The expansion on the horizon

[Cleretic]

One thing I miss is an open world like FFXI, ARR, or 1.0 with zones that don’t have story requirements to access.

I also miss the danger that FFXI, 1.0, and Eureka maps had when running around. It added its own element of adventure, but it feels like ARR and onwards zones are much more sparsely populated and it’s easier to avoid mobs.

Notorious monsters, non-instanced dungeons, and FATEs that are more engaging or have a reason to do more than mounts or bicolor gems would be nice. I’d like more of a reason to be in the overworld that lasts more than a couple of weeks after release

Besieged and the gameplay around the buildup before the invasion and the aftermath if you lost the glowy thing was something I enjoyed and give the world a more interactive feel.

As much as I hated Promyvion when I was doing it, the idea of a non-linear dungeon other parties could be in as well (on different levels) is a neat idea. Especially if it had a randomly generated map that was different every time and we don’t have a map screen for.

Something that struck me when making a video about Eureka, and therefore discussing FFXI (and especially the legend that is Absolute Virtue) is that while a lot of these old MMOs have really interesting stories attached and interesting worlds, it's... not really because it was good game design. Early MMOs, when you look back at them in retrospect, have a lot of pretty terrible design that more flew out of novelty and a lack of alternatives. Sometimes even diverging into straight-up player-hostile design--and I don't even mean that from a more subjective lens, Absolute Virtue is just one of a number of stories around the early MMO space of game developers being outright adversarial in their relationship with players. Let's be completely honest, walking down a plain road and suddenly getting one-shot by a monster intended for dozens of players isn't really the devs being nice! It's probably a good thing the genre's moved away from that (as proven pretty handily by Wildstar trying to be that and failing), even if we lost a few things that were genuinely fun and interesting.

Eureka's neat in that it's essentially that style of early MMO design, but... you know, not designed by people who feel like they kinda hate you. I'd be interested in seeing more things like that, but it probably can't be the 'core' of an expansion. It just isn't what the game is anymore, and delivering that instead of the formula that's brought so much success just doesn't seem like the strongest idea.

As was Xenoblade Chronicles.

Okay, so we agree that the next FFXIV expansion needs to take place on some kind of ephemeral moving or teleporting, possibly entirely living, continent. Because every JRPG that uses that as a setting rules.