What do we have to look forward to with Dawntrail?

[Jeeqbit]

I really want to know what you guys are looking forward to and why. Aside from new instances like Dungeons and the MSQ, that's a given they'll be added.

Exactly that. I like the formula and I've liked it for the entire time the game has been here. So I'm looking forward to all the standard stuff.

the slow removal of content

I think that they made a lot of dungeons in ARR because there weren't very many dungeons. Now we have somewhere near 100 of them, so roulettes have the variety they were originally trying to create. Arguably there are so many that a lot of players don't remember their mechanics. So I see the logic of reducing them to the bare minimum (to MSQ dungeons).

lazy simplification and sanitation of things that no one asked for, for the sake of making the developers job easier instead of our time playing more meaningful or more fun.

Actually, I think their intention is to make them easier so that they are more intuitive. The old rotations were not understood by many players that you see in roulettes. For example they may not have kept up GL properly on MNK, they didn't stance dance on tanks and even now you get tanks and DPS that can't use their respective mitigation or damage buffs, they think stun is the interrupt button or they do single target rotations on packs.

It really has nothing to do with being lazy. It's a design decision intended to help new players understand the game properly by making rotations logical, highlighted and hard to mess up.

Despite the fact that artifact weapons are in their worst state ever.

I get where they are coming from. Everyone praised how the game let's you take breaks and constantly quoted Yoshi-P saying this, to a point where he made relics and all the other content live up to that more than ever. The problem is how it is only a certain percantage of players that want that (but this could be a very high percentage, I really have no data here).

Ishikawa, FFXIV's most profilic and IMO most impactful writer, is gone and sorely missing.

They are overseeing the writers instead. So there should still be a degree of influence.

intricate food animations

Considering these appeared in FF16 as well it seems this is just a technology they brought over.

If you're wondering, what genuinely matters to me is that classes are fun to play and have some depth, with opportunities for good players to really shine

I like that too, but I also have to admit they weren't really that intuitive to new players before. For example, I liked that keeping the DoTs up empowered one of Bard's attacks, but would your average new player that doesn't read tooltips know this?

HW 3.5 DRK, MCH, DRG, MNK

I get that HW DRK was fun, but it was also full of jank and built on top of things like Parry. And as I was playing it in savage, my thoughts were that no new player is gonna come close to understanding it on this level. I am also just pretty content with it not being as complicated as in Heavensward because I like to focus on fight mechanics rather than job mechanics. However, I do wish it had a bit more meaningful nuance than it does now.

Wasn't a fan of MCH then (glad it got overhauled), DRG was too bloated with abilities that buff abilities (some would say it's returned to being that way now) and GCD bloat such as Heavy Thrust.

Homogenization has set in and will continue to happen

Partly players tend to demand, even on these forums, that all other jobs of the same role get the same abilities. Remember when DRK was the only one with a gap closer and we got enough demand for PLD to have one that they caved? That is just one of many examples. I believe the other reason it will continue is that with 20 jobs now, they will want 50% of them to play the same as the other 50% so that they have the same amount of balancing to do as in ARR.

[Tetsujin]

*Snip.*

I don't think FFXIV was the hardest game to play, ever. Even at its height in terms of complexity with the most difficult classes. It was a hell of a lot more engaging though and rewarding though. I'm not gonna gush about 3.5 MCH, but if you know, you know. New players didn't immediately get it? Alright, no one is born knowing. They had an opportunity to grow, to get better, mentors to ask for help which fosters kindness and camaraderie in the game's community, to feel good when they mastered the class they'd inevitably grow to love and put work in. I think they had done more than enough "fixing" (damage) by SB, especially with arbitrarily deciding everyone needed a meter. Now there's nothing left to shave off.

To think they wanted to lobotomize DRG as well, and for what? Nothing's crazy hard or demanding on DRG. They don't even lose their BotD meter with Geirskogul anymore, the final hits of their melee combos aren't RNG based anymore so no need to adjust, there's no management of anything but a couple of buffs.

You know what we got in fighting games when developers decided they should go make it easier for new players, to go back to basics and lower the skill floor, and to make it all about fundamentals? Street Fighter 5. A flavorless disaster. Ask any FGC member what they think about SF5's launch. Just like FFXIV's 2m meta with the easy classes too, the new meta was anything but more balanced. it took an entire new dev team to make it MIDDLING 5 years later. I think that's the road we're going.

Ishikawa is not "gone". She is not directly writing the MSQ this time, but she is in a higher position overseeing what they write. She can still make decisions regarding the story direction.

This doesn't breed any hope for me. Yoshi-P oversees this game too, yet here we are. It's a different beast from before.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think FFXIV was the hardest game to play, ever.

Never said that, but DRK had a lot going on and to consider in addition to the actual tanking and actual fight mechanics, compared to PLD which was totally braindead compared to it. I don't think it was even close.

To think they wanted to lobotomize DRG as well, and for what? Nothing's crazy hard or demanding on DRG. They don't even lose their BotD meter with Geirskogul anymore, the final hits of their melee combos aren't RNG based anymore so no need to adjust, there's no management of anything but a couple of buffs.

To me, DRG was perfect in Shadowbringers (still kind of similar now tbh). I would be fine with BotD still existing or RNG on the hits. Unfortunately I think 7.0 will see it become a RPR clone.