So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

[Talraen]

All people really want is something different. Give us something new, something different that's actually relevant to do and that it would be rewarding for people to do it. Give us a new way to farm, a new way to obtain something, something actually fun to do that's entertaining.

We don't want to play the same exact thing, because if that's really the case, we can just stay on 3.0 and not even bother with Stormblood. How about don't tell us that "this isn't FFXI" when it's not like FFXI invented open world content, and don't sit there and act as if casuals don't enjoy open world content when Zelda Breath of the Wild is selling like hot cakes right now and is open world.

People actually like open world content, and if a singleplayer game can do that well with open world, it'd be even better with an MMORPG because you can meet people out in the world, meet someone in a dungeon, share experiences with one another. Please do not base your design decisions solely on FFXIV 1.0 because that game failed for many, many reasons, and open world content wasn't one of them.

Just give us something new, please. Please.

Your assumptions here are very flawed. Open world content works in single player pretty much specifically because there's no one else out there. Open world content in an MMO means competition with other players. Like, that's basically the only difference between open world and instanced. And that's good... why? What does a casual player have to gain from NMs they'll never claim and drops they'll never get from them? Do a lot of casual players do hunts in FFXIV?

For what it's worth, my favorite MMO memory of all time happened because FFXI had an open world. (The short version is, we were in over our heads in Fei'yin, and a higher-level party saved us and it was awesome.) I get it. The potential for awesome stuff to happen is much, much higher in an open world. But the cost to have that chance is absolutely soul-crushing to a casual player. I am basically the prototype of a player who hates open-world content. I play quite a lot, and I'm pretty decent, but I have no desire to compete with people, brag about my achievements, or prove anything to anyone. I basically want to be able to play the game like a single-player game, and I'm not the only one. That's why open-world content has become unpopular; it requires you to deal with other people, and a lot of MMO players (despite that moniker) do not actually want that. And it's much more profitable than a game that requires social interaction to actually accomplish things. That's why WoW was 25x more popular than EQ or FFXI.

They've tried new content. People didn't like it and loudly complained about it. Stormblood having a dearth of "new types of content" is the result. A befuddled development team tired of getting burned by the capriciousness of consumers who don't know what the fuck they want.

I can't reiterate this enough. People asked for Diadem, and then hated it. People insisted they wanted quests that didn't lead you by the nose, and they implemented one. Given that they never did another, I presume it wasn't at all popular. They made hunts and people complained. Every time they try to implement something "old school," it gets rejected. People will say they just didn't do it right, but consider. Either they've consistently gotten these ideas wrong, in which case why would you trust them to get the next one right? Or those ideas just don't work anymore. Either way, it would be stupid for the devs to change things for the sake of doing so without direction. There is no indication that would be successful.

Seriously, what part of this game's history makes you think that if the devs made a change, the people who keep asking for one would like it?

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Your assumptions here are very flawed. Open world content works in single player pretty much specifically because there's no one else out there. Open world content in an MMO means competition with other players. Like, that's basically the only difference between open world and instanced. And that's good... why? What does a casual player have to gain from NMs they'll never claim and drops they'll never get from them? Do a lot of casual players do hunts in FFXIV?

For what it's worth, my favorite MMO memory of all time happened because FFXI had an open world. (The short version is, we were in over our heads in Fei'yin, and a higher-level party saved us and it was awesome.) I get it. The potential for awesome stuff to happen is much, much higher in an open world. But the cost to have that chance is absolutely soul-crushing to a casual player. I am basically the prototype of a player who hates open-world content. I play quite a lot, and I'm pretty decent, but I have no desire to compete with people, brag about my achievements, or prove anything to anyone. I basically want to be able to play the game like a single-player game, and I'm not the only one. That's why open-world content has become unpopular; it requires you to deal with other people, and a lot of MMO players (despite that moniker) do not actually want that. And it's much more profitable than a game that requires social interaction to actually accomplish things. That's why WoW was 25x more popular than EQ or FFXI.

You mention flaws, I've found some in your post. WoW has many reasons for it to be far more successful than FFXI, it had more competent devs and ones that actually listened to the player base. It was based in USA and thus had better communication with it's player base and appealed to the western audience more because of it's art style and themeing. World of Warcraft also came out years after FFXI when gaming was even larger, and FFXI as an MMO came out when such games were not that widely popular as of yet. The list can really go on for why World of Warcraft is more successful, but you can honestly just look at the flaws of FFXI to see why it didn't win over mainstream and how the game was run. Open world content had nothing to do with this.

And here's the thing about open world content, the fact that you actually have to interact with people becomes more rewarding in the long run and helps the community stabilize better, it gets more people talking. It gives them time to pause and take in the surroundings and not rush straight to the end of a raid like instanced content is. How many times have people not been able to read a random note on the floor in a dungeon just because people want to rush down the dungeon? If open world content is damaging, so is instanced content if that's all there is, just people don't pay attention to the little things that add up over time.

I disagree, and I feel that it can be implemented alongside instanced content for an excellent balance. It really depends on how it's executed in the end, we don't need FFXI 2.0. Besides, with party finder, it's already vastly above FFXI's recruitment process.

[Talraen]

FFXI came out in Japan two years before WoW came out at all, but they both came out in 2004 in the US. They aren't actually that far apart. And aside from WoW itself, FFXI was the most popular MMO of its time, equaling Everquest's peak. If it didn't win over the mainstream, neither did EQ. And I think that's accurate; WoW was so huge compared to both of these because it was the first MMO that did attract the mainstream.

The problem with the assumption that having to interact is rewarding is survivorship bias. Yes, the people who played FFXI long-term had a great community, quite possibly better than the one here. But that's because the players who couldn't or didn't want to deal with FFXI stopped playing. A wider community is almost always going to be more flawed by its nature, but they're trying to appeal to as wide a community as possible. Having a good community consisting of people with very narrow desires is no great achievement.

As for the party finder, that's not the only reason FFXIV has better recruitment than FFXI. I spent many a week shouting in town looking for people to do CoP, and never finished it. There was no incentive for anyone who had completed the content to help, and the content was too long and difficult to consistently clear with other people looking to do it, assuming you even found them. The party finder would help slightly with this, but the reason this works in FFXIV is because of the duty finder. Now I can queue for the dungeon, and someone else is incentivized to come because of roulettes. And they can be rewarded for doing an old dungeon because of the tomestone system. If you change these systems, as people seem to want, you risk going back to a system where people have no incentive to help other players. I'm stubborn, so I stuck around in FFXI, but none of my similarly-casual friends did. I only ever finished most of the plotlines in the game because of the increased level cap and Trust system.

TLDR; everything you're asking for is what frustrated me about FFXI, and made all my friends quit. My story is not exceptional.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

FFXI came out in Japan two years before WoW came out at all, but they both came out in 2004 in the US. They aren't actually that far apart. And aside from WoW itself, FFXI was the most popular MMO of its time, equaling Everquest's peak. If it didn't win over the mainstream, neither did EQ. And I think that's accurate; WoW was so huge compared to both of these because it was the first MMO that did attract the mainstream.

The problem with the assumption that having to interact is rewarding is survivorship bias. Yes, the people who played FFXI long-term had a great community, quite possibly better than the one here. But that's because the players who couldn't or didn't want to deal with FFXI stopped playing. A wider community is almost always going to be more flawed by its nature, but they're trying to appeal to as wide a community as possible. Having a good community consisting of people with very narrow desires is no great achievement.

As for the party finder, that's not the only reason FFXIV has better recruitment than FFXI. I spent many a week shouting in town looking for people to do CoP, and never finished it. There was no incentive for anyone who had completed the content to help, and the content was too long and difficult to consistently clear with other people looking to do it, assuming you even found them. The party finder would help slightly with this, but the reason this works in FFXIV is because of the duty finder. Now I can queue for the dungeon, and someone else is incentivized to come because of roulettes. And they can be rewarded for doing an old dungeon because of the tomestone system. If you change these systems, as people seem to want, you risk going back to a system where people have no incentive to help other players. I'm stubborn, so I stuck around in FFXI, but none of my similarly-casual friends did. I only ever finished most of the plotlines in the game because of the increased level cap and Trust system.

TLDR; everything you're asking for is what frustrated me about FFXI, and made all my friends quit. My story is not exceptional.

I think the issue is that you're still thinking of open world content in a very old MMORPG sort of way. You're thinking of FFXI which had unforgiving systems in place, a game that had some of the worst class balance in an MMO (legit some classes were useless or inferior for most content). FFXIV is a far more balanced game by comparison with far more modern UI and match making systems as well as design and functionality. We don't have to do this like FFXI.