FFXIV's Future

[Rufalus]

Except XVI, which of course is being produced by the same producer as XIV. DMC with FF skin and QTE summon battles in 2023... Just chasing trends.

I was concerned about it through the first few trailers. It was hard to tell if it's just flashy stuff and no substance.

But they recently let the media play a whole chunk of a chapter and release the unedited footage. They finally won me over. It's not what I would have asked for but the quality is there.

I don't want FFXIV to reinvent itself or overhaul the classes or gameplay every expansion

I'm ok with the classes and flow of battle. To me the problem is the whole framework around it. The first expansion was exciting because it had some new concepts and we didn't know at the time that every expansion thereafter would be a copy.

Here's some examples of repetition to an absolute fault. Before you even play an expansion, you know for sure it has (1) six field zones and two big boss fates with tokens, (2) a dungeon every 2 levels with the same corridor design, (3) three trials with two extremes at launch, one gives accessories the other gives weapons, (4) hundreds of sidequests that mostly give nothing, some give HQ crafted leveling gear in-between the levels of dungeon gear.

A lot more examples could be made but you get the point of how they push new content through an old cookie-cutter template to an extreme degree. That decade of déjà vu was a big chunk of my life. I would hope that, some day, they try anything new. Offer up surprises to all players regardless of how long we've been around. Not just narrative surprises but actual game design choices.