With all of the limitations holding FFXIV back, why not make a new FF MMORPG?

[Daralii]

Yeah, definitely. It's no small thing. To be completely honest it's almost a miracle that ARR hit the ground running and became a huge success, and the success is still going. It's clearly something that SE never expected either since they were ill prepared for 2.0's launch and had to add servers on the fly. I honestly don't expect SE to make another MMO for some time since the genre as a whole is on its way out the door. But I do think that it will be back in some form eventually.

I don't think it'll ever really bounce back unless there's some major breakthroughs in tech(VRMMOs obviously being the dream for a lot of people) or an industry crash to hit the reset button. SWTOR cost $200m just to develop(never mind however much was spent on Blur's cinematics and the marketing) and it flopped almost immediately.

[Eldevern]

If I knew for a certainty that SE could design a truly expansive, flexible platform for an MMO - something on par with an Unreal or Unity engine - I'd say go for it. If nothing else, such a game would last for longer than XIV does, because it wouldn't need such a large development team to churn out content.

But I seriously, seriously doubt they could pull this off. They simply don't have the expertise with graphics engines that long-time PC companies like id Software / Epic Games / Ubisoft / etc. do. In all likelihood, we'd get another engine that supports beautiful artwork and overly relies on particle effects, with fair to poor technical capabilities in all other respects.

From what I heard the Luminous Engine sounds far from bad. And cinematics demonstrations are pretty good (the 2018 from VirtualWorks with the Luminous Engine is pretty nice).

And if I consider how it runs on my computer, to compare with Unreal, Unity or BlackDesert Engine, FFXIV or BlackDesert run pretty smoother than Unreal or Unity based games for the same aesthetic (thought since Aion run a new engine, it NEVER looks fine despite requiring pretty much more work from my graphic card).

I tend to think the real problem is SE didn't seem to be able to decide if they continue the FF licence or launch a brand new one. According to rumors, SE will maybe make a big announcement this year, a new AAA licence, exactly, from the Luminous Studio.

[Drayce1]

This again, they confirmed already that FFXVI will NOT be a MMO. So you can forget about that for the time being. Yoshi-P is apparently working on something new however, who knows what, between XIV, the other mmo that makes more money from its JP playerbase than FFXIV, Dragon Quest X Online, and whatever this new project is, I often wonder if the poor man blacks out on his desk from all the work he does.

[LyraKuroneko]

This again, they confirmed already that FFXVI will NOT be a MMO.

I don't even remember them saying there will be a XVI.

And even if there was I could bet on mobile.

[Vahlnir]

I don't think it'll ever really bounce back unless there's some major breakthroughs in tech(VRMMOs obviously being the dream for a lot of people) or an industry crash to hit the reset button. SWTOR cost $200m just to develop(never mind however much was spent on Blur's cinematics and the marketing) and it flopped almost immediately.

It'd definitely have to change drastically, for sure. That's why I said I thought it'd come back in some form...but it'd definitely have to be different somehow.

[AlliciaCapulet]

PS4 limitations. That's what limit the most FFXIV right now. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to start a PC versus console war, but, at the moment, XIV can run on PS4, PS4 Pro and PC. PC can be far better than the PS4 Pro or even not announced yet PS5, for people who have lots of money to put in a good build. PS4 Pro is still decent at the moment and it will probably able to keep up for ShB and another expansion. After that it will probably be just PC and PS5. That's purely my guess, but if you remember well, before Stormblood, we had the PS3 limitation and it made a big difference when they removed the PS3 support. We were able to have larger inventory, more items in housing, better graphics, just to mention those.

The PS3 was released in 2006 and you were able to play until 2017 to XIV. The PS4 was release in 2013, and if you add ShB + another expansion, this bring us to 2023, so almost the same age than the PS3 when it was removed. I think that it's just a logical bet to say that the support for PS4 will ends with the release of the 7.0, and remove at the same time the limitations that we have right now.

Every other "limitations" are more like "choices" of where to put their ressources. Adding a new race means making or modifying every models of every existing gear + adding the new one. This takes a LOT of time, and this is the reason why there won't be any headgear visible for Viera at the launch, but Yoshi-P said it will come... one day. Also, maybe the male Viera will come, maybe not. They said they won't release more race to XIV, but maybe they can complete those 2 new races in the future. They also released only 2 jobs on an expansion because adding 3 is too much work.

As for the new MMORPG, FF XI will probably die in the next years, when they'll reach the "minimum active players limit" playing the game. Beyond a certain number of active player, the game won't be profitable enough for them to keep on running it. This will leave us with XIV only. Yoshi-P already said they can make at least 3 other expansion (excluding ShB), and they probably can do more, so I don't see XIV die in a close future. But, even if it's their engine, and even if you remove the PS4 limitations, we will eventually reach the limit of the XIV engine. Meaning, if they want to keep an MMO, they'll need to make a new one eventually. And people now wants awesome graphics, awesome gameplay, awesome stories and lots of content, well, making a new game like that takes years of developement.

To be honnest, I won't be surprise if FF XVII (maybe?) is in development at the moment and will be a future MMO that will release in 6 or 8 years from now. They know that they can run 2 MMOs at the same time. And this brings them a lot of money. So I don't see why they won't release a new one when XIV will be their only MMO and will be in his last years. But, that's just my opinion, they can also chose to give up on the MMO genre.

[Tint]

PS4 limitations. That's what limit the most FFXIV right now.

What are these limitations?

The PS3 limitation was largely due the fact that the PS3 had only 512 MB RAM.

But what exactly are the PS4 limitations?

[Xeynaar]

There are also 32-bit PC limitations. They announced they'll drop support for it and that not everything in ShB will work on a 32-bit OS.

[Makeda]

The MMO genre isn't what it used to be, and making one is a massive undertaking

Every failed MMO since about 2008 has been saying this. Yet in that same time we have had many successful MMOs; including a certain one from Japan that features catgirls and potato people...

It is basically the 'not our fault our game failed' excuse of every development house that reads the market completely wrongly...

Starting with Warhammer - which was way too PvP centric but without, from what I was told, even delivering it's full suite of PvP promises - not their fault, the MMO genre died in 2008.

Wildstar - way too hardcore on raids that were silly overtuned and 'casual dungeons' that were harder than WoW mythic raids... not their fault: the MMO genre died in 2013.

City of Heroes - old engine, still making money, fans that were nearly-religious in devotion. Developer cancels it. Not their fault, the MMO genre died in 2010.

The old Conan MMO, The Star Wars MMO, maybe a half dozen Star Trek MMOs, assorted fantasy MMOs, and so on - all of which people pointed out major missing features, failure to balance critical flaws, lack of endgame, lack of 'game' before the endgame, too much monetization, not enough monetization, and so on... not the publisher / developer's fault: the MMO genre died in [inset year of fail here]...

FFXIV could have gone that route... in 2013... SE could have just said... 1.0 was not our fault, the MMO genre died in 2012... BUT... they didn't.
- Unlike the entire rest of the industry, including now even Blizzard (ya'll got phones right?), only SE and ESO's Zenimax have said "oops, that was our fault, we're going to fix it".

There's a reason the 3 top MMOs are basically WoW, FFXIV, and ESO - and people are now debating which one is actually #1... One of them is coasting on inertia (only reason anybody still has a WoW sub these days is memories), and the other two admitted mistakes and fixed stuff... instead of claiming the MMO genre isn't what it used to be.

(And I'll give Zenimax some 'dev-cred' despite everyone currently tossing shade at their partner Bethesda...)

Which brings up another point... right now we're seeing all the other game houses, the non-MMO ones... come back with "not our fault, the game industry isn't what it used to be..." despite fans saying "um hey... no... this new release you guys have... it's junk... it is your fault it didn't sell..."

- The industry has basically been using the 'the dog ate my game quality' excuse for the last decade now... the gamers haven't gone anywhere... nothing is 'no longer viable'... we're just getting fed excuses.

That said... I personally don't see a need for a FFX-something just yet. Still enjoying this game and ESO.

[Kalise]

Every failed MMO since about 2008 has been saying this. Yet in that same time we have had many successful MMOs; including a certain one from Japan that features catgirls and potato people...

Literally, you can see that there are plenty of successful MMO's out there. Ones that are doing well enough, to even foster new releases on updated engines. A lot of the Asian MMO's have enough following to release new versions in 2019/2020.

Heck, Anarchy Online is still going to date even despite Funcom being a crappy cash milking company.

It is basically the 'not our fault our game failed' excuse of every development house that reads the market completely wrongly...

I can personally attest to what killed many of the games you mentioned...

Starting with Warhammer - which was way too PvP centric but without, from what I was told, even delivering it's full suite of PvP promises - not their fault, the MMO genre died in 2008.

Warhammer died, not because it was too PvP centric (Though, that was part of it, it literally cut out a large portion of the MMO playerbase by having no PvE content past level 32. With max level being 50 you can see how this might be an issue)

But because its balance was awful. The lead developer mained one of the glass cannon mages (Bright Wizard as I recall) and so basically balance was entirely "Play Bright Wizard/Sorcerer or play a healer to heal the Bright Wizard/Sorcerer" with later adding in the Choppa and Slayer to be mDPS versions of Bright Wizard/Sorcerer. So every other class that wasn't blowing people up while being immortal because of being focused by heals (Negating the "Glass" portion of their glass cannon designs)

Every other class was just outright inferior to the glass cannons and some had been complaining about bugs or aspects of their kit that had been left to rot for years... (To say nothing about the bugs that cropped up, such as the infamous 0.0s attack speed Slayers. Yes. That meant infinite attacks per second. Insta-killing anything.)

City of Heroes - old engine, still making money, fans that were nearly-religious in devotion. Developer cancels it. Not their fault, the MMO genre died in 2010.

CoX died because they went for a ridiculously long period of time without adding any meaningful end-game content. Instead they relied upon players being able to make custom missions to keep people interested. Which they promptly nerfed when they realized that certain configurations would allow people to easily farm higher than max level enemies in massive densities and power level like crazy...

The old Conan MMO, The Star Wars MMO, maybe a half dozen Star Trek MMOs, assorted fantasy MMOs, and so on - all of which people pointed out major missing features, failure to balance critical flaws, lack of endgame, lack of 'game' before the endgame, too much monetization, not enough monetization, and so on... not the publisher / developer's fault: the MMO genre died in [inset year of fail here]...

True, and one of the more notable ones was Rift which was DoA due to the lack of end-game content.

They eventually put some in, but by then everyone had left the game. Especially since WoW hadn't turned to crap at that point. (These days, it'd probably have had a fair shot with WoW being utter tripe)

There's a reason the 3 top MMOs are basically WoW, FFXIV, and ESO - and people are now debating which one is actually #1... One of them is coasting on inertia (only reason anybody still has a WoW sub these days is memories), and the other two admitted mistakes and fixed stuff... instead of claiming the MMO genre isn't what it used to be.

WoW can only claim "Top 3 MMO's" by the fact it has existing players, rather than being actually good...

I think the contention for Top MMO is FFXIV, ESO and BDO.

XIV can become #1 if the team gets the additional resources it needs to actually expand and provide the content that the developers want (As opposed to SE strangling it by siphoning most of the money it makes into other games... Siphon some, sure, but not most of it...)

ESO could really do with building up their dungeons a bit more. Their overworld is amazing and easily the best part of the game. The dungeons are a bit lacklustre...

BDO needs to step away from the P2W model of having literally the worst gear progression system ever implemented into a video game.

These are only relatively minor flaws compared to the ones that sunk prior games though (Except maybe BDO... It maintains a niche audience though... One that likes to meme about Bless Online and continually debate "Are Traps Gay?" in general chat...)