Why pvp is succesful and pve is getting stale

[Valence]

To add a little more to it, Feast had more clearly laid out and binary states: you picked up the medals or not, you picked up too many medals for your role or not, you didn't heal at the proper time or not, you weren't properly burst synced or not, you didn't cc the proper target when it mattered or not. It was very easy every time to see who fucked up and what costed the game, which lead to more toxicity than ever (and eventually lead the devs to turn off the party chat altogether and replace it with quickchat). In current pve, and put under the spotlight more than ever with the new Chaotic, it's very similar: you have binary states to fulfill as a player, either you succeed at the mechanic or wipe the party with the body check, or just derail the whole set up and wipe the party, and nobody can do anything about it, and it leads to frustrations on all sides.

The game needs to be made less systematic, less executable, less about raidplans and binary failure states, and more about organic designs. Is it a gargantuan task that also needs to account for not destroying every piece of older content already there? Yes it is, but if they can do it with a couple of hands for pvp under the span of a full expansion, then I'm confident that they can do it with pve as well

[ovIm]

The game needs to be made less systematic, less executable, less about raidplans and binary failure states, and more about organic designs. Is it a gargantuan task that also needs to account for not destroying every piece of older content already there? Yes it is, but if they can do it with a couple of hands for pvp under the span of a full expansion, then I'm confident that they can do it with pve as well

Fully agree with that sentiment, and good write up overall! Though I recon there are enough people that also like the on rails approach of the fights, especially now after years of this being "the way" FFXIV combat works. (Perhaps in the future, there is Savage for the tried raidplan approach, and, say, Criterion for a more organic design, so players can chose what kind of endgame they prefer?)

Makes me wonder how the new battle content approach in 7.2 is supposed to look, really.

[Gurgeh]

...The game needs to be made less systematic, less executable, less about raidplans and binary failure states, and more about organic designs. Is it a gargantuan task that also needs to account for not destroying every piece of older content already there? Yes it is, but if they can do it with a couple of hands for pvp under the span of a full expansion, then I'm confident that they can do it with pve as well

I applaud your willingness to want something better. They could (unlimited resources). But the whole business of how the back end works that can be seen with the use of snapshots etc, I think the fights are the way they are because its 'very' hard, and 'limited' as to what you can do to create complexity, that has a learning/skill/mastery curve, with what the back end can (and can't) do. We already have lots of problems with mechanics that just don't seem to work well with just a mediocre ping or what appears to be the sever<>client not keeping up with each other. (for the starkest example of the limits of the engine I'm thinking of the fall guys events.) The game less about about playing the game you 'see', and but more about getting a "feel" for the second invisible parallel world of snapshots underneath.
I got pretty good at making sure I'm a least good enough for my corpse to make it look like I was where I was supposed to be. I was almost flawless at that. It almost became a minigame with every KO for me. ("Yuz! Nailed it! Not only am I where I needed to be, but I did it just the moment I needed to also die doing it! Too early and I'd still be alive, too late and I wouldn't be positioned 'perfectly' with everyone who's still alive. Howz that for Skillz!) Almost like slide casting, but for precision KOs.
I'm just not convinced that there is 'much' of texture and depth they can achieve with other 'game' styles. Is why so much (everything) is know the mechanic ahead of time, positioning you character ahead of time, wait for the mechanic to resolve (because the clients and servers always need some breathing time to catch up with each other. Quite a lot maybe comparatively speaking?). The back-end engine is what it is, and after a decade, the game we have is the 'emergent' result of that system.
I don't know squat, I'm speculating above. But we all are I think. The future I see for this game, is that it can't go on forever, they will eventually have to bet the house, on XIV v3, crate whole new back ends, and hybird dual client front end that is used when you aetherite to XIV 10.0 (so that they can try and bring their user base over), pray to god they don't lose too many raiders who will be pissed that all that 'exceptional' skill, now counts for not much, and they are playing a 'totally' different game.

Yeah as the diffculty goes up, all that seems to mean, is we are going to pair back the amount of time you have to get into position between mechanics to the minimum our server-client engine can achieve, and we are going to make it harder and harder for you to "work out" where it is you need to get to ahead of time, while all the time making you keep pushing 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-5-1-2-3-64-1-2-3... .

TLDR; I think they can create something of a more organic experience, but with the current engine it will always be too limited and what little is possible will get stale fast, and just wont compare to other games that have come out since. XIV (I gather) is 'very' unique in the feel of its battle. Sort of realtime, sort of.. not. IF they stop being so unique, then they have to start going head to head with others that have that design baked in from concept, without also needed to pander or compromise on any pre-existing preferences that pull in opposite directions.

But absolutely I think it would be great to hear more about this.