Future direction of FFXIV

[ReynTime]

u havent played much single players have you? I can name many times in ff history of single player where i had to dungeon crawl/grind to progress better or well ff7 getting all the summons and ultima weapons it worked fine.. plus do i need to mention dark souls,demons souls, skyrim, oblivion etc ...

people need to stop acting like the "mmo" makes it diffrent it doesn't it only means more than one person playing on a server at a time online... really... its annoying acting like the "mmo
matters that's just a tag on the real generic of rpg

not even counting old digimon and monster rancher games where u had to dungeon to progress or u know pokemon games lol

None of the games you mentioned are MMO-like. People just see open world + some level of grind and use the hyperbole that they're "JUST LIKE MMORPGS!".
There's a reason FFXIV homogenized its job design to oblivion and is completely anti prep (a freaking STAPLE even in action RPGs like Kingdom freaking Hearts of all things). That gets in the way of player retention. Something single player games don't need to worry about.
Same reason why XIV has horrid themepark attraction style dungeons in Heavensward onwards. Because it's a MMORPG they need the players to stay subbed. To keep players subbed they need all instanced content to have activity. For the content to have activity they introduce the tedious roulette + tomestone system. Which in turn creates the culture of treating dailies as a checklist you want to get done with asap. Which results in focusing on making dungeons as straight to the point and unchallenging as possible, raids to be just a bunch of boss arenas, etc. Again, not something single players need to worry about.
A game like Elden Ring would abso-freaking-lutely NOT work as a profitable MMORPG. And that's why it's not one. Nor is FFVII. Nor is Tales of Arise. Nor Xenoblade Chronicles. Nor Pokemon Legends. They're not MMORPG-like beyond a very surface level that PREDATES MMORPGs as a genre.

A single player RPG only needs to sell once. Majority of people don't even finish them but that never mattered in the 40+ years they have existed. The challenge is there for those who WANT to take them. And the extra challenge is also there for those who want to go beyond just beat the story. No costs with server hardware means they don't need to appeal to people who baw at the thought of playing for any longer than 2 hours a session because the niche audience they have will already give them profit.

All of this affects the design significantly. I play single player RPGs all the time. Probably a lot more than people impressed with Endwalker because I don't limit myself to SE's shallow style over substance AAA offerings.
This is why I've been so incredibly unimpressed by PvE content in XIV in the last 6 years. Finally XIV is not even remotely similar to offline FFs beyond the references and fanservice it throws. Even XI is way closer than XIV is.