In 12 years the game hasn't innovated

[Zelda206]

The general impression of the formulaic treadmill SquareEnix has held FFXIV to: "I never said you were never good at what you do. It's just what you're doing isn't worth doing."

[Gurgeh]

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..

I'm hardly one to criticise as I was too tired to even read OPs post and just replied to the title, but yes, it's your tired. I said "...apart from..." Its the fact that there are the only two innovations that matters.
One can't call sanctuary an innovation because about 30-40 years of collective gaming should have told them it was just boring unengaging unfun. At a mathematical level it is LITERALLY ZERO MORE than a glorified clicker game. Which is actually (which is half of Moonbase-crafter thingy, still can't be bothered to not note what it's called, I just blow past it whenever it's mentioned or I saw a thumbnail) then you cache your clicks for graphics reveals on railtracked path. No descisions in sight.
You especially can't count Sanctuary because it's SO totally different to the type of game that FFXIV is that it disqualifies. It has to be well judged and good innovation 'for its audience'. There is nothing MMO about sanctuary. You've no reason to even show a friend your sanctuary because its just like theirs. If you added a high detail cockpit flight-sim to FFXIV, and tried to co-opt it by calling it airforceone, or added a 4x sci-fi strategy game, you should expect to get blank looks from your action savage arcade game players, and your dress up doll glamour enthusiasts. That's not innovation it's just ungrounded.

Its not "arbitrary" it's subtle nuanced and complex.
This is not aimed at Kaurhz, but the modern desire to shut down any conversation that is about argument, or involves the tricky negotiation of differing opinions (e.g. what innovation is) is... well humanity is doomed.
"If you can't have a nice discussion then have no discussion at all" . It's frankly just despotically selfish. But I'm not really thinking of Kaurhz post , it just has the very very faintest of wiffs of that.

I don't like bashing sanctuary because its so clear that a lot of stome Devs real *heart* (rather than the ego we see going into high-end instances) went into that.
But it's just in the wrong game. It was never going to land well with it's audience.

You know sometimes I wonder what on earth kind of games the modern CB3 dev team have been playing in their own life experience. Because it feels like nothing within my life experience. Is it all bland jpg text no real choice story games? There is nothing to 'do' in the whole of moonbase thingy. Its pachinko. Its just grind.

All the gameplay, even the gameplay from the dungeons, to the high-end, to all the rest, it just robs the player of any 'agency'. You can't even choose your job any more because they are all the same job. You can't even choose your role because they all make each other redundant. Now there are phoenix downs. The player has no play.

[Ath192]

The player has no play.

Hmm. How interesting. In their quest to shut down all complaints they ended up with a game that doesn't make anyone feel anything. I've been arguing that bad experiences are still better than unmemorable ones. Because I'd at least experience something. Thus it would be better for the developers to experiment and fail than to do what they are doing.

Either way. Fanfest is around the corner, let's see if the ship finishes sinking or not. I doubt players are gonna be chill with yet another inconceivably further 3 years of shadowbringers. For a total runtime of 10 years of bland job design. SHB released 2019 and assuming new expac lasts 2-3 years it would be 2029.

[Gwenkatsu]

On the other hand there is WoW, where they try to re-invent the wheel with every major patch. We had square wheels, octagonal wheels, round wheels. We had weels of stone, of wood, of inflated rubber, of smoke, of void, of applepie. They're innovating so much, that even when they find the perfect formula, they have to abandon it next patch for something inferior since "innovation".

When innovation is pursued for its own sake, it does more harm than good.

My problem with FF14 is not their formula. It's the immense drop in quality they suffered in DT.

[Mikey_R]

Its not "arbitrary" it's subtle nuanced and complex.

But that is the thing, to innovate is just to make changes to things or add something new.

By that very definition, Island Sanctuary and Cosmic Exploration are innovations, yet you have dismissed them just because you don't like them.

Then there is everything else, for example, changes in the tools that can be used for combat. ARR had your basic GCDs and oGCDs and throughout the expansion, they have implemented new ways to use them, with charges on oGCDs and charges and cooldowns on GCDs, expanding the scope of what they can do with each job. Even job gauges were an innovation

Every exploration zone is an innovation as each one does things differently, every Deep Dungeon has a new mechanic to play around with and they are a longer standing pieces of content outside the normal dungeons and trials.

Variant dungeons and everything associated with them were an innovation, with changes happening this expansion.

The list goes on and on about the changes they have made, from the small to the big. Each one is an innovation in and of itself and yet, you discount some for some arbitrary reason, which is the point Kaurhz was making. Where is the line drawn?

And I have said similar things in the past when talking about jobs and fight design. People just throw out words with such a vague meaning in the context, that nothing can be drawn from it. If we want to restrict what we are classing as 'innovative' we need to have that line drawn somewhere so that a proper assessment can be made.

[Garruss]

On the other hand there is WoW, where they try to re-invent the wheel with every major patch. We had square wheels, octagonal wheels, round wheels. We had weels of stone, of wood, of inflated rubber, of smoke, of void, of applepie. They're innovating so much, that even when they find the perfect formula, they have to abandon it next patch for something inferior since "innovation".

When innovation is pursued for its own sake, it does more harm than good.

My problem with FF14 is not their formula. It's the immense drop in quality they suffered in DT.

That's the thing that got me, the feel of quality dropped off greatly in DT

[Jeeqbit]

But that is the thing, to innovate is just to make changes to things or add something new.

Is it really innovative if an MMORPG has already done it though? Like, saying Chat Bubbles are innovative would be a big joke, when it's more like SE is playing catch-up with other games.

By that very definition, Island Sanctuary and Cosmic Exploration are innovations, yet you have dismissed them just because you don't like them.

Ok, Island Sanctuary is probably an innovation on the basis that it's trying to do like Stardew Valley in an MMORPG. It's just, the way it's implemented makes it so thoroughly boring that it doesn't feel like anything at all. It isn't fun. It's the most typical MMO-style implementation of it - clicking, clicking, clicking.

Without more control and stakes, it'll always be boring. Changing the weather. Placing your animals elsewhere in the world. Seeing them grow older. Them being able to eat other animals near where you place them. Introducing predators and watching what unfolds, and seeing lightning affect the animals. The goods you produce in factories being relevant to the crafting of endgame foods, pots and gear instead of just tomestone materials.

I can't imagine how bored you'd have to be to enjoy Island Sanctuary, and you'd be far more satisfied simply watching Netflix or YouTube instead.

[Aco505]

Field Operations are nothing new, they just recycle core content types that are fates and hunt bosses. That's it.

Additional actions and elements such as extra haste combined with big player sizes and chaotic encounters are the ingredients that make Field Operations good. If it was just a FATE/hunt train, they would not be as beloved as they are. Could they be better and more groundbreaking? Absolutely. After all, Phantom Jobs have been received with mixed feelings due to fixing some issues (not having to farm actions) but worsening others (limited options and lack of combination).

But to reduce FOs to FATE/hunt bosses that have not innovated on anything since 2013 is incorrect.

[Jeeqbit]

FATE/hunt bosses that have not innovated on anything

I will say that hunts changed a bit:

The mechanics got more awesome. This is relevant if you do them when the turnout isn't massive, such as outside peak hours, in a patch lull or on a less populated data centers. Dawntrail hunt mechanics are easily the best we've had and they just keep getting better every expansion. Seeing bodies everywhere makes it fun to me, and most people have probably at least seen them at Heshuala, Cat's Eye and Rrax, but all the A ranks and S ranks this expansion can wipe everyone if most people there are new to hunts or they last too long.

They also added extraordinarily powerful marks in Shadowbringers, and they do occasionally add creative new spawn conditions, but it's rare. An example of some creative spawn conditions are dressing as a Garlean and getting killed in Garlemald, and using certain Blue Mage spells, but I wish they'd be creative with spawn conditions more often instead of doing the same concepts (killing hundreds of enemies, discarding an item and riding a minion over a spawn point).

But it's like the innovation is very small, very tiny, very microscopic. It's not the sort of ideas we could think of to innovate it as players.

Additional actions and elements such as extra haste combined with big player sizes and chaotic encounters are the ingredients that make Field Operations good. If it was just a FATE/hunt train, they would not be as beloved as they are. Could they be better and more groundbreaking? Absolutely. After all, Phantom Jobs have been received with mixed feelings due to fixing some issues (not having to farm actions) but worsening others (limited options and lack of combination).

It's similar with Field Operations. Yes, they innovated in that they made NMs into CEs to increase excitement of the battles and scale the battles properly. Yes, the Logos Actions and Lost Actions likely contained some interesting ideas somewhere. Making Phantom Jobs a way to augment your current job sort of as well. I could include 48+ person raids, but large-scale raids are not a new concept in the MMORPG genre; they were just new in FFXIV in Stormblood and Shadowbringers. But all these innovations are tiny in comparison to what a player could come up with.

It comes back to the fact that they recently admitted on the lodestone their team just does things based on precedent without even bringing it up for discussion or approaching Yoshi-P about it. So they just repeated things due to time crunch and didn't innovate much because of that lack of time. This is compounded by how they distribute "development resources" - where somehow, the management of this results in the long-winded development of something that is visually different, but mechanically too similar to the previous iteration.

[Gurgeh]

...
By that very definition, Island Sanctuary and Cosmic Exploration are innovations, yet you have dismissed them just because you don't like them....

Yeah. I think I agree. I'm not sure my dismissal of Island Sanctuary sits very well with me either.

But it's not because I dint like it. Its because I'm confident that for all the people that 'did' like it they would have been massively more pleased with 'something else', where that something else would have also pleased all those people who were utterly un-engaged by it.

We all know what we wanted from Island Sanctuary. A mini-farm/city/village builder. Were you could choose where to put what buildings, what flower beds, what fields, what plants, paths , what skins.
No noone was expecting animal crossing. Or to be able to do geography landscaping. But a grid where you can put stuff.
Yes, it would have been way more effort but less effort than animal crossing but it would have been *amazing*. It would have been worth a sub alone. And social wise, with the XIV community it had, that aspect would have been animal Crossing Deluxe on steroids.

But it's like someone sat at meeting table, said "I've got this amazing idea!... YADA YADA YADA (see the above)!"
and then the spreadsheet jokeys got involved and (in a peevish weasley voice) said "well yes, but no. The sub revenues are earmarked for other games I'm afraid. So we'll throw 90% of that away, but l like the Title and Setting, I don't really get it, but I've also got no real respect for the players as discering people, and we'll create a spreadsheet game instead! Mmm yes! I do love a good spreadsheet! Who doesn't! Tell you what, we'll start with that and maybe expand from there." and the poor dev was left pouring their heart into making the very best of it they could, hoping the next step would be taken, but that never came to pass.

Utterly wasted opportunity.

It was only innovation really, when measured against FFXIVs own VERY low bar.