We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[Jojoya]

Aion (new classes, new systems)
GW2 (new mechanic of classes, mount added with mechanic of gameplay)
FFXI (The older One, remember this one ? a whole new expansion lead to new contents)
World of Warcraft (they changed multiple thing, keeping some old one, like Mythic+ and Dungeon)
Archeage (new classes, new way of playing the game)
etc...

Oops, you said three !

All of them, take risk. FFXIV dont.

How many of them achieved greater success and greater player satisfaction by taking those risks?

Aion didn't.
WoW didn't.
Archeage didn't.
Guild Wars 2 has had success for the most part.
I don't know enough about FFXI's history to say one way or another.

The problem with risk is it can fail to provide the desired results. A company out to earn a profit may be wary of taking risks if the game is profitable because their current customers are happy or at least satisfied with the product. Why is WoW down to a fraction of the number of subscribers that it had at its most popular? Because the risks Blizzard took continued to turn more and more players off while doing little to attract new players.

Then you have the games like Old School Runescape that are making a resurgence because those games stayed true to what players originally liked about them.

If I want something new/different, I pick up a new game. I'd rather not see a game I'm currently playing and enjoying take a lot of risks just to have them backfire and make the game unenjoyable. If I like the new game, great I now have 2 games to enjoy and switch between. If I don't like the new game, I still have this to play and enjoy. If this game takes risks and stops being enjoyable but I can't find a new game I like, I'm left stumbling around trying to find something enjoyable to play and potentially wasting a lot of money in the process.

If you want a game that takes risks, then play a game that takes risks. Not every game needs to be such a game.

[Nexxus]

Aion did (New servers are still full of players), the reboot and the new path make players excited once again.
Wow did (but content is easily achieved shortly, but still full of players), the last expansion has been enjoyed by players.
Archeage, i dunno (I've stopped at the Unchained one).

Some of the game take risk, but keep old content too.
FFXIV, just change the colors, and the effect of the content, but it's still the same.

As i said earlier, i'm agree, if the game won't take risk, then it's not met for me, but, they could atleast try...

[Voltyblast]

That's the thing people tend to forget, WoW did fail, even a lot in recent memory, but it also succeeded more than it ever failed. Why did WoW failing even make such huge headlines? Because it had been overwhelmingly successful for over a decade before.

XIV never even tried, it has been shuffling along with not only the same designs it had almost since it's inception but in some cases made them even blander and safer than ever.

That's not entirely true: ARR was a big success and it earned its respect not only as a pretty decent MMO (with limitations, but hey it was just resurrected so we were more lenient on its flaws) but also because it showed that if they listen to feedback, they will succeed...which is something they hardly do nowadays.

It all changed when HW came about: people realized that HW was "ARR 2.0", the same procedure for gear was the same, the few new additions were massive failures that they either died instantly (old diadem) or nobody cared from the get go (Verminion...yes, it was considered as major content updated back in 3.1). HW was still successful for other reasons, but it was essentially ARR with a new coat of paint...then SB came out and people started to see that it was also ARR with another coat of paint, and people were starting to realize that things weren't working as they hoped for and those few new additions were just hits or misses.

It's come to a point where people can almost predict what's gonna happen, and that's exactly when it's getting too safe. But ARR was all new, it actually experimented, it actually tried new things (desynthesis, hunts, housing, etc). It was after ARR that it became clear they didn't want to risk it and now we're in this state.

PS: I agree, wow failed a lot, but i give them credit for at least trying out. I hated the garrison but I liked how they made it better in Legion, I liked the artifact but also hated it for its gatekeeping mentality and grindy requirements, but I really can't say I hated them for experimenting, expecially in a time and period where games don't really like to experiment and always use the same mechanics so that you know it works (look at military shooters)

[Absurdity]

That's not entirely true: ARR was a big success and it earned its respect not only as a pretty decent MMO (with limitations, but hey it was just resurrected so we were more lenient on its flaws) but also because it showed that if they listen to feedback, they will succeed...which is something they hardly do nowadays.

That's why I said "almost" since it's inception, because technically there was massive innovation and risk when transitioning from 1.0 to ARR. But at the same time it's hard to count 1.0 and ARR as even the same game.

[TheNight]

That's not entirely true: ARR was a big success and it earned its respect not only as a pretty decent MMO (with limitations, but hey it was just resurrected so we were more lenient on its flaws) but also because it showed that if they listen to feedback, they will succeed...which is something they hardly do nowadays.

It all changed when HW came about: people realized that HW was "ARR 2.0", the same procedure for gear was the same, the few new additions were massive failures that they either died instantly (old diadem) or nobody cared from the get go (Verminion...yes, it was considered as major content updated back in 3.1). HW was still successful for other reasons, but it was essentially ARR with a new coat of paint...then SB came out and people started to see that it was also ARR with another coat of paint, and people were starting to realize that things weren't working as they hoped for and those few new additions were just hits or misses.

It's come to a point where people can almost predict what's gonna happen, and that's exactly when it's getting too safe. But ARR was all new, it actually experimented, it actually tried new things (desynthesis, hunts, housing, etc). It was after ARR that it became clear they didn't want to risk it and now we're in this state.

PS: I agree, wow failed a lot, but i give them credit for at least trying out. I hated the garrison but I liked how they made it better in Legion, I liked the artifact but also hated it for its gatekeeping mentality and grindy requirements, but I really can't say I hated them for experimenting, expecially in a time and period where games don't really like to experiment and always use the same mechanics so that you know it works (look at military shooters)

It's rather sad that WoW probably tried to innovate more in a single expansion than FF14 has in four expansions (and counting, since 7.0 will be the same old)

[BigBossCL]

It's rather sad that WoW probably tried to innovate more in a single expansion than FF14 has in four expansions (and counting, since 7.0 will be the same old)

Because FF generally takes things forward as it goes. WoW has had basically a list of features as long as my forearm that they've abandoned after one expansion, never to revisit. Not to mention, there's a lot of the same malaise about their most recent expansion. They've also had a large player dropoff. Its just the cycle of MMO's.

[Shurrikhan]

WoW has had basically a list of features as long as my forearm that they've abandoned after one expansion, never to revisit.

To be fair...

1. those things are usually very narrative-specific (Nzoth's Nightmares make little sense after you've defeated N'zoth, Withered Training makes little sense after you no longer need to use the Withered to push the Burning Legion out of Suramar, and your Draenor Garrisons make little sense after you've long since left Draenor);
2. they salvage the tech behind virtually all the successful attempts, reincluding them in some new form as soon as they'd again be narratively fitting; and
3. in the few cases they fail to do so, the WoW community's criticism is frequent, dense, and fairly harsh, often retroactively declaring the initial implementation resource-wasteful for not taking on that additional value through longevity or recycling.

Probably the larger difference between WoW's systems and XIV's is that WoW's are front-and-center to their core narrative of a given expansion, whereas in XIV, they're usually isolated side-narratives. That's what makes XIV's so frequently leaving many a features to rot all the more disappointing; Bozja aside, they're almost all unrelated to the game's greater story archs anyways.

[TheNight]

Because FF generally takes things forward as it goes. WoW has had basically a list of features as long as my forearm that they've abandoned after one expansion, never to revisit. Not to mention, there's a lot of the same malaise about their most recent expansion. They've also had a large player dropoff. Its just the cycle of MMO's.

That is what FF14 is doing too. Favors, abandoned after one expansion. Restoration, abandoned after one. Every exploratory content, abandoned after one.

[Sindele]

Leading that list with maybe one of the worst subsystems they've ever come up with is certainly a choice. The real sin would have been carrying such a reviled mechanic forward.

[TheNight]

Leading that list with maybe one of the worst subsystems they've ever come up with is certainly a choice. The real sin would have been carrying such a reviled mechanic forward.

That's the problem with the playerbase. They want systems removed instead of the developers trying to fix it and making it better and more enjoyable.

Watch as Criterions will never be used again in 7.0 because of attitudes like yours.