Quote Originally Posted by Raven2014 View Post
Eh, not really. While there were definitely some shift, that wouldn't how I would put. I don't think ARR and HW were any more concerned about what players want. These days HW are often looked back with the rose-tined nostalgia glasses. The fact it was also polished with most of the malcontent removed helped. But I'll say it again, HW was one of the worst expansion when it was live, 3.0 - 3.3 was a hell that I don't care to ever relive. So I'll be on the fence about "giving players what they want" during this era, it was almost the exact opposite.


How I would describe the shift of FF14 life cycle:

- ARR: a desperate WoW clone to revive 1.0. Many design can be seen straight up lifting from WoW.
- HW: an attempt to be more WoW then WoW itself, and this blew up in their face.

The above two I don't think resemblance any kind of "vision", more like a developer team who desperately try to right a sinking ship in survival mode.

Stormblood I think is when Yoshi and his staff finally settle down one the long term vision they have for the game, when FF14 is given its own unique identity instead of trying to be another WoW's clone. And for good or bad, we have been staying on that track very consistently throughout every sub-sequence release.
HW actually looks more like the first attempt at appeasing players when you look at it as the result of player feedback during ARR as the groundwork for HW's content was made during ARR with Stormblood's changes being a result of feedback during the HW cycle. It takes time to turn a truck into a minivan.