In 12 years the game hasn't innovated

[Valence]

If we start examining what the game has been offering since its inception in 2013 (2.0), I do think the devs have literally almost never actually added to the game in terms of content type with a few exceptions: deep dungeons in HW, job gauges in SB, and ironically island sanctuary in EW. What else am I missing? Blue mages maybe?

Field Operations are nothing new, they just recycle core content types that are fates and hunt bosses. That's it. Firmament or Cosmic exploration hasn't brought anything new either, just crafting leves and collectables recycled every time and same for the relics.

Dungeons, savage, etc, have always been the core pve of the game and have always been there under the same form (except for deep dungeons in HW, but nothing new since). Ultimates that got added in SB are just a harder, more gated variation of Savage. Criterion/Variants aren't new either, they're just dungeons where they added some path options.

Pvp has always been there in a form or another and relies on systems already found in pve anyway.

If you take any type of content in the game, it's actually been there since the beginning of ARR. I guess my point is, when you think a little about it, the game has never truly tried changing, tried new things, except in very few occasions. It's always been about glorified fates, hunts, or dungeons/duties. It tries playing it so safe that it becomes interchangeable with staleness, and I do believe it plays no small part into the global dissatisfaction people have with the actual content those days especially once the msq hasn't quite delivered.

Edit: I'll add squadron AI in SB, that was new, and was extended into Duty Support.

Edit 2: added to the title because it was apparently not clear enough. My apologies.

[Bryson]

Where one draws the line on "innovation" is arbitrary. If you're just gonna say.. rather reductively imo: "oh x isn't new, it's just y with z" then yeah, nothing will ever be innovative to you.

5k posts from someone who apparently, doesn't enjoy the game is hilarious.

[Kaurhz]

If we start examining what the game has been offering since its inception in 2013 (2.0), I do think the devs have literally almost never actually added to the game in terms of content type with a few exceptions: deep dungeons in HW, job gauges in SB, and ironically island sanctuary in EW. What else am I missing? Blue mages maybe?

Field Operations are nothing new, they just recycle core content types that are fates and hunt bosses. That's it. Firmament or Cosmic exploration hasn't brought anything new either, just crafting leves and collectables recycled every time and same for the relics.

Dungeons, savage, etc, have always been the core pve of the game and have always been there under the same form (except for deep dungeons in HW, but nothing new since). Ultimates that got added in SB are just a harder, more gated variation of Savage. Criterion/Variants aren't new either, they're just dungeons where they added some path options.

Pvp has always been there in a form or another and relies on systems already found in pve anyway.

If you take any type of content in the game, it's actually been there since the beginning of ARR. I guess my point is, when you think a little about it, the game has never truly tried changing, tried new things, except in very few occasions. It's always been about glorified fates, hunts, or dungeons/duties. It tries playing it so safe that it becomes interchangeable with staleness, and I do believe it plays no small part into the global dissatisfaction people have with the actual content those days especially once the msq hasn't quite delivered.

I would say that Diadem, Emergency Missions, Matron's Favors, Specialist System were all unique enough that I would personally consider them 'new'... In terms of how one might... Actually engage with those systems... Even Eureka and Bozja to an extent..

I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of... X borrows from Y, therefore, X is not innovative... I'd much rather look at it in terms of how you might actually engage with the content itself....

[Valence]

5k posts from someone who apparently, doesn't enjoy the game is hilarious.

You're right, I would be long gone silently if I didn't enjoy the game.

[Bryson]

You're right, I would be long gone silently if I didn't enjoy the game.

whether that's true or not, x isn't "innovative" because it's just y but with z is still pretty reductive. Like if you follow that logic through, anything that's built upon an existing system can't be innovative... like ARR isn't innovative then? Yoshi-P built upon 1.0

[Ath192]

Variant dungeons. I feel like it changes the engagement significantly enough to constitute innovation. My engagement with those stemmed from unlocking all entries in the book by interacting with all the variables in the dungeon. Even if a singular run did feel like a similar format I was actually engaging more with the prospect of discovery than battle.

[Jeeqbit]

The ways it has innovated have been considerably more subtle.

• Reset of cooldowns on each wipe.
• Adventure Plates and Instant Portraits that display at the start of duties.
• Deep dungeons and gauges as you mentioned.
• Following story NPCs and keeping pace with them, in the open world, sometimes without their knowledge.
• Maybe the mentor/sprout system? Maybe there are MMORPGs with some sort of similar system that had it first, but I think this particular implementation, with the sprout icons, is so very notorious that Discord copied the sprout icons.
• Aethernets, teleporters, teleporting, shortcuts to boss, DF... yes, MMORPGs have trivialized travel over time to make it less tedious, but surely FFXIV takes the cake. You don't have to go on foot barely at all for more than 5y.
• Despite you saying Firmament wasn't innovative, the part of it where hundreds of people got together to rebuild part of Ishgard and lots of houses was really quite something. The kind of thing that makes it feel like a massively multiplayer game, despite that it was technically just clicking wood or bricks and clicking a building to apply them.
• Graphically, the game has been quite innovative. I know some people might disagree (some people were claiming WoW graphics were better when everything looked like pixels in that game). But most MMOs at the time of FFXIV release and before had atrocious, pixelated, or cartoon quality graphics in comparison. To the point SE has been able to animate bosses in such amazing ways - like Titan Savage, Susano, etc. Although we've had new MMOs since with much better graphics such as New World or Ashes of Creation, it is hard to say if they count when they either didn't get a long-term audience or simply remain unfinished.

There are a lot of other things they added over time, but I can think of at least one MMO that has each of those things from the start, so I didn't mention them. For example, SWTOR has NPCs following you, and STO lets you replay story in episodes so it already has NG+, etc. When I think of innovation, it really has to be stuff that their competition hadn't done before them in the MMORPG genre.

[Aidorouge]

I did start to get a similar impression as I played through ARR and finished SHB, where it felt like every "new" piece of content was "thing you did before but slightly harder" with very little difference even when I attempted to try various pieces of side content.

[Gurgeh]

I'm gonna do something I shouldn't, so if in unfair to OP, well that could be, but I'm gonna disagree without even the reading the actual post.
Their most recent innovation was Chaotic. But they fkd it, not because they got it wrong, but because like all of their other biggest mistakes, they just gave up without incrementally improving it.
There is a massive appetite for phase 1 CoD without the BS of phase 24 man body checks.
There is s massive appetite for challenging content people can just queue like in day 1. But not the BS of sitting in PF for 2.5 hours for it to collapse back to nothing at 3/4 full.
But do they try and bring it a new instant with the worst mistakes easily avoided, and with DF heavily incentivised? Nope they just said well we can't possible do it any other way, let's give up.

Variant dungeons were another innovation. Really innovative.

The whole of gold saucer is a genre industry innovation as far as I can tell.

But appart from those two examples have they invovated in the last six years, not twelve? No they haven't saved thats so bad.

I'm not sure it's s good idea to exaggerate too heavily, else cry wolf on the very real innovation problem that they do have.

[Kaurhz]

I'm gonna do something I shouldn't, so if in unfair to OP, well that could be, but I'm gonna disagree without even the reading the actual post.
Their most recent innovation was Chaotic. But they fkd it, not because they got it wrong, but because like all of their other biggest mistakes, they just gave up without incrementally improving it.
There is a massive appetite for phase 1 CoD without the BS of phase 24 man body checks.
There is s massive appetite for challenging content people can just queue like in day 1. But not the BS of sitting in PF for 2.5 hours for it to collapse back to nothing at 3/4 full.
But do they try and bring it a new instant with the worst mistakes easily avoided, and with DF heavily incentivised? Nope they just said well we can't possible do it any other way, let's give up.

Variant dungeons were another innovation. Really innovative.

The whole of gold saucer is a genre industry innovation as far as I can tell.

But appart from those two examples have they invovated in the last six years, not twelve? No they haven't saved thats so bad.

I'm not sure it's s good idea to exaggerate too heavily, else cry wolf on the very real innovation problem that they do have.

I hope I am just tired and misinterpreting your post...

To be honest, I think it's a bit disingenuous to call Chaotic raid innovative and then subsequently go on to say that they have not innovated in the past 6 or 12 years.. When realistically they have done things that are just as innovative as Chaotic.

This is kind of the problem with this debate... Where people people are drawing the line here between innovative and not innovative is just completely arbitrary and realistically not even defined consistently with the examples..