In 12 years the game hasn't innovated

[Valence]

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.

I hesitated to mention them as a brand new feature, but since it wasn't completely decided against it.

Either way, glad people find them creative enough.

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.

Adventurer plates and the startegy planner, you're right. I forgot about those. They were definitely a brand new feature. Unfortunately not tied to gameplay per se, but a feature nonetheless.

Mentor system and NN was a thing in XI iirc (at least partially), but you're also right that it appeared in HW for XIV. One of the best additions to the game and even if when I made that thread I was mostly thinking about gameplay features first and foremost, I feel this one also ties to it at least indirectly anyway.

Firmament I also didn't want to mention it for the same reason as Variants: there is definitely something new, but it's something new made of old (standard crafting and gathering and fate systems in this case).

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.

As you say, you clearly didn't read the OP then. I was definitely not talking about "creative or innovative" with the same base features the game has always relied on.

That's why I exposed in the OP what I considered innovative within that context, and that it was about fully novel game features, and not content made out of older features, no matter how creative it could be. There is a point where no matter how many recipes you create out of beef, it's still gonna taste like beef.

I'll do you the same courtesy and not read the rest of your posts

[Aco505]

Yes, the Logos Actions and Lost Actions likely contained some interesting ideas somewhere.

Quite a lot actually. They can make jobs play in very different ways, more so if you want to tank as a DPS or heal as a tank like you can do in Save the Queen areas. Stuff like Blood Rage or Double Edge is quite fun to work with.

[Connor]

More like they innovate then immediately throw everything they could have created out the window in favour of the ‘standard formula’ because it’s quicker and easier than actually refining or improving it

[PyurBlue]

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

When I read the title of the thread this was my initial reaction. The game wouldn't need to change that much if it tried to be fun to play in the first place. Instead, SE relies on incentivizing players through rewards to the detriment of content. Dungeons, FATEs, etc are designed to be time fillers to space out when the next reward item drops and players logout. It's a very common MMO problem. FF14 compounds this with completely scripted encounters that players will fully understand after a handful of attempts.

I just want MMO's that try to be living, engaging worlds instead of treadmills.

[Kaurhz]

Snip.

I don't think I was too tired given your response here... You have ultimately given very simple and arbitrary reasons as to why a specific piece of content is not innovative, whilst also going on to say "It's subtle, nuanced and complex", like, you say there is nothing MMO about Island Sanctuary, but that was never the goal, and if we want to start weaponising MMO definitions... The entire game pipeline is basically built around it being a lobby simulator, more than it actually being an MMO.

If you sit there and say Chaotic is innovative, then there is absolutely zero reason whatsoever as to why Ocean Fishing, Ishgard Restoration, V&C Dungeons would not qualify as innovative as well.

I don't actually disagree with the premise of this game not truly innovating, but what OP has considered innovative is a bit reductive.. If we wanted to continue the train of thought with that.. Technically nothing is innovative since most of ARR was borrowed from 1.0, and technically not even savage is innovative because it's just a harder 8-man raids (glorified trials), and those 8-man raids? Well, see glorified trials.. Alliance raids? Well it's just a dungeon with 3 parties of 8.. All of this following the exact principle of "Well ultimate is just a harder, more gated version of savage".

Same issue with yours... You're basing an overwhelming amount of whether something is innovative or not on... Whether it is engaging, whether it has decision making and player agency, then also subsequently going on to say that, "well it's not 'arbitrary', it's subtle, nuanced and complex, whilst then also going on to say

"All the gameplay, even the gameplay from the dungeons to the high end 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."

Under this premise; your own premise... Can you really still say Chaotic is as innovative as you originally claimed?

TL;DR - I don't disagree with the premise of the original debate about innovating, but the conclusions here are split between reductive and arbitrary.

[Gurgeh]

I don't think I was too tired given your response here... You have ultimately given very simple and arbitrary reasons as to why a specific piece of content is not innovative, whilst also going on to say "It's subtle, nuanced and complex", like, you say there is nothing MMO about Island Sanctuary, but that was never the goal, and if we want to start weaponising MMO definitions... The entire game pipeline is basically built around it being a lobby simulator, more than it actually being an MMO.

If you sit there and say Chaotic is innovative, then there is absolutely zero reason whatsoever as to why Ocean Fishing, Ishgard Restoration, V&C Dungeons would not qualify as innovative as well.

I don't actually disagree with the premise of this game not truly innovating, but what OP has considered innovative is a bit reductive.. If we wanted to continue the train of thought with that.. Technically nothing is innovative since most of ARR was borrowed from 1.0, and technically not even savage is innovative because it's just a harder 8-man raids (glorified trials), and those 8-man raids? Well, see glorified trials.. Alliance raids? Well it's just a dungeon with 3 parties of 8.. All of this following the exact principle of "Well ultimate is just a harder, more gated version of savage".

Same issue with yours... You're basing an overwhelming amount of whether something is innovative or not on... Whether it is engaging, whether it has decision making and player agency, then also subsequently going on to say that, "well it's not 'arbitrary', it's subtle, nuanced and complex, whilst then also going on to say



Under this premise; your own premise... Can you really still say Chaotic is as innovative as you originally claimed?

TL;DR - I don't disagree with the premise of the original debate about innovating, but the conclusions here are split between reductive and arbitrary.

Frankly, it should be impossible to disagree with your chain of argument, and I don't. I agree, with your chain.
For me, and to answer the discrepancies you've highlighted... it just comes down to how generous one wants to be with giving them credit.
Gotta say, stepping outside myself, it looks a bit like desperation.
Honestly, I dint want to be hurtful, but I just pity CB3. Its tragic, utterly tragic what SE have done with CB3 legacy.
They've short changed the enterprise, and they've destroyed it. When i read "nothing good in 12 years". It's so harsh. A lot of people will have really cared and been proud of what they had built by the end of EW. And rightly so.
It was there. They built it. It was special. It was real.
But it was an MSQ house of cards built on the quicksand of what it's community had brought to the game over a decade, and this HIGHLY SOCIAL game could not afford to lose that community.

Its Fng tradgic. It pisses me off. (Not OPs post which I didn't read because i was tired, and was bad of me. I understand what they are saying and where they are coming from)

And the happy police that just wanted the doomers to unsub and quit spoiling their buzz, and for SE to carry on business as usual: short sighted, totally lacking in insight and intellect, and given that every human has motivations and agendas, I can't explain it by anything other selfishness in every case. Contemptible.

Its tragic. I pity CB3. Its sad.

They have innovated over 12 years. But not as much as they should have. At the same time they've also done a huge amount of 'reduction'. The net result, the title of this thread is too harsh, but we can all see where OP is coming from, and it shouldn't be a suprise to anyone with insight that these thread titles pop up.
Tragic.

[Myotis]

past 4 years i feel that i'm doing the same things over and over again.
using the same systems we need a change this is just a job , chore , it's boring

[Kaurhz]

Snip.

So this turns less into innovation and more about a credit-giving contest, which is fine, but it is what it is.

I understand the feeling, given I have played for over a decade, and for as many problems as the game does have.. This particular problem is half our own making (Not people specifically, but overall community)... Let's look at it starting from Shadowbringers... People loved Heaven on High and Palace of the Dead... They didn't continue it, yet some will feel like it's a complete sin for an expansion not to have a deep dungeon.

Now let's look at Endwalker... We got Island Sanctuary (Granted very few people actually liked it)... But what did we do?... Complained to the heavens that we lost this because we got that (This being Exploratory and that being Island Sanctuary).. Here they gave us exactly what 'we' were asking for if I am brutally honest.. Sometimes we just have to realize that a particular piece of content (e.g., Deep Dungeons) has ran its natural course, and that something else should take its place... It's the same thing with exploratory content... We just have to acknowledge that under it's current design, there isn't really much there to add without transforming it into something else entirely.

We also just need to accept the fact that the new thing they try is not going to be an absolute banger (e.g., Island Sanctuary), and that something brand new like that would still need several iterations before it was a hit... Much like going from Diadem -> Eureka -> Bozja

Again, as much as I like giving critique on something, there are just some problems here that we do ask for.

[Aidorouge]

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.

Depending on who you ask, most content is already "second monitor activity" while they watch Netflix and Youtube in their first one.

I mean, that's what Eureka's elemental level grind was for me. Switch to WAR and smash mobs, sometimes use self-heals, while watching other people play other video games on my phone propped up against my monitor.

And stuff like the ARR gathering, crafting and levequest achievements? Oh yeah, you bet I've been putting on feature length films and series for that stuff with the game becoming the "background noise" instead after a while.

[Gurgeh]

..Here they gave us exactly what 'we' were asking for if I am brutally honest...
Again, as much as I like giving critique on something, there are just some problems here that we do ask for.

I have to guess the what we asked for was Occult Crescent? If that's the case then that I do have to stand up and be counted as clearly disagreeing with that.

Noone asked them to give 'everyone' what they vocally asked for all at the same time regardless of how poorly the results fitted together, and to cut everything that they didn't strictly speaking actually ask for, saving cherry picking some of past exploration zones most disliked features. (I mean if they'd even called the new atma anything else, and commissioned some new icons on fiverr.com, or even just asked a free DALL-E model, they'd have gotten half the resentment.)
They gave people like me the tougher critical encounters, but they then went and made them all like that. I didn't want to take away other peoples fun. I just wanted twice as many red-choctobers (ie 2 instead. Of 1) and the chance to improve to win a no-KOs place in a winners arena. Instead they made people who wanted to have fun chilling with dancer spend their whole time on the floor.
Then they also tried to please the hunt farm crowd, which they had no business even considering in a zone that was supposed to be about creating common ground for people to ' 'meet' each other and go off and level in small social groups.
And they tried as usual to make sure that, even knowing they had limited resources, even knowing the backlash after chaotic, that yes... they had to also please the savage/ultimate raiders.
Players asked for grind. They did NOT ask for grind^RNG (atma).
Anyone who said they didn't want grind, they should have shown the leadership to ignore. People want grind, but like it or not SE noone said that was going to be easy. They do I'm afraid demand new and interesting grind. Your gonna have to put effort in SE.
I'd love to know who these people were who complained that Bozja was too grindy. My suspicion, which will surprise no-one who has read my posts, is that yes... it high-end yet again. Who just wanted to be able to get it done and get back to preparing for final tier savage and then progging it. Didn't want to have to do any 40 minute DRs with randoms, especially not to 'grind' 15 of them. Didn't want to have to grind optimal antitower and Alexander which noone asked then to do but which they decided they had to straightline a path to being freed up for savage. Who felt that if there was going to be a BiS savage/ultimate weapon, it should be in their usual savage/ultimate terms.
If you don't like grind you really have no business expecting exploration or relics to be even tollerable. But that was no excuse for SE to do bad, or trollish, ultra boring grinds, like Atma RNG, or the same old legacy zone fates.