What would you like to see (differently) in the next Final Fantasy MMO?

[Kalise]

Blizzard and SE seem to be the only ones who manage to maintain a succesful non-niche trinity role based MMORPG.

ESO also utilizes a Trinity system (Ironically, given the nature of the TES series) and is quite successful.

As far as the Trinity goes...

SE actually has grounds to work on in order to break that particular meta.

While most of the FF series actually ended up with some form of Trinity happening (I.e. One character as a front liner with some form of taunt ability and auto-counter, a thief of some kind for stealing stuff and using items, a backline mage for magical damage and then a healer on the backlines)

FFXIII did utilize a role system that expanded on the Tank/Healer/DPS trifecta with the Paradigms;

Commando was a semi-tank that set up your Break Gauge to be able to be built as well as capitalize on Staggered enemies.
Ravager was the DPS and primary source of Break Gauge filling.
Sentinel was the full on tank that would absorb damage.
Saboteur was the debuffer that would weaken enemies making them deal less damage and take more damage.
Synergist was the buffer increasing defenses and attack of allies.
Medic was the healer.

Throw in Paradigm Shifts to let people swap between 2 Paradigms in combat (An interesting take on the oft seen weapon switching) and you have a particularly interesting basis for an expanded "Trinity"

[Vaer]

Let's get away from the old MMORPG tropes and have it be something unique. For instance, how many MMORPG rely on the dps, tank, and healer setup? Also, cooldowns in general just make me feel like I'm playing games that are clones of each other.

And before you say, it will never work! Remember, we're talking about making a new game here. It needs some creativity, and don't be someone not willing to think outside of the box due to fear of change.

Ehh, GW2 gave this sort of a shot. It works ok but it just ends up where everyone is everything. While cool in a sense that basically everyone would be responsible for themselves, (no healers to bail them out since they have to heal themselves, they have to dodge to prevent themselves from being downed) it kinda makes the dynamic a bunch of solo players playing together instead of a structured group working together IMO. Blasting fields are ok in organized groups but I feel like most players probably don't even bother with them.

Later on they pulled back on it when they wanted to add raids and just added mechanics that made someone the "tank" temporarily that could be influenced by equipped stats and added more supporty healer specs anyway.

I dunno, people that just purely want to play healers and tanks that don't like to dps at all would get left out. Not that FFXIV does a good job of enforcing the holy trinity anyway, FFXIV is a bit close to the "everyone is a dps" mentality already anyway.

[Lauront]

Games without the holy trinity have been done before, but the combat tends to quickly devolve into chaos without any sort of tanking or healing so sometimes they retrofit those in, in some capacity, later anyway. It can work without it, but usually the content isn't challenging enough to require it then.

Yeah, it's really not worth it. Better to have jobs/classes designed with a clearly designated role in mind.

[dinnertime]

I'm not too familiar with MHW but from what I've seen of it, it looks good.

I often dislike action combat games for two reasons - 1) too much staggering, which makes the combat feel dull and little more than button mashing against target dummies and 2) spellcasting is poorly integrated into it. Tales of Berseria was an example of 2), and I absolutely hated its combat system for that reason, even if it was a deliberate design choice. I'm not too familiar with Dragon's Dogma, but from the limited amount I played of it, BDO seemed to handle spellcasting quite well. An action combat system could be more fun, but they'd need to re-think the design of several jobs if they were to follow through with it. From what I saw of the VII remake they seem to have the right idea. Spellcasters would need to focus on swift casts, teleports, dodging, shield spells and the like.

MHW has its moments especially right now with the new mechanics on the MHW expansion making it easier to cheese fights, but it's one of the more well-polished action combat games out there. The enemies or rather monsters/wyverns are totally not target dummies, especially the endgame monsters. You will be dealt with ruthlessly, especially when they're enraged. Another thing about Monster Hunter is that enemies are pretty complex and challenging. The gameplay involves a lot of enemy movement reading/predicting unlike FFXIV where everything is so scripted, which takes away fights having unexpected surprises. Behemoth in that game is an absolute pain in the butt to fight, even with better gear.

Spellcasting in Dragon's Dogma and BDO are kind of similar, but Dragon's Dogma is slower, while BDO is faster and feels less outdated. Though, I've never seen any other game with so much impact on the magic presentation other than Dragon's Dogma. It also has an MMO that shut down (unfortunately), the casting gimmick is pretty bad but other than that it's the same as the single player game.

Also Dragon's Dogma Online has a class named High Scepter and it's a good take on a spell fencer, and has all of those things you mentioned that a spellcaster would need.

[Yencat]

Later on they pulled back on it when they wanted to add raids and just added mechanics that made someone the "tank" temporarily that could be influenced by equipped stats and added more supporty healer specs anyway.

I don't know how it is now but for a good long while Chrono was the only acceptable tank so you ended up in the same situation where everyone's looking for (X) class anyway.

I love the idea of no trinity but I've never seen it work really well.

[Jade3173]

Throw in Paradigm Shifts to let people swap between 2 Paradigms in combat (An interesting take on the oft seen weapon switching) and you have a particularly interesting basis for an expanded "Trinity"

While I agree that it sounds good on paper, it leaves out the problem known as "people". You'd have to have something in place to prevent a Sentinel/Ravager person from jumping into content and then sticking to Ravager the entire time, same applies to Medic. Don't get me wrong, enjoy the idea, would love to do something like having a split Medic/Saboteur style play or if they'll let me, a Saboteur/Synergist.

The idea that quickly comes to mind on how to deal with the problem people would be limit the two paradigms that people can play but at that point you also lose the draw of the system.

[Lauront]

ESO also utilizes a Trinity system (Ironically, given the nature of the TES series) and is quite successful.

As far as the Trinity goes...

SE actually has grounds to work on in order to break that particular meta.

While most of the FF series actually ended up with some form of Trinity happening (I.e. One character as a front liner with some form of taunt ability and auto-counter, a thief of some kind for stealing stuff and using items, a backline mage for magical damage and then a healer on the backlines)

FFXIII did utilize a role system that expanded on the Tank/Healer/DPS trifecta with the Paradigms;

Commando was a semi-tank that set up your Break Gauge to be able to be built as well as capitalize on Staggered enemies.
Ravager was the DPS and primary source of Break Gauge filling.
Sentinel was the full on tank that would absorb damage.
Saboteur was the debuffer that would weaken enemies making them deal less damage and take more damage.
Synergist was the buffer increasing defenses and attack of allies.
Medic was the healer.

Throw in Paradigm Shifts to let people swap between 2 Paradigms in combat (An interesting take on the oft seen weapon switching) and you have a particularly interesting basis for an expanded "Trinity"

I'd like something along those lines, if only because it basically adds some twists to the trinity system. If they approached it with that kind of design from the ground up, rather than trying to patch it in later, they'd have plenty of room to make sure the raids, dungeons etc. featured mechanics to exploit it to the max. That, though, speaks more to class identity than anything, and I think it's something they'd need to address head on. I.e., for a given role, what kind of variations are we willing to tolerate and which jobs will fill each? Being able to shift between stances could also work on such a basis. Definitely a system I would be interested in seeing if they could overcome potential issues with homogeneisation.

[SamRF]

ESO also utilizes a Trinity system (Ironically, given the nature of the TES series) and is quite successful.

It doesn't have tab targeting though and I feel like is quite different than WoW and FFXIV with how the game functions in terms of abilities etc as well. I think ESO is still considered a niche type of MMO, although tbh what does niche even mean right now for MMO market.

You know, now I think about it, it could be that the holy trinity and established MMO formula wasn't actually the deciding factor for the success of FFXIV and WoW, looking at ESO's current success. All 3 games are based on a pre-exisiting franchise which was very popular before there was any mention of an upcoming MMO. Maybe that is the biggest reason why they manage to thrive while other MMOs seem to have trouble keeping their heads above water.

[Kalise]

While I agree that it sounds good on paper, it leaves out the problem known as "people". You'd have to have something in place to prevent a Sentinel/Ravager person from jumping into content and then sticking to Ravager the entire time, same applies to Medic. Don't get me wrong, enjoy the idea, would love to do something like having a split Medic/Saboteur style play or if they'll let me, a Saboteur/Synergist.

The idea that quickly comes to mind on how to deal with the problem people would be limit the two paradigms that people can play but at that point you also lose the draw of the system.

Well... If they didn't hold people's hand and molly coddle them, these people would die repeatedly and then get kicked from content. Fast.

There could also be some links to Class/Jobs too. For example, a Paladin will do mostly Tank things even if they go like Medic/Synergist and so would be a serviceable tank for "Normal" content.

It really just depends on how they build the systems surrounding making your character/job. To say nothing about if they go to rely on Duty Finder more and thus content that can be done by a braindead weasel...

I'd like something along those lines, if only because it basically adds some twists to the trinity system. If they approached it with that kind of design from the ground up, rather than trying to patch it in later, they'd have plenty of room to make sure the raids, dungeons etc. featured mechanics to exploit it to the max.

Yeah, it could be quite interesting. Like, imagine Raids where your Tanks are Sen/Com so MT is Sen and absorbs the damage while your OT is Com and helps build up staggers. DPS are combinations of Rav/Com, Rav/Sab and Rav/Syn while your healer is Med/X. With burst phases being triggered, not by Trick Attack being used on a 60s interval, but by staggering a boss, where everyone can switch to damage and blast away!

It's just a matter of pinning down the details of Job vs Paradigm, which will likely take a bit of time to figure out and possibly some playtesting to figure out what feels right, especially if also going with a more action based combat.

It doesn't have tab targeting though and I feel like is quite different than WoW and FFXIV with how the game functions in terms of abilities etc as well. I think ESO is still considered a niche type of MMO, although tbh what does niche even mean right now for MMO market.

It's not that niche. Everywhere you go on the internet will tell you that the major MMO's are WoW, FFXIV, ESO and GW2.

All 3 games are based on a pre-exisiting franchise which was very popular before there was any mention of an upcoming MMO. Maybe that is the biggest reason why they manage to thrive while other MMOs seem to have trouble keeping their heads above water.

Well, the primary reason that WoW became the success that it was, was to do with the fact that it polished everything up. Like, it didn't do anything new, it merely took what was already out there and polished it to nigh perfection.

ESO did something similar, it took an already polished game (TES series) and simply did what was necessary to convert it into an MMO.

FFXIV seemed to do something similar, by taking already working systems from other games and applying them here (After the mess that was 1.0)

Many other games fail because they tried to copy WoW, but didn't have the polish so they came out clunky and awkward. Or they tried something different and it flopped because they were doing it purely to be different, not because they thought it would be a good addition.

Of course, with WoW dying right now due to Blizzard being a terrible company, FFXIV reaps the benefits of all the people leaving WoW and looking for a new home...

[He-Saiyan]

1) Kill off weapons for specific jobs. In past Final Fantasy games (Even the 11 to an extent); people who do not use wands or books could summons monsters and use Magic.

2) Better customization. The current 2 mmo titles have low-budget customization.

3) Ability to create masculine men. Barret for example.