If you try to please everybody, you will end up pleasing none. Its clear with the amount of critique the games has been having lately and people leaving, that compiled with the people who complain generally referring to their inability to innovate the game in meaningful ways and in critical ways aside from a few QoL changes here and there. ALL MMO's tend to have some critical improvements or new features in the new expansions ON LAUNCH. We just have "new story, new dungeons, new raids, same fates, same hunts and the list goes on." A lack of direction and a broad brush is not a marketing strategy for MMO's. It's a marketing strategy for coca-cola.

They should be BOLD and try something new, add new elements to the game. But I feel like they are:

A) Under Yoshi P's restrictive direction
B) Under the CEO's and boards restrictive budget, control
C) Just not talented and creative enough to pull it off

FFXIV has it's niche, but it's main competitor WoW is doing wheelies on it with how they LISTEN, ADAPT and EVOLVE. Even while they were a horrible stubborn company at a phase, they innovated.

If Riot had their stuff together and actually unleashed their MMO, FFXIV would lose their catgirl / bunnygirl crowd in an INSTANT.

They can afford to coast and do a 9 to 5 job mentality, but goodwill only lasts for so long.

A new mmo would certainly solve the issue of technical debt. It's a sorry state to be in where your main game is getting styled on by the mobile port. I do think it's hella copium though.

Personally if I were to dream, I'd love an mmo that took place entirely in the Ivalice setting. A strong unifying vision and theme would do a lot for me. A "best of" final fantasy theme park seems like a nice idea, and maybe it works for some (or even a lot) of people, but to me it makes the world feel incoherent and dissonant, especially lately as they pile more and more on top of it

It would save the game from technical debt,

but largely many of the non-technical issues that plague this game, will just be present in whatever future MMO they decide to do, if they do.

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Originally Posted by Velthice

A new mmo would certainly solve the issue of technical debt. It's a sorry state to be in where your main game is getting styled on by the mobile port. I do think it's hella copium though.

Personally if I were to dream, I'd love an mmo that took place entirely in the Ivalice setting. A strong unifying vision and theme would do a lot for me. A "best of" final fantasy theme park seems like a nice idea, and maybe it works for some (or even a lot) of people, but to me it makes the world feel incoherent and dissonant, especially lately as they pile more and more on top of it

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Thats the main issue with FFXIV, they add so many conflicting concepts that the worldbuilding suffers through it. DOwn to the very very annoying "Oh this hippo? Why can it fly? Uhmm wind aether I guess". The themepark concept without proper worldbuilding and adherence to their established lore is going to be a dead themepark, much like Living Memory.

I mean, it's a new MMO, Michael. What would it cost? 10 dollars?

I don't recall anything produced by Square Enix recently that points to a new MMO being successful. They should focus on fixing their main product. But who knows, with how they've been operating recently, the least obvious solution might be the one they try to implement. Right now, it feels like we need a miracle for CBU3 to change their current XIV formula and revamp the game.

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Originally Posted by brinn12

I don't recall anything produced by Square Enix recently that points to a new MMO being successful. They should focus on fixing their main product. But who knows, with how they've been operating recently, the least obvious solution might be the one they try to implement. Right now, it feels like we need a miracle for CBU3 to change their current XIV formula and revamp the game.

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Maybe history is repeating itself - SE did try their best to run FFXI into the ground before announcing FFXIV after all. Maybe we're just in our Abyssea arc.

I'd definitely like to jump into a new Final Fantasy Online world. I've been wanting one for a while.

We know Yoshi-P and the team has things planned to 10.0 for FFXIV; but, things could be in the works behind the scenes (like Rapture, while FFXI thriving). He also talked about Final Fantasy 17 & 18; but, they were touched on so little, they're either not even in the planning stages, or he *really* just wanted to keep things hush hush.

Unless any new FF MMO is being designed by a new team, with a new director and new writers, I really wouldn't be expecting anything different tbh

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Unless any new FF MMO is being designed by a new team, with a new director and new writers, I really wouldn't be expecting anything different tbh

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Well yes exactly. It needs a different gameplay experience. I think the player base is actually bored of CBU III’s style of development. It’s too predictable and boring. However, it is very polished and well done. So while I appreciate this team, just like Yoshi P said, he hoped the next mainline game would be done by another team, hopefully it’s an MMO.

It’s clear MMOs are giant cash cows for SE. it would be ridiculous to not invest in another one if you ask me. I don’t care what people think, every MMO has been and will be a gold mine for SE so long as it’s good.

This game also cannot innovate super well without raising complaints from the user base that already likes it as boring as repetitive as it is.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Thus, I think the best route here is to release a new MMO

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Even if they started working right now on a new mmorpg that is literally 8 years away. As that is about the usual amount of dev time it takes to develop a new one, so your looking at 2033. Even if we say they are secretly working on a new one as far back as endwalker's release, a new one would still be 3 and a half years away in 2029.

Which would definitely mean a different studio within SE is working on it and it can't be CBU3 which was being used for development on FF14, FF16, FF Tactics, and also a FF9 remake.

If we were to get a new mmorpg in a sooner time frame, expect it to be an iteration on ff14 which was an iteration ff11.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Even if we say they are secretly working on a new one as far back as endwalker's release, a new one would still be 3 and a half years away in 2029.

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I think this is the best case scenario we can hope for. If they haven't started on it by now then yeah its going to be a long while.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

Well yes exactly. It needs a different gameplay experience. I think the player base is actually bored of CBU III’s style of development. It’s too predictable and boring. However, it is very polished and well done. So while I appreciate this team, just like Yoshi P said, he hoped the next mainline game would be done by another team, hopefully it’s an MMO.

It’s clear MMOs are giant cash cows for SE. it would be ridiculous to not invest in another one if you ask me. I don’t care what people think, every MMO has been and will be a gold mine for SE so long as it’s good.

This game also cannot innovate super well without raising complaints from the user base that already likes it as boring as repetitive as it is.

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Yea, I guess I should say it hopefully doesn't have any influences from the current CBU3 team and, if/when they do work on it, it is completely seperated from them.