FFXIV is too simplistic and bland

[Connor]

Or why not both? Why focus purely on the negatives of either game when you could work to incorporate the positives of both?

They’ve made some attempts to do this kind of thing before. In FFXI, everything now is pretty quick, even relics take like 2-3 months at the most (and many are still considered the best equipment in the game for the job). They added daily levequest style objectives, they rotate monthly boss fights that you can do at your own leisure, alone or with a party. All content in FFXI, or at least the majority of it, can be done solo now (because of Trusts).

FFXIV took elements from FFXI and incorporated them into Eureka content. Joining groups to do overworld content with others, penalties for deaths (exp loss), some slight options on how to play your character with the Logos Actions (similar to FFXI’s subclass system), and long-term gear progression with the way relics work.

Neither of these attempts were perfect of course, but I’m just saying that maybe instead of trying to pick the ‘better of the two’, we should look at positives and negatives of both. Why settle for one when you can have the best of both worlds? SE is in a fairly unique position with two concurrent MMOs that are both have strong fanbases but entirely different game play styles. Surely it makes sense that if they took what was good from one and incorporated it into the other, it would create two well-rounded and balanced MMOs? Not that they should just copy-paste systems, I just mean conceptually. FFXI could benefit from the ‘simplicity’ of FFXIV; FFXIV could benefit from the ‘complexity’ of FFXI.

I think that looking at FFXI and FFXIV as equals rather than competitors would benefit both games. They’re both good in their own way. If you ask me, the real question is: how could those ways fit into the other game to improve it long-term?