Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[Reynhart]

For me, the whole explanation is stupid...

The same applies to how, having elements like ice and fire on your weapon and equipment is rather meaningless with our game design. If the game system has elements as a huge factor and let's say you face a boss who is weak against a certain element. Those who don't have the actions or weapons that are effective will need to start back from re-learning a certain move or go get that fire weapon that melts the boss.

Instead of that, the game has an ilvl and accuracy requirements, so those who don't have proper gear will need to build a whole new set...reaaaaaly different.
Except that, in the current systemt you can just throw away your old gear. With horizontal progression, your "Fire weapon" may be useful several patches later.

If this continues to go on, there will be a moment where you lose focus and at one point you collapse. That sort of game system is highly addictive with fear and uplift alongside each other with the merit where it's harder to get bored because it forces you to continue spending most of your time. But, people nowadays don't have that time anymore.

Doing the Anima also takes a lot of time. And he admitted that Anima weapons are for people who can't overcome the difficulty of raids, so, he still expect his "less skilled" players to "have enough time".

This is just an imagination, but 10 years into the future we might shift into a team consisted of members who all truly love FFXIV and we might take our risk to release an expansion with that kind of character development involved in it, but at the moment it's impossible.

Don't worry, you won't have to wait for ten years. Another tome-gathering-content-facerolling expansion will bore far enough players for the game to change direction or die.

Even if we did change our policy, starting with new players having a hard time getting into the game, a majority of the current players will also be like "I was only able to keep playing because of the current system!"

New players won't have a "hard time", they'll slowly learn while gathering levels. And as long as you can progress bit by bit, the amount of time you can put in the game doesn't matter...We don't need the system to be like old FFXI where you can only progress in content if you have 3 hours straight.

Not having an endless element to build on your character is intentional and it's designed so you build up your item level instead.

Building item level is also an "endless" system...

Of course, we do understand you will get bored of refreshing your item level at one point, but no matter what sort of game desing you choose, you'll eventually get bored.

"You will be bored by any system in the long run, so let's keep the one you're already bored with"...yep, totally makes sense.
Or maybe they could, you know...build a different system for each expansion, so by the time you get bored, the system will change...