Quote Originally Posted by Rufalus View Post
I was very invested in the game for ARR, HW, SB. Addicted actually. Started being disappointed by ShB, EW. It's still about as good as it was, but innovation and improvement is expected. It's been quite stagnant instead. Good for 2013 isn't so good for 2022.

Actually we're 10 months away from the 10th anniversary of ARR. Every system that was established in the first year is still going mostly unchanged. Boring gear and materia system. Farming those weekly tomestones. The 3-part raid series that alternates between normal raid and alliance raid patches, with bosses that are just memorizing a scripted sequence of moves. The basic dungeons of 'trash' pulls and 3 bosses. The FATEs that are either hand items to an npc or plain killing trash enemies, etc.

Yoshida is a good project manager in many ways because he brought stability and reliability of service, gave this game a good reputation. For me though as an FF fan long before XIV, it doesn't feel very FF any more if there isn't some wild experimentation in every major release. I want to go into each new expansion feeling a little bit lost at first, having to learn a new system to progress at certain points.

I feel like the era of maps full of sidequest icons should be over, and an innovative Square-Enix would have created a new way for players to discover lore and tasks by now, new kinds of interfaces, leading the industry in influential modern design. Old Squaresoft was a pioneer and FF represented that.
I’m with you here; I love the game despite strong dislike for certain aspects…and as much as I know it would be bad business sense short term, I wish the devs would spend an entire expansion’s worth of effort just on a massive TLC update. If that means training new staff now/through 7.0, so be it.

They need to:
1) just gut systems that aren’t working or rework them. Eg. Materia used to be a sort of horizontal progression/allow for niche builds (remember +VIT on healers to clear Titan ex?). Now there really isn’t a lot of variety/choice towards BiS materia..so why have it at all.

2) build a proper physics engine. Fix the jumping puzzles. Guildwars 2 shows a lot of what can be done with this.

3) ground textures from afar are pretty bad… even EW zones from the air are pretty much pea soup.

4) General improvements to zones; nothing groundbreaking, but the zones in HW are rather bleak, especially the “flying” ones. Giant flying pinecones don’t exactly spice it up.

5) cleanup shops/shopping menus. Why do we need to click -> armor -> enter a menu with tabs on the top for weapons, accessories, etc when all that is listed is armor.. perhaps make shops either just show all their stock 1 click, or a menu like the newer Rowena shops do. Also concise naming “Glorious Gewgaws” or whatever doesn’t tell me what’s sold.

Probably more, but plain usability and user friendliness is a thing they need to work out.