The Lessons Not Learned.

[Absimiliard]

Developer 1: "Players felt the Junction and GF systems were overly complex. They didn't like it."
Developer 2: "They did? Okay, make something twice as convoluted and put it in FF9."

A conversation that happened. ....Maybe.

On a barely related note, it fascinates me how different FFXI is from all the other titles. Some of this is obviously because it's an MMO (and borrowed heavily from EQ, like nearly all extant MMOs), but even taking that into account it's way off in left field. Some of its mechanics are still interesting to this day. Like magic bursting? I'd have loved to see something akin to that in FFXIV. Many things in XIV were clearly inspired, if not outright taken (then heavily modified) from FFXI. Pity they took so few of the really neat things.