Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW

[Duelle]

And by different from XI, you mean similar to WoW?

Being similar to WoW was more icing on the cake than anything else. All that meant is that I could make a transition from one to the other. This is not counting that I hated most of FFXI's gameplay (gear swaps, refresh-whoring, utsusemi, on/off switches in the form of gear, to name a few) while I did enjoy WoW's take on encounter design, mechanics and party dynamics.

Like nearly other MMO for the past decade? The very same stagnation that poisons so many other genres in so many other industries?

Taking ideas from your peers has been par for the course in entertainment since the coming of motion pictures, and is thus a poor talking point. Specially when it is ideas that work.

We could sit here and condemn the fighting game industry for implementing super meters, or RPGs of old for using turn-based combat, or even recent beat em ups that seem to be taking major pointers from Akham Assylum's free flow combo system (equivalents to what we've seen within the MMORPG genre), but to do so would be asinine and pointless. MMORPGs also fall into this line of reasoning.

[Gramul]

Taking ideas from your peers has been par for the course in entertainment since the coming of motion pictures, and is thus a poor talking point. Specially when it is ideas that work.

And it's the reason why we get 4 terrible rom-coms a year. It's why most action movies are either Michael Bay explosion fests, or Die Hard ripoffs. It's why every non-major animation studio makes films featuring talking animals. It's why family comedies feature some form of CG animal dancing for no real reason. It's why horror almost always features dumb shaky cam now.

We could sit here and condemn the fighting game industry for implementing super meters, or RPGs of old for using turn-based combat, or even recent beat em ups that seem to be taking major pointers from Akham Assylum's free flow combo system

I can and do.
Why do you think regular JRPGs are so rare these days? Why did Adventure games fade into obscurity for a decade, only to be brought back by essentially one company? Why do you not really see rhythm games anymore? What happened to film noir and Italian Westerns? The genres burnt out.

Hell, one of the newest JRPGs coming out is a novelty because it uses an old style system. Because that what happens when you overexpose something like that, any attempt to revive it can only be seen as a novelty. People get tired of seeing it again and again. It happens in every industry throughout all of creative history. You have to really mix it up before you drown in the stagnant swamp you've created.