I'm not sure I can do this again.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not as well versed in PVP so my insight here is considerably less so. I don't care for PVP in either of these games (BNS was king for that IMO). They added templates and completely separated pve from pvp. That's a pretty big change. The brawls and stuff are pretty minor though IMO.

This. I'd argue it wasn't all for the best, but Legion brought large changes to PvP as well. Imagine the Stormblood change, before Stormblood, but without all the over-simplifying. (E.g. gear doesn't barely matters; secondary stats are pre-optimized; and there are now PvP-specific talents atop the regular ones.)

Agreed. They changed professions over the years, but the system is still one of the weaker systems out there. The gathering bit isn't bad, but it's not nearly the standard their other systems are.

And that's slated for massive reform in BFA. Little to no vertical progression, far more horizontal progression. If you've got the mats for it, you can progress any category of crafting, from Dark Iron designs to Iron Horde battlearmor to Naga mail, etc., etc.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I can pretty well sculpt out an idea of your thoughts on it at this point, but I don't think I've heard explicitly what makes something "new" from you yet. Ambiguous question context aside, though, I suspect our answers will be fairly close(?).

My standards aren't super high. Looking at FF14. I would consider Rival Wings "new". Even though it is just PVP content, it is drastically different than the norm and not just a marked "improvement". I would include Squadron dungeons in this as well.

Looking at WoW, I'd classify the artifact weapons as something new even though they can be boiled down to merely just weapons. I'd classify Mythic + as new, even though it's just dungeons.

To me there has to be fairly robust/unique systems newly built to something to be considered new.

Looking at FF14 again, I think they really dropped the ball on "side content".

I look at the gold saucer and I cry everytime. I envision in my head a version of chocobo racing that would be robust enough to be its own game, BUT by putting it in FF14 you open a fantastic world for people to get lost in and be a part of.

There's a game called Crash Team Racing that I have extraordinarily fond memories of. I would have literally copy pasted the mechanics out of that game into this version of Chocobo racing. Maybe I'll make a new thread on that.

I even had a fairly robust "battle arena" concept that would have been cool for light and full parties to mess around with when things are slow, yet everytime I see GS I just sigh at how much of a waste it was. It could have been the cool place to hang out that contained a ton of non-standard content forms for people to mess with when stuffs slow.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Mythic+ certainly would meet my definition for "new"; it created whole new sectors of gameplay, communities, -between-casual-and-hardcore stratums, time allotments, and in a way whole new paradigms over what content ought to be like.

Squadron dungeons may too, depending on how extensive the resultant changes end up at the end of its development path. If what we have now is as far as they go... then I'm not entirely sure.

Rival Wings is likewise borderline for me; though it was a new combat mode, it actually did very little to change the mindset or meta of PvP, apart from making healers seem even stronger. The difference between Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, for instance, seems both far deeper and far more apparent than any form of XIV PvP vs. Rival Wings.

I'm judging a bit more critically than I normally would in game, though; even if not exactly what I'd call "new" I can frequently be pleased by all those things I'd here call borderline, at least in terms of their newness. It'll be their actual execution that will matter most to me. My issue with GS when in game, for instance, isn't that it doesn't allow for anything new: it's that what has been provided within is feels inferior to what almost anyone could seemingly imagine with a bit of time and effort -- it often feels like merely a token gesture rather than an earnest attempt at anything. It's almost as if they're too hung up on the idea of creating "new side-content" and not enough on making whatever content they add actually worthwhile.

Taken as a definition, though, my standards for "newness" are probably, as I'd said, abnormally high. For me, for something to be "new" requires not only that it be different, but that it should point at a new or more fleshed out direction for the game; it should show that the game is in growth. That ends up a largely retroactive opinion if production is kept behind tight lips, but I'll tend to make my assumption and revoke it later if need be.

That's not to say that something should feel free to outgrow or leave things obsolete. If so, those things become unable to contribute to what remains; it'd be like a canopy without a trunk. Moreover it'd quickly end up wasted development time. No, growth must extend from what's there towards some goal which will then be foundation for another, and so forth. Only then does something new connote a new extent for the game.