It does not surprise me that the stories in the 6.x patches feel less than what we had in the previous patches. The main story writing team stepped back and are letting their understudies take over for these patches. It is unconfirmed if they are returning for 7.0 or 7.x patches but considering the reception and how things are going, including sub numbers, I expect they will return.

For me, the game kind of fell off a cliff after we got past 6.0. I understand that they wanted to bring us down from the super high levels we obtained but this feels more like controlled flight into terrain, aka, they crashed us into the ground because they descended too hard and too fast. After 6.0, my character felt like Sad Keanu just sitting around, unemployed, and unwanted vs the glorious feelings I had at the end of 5.0. It doesn't matter how good the meal is if the aftertaste is awful...

I have a feeling that FF16 got its PC version cut because they needed to bring back the developers from 16 to shore things up. The only thing I can hope is that they did FF16 because they couldn't get a large development budget for future upgrades, so they made 16 and hid the future upgrades for 14 in the 16 budget. It makes sense if you think about it, everybody who is making 16 is from the 14 team and what they made and learned there can be brought back, possibly even the graphics engine for 8.0.

Regardless, we need those Devs back or this game is going to start to go in the wrong direction fast, public opinion and perception are terribly fluid. Once people think that the game is in decline, it will take 10 times more work to counter that perception or direction, even if they are incorrect. Opinions and perceptions are incredibly powerful in either direction with mountains of work to go up and a drop of a feather to fall... and the feather is quivering...