Honestly, What's the verdict for you?

[Jeeqbit]

Or it could be not doing new stuff is stagnating the game?
MMO's have to innovate or fall behind, ff14 has not innovated nearly enough

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Whether those were well implemented is another story, but they at least reserve capacity in their schedule for experiments.

Then I learned that you loose exp and levels on failure, and I immediately noped out - not going to deal with that sort of garbage mechanic.

I don't get why. Just do a few FATEs and CEs and you're back to max level. It's not even a big deal. In Shadowbringers, when we got Zadnor, I think just 1 or 2 Skirmish was enough to return all the lost EXP. That takes no time at all.

Consequences for dying are meant to be part of video games, and it's weird that people think that when you mess up that you should continue to be invincible and succeed.

It's also there for social reasons, by the way. Almost always, someone will resurrect you and this will prevent you losing levels and EXP. Although rare, sometimes people die far away from other players while searching for treasure - which thus makes it social because they have to ask in /shout or /party for a resurrection. Social interaction is obviously the point. And if you find that hard? Just do a few CEs and you're back to max level - the CEs don't even take into account level so it doesn't affect the content you're doing anyways.

Or me finally losing interest when 8.0 turns out to be the same uninspired nonsense as DT

To be fair, they said what their inspiration was (AI), and well, clearly Cyberpunk and westerns. It's just an obnoxious and overbearing mix, with the shift in theme so sudden and drastic that it's hard to appreciate.

[Basteala]

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Chaotic Sure. Kinda. It's like Savage with Alliance Raid. How innovative is that really?

The other two we haven't seen yet.

[SophiaDL]

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Whether those were well implemented is another story, but they at least reserve capacity in their schedule for experiments.
I don't get why. Just do a few FATEs and CEs and you're back to max level. It's not even a big deal. In Shadowbringers, when we got Zadnor, I think just 1 or 2 Skirmish was enough to return all the lost EXP. That takes no time at all.

Consequences for dying are meant to be part of video games, and it's weird that people think that when you mess up that you should continue to be invincible and succeed.

It's also there for social reasons, by the way. Almost always, someone will resurrect you and this will prevent you losing levels and EXP. Although rare, sometimes people die far away from other players while searching for treasure - which thus makes it social because they have to ask in /shout or /party for a resurrection. Social interaction is obviously the point. And if you find that hard? Just do a few CEs and you're back to max level - the CEs don't even take into account level so it doesn't affect the content you're doing anyways.
To be fair, they said what their inspiration was (AI), and well, clearly Cyberpunk and westerns. It's just an obnoxious and overbearing mix, with the shift in theme so sudden and drastic that it's hard to appreciate.

There's so many of those new things !

The things in question :

Old thing A mixed with old thing B
Old thing C mixed with old thing D
Old thing E mixed with old thing F

"See it's brand new and innovative !"

[Gwenkatsu]

I don't get why.

Which is perfectly fine. I for one will never understand why anyone would want to interact with the harder content in this game, seeing how even normal MSQ trials are a convoluted, overdesigned, unfun mess.

To be fair, they said what their inspiration was (AI), and well, clearly Cyberpunk and westerns. It's just an obnoxious and overbearing mix, with the shift in theme so sudden and drastic that it's hard to appreciate.

I sounds like they did not only throw the plate with spaghetti at the wall, but the entire buffet. This might explain the strange mixture of sushi, hamburgers, chocolate-flavoured donuts, and BBQ sauce they served as DT

[ForteNightshade]

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Whether those were well implemented is another story, but they at least reserve capacity in their schedule for experiments.

The problem is every single one of those new things recently has been done with the safest of kid gloves on or implemented incredibly poorly. Often times both.

Criterion had literally zero reward structure making it the least completed content in the game's entire history. It's actually shocking how bad the Savage version performed. Island Sanctuary had less depth than Farmville, a facebook mobile game from 2009 and Eureka Orthos is literally copy/pasted Heaven on High.

Now we get to DT and it's essentially the same problem: a complete lack of innovation and everything played extremely safe. Chaotic is the sole exception where they actually did something that took some actual risks.

This "safety first" approach has simply become stale for a lot of people because even new content doesn't feel new. Or it lacks polish which has become an alarmingly regular occurrence of late. I'd like to believe say, Deep Dungeon, will work differently, but I'll be shocked if their big "innovation" amounts to more than "we changed the size of the rooms." We have two expansions worth of evidence showcasing they don't take risks at all nowadays.

Edit: Just to bolster my point further with a recent example. Let's look at Cosmic Exploration, a piece of content people were genuinely excited for. All it amounted to was one massive levequest system with an insane grind for a reskinned mount. While the higher level crafts being less macro-able can have its interest. I suspect people wanted more than a levelquest equivalent that the devs themselves abandoned years ago. Which speaks volumes in its own right. They brought back a system even they thought wasn't good enough in prior expansions. Now if they did something to elevate it, perhaps that could be interesting. They didn't. And as a result, Cosmic's population cratered within a week of its launch--to the point servers are routinely missing advancement objectives now because nobody cares to bother.