In 12 years the game hasn't innovated

[Reginald_Cain]

The walls of text in here would make ba sing se jealous. Anyway, Square fix machinist for me and Valence. It's been 3 expansions and autocrossbow doesn't function like heat blast on our ogcds wtf.

[Valence]

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".


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.

I'll say the criticism is fair, if we want to use innovation at its most inclusive definition. In my defense the OP was made to point at the sheer lack of brand new features and the lethargy at even considering it in terms of development strategies.
So yes, under that lens, I do not consider harder modes of difficulty for a specific piece of content to be "new features", but merely a different difficulty slider. And that's fine as we obviously need different difficulty sliders, as evidenced by the most recent community hot topics around Chaotic, Forked, and Yoshida's answer to it all.

When i read "nothing good in 12 years". It's so harsh.

You're kinda fighting against windmills here, nobody said nothing good has happened in 12 years..

The walls of text in here would make ba sing se jealous. Anyway, Square fix machinist for me and Valence. It's been 3 expansions and autocrossbow doesn't function like heat blast on our ogcds wtf.

"Fix MCH" was me in SB to improve usability and later me in ShB after they decided to butcher the job instead.
I've not been into the "fix MCH" mindset for like, 2 expansions. At this point it's consistently been "just fix pve".

[Loggos]

I agree with the overall sentiment, though there are one or two examples that do feel innovative enough for me (variant dungeons for example and yes CC (lol orz I know)).

I know, "innovative" is somewhat subjective. For me it means "is the overall gameplay experience is novel enough for me to feel distinct".
For example, cosmic exploration (at my low stage - I use it to level crafters) doesn't feel that novel to me because most of my activities are just crafting/gathering as I've always done them and there is nothing in that routine that makes the experience different from normal crafting except for the background story/staging of building a space station.
Their fates do feel a bit more unique though and I actually really like them (esp. piloting the mechs lol) but they're unfortunately more of a gimmick/a little bit of spice that doesn't fundamentally change the "business as usual" feeling of the content as a whole.

Variant dungeon do feel different enough for me personally. Sure, it's the same style of battle content as any other PvE content but the premise of exploring different paths sets it apart from normal dungeons in my opinion. It changes your approach to them because it's a fundamentally different goal compared normal dungeons (at least when you do them for the first few times). Normal dungeons are just there to be finished as soon as possible in a linear way. Variant dungeon divert from this nature and ask you to traverse them differently. Find different options, see different things, try different paths. And the element of collecting different lore drops depending on your choices is a nice extra motivator.

As for CC, I guess depending on where you stand it can be debated if it was good or a bad innovation but in my eyes it was innovation (I'm biased because I didn't play feast but I do like CC'S concept/core idea). As far as I know it's one of the few examples where they actually completely overhauled a system and changed it significantly compared to its predecessor. Is it novel compared to other PvP games? I mean no, push the crystal is a bog standard escort mission found in other titles too. But I'd argue within FF14 itself it's something new.

But yeah, all in all, I agree that SE plays it very safe and is stuck in their formularic approach. I can even somewhat understand it for some aspects like the MSQ because it makes the production volume more projectable. (Although I really wouldn't mind innovation here as well.)
But at least when it comes to anything outside of the MSQ I wish they'd be more experimental and creative with their content.

[Kaurhz]

I'll say the criticism is fair, if we want to use innovation at its most inclusive definition. In my defense the OP was made to point at the sheer lack of brand new features and the lethargy at even considering it in terms of development strategies.
So yes, under that lens, I do not consider harder modes of difficulty for a specific piece of content to be "new features", but merely a different difficulty slider. And that's fine as we obviously need different difficulty sliders, as evidenced by the most recent community hot topics around Chaotic, Forked, and Yoshida's answer to it all..

I mean personally I am less concerned about being the most inclusive definition, as there are definitely things that aren't innovative.. But I'd prefer to just base it on whether it added much for gameplay (that otherwise didn't exist), or whether it transformed the gameplay.. Like, yeah, Firmament at its core basically borrowed supply and provisioning missions... Cosmic borrowed a levequest-esque system... But when you really look at what it aimed to deliver overall, it definitely was innovative, as previously we never really had server-wide progression that actually saw people working together to a collective goal.

Unfortunately, I don't really think XIV lends itself well at all to allowing for true innovation in the way you might be describing.. Like, the content pipeline, and the gameplay pipeline generally follow an on-the-rails design.. Fundamentally it does not allow you to curate your journey or adventure (Which is probably the biggest part of innovating, when you allow people to free-form)... This to me is where developer fault lies... Fault with 'us' (not specifically you and me, but I think the broader community).. Is 'we' are very loss-averse.. 'We' always make reference to things 'we' lost at the expense of something else, e.g., losing exploratory at the expense of Island Sanctuary, and we have a difficult time accepting the fact that with innovation comes massive risk (e.g., both Diadem and Island Sanctuary falling flat), and a need to actually iterate over that content type across several expansions to turn it into a refined piece of content

Now, I think an interesting debate would be if those content types (e.g., Restoration-type, and exploratory-type) have realistically started to outlive themselves and show their age.. But I digress with this....

[TeresaFortell]

I think this goes back to the mentality of trying play safe. And in more recent times, perhaps they took notice of how Shadowlands was to WOW, and realised that going by the book was the better option for them. Considering how much damage SL did to WOW, I would not say that it was a bad mentality.

[AstreaLove]

You know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel with each expansion right?
If a game is functional with it's current systems, then that's fine.

Stroy, raids, dungeons, trials, crafting, jobs & whatever else doesn't have to change just for the sake of changing. I'm not saying that it should stay stagnant and never change, but it should make sense to have the changes.

[Valence]

I agree with the overall sentiment, though there are one or two examples that do feel innovative enough for me (variant dungeons for example and yes CC (lol orz I know)).

I know, "innovative" is somewhat subjective. For me it means "is the overall gameplay experience is novel enough for me to feel distinct".
For example, cosmic exploration (at my low stage - I use it to level crafters) doesn't feel that novel to me because most of my activities are just crafting/gathering as I've always done them and there is nothing in that routine that makes the experience different from normal crafting except for the background story/staging of building a space station.
Their fates do feel a bit more unique though and I actually really like them (esp. piloting the mechs lol) but they're unfortunately more of a gimmick/a little bit of spice that doesn't fundamentally change the "business as usual" feeling of the content as a whole.

Variant dungeon do feel different enough for me personally. Sure, it's the same style of battle content as any other PvE content but the premise of exploring different paths sets it apart from normal dungeons in my opinion. It changes your approach to them because it's a fundamentally different goal compared normal dungeons (at least when you do them for the first few times). Normal dungeons are just there to be finished as soon as possible in a linear way. Variant dungeon divert from this nature and ask you to traverse them differently. Find different options, see different things, try different paths. And the element of collecting different lore drops depending on your choices is a nice extra motivator.

As for CC, I guess depending on where you stand it can be debated if it was good or a bad innovation but in my eyes it was innovation (I'm biased because I didn't play feast but I do like CC'S concept/core idea). As far as I know it's one of the few examples where they actually completely overhauled a system and changed it significantly compared to its predecessor. Is it novel compared to other PvP games? I mean no, push the crystal is a bog standard escort mission found in other titles too. But I'd argue within FF14 itself it's something new.

But yeah, all in all, I agree that SE plays it very safe and is stuck in their formularic approach. I can even somewhat understand it for some aspects like the MSQ because it makes the production volume more projectable. (Although I really wouldn't mind innovation here as well.)
But at least when it comes to anything outside of the MSQ I wish they'd be more experimental and creative with their content.

I thought about pvp but then remembered that it hasn't really brought new things until CC I guess. A mode where you move the payload was definitely a new feature. Same as Astragalos back in the day long ago.

It feels to me ironically pvp is where they make new features the most because perhaps it struggles meeting any kind of popularity?

[Gurgeh]

You know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel with each expansion right?
If a game is functional with it's current systems, then that's fine.

Stroy, raids, dungeons, trials, crafting, jobs & whatever else doesn't have to change just for the sake of changing. I'm not saying that it should stay stagnant and never change, but it should make sense to have the changes.

Taking you literally, actually yeah they kind of do need to change purely for the sake if it, for a lot of people. And when I say a lot, we're talking the majority for a healthy normal demographic (not a demographic which has filtered for personality types that prefer familiar regimen without limit) Perhaps not every 2 years, but easily by the time 4 years is up.
That is if you expect them to be actually having at all notable fun, rather than just "this is bearable ok down time after work".

The only exception to this is those things. Where their nature is aquiring expertise.
The irony is thats THE ONLY thing that xiv reliable shakes up every expansion.
Yes the jobs.
Although while they change them every expansion they changed them all, increasingly, in 'the same way' which destroys the only possible positive of changing expertise areas.


When they yet again made me have to really work hard to reaquire rotation expertise, totally levelling my DPS main, I just lost interest in having to learn a new job. I realised that all I wanted to do for any job other than my two mains - is nothing at all.
I hear so much bemoning about how badly people know jobs but they keep changing them. We now have what? 16?
No, I'm not hanging about learn them again, studying Balance for every job again and again. I did that it wasn't really fun the first time but I kind of enjoyed it for a reason, now I know better, it's futile.
I pick the job up for the first time in about two years 'try' only to remove any dead grey abilities, and add any new ones (anywhere on my controller will do, it's too much work to rejuggle everything for for every job). Kind of read the tool tips, but no I'm not thinking about it all again, studying it remembering it. Its too complicated to work out the rotation for myself, it's a complex calculation, and looking it up is just boring, Im here to play. Then I'm putting down the job once it's levelled (I have no choice if I'm to be any good at my two mains.) And i just queue and try to work it out as I go along. None of the leveling is fun anymore.
Only healers I make some attempt to understand.

The net result is I didn't even bother unlocking a one off the new jobs. I played solidly everyday until sometime after Ex3. Dropped pict at about 70 something, never even unlocked Viper still to this day. Just another job for me to play bareably passably at before they change it again.
Stop making ANY changes to jobs.
Problem now is that their current state is that they really do suck. Even when you do learn another job, it's just not interesting. Its just another fixed rotation with that burst window agenda.

Take last time I played. I haven't logged in for over five months. I pick up a DPS Im still leveling, and I just queue. I dint really remember his it works. Even it's signature moves in gonnas have to figure out as I go and do a bit of button mashing.
Now if they committed to not changing the job that would charge everything. Id make an effort before it's not a waste of my time, but at the moment it's definitely only a waste of my time.
The reality is that how well I play is totally and wholly irrelevant in a dungeon. Only thing that matters is I focus on boss mechanics, I can just mash buns in the meantime.
Mobs? Total button mash.

[hydralus]

I'd love to see some innovation from the people who complain about the same thing all the time. Always the same people too. Valence and Gurgeh pay a subscription to post on the forums I guarantee it.

[Valence]

I'd love to see some innovation from the people who complain about the same thing all the time. Always the same people too. Valence and Gurgeh pay a subscription to post on the forums I guarantee it.

You seem to pay a sub in white knighting so I'd love to see some innovation away from that as well but here we are.

Constructive contributions you've been doing all this time sir, my hat to you.