Does anyone else miss the feeling of fantasy in this game?

[OMGJesuis66]

The sense of mystery, the undiscovered, adventure.
The writers dont understand. We dont NEED to know everything down to an exact science. We dont NEED a glimpse beyond the veil.

Twelve RUINED
Anything godlike and mystical? Sharlayan: "lol its primals or ancients"

Any mystery left to solve? Scions or Sharlayan has an instant explanation without ZERO sense of wonder or surprise. Its really jarring.
In fact I think Yshtola had an example of that this expac. "Hiya. Exposition catto here.. its another shard.. ok bye!"

Asspull spaceship. "OH SHARLAYAN HAS A PROBE IN THE AFTERLIFE" sigh, why even bother adventuring. When Sharlayan knows everything and can asspull a solution to everything. Thancred cant teleport? Oh lol nvm! WE JUST HAPPENED TO INVENT A TELEPORTER THAT DOESNT NEED YOUR EFFORT. this games writing physically hurts me

Pretty much this. And has ever been like this. Instead they could give us more world building and culture for races that have as much as a stale bread. Let us be immersed in the world. Instead, more solutions to every mystery and everything basically tracking to unveil Ancients web of mess.

[dies_irae]

What mainly kills the fantasy vibe in FF14 especially in DT is all the on the nose IRL references. I was fine with "fantasy japan" in Stormblood because it makes sense to introduce the Samurai job. But then came "fantasy India" but ok it was just one of the 6 zones so it was not too bad. But in DT its now "fantasy America" where almost everything is IRL themed instead of creating NEW fantasy worlds. It just feels lazy and uninspired. I guess 8.0 will probably be "fantasy Australia" or something...

[Mr_Gyactus]

Especially the feeling of adventure as well. I think the stuff about the Ancients ruined all fantasy elements of this game going forward, like we've seen with the Twelve, the supposed Gods of the planet, they were literally just Ancients as well, so going forward, if we see something magical or wondrous, there's just going to be that thought of "Oh this was just something from Amaurot"

"Just Ancients"?
They were Creators: they were able to create new life from a project, they were eternal (they DECIDED to die), they could travel boundless distances.

If we found Zeus's thunderbolt would you say it's not fantasy enough because we traveled to the past and lived in Olympus?

[Doomed_Raven]

To me, fantasy would be if the game still gives you a feeling a escapism in a world far removed from our own. Granted I'm a new player but I think this game and it's environments/monsters/races and story in some respects help create a fantastical world. Maybe it's more, whether the game still gives intrigue or not having learned and unravelled much about it's story/lore?

[lolnotacat]

As much as I enjoyed EW, looking back, I feel like they went too hard and it spoiled too much of the secret sauce. We got such a huge exposition dump regarding the ancients, the Omicrons, the Dragons, the Aetherial sea, etc... and I don't know if they'll be able to reach those heights again. Instead all of that could've been drip-fed to us along with the main story over a few more expansions, finally culminating with sadge borb in the game's true final expansion. As much as I want to see new shards, seeing them probably won't compare with possibly seeing more of an unsundered Etheriys. In my mind, new enemies would have a very hard time feeling like an actual threat like a personification of despair, a learning machine designed for battle, or an ancient, immortal mage who can create whatever he imagines.

[Jeeqbit]

I miss the old feelings of fantasy, yes, but they have been replaced by new ones so it's alright!

For example, if you watch the ARR cinematic trailer, you are reminded of the feelings and mysteries of the garleans, dalamud, bahamut, the allagans, the grand companies, the effects of the calamity, what Hydaelyn is and what lay beyond just Eorzea. What was at the heart of all the magic and allowed it to function?

...all "answered" now (pun I guess), but that fantasy has been replaced over time by other fantasy.

• Heavensward gave us the Dragonsong War, a high-fantasy expansion.
• Stormblood, although less popular, gave us a real story about how if oppressed people try to start a revolution, they are too afraid to really do it because what if everyone else doesn't show up and they get arrested, or what if it means sacrificing their family (or themselves being able to provide for them)? But we made it happen somehow. The fantasy here, aside from larger-than-life garlean emperors, was stereotyping their own Japanese culture to include Samurais and Ninjas and stereotyped Japanese instruments and clothes, and the kami lore.
• Shadowbringers was deliberately a high-fantasy expansion. They went out of their way to include everything they could to make it that way, such as pixies, goblins, dwarves, "fat cats" and a world consumed in Light.
• Endwalker, despite going in a sci-fi direction, still ended up being fantasy. Because despite the space ships and space travel, we used a mothercrystal of aether as fuel, we fought against "Despair" using "emotion" (this is fantasy stuff) and we fought Zenos at the edge of the universe (which is symbolic of how "far" our feud had gone). Despite the time travel, we meet these fantastical, perfect, ancient beings that created most of the life we know.
• And Dawntrail ultimately takes us to a very primitive area (which would be much more primitive were it not for Koana), where the Viper arts are common to fight vidraal and other beasts. Very quickly we meet tribes we're familiar with (similar to the Vanu Vanu and the Goblins) that have strange connections with the weather and building respectively. Urqopacha has a whole lore about a dragon whose fire burns eternally, and is the homeland of the giants (I really dig this place). Yak T'el feels like it goes from a Robin Hood forest to a disney film once you reach the south. And then we enter Alexandria with a Queen, where souls are being misused.

As much as Dawntrail may be a mixed bag of different fantasy elements too fast, they were nevertheless fantasy elements to me personally.

So what do we have to look forward to like we did in ARR? We still have a few remaining areas on the map, Meracydia and a number of unvisited shards. It would be very easy to create lots of mysteries similar to what we had in ARR in just these areas, if they wanted to, SE just doesn't want to leave loose ends like in ARR.

[NegativeS]

One of WoW's worst expansions lore-wise is considered to be Shadowlands, because it tried to deconstruct and explain a huge part of its lore behind magic and divinity. The Lich King wasn't just something conceived by demons to be a really evil dude, but he's actually the culmination of the plans of some super-powerful death angel who was previously the judge of souls entering the afterlife, which means he was a construct made by other super-powerful beings, which means every other super-powerful death angel is also a construct in some way, and all the interactions we've had with death in the past basically boil down to angels trying to meet quotas, and just to be sure we're going to travel to the manufacturing facility where they make the death angels, and, and, and...

FFXIV has the same problem, except it was a much slower burn over the course of the Zodi-arc. But now that everything is completely deconstructed, everything that comes after just feels dry. At least in the past, characters were entertaining and endearing while they were doing this deconstructing. Now we don't even get that.

[Voidmage]

What mainly kills the fantasy vibe in FF14 especially in DT is all the on the nose IRL references. I was fine with "fantasy japan" in Stormblood because it makes sense to introduce the Samurai job. But then came "fantasy India" but ok it was just one of the 6 zones so it was not too bad. But in DT it’s now "fantasy America" where almost everything is IRL themed instead of creating NEW fantasy worlds. It just feels lazy and uninspired. I guess 8.0 will probably be "fantasy Australia" or something...

Genshin also used heavy real life stuff for Natlan but it just “flows“ better there with doing its own thing despite having Breakdancing and Graffiti oft all things.

But yeah I also think there is some fantasy feeling missing nowadays.
Little things like the frozen dragons in Ishgards zones or the ruins in the desert in Shadowbringers.
You have this stuff in between like the glowing plants in this one DT zones that reminded me of xenoblade but not much.

I don‘t even think this is a DT problem or the ancients are to be blamed.
I do think the writers demystified a bit too many things (like the twelve) but the biggest problem is that they don‘t really introduce NEW mystic things.
To this day we still have the allagans everywhere (easy assets and dungeons I guess).
Personaly I think thats also the reason why Eureka Orthos fell flat.

New stuff like the Ronkan are glossed over, Valigarmanda was underused despite being a good Template and Alexandria was while good, too hastily written.

Since EW almost everything gets answered in the same expansion or patch.

The treasure under the sea? Answered in 6.1.
Monster origins? Answered in EW.
Races origins? Almost no one is satisfied with the answer to that.

Not every thing needs to be answered but they do ist anyway without giving us new things.

[Jojoya]

I’m still not convinced Dawntrail isn’t going to fall into the standard ‘LOL ASCIANS’ bullshit they’ve done every other expansion. Where it looks like they might actually be introducing something new and different…only to find out, nope, it was ascians all along! . Living Memory? Sphene? The magic key thing? It’s 100% all going to lead to some crappy ‘Ascians STILL trying the same shit they were doing in ARR’. Which is hilarious because they claimed so hard last expansion ‘yeah guys this is TOTALLY the end of that arc we’re totally moving on!’. Until 7.1 when it’s revealed the idea for Living Memory came from…you guessed it…Ascians

Oh, we already know it's going to lead back to Ascians. We've had too many hints.

But it's not going to be "they're still trying". What we're looking at is one of their abandoned schemes and the society that resulted from it.

So are we going to spend the next 10 years running around trying to fix what the Ascians screwed up on the remaining reflections?

[Arzalis]

I think its less the ancients themselves existing (because it is in and of itself a fantasy concept to have a long-dead mystical people who wore masks and wielded insane magic) but the writers/dev team's insistence on OVER EXPLAINING everything. we didn't need to know "what the twelve really are," because they were just part of the lore and worldbuilding of the game and frankly the explanation was boring and extremely non-fantastical. likewise, I don't need an expert dungeon quest to tell me point blank "these cultures share similarities because they had an origin point in the unsundered world." thats a lot more fun of a conclusion to arrive at on my own through speculation.

there also seems to be, in DT at least, a fundamental incuriosity and lack of interest in making the world fantastical at all. weirdly uninspired expac all around that's definitely heightened the feeling that I'm barely playing a fantasy game at all anymore. really not sure how this happened...

I actually really agree with this. Some explanation is fine and absolutely necessary, but the devs tend to overdo it. A lot of the game feels like it spends so much time on things that should be in writer's notes or a lore book (which are basically a compendium of storytelling notes arranged in an easy to read manner anyway) but not really in the game itself. The sort of hyper focus on those aspects drags everything down. The game writing seemingly has also kind of become terrified of players forming their own opinion on things. This is super prevalent in DT. It constantly beats you over the head with how to feel or what to think.