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

[Shurrikhan]

Sure, but even if it can be done by anyone that still means someone has to do these tasks, no?

Yes, but the decision of who will do something can include more factors as to who is in the best position to do that thing than just who picked which "role". Essentially, the more deeply designs preemptively specialize those tasks by means outside of combat (such as by role, class, spec, talents, or gear choice), the less players have to engage in those decisions.

Now, there's a point where there's too much going on at once to feel like you're doing any part of it--let alone the parts most attractive to you, which specialization helps you focus on according to your own choices--as well as you'd like, and preemptive specialization can help to keep that in check. But, going too far in the opposite direction means that there's only one choice, and therefore effectively none. Good design has situational best answers, if often near enough that convention (person with X tends to do the X things), player preference (what you want to do), a specific capacity (what you're specifically good at) can play a part in those decisions, but they should always be multiple.

Unless this was all hypothetical in the sense that just because we haven't seen it done well doesn't mean it's not possible, in which case I'd agree and I'd still love to see it.

Sadly, this is largely hypothetical, at least from my limited experience (since midway through college, several years ago, I've had little time to sample many MMOs in full). I've yet to see any MMO, to either side of the spectrum, really nail what I'm talking about. The closest I've seen, oddly enough, would be something like oddball runs back in WotLK (no tank, no healers... well, I guess we just completely rethink all our assumptions about how combat is supposed to work and own that new world) and undergeared and undermanned runs Blade and Soul (where a single missed task meant we'd all die and there were very real and necessary decisions to be made about those tasks).

[Kalise]

Sadly, this is largely hypothetical, at least from my limited experience (since midway through college, several years ago, I've had little time to sample many MMOs in full). I've yet to see any MMO, to either side of the spectrum, really nail what I'm talking about. The closest I've seen, oddly enough, would be something like oddball runs back in WotLK (no tank, no healers... well, I guess we just completely rethink all our assumptions about how combat is supposed to work and own that new world) and undergeared and undermanned runs Blade and Soul (where a single missed task meant we'd all die and there were very real and necessary decisions to be made about those tasks).

Ironically, I think that a close approximation to this scenario is found in Monster Hunter: World.

"Tanking" is done by, whomever has the aggro of the monster, whomever has the most life or whomever is in a good position to actually do something about it.

"Healing" is done by, whomever has the items available if they have the time and space to do so.

Meanwhile, everyone is doing relevant damage.

In addition, you can tune yourself towards a particular support role outside of combat if you wish, for example, if you want to Tank more often, you can pick a weaponset that has a shield (Sword and Shield, Charged Blade, Lance or Gunlance) and equip armour that helps you stay in the thick of things (Increased health, Stagger protection, improved blocking etc). Meanwhile, if you want to Heal more often, you can pick a Bowgun that can use Healing Bullets and carry more items that provide healing, cleansing or buffing to allies.

To top it off, all these weapon specializations also have benefits for dealing damage to boot. Sword and Shield has a good combo that enables mounting to eventually knock down a monster to enable big damage but slow activation attacks, Charged Blade can turn into a giant electrified axe that smashes giant fissures into the Earth and whatever poor monster is in your way, Lance can be aimed in several directions making it easier to hit weak spots, Gunlance can explode (Like a Gunblade) which can deal damage through armoured areas and Bowguns have a plethora of different ammunition types that can target monster weaknesses, can apply various status effects to disable monsters or can just dish out massive damage if you use them in their optimum range.

So it's not like your gearing towards a support role leaves you in a state where you can ONLY do that thing. Everyone can still do everything, gearing towards a role merely affects how often you'll be in a position to perform that role.

Heck, for the Behemoth fight as part of the FFXIV Crossover event, they even implemented enmity to further define how often someone could "Tank" (Basically, hit the giant angry Behemoth in the face and he'll focus on you)

[Liam_Harper]

-The main one for me is no 1.0 spaghetti code. That's the single largest limitation in this game and about 95% of stuff we ask for gets shot down because "the servers can't handle it". Invest in good code and servers that can handle fluid, responsive combat and any customization.

-Fluid combat. Instant abilities that trigger instantly, instead of pressing a tank CD two thirds through the cast bar and seeing it resolve a second after you get hit. None of this nonsense where mechanic animations come after the damage. Shorter GcD's. More meaningful stats, instead of "meld whatever you like, it's only 0.53% difference".

-Flexible raid modes. I loved flex in WoW. It encouraged FC's to run content together instead of breaking off into statics. I'd like to see a harder flex version of the Alliance raids too, that could be great fun in an FC group. Alliances are wasted on the average DF pug.

-Speaking of, meaningful FC's. A FC event calender. Minor perks for running content together. A better FC bank.

-Mythic+ style dungeons. Regular dungeons are a waste of developer time. Just a zerg chore that people rush for tomes or exp but seem to hate doing.

-No paid inventory space. Two retainers, 4 expansions in, in a game with thousands of crafting mats is ridiculous. By all means put vanity items in the store, not bag space.

-A dps meter. Controversial and I respect opinions otherwise but the topic did ask what I'd like to see.

[Yencat]

well, I guess we just completely rethink all our assumptions about how combat is supposed to work and own that new world)

Yeah, this is what it would take I think. Sadly MMO's are falling out of favor with developers so I can't see anyone do a complete reimagining of combat and the players' role in that. Blade & Soul had some interesting ideas on this I agree, I haven't played in well over a year but when I quit the need for at least a tank was very real. Even if there were multiple classes that could realistically do it, it mostly came down to Blade Masters and Kung Fu Masters (at the time at least).

TERA was probably my (personal) favorite implementation of the holy trinity because healing and damage mitigation/tanking was very active. You couldn't actually target people normally but both healers had a skill that allowed them to lock on to (X) amount of targets and it would directly heal them, Mystics could drop HP and MP orbs where they stood so people could heal themselves or restore their mana if you dropped them close to them, and the other Priest heals (and cleanses) required you to move within a certain range of players for everyone to be in your 'circle'. Coupled with i-frames like B&S has to dodge the big bads and debuffs on enemies at the right times. Still, that means you're locked into needing a tank & healer but it was a lot more fun than just playing whack-a-mole with health bars. But this was also many years ago so that may have changed by now too.

[Shurrikhan]

Ironically, I think that a close approximation to this scenario is found in Monster Hunter: World.

I only just started playing it back when it had its Steam sale and overall it hasn't been my cup of tea--just due to the simplicity of attack/ability options and so on--but from what gameplay I've seen, you're probably right on the money there.

It just still doesn't appear as great an example as I would like simply due to how little there is going mechanically for each player, even if it does do a good job of letting each player engage with a greater portion of the tasks.

I'd love to see something with BDO/MHW's button efficiency that nonetheless makes use of almost as many buttons in total as XIV does (basically just minus combo bloat and then replacing rarely used keys) atop the kind of strong decisions allowed for by versatility and pacing/positioning/situational priorities therein rather than clear-cut roles that we've hinted at so far.

[Shurrikhan]

Might be more controversial than the above:

No player economy, no player trading, every transaction deals with NPCs with fixed pricing.
No crafting/gathering, hire NPC services for those.
No pvp.
No addons, but provide features that are needed/desired (with some reason), especially QoL features.

Controversial indeed, but now I'm curious as to my own tastes in these regards.

I mentioned before that I wanted to see a "living world". The more I think about it, there'd need to be significant NPC presence in the economy for that to work. There have to be NPC craftsman who'd want to buy your more basic materials for their own crafts, guard divisions who need armaments, traders moving things between markets for profit with or without you. Getting up to the level of the established money-makers should feel like an accomplishment early into the game, and likely certain NPCs should function right alongside and with many of the bigshot players.

Heck, if this were the original XIV world, reborn (again), I wouldn't doubt that the Monetarists would just... have you assassinated if you get a little too audacious without the strategy to back yourself up, complete with rituals of obliteration to ensure no one remembers you when you Echo yourself back to life.

As for crafting/gathering, I've always felt using separate classes for that was a tremendous waste, as it made it so there could never be any real combination of risk and reward in gathering. Stealth completely replaces combat, after all. Why not go some place guarded by a rare mini-boss and fight or sneak your way past that to get to whatever you want to gather.
...And that's not even getting started on replacing nodes with actual prospecting and woodcraft....

For comprehensiveness's sake, yes on official addons instead, but no on axing PvP -- for my preferences. The more a game can embrace PvP, usually the more it has to embrace intelligent enemy design and more than the barebone "hit thing with most X value til it's dead; repeat" scripting.

[Lauront]

-A dps meter. Controversial and I respect opinions otherwise but the topic did ask what I'd like to see.

I'd like to see one of those, too. They will exist and will be used regardless of whether they want to include one, so the rules around misusing it should already have that covered off.

[Granyala]

Job mastery incorporated into MSQ. I.e. If after a battle, people are injured and you're playing a healing job, your character runs to go tend to them. But if after the same battle someone else is playing a tank job, they go to the front to protect against any suprise attacks etc. Different paths based on what your character is actually good at (So no, dueling Lyse and threatening her by... Holding a BOOK at her )

Yes please!

How often did I yell at my screen "Ifalna, do sth useful and heal them FFS!"....

BTW: She wasn't "threatening" Lyse with the book. She was preparing to bore her to death by reciting Aetheromathematical equations.
A far worse fate than getting smacked on your head with a 3K+ pages tome!

[Eldevern]

What need to change :

- Better physics (clipping, clothes when sitting etc.).
- Graphic update (close rang cinematics can hurt eyes : gun or hands that really look awful).
- Better housing system (something like Wildstar, even if instancied).
- Better glamour system (the last changes are rather going the right way).
- More customizations for characters (something like Aion is just fine, maybe with few restrictions that avoid weird/monstruous things)


What would I keep as it is?

- All jobs on the same character.
- Craft and gathering, mostly.
- Compagnies deliveries and custom deliveries for levelling craft and gathering.
- Full personalized keybinding.
- Hildibrand
- Steampunk/techno-magic (eventually kind of magic-cyberpunk as it is in FF7)
(There are too many medieval inspired MMO's)
- The unsync mode for old content


What could be better?

- Alt management : some shared chest.
- Maybe a more lively world : NPC who adapt their behavior to the daylight.
- No race lock.
- More background about where races come from.
- Gameplay as it is in BDO but with a full personalized keybinding.
- Eureka without the dragons
- Less fedex quests
- Trust and squadron.


What could be nice, maybe?

- Seasons

[Averax]

-A functional engine that can be negotiated with.

Unpopular idea: A few voice actors to choose from for our characters (but we still don't say very much). We're just getting more and more of those awkward moments where we have to choose our dialogue in the MSQ and it's awkward for half of the cast to be responding to silence.