Quote Originally Posted by TowaIsBestGirl View Post
It's so damn interesting, too. Since Tears of the Kingdom, the game in particular Yoshi-P endorsed as the one for us all to take a break and play? Well, suffice to say its a definitive case of bottled lightning striking twice. If Ninty can do it, why can't Squeenix?
Well, Nintendo had the luxury of delaying Tears of the Kingdom by a whole year or more due to seeing incredible games come out right before it was originally supposed too. With the expectation of dev cycles on XIV, limited and only getting more bare bones staffing, and that pesky thing called capital, Yoshi-P and his team can only do so much. However, it's also because Zelda has a less rigorous story. There are no big moral quandaries in Zelda (as far as I know, I haven't beaten Tears yet). There isn't a large extensive cast of mouthpieces either.

Part of liking FFXIV is liking those mouthpieces and what they say. And taking their suppositions as fact. There is an advantage to sticking to characters this way, but it doesn't stick or land for everyone. Compared to Zelda, which does have some static characters, Zelda's characters hardly preach anything. It's a lot more cut and dry, and it's a game where the game is primary thing you are doing 80% of the time, whereas with FFXIV it lives and dies by its stories. The second those dry up or miss their mark, it starts to rely on MMO style gameplay and socializing in order to be entertaining. Which in our current era is something most people refuse to engage with, and FFXIV isn't really setup for people to engage like that either, while also still playing the game.

tl; dr

Zelda is made with less limitations, restrictions, and exposition. On top of that, FFXIV starts to fall apart the second its story does, for many people.