Is it safe to say that the next FF MMO will be an action game?

[Vandso]

Pretty much every FF release since XIV was an action game. We had FFXV, FF7R, Stranger of Paradise and FFXVI (I guess the only exception is FF7 Ever Crisis, the mobile game). It's clear that they want to keep pushing the genre as it has been very successfull, and also knowing that FFXIV is doing pretty well on his own, I don't think they wanna get rid of it so soon nor release an MMO too similar to it. Which is why I think their next MMO will be an action game instead of a tab-target one. Now, knowing how much they evolved in their action games I'm not too concerned about it, but what to change and what to keep from FFXIV? Here's my own perspective on this:

What to keep

- All jobs in one character
This is the best thing about FFXIV and one of the main reasons why I don't play other MMOs. It makes the game a little alt-unfriendly sure, but who cares? Having all jobs in one character is awesome.

- Focus on the social aspect
That's another think about the game that makes me hard to leave. It's what makes FFXIV feel so alive. We have crowded cities, bards, venues, glamours, fashion accessories, adventurer plates. I just wish we have more accessbility options. We wouldn't be able to do what we do with bards/venues without third party tools.

- Level-based skills
Maybe skill trees are alright as long as your "skill currency" is gained by level and you have them all at max level. I just dislike the idea of unlocking skills via quests or shop. Imo the worst part of FFXIV's leveing experience is when I have to quit a dungeon queue and disband a party to enter a solo instance.

- Fast Travel
That's obligatory in every MMO. If you don't think so go play New World.

What to change

- MSQ is optional, content is unlocked through leveling
We all love the MSQ, but why does every single thing in the game need to be attached to the story? Why can't I do Island Sanctuary and Criterion Dungeons before Endwalker? What about raids, exploratory zones, flight, mounts? That's what makes the game so alt-unfriendly.

- Holy Trinity
I don't think Holy Trinity works really well with action games. Since most of the mechanics will be around dodging, timing and positioning, we won't need a tank and a healer every single game. It also makes queues really long.

- No Beginner/Secondary Classes
Yeah I want to play Black Mage right away, I don't want to level a Thaumaturge first. Why the hell is called Thaumaturge anyway? Thaumaturge means saint.

- Auto-loot
You know what auto-loot does? Fills your inventory with crap. You should be able to pick whatever you want from the enemy drops.

- Loading Screens
Yeah that's not going away. Every FF has a shitton of loading screen, except for maybe FFXV.

Well, that's all just basic stuff. I probably forgot many things. What about you? If square released a new MMO, what would you like it to have?

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Is it safe to say that the next FF MMO will be an action game?

No.
But Ill be honest, Im just saying that because I dont like Making Bold Assumptions and Predictions. Even with other instances and evidence, because you can still be wrong....just like how everyone thought Forspoken was gonna be the next expansion, and just because YoshiP has lied before, it means he's lying now....and behold he wasn't lying and Forspoken was a Whole Different Game.
And....hmm guess I cant give a real Educated opinion here, because the only examples I can draw from are ESO, and BDO. But I just hate how ESO works and I didnt have a good experience with BDO on console (Peasant I know) But they are both Successful enough, I just dont know if it would work for a FF-MMO.

What to change
- Loading Screens

Is there a Current MMO-Type Game with no Loading Screens?
Everything would have to be Preloaded and there would be no Instanced Content. Everything would just be live.
I know Runescape did it this way...but of course that was a simpler time when it was a browser game.
IDK, I just dont see this working in a Space will hundreds, to Thousands, or Millions of Players and Assets moving around, that they would be able to eliminate Loading Screens.

[Stormpeaks]

I'll only quote the parts that I personally would like changed

- All jobs in one character
This is the best thing about FFXIV and one of the main reasons why I don't play other MMOs. It makes the game a little alt-unfriendly sure, but who cares? Having all jobs in one character is awesome.

Yes but with a better loot system than FFXIV.

- Focus on the social aspect
That's another think about the game that makes me hard to leave. It's what makes FFXIV feel so alive. We have crowded cities, bards, venues, glamours, fashion accessories, adventurer plates. I just wish we have more accessbility options. We wouldn't be able to do what we do with bards/venues without third party tools.

+1

- Level-based skills
Maybe skill trees are alright as long as your "skill currency" is gained by level and you have them all at max level. I just dislike the idea of unlocking skills via quests or shop. Imo the worst part of FFXIV's leveing experience is when I have to quit a dungeon queue and disband a party to enter a solo instance.

+1

- Fast Travel
That's obligatory in every MMO. If you don't think so go play New World.

- MSQ is optional, content is unlocked through leveling
We all love the MSQ, but why does every single thing in the game need to be attached to the story? Why can't I do Island Sanctuary and Criterion Dungeons before Endwalker? What about raids, exploratory zones, flight, mounts? That's what makes the game so alt-unfriendly.

Big agree on this, untie the MSQ from actual content, it's so annoying to not be able to play an alt without either buying a boost (and even then, still gotta do EW MSQ), let us play the game as we wish if we want to go straight to end game content.

- No Beginner/Secondary Classes
Yeah I want to play Black Mage right away, I don't want to level a Thaumaturge first. Why the hell is called Thaumaturge anyway? Thaumaturge means saint.

- Auto-loot
You know what auto-loot does? Fills your inventory with crap. You should be able to pick whatever you want from the enemy drops.

Agree with both of those as well

[kpxmanifesto]

I'd think so. If a particular product design is selling well it would benefit the company to keep making similar products.

[TheDecay]

No thanks. SE is incapable of writing the netcode that is required for an action game unless they remove so many features like parry or dodge rolls that it basically is just FF14 all over again.

Oh wait, they already did that in a single player game. It's called FF16.

[Jeeqbit]

I doubt there will be a new FF MMO any time soon because...

1. They have to establish that the current one cannot be salvaged, like happened to FF11 early on in its life.
2. FF11 was made for consoles and didn't exactly compete with newer MMOs well, or emerging specs.
3. It takes years to make. It took 5 years to make FFXIV (which failed and then was remade in 2 years by reusing assets and lore).

So they would need determine that FFXIV cannot be salvaged or upgraded, which is not the case because we have a graphics upgrade incoming, we have had network and sound improvements recently, the FF16 engine was hinted to have been based on FFXIV's, a rough 10-year-roadmap has been provided by Yoshi-P and even if all that were not so, it would take at least 5 years to make this new MMO because that is how long it took to make FFXIV and it took even longer to make FF16.

Now you could say "but maybe they have been working on one for 5 years already". But there is no evidence of that. It would almost certainly be CBU3 that developed it, and they have been stretched between two games already, and then there are all the previously-mentioned points such as how FFXIV has a 10-year roadmap and it has also been growing each expansion so far.

Could Square Enix change the combat in FFXIV to use action combat?
Sadly no, because if they change a battle system that a lot of people are used to or appreciate for various reasons or are used to from other MMORPGs, many of them will probably just quit and I doubt SE will risk that.

But there could be some middleground, such as a specific class that plays similarly and boss fights that use the FFXIV style to resemble FF16 a bit more (ie. telegraphing with animations instead of standing there casting or showing red circles). Like Giruveganaus, Rathalos or Hrodric Poisontongue.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I doubt there will be a new FF MMO any time soon because...

1. They have to establish that the current one cannot be salvaged, like happened to FF11 early on in its life.
2. FF11 was made for consoles and didn't exactly compete with newer MMOs well, or emerging specs.
3. It takes years to make. It took 5 years to make FFXIV (which failed and then was remade in 2 years by reusing assets and lore).

So they would need determine that FFXIV cannot be salvaged or upgraded, which is not the case because we have a graphics upgrade incoming, we have had network and sound improvements recently, the FF16 engine was hinted to have been based on FFXIV's, a rough 10-year-roadmap has been provided by Yoshi-P and even if all that were not so, it would take at least 5 years to make this new MMO because that is how long it took to make FFXIV and it took even longer to make FF16.

Now you could say "but maybe they have been working on one for 5 years already". But there is no evidence of that. It would almost certainly be CBU3 that developed it, and they have been stretched between two games already, and then there are all the previously-mentioned points such as how FFXIV has a 10-year roadmap and it has also been growing each expansion so far.

Could Square Enix change the combat in FFXIV to use action combat?
Sadly no, because if they change a battle system that a lot of people are used to or appreciate for various reasons or are used to from other MMORPGs, many of them will probably just quit and I doubt SE will risk that.

But there could be some middleground, such as a specific class that plays similarly and boss fights that use the FFXIV style to resemble FF16 a bit more (ie. telegraphing with animations instead of standing there casting or showing red circles). Like Giruveganaus, Rathalos or Hrodric Poisontongue.

Not anytime soon, but not improbable considering that Yoshida had stated interest in the idea of being able to make a new MMO from scratch

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I don't think there will be another FF MMO, personally.

[SquirrelDerp]

- Holy Trinity
I don't think Holy Trinity works really well with action games. Since most of the mechanics will be around dodging, timing and positioning, we won't need a tank and a healer every single game. It also makes queues really long.

I agree with mostly everything, but has there been a mmo without a holy trinity that didn't feel like, weird and forced? In my experience they tend to either have every class more or less the same but with different spell effects or even the support classes end up just feeling like worse dps(Lost Ark)

I guess Rift did it pretty well, but no one played Rift

Monster Hunter too, actually, cause everyone is just dps or support, and that works really well.

That's just personal taste though. I really like how FFXIV lets you change your jobs on the fly so you aren't, for example, stuck on a holy paladin trying to do solo content. That kinda holy trinity(Where tanks and healers do no damage at all and can't solo things) probably needs to die off.(But also xiv kinda blurrs the lines a lil with tanks and healers both doing pretty aight damage)

- No Beginner/Secondary Classes
Yeah I want to play Black Mage right away, I don't want to level a Thaumaturge first. Why the hell is called Thaumaturge anyway? Thaumaturge means saint.

I think I'm pretty alone on this, but I absolutely love beginner classes. It reminds me of older d&d with prestige classes, and it doesn't really effect gameplay much aside from just being flavor.

I'd actually kinda like more things like multiclassing, but my understanding is that was in xiv already(Cross class skills) and basically no one liked it, and I'm sure it'd lead to like weird min/maxing where you can't do X until you have Y and Z classes leveled, but I'm willing to admit I might just be in the wrong there lol

[Shinkuno]

Is there a Current MMO-Type Game with no Loading Screens?
.

You can travel across each contintent in WoW with no loading screen. Only changing to another continent or zoning into a instanced area has a loading screen.



I dont agree with your fast travel point. FF14 went too far. Thats why the open world is completly dead. Rather have it like WoW where there is fast travel to specific points, you can unlock some more niche location teleports via toys and items but for the rest you gotta move yourself.