I'm Frustrated with FFXIV's New Direction

[Lollerblades]

Palette swap Vanu Vanu
Palette swap Goblin
West Ahm Araeng 2.0 but with more bland and flat design
Northern Thanalan 2.0 but with the techwear invasion instead of Garlemald
Secret highly advanced civilization number 4 now with Twitch Streamer Overlay motif
Elezen kids wearing funny clothes (Pelu Pelu)

And out of every new enemy and boss, maybe 4 have completely new models and animation.

Exactly. It's just felt like a very lazy expansion design wise.
Even the Pelu aren't original, just ripped from X.

To be positive, some of the new areas are bloody lovely visually, but are sadly devoid of a soul with the race designs.

[All_Nonsense]

Exactly. It's just felt like a very lazy expansion design wise.
Even the Pelu aren't original, just ripped from X.

To be positive, some of the new areas are bloody lovely visually, but are sadly devoid of a soul with the race designs.

Part of me is starting to wonder just how many veteran team members were pulled off of FF14 and put on FF16. The cracks are kinda showing

[honest_psycho]

Part of me is starting to wonder just how many veteran team members were pulled off of FF14 and put on FF16. The cracks are kinda showing

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

[BakoolJaJa]

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

Also showed that the team makes all the same problems every single time, regardless of what sort of game they're working with.

- Fetch quests that only serve as filler? Check! Go collect literal dirt. In a single player story focused FF game.
- Brain dead easy combat? Check! We'll take DMC's designer and his godly combat and we'll turn it into a pointless mind numbing clicker!
- Boring, empty open world that has nothing worth exploring for, serving only as a pretty backdrop? Check! Who wants to actually have fun in between picking up and handing in quests? How does a corridor game like FF7 Remake have a million times more exploration?? I don't know!
- They even did the "Wuk Lamat kills boss for you" in FF16... On almost every boss... Because you don't actually get to kill most of them, the cutscene does it for you. Just get the boss to 25% health, the game does the rest. Who wants to actually beat bosses, right? Right? All those games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring and stuff, LAME I tell you.

Before that game, I used to cope that many of the ffxiv issues were carry-overs from 1.0 days. Old MMO problems. That sort of thing. After FF16 I understood - it is not a bug, it is a feature. CBU3 makes those design decisions. Again and again and again. They like those design decisions. They like their filler fetch quests. They like boring, homogenized, easy job design. They like not having exploration and fun. They don't know how to make games differently. Whatever next game they're working on will prove it all over again. I guarantee it.

[Daralii]

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

Most of those people never got moved back to XIV either, just promoted off of directly working on games. Dawntrail is a preview of the future.