Is Dawntrail going to bring new things again?

[Valence]

Disclaimer: this isn't about the story, the lore or the art. All of this is top notch. I loved every bit of it.

There is very little left of the battlesystem.

Tanks can heal themselves because it "feels bad when someone lets you die". Every class has been self sufficient on MP since forever, because "it feels bad when someone doesn't support the party properly". Aggro has been axed because "it feels bad when the tank loses aggro".

There is no more scrappy/scarcity based gameplay and resource management, MP pools have been uniformized. BRD and MCH can't use their MP anymore. Are PLD and DRK next?

Direct Hit, Determination and Critical Hits all do the same thing, and without a (gasp) parser you're likely to never see a difference anyway.

A healer in Sastasha during Heavensward had actually more to do than a healer in a lvl90 Endwalker dungeon. Same for tanks.Tanks and healers are all the same with different skins.

Everybody and their mothers now have support defensive skills and party heals. What is even the point of ranged physical DPS now? And is SMN finally going to be called a ranged physical DPS?

Everyone bursts every 2min, rince and repeat. Bard is the only remaining pure RNG job (DNC is not as it has a fixed 2 steps base combo, sorrynotsorry). Everything else is a form or another of a deterministic rotation that can be played with a macro.

Fights all follow a rigid formulaic design where everything is the same: trials and raids are a platform arena, usually with a death wall, and there is one boss to kill. Dungeons all follow the same 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > boss. There is nothing new, nothing fresh or daring. At best we'll have an AoE heavy boss with adds as a unicorn and it will be a breath of fresh air...

There is little to no player agency left, either in job rotations or party synergy. Everything is hard funneled into fight mechanics and rehearsal and playing a perfect choreography. This is not about RPG mechanics anymore, but DDR and guitar hero.

Shadowbringers pre release liveletters have been all about half the battlesystem that was being axed. Endwalker pre release liveletters have been about literally nothing (30min on how addle was gonna get physical mitigation too, and how feint was going to help against magical mitigation like if it was a gigantic revolution, because there was nothing else in terms of gameplay to show).

The only notable fresh, interesting and flavorful new gameplay as far as I'm concerned has been the new pvp, which in spite of having less than a third of the buttons pve has, proves 100 times more intricate and interesting mechanically.

Is Dawntrail finally going to bring new things?

[Mostly_Raxus]

No. please look forward to it.

[OdinelStarrei]

Probably not.

Don't expect DT to be different. You'd just be setting yourself up to be disappointed.

If new things come, cool. If they don't, whatever. It's better to just not care.

[Avoidy]

It's unlikely. Under the simplification model, this game has exploded in popularity. Even jobs like SMN, which people complain about for being too easy, are extremely popular jobs because they're so accessible. The team looks at these engagement metrics, sees that people are "engaging with" the content (not necessarily enjoying it) and makes the leap that "oh, well, people are playing this stuff. That must mean it's a success."

[Eastwall]

Go wild and introduce stamina bar and dodge roll to evade mechanics.

[Ardeth]

Go wild and introduce stamina bar and dodge roll to evade mechanics.

That sounds awesome I'm not gonna lie after 100%ing Elden Ring I want to see a Tank fat rolling.

[BRVV]

Pray it won't take away more

[Karious]

I'm expecting them to take away positionals and make things worse.

[Ardeth]

I'm expecting them to take away positionals and make things worse.

You say that, but I would think the game was better for it. Not because I fear positionals, but they've been slowly removing that bandage for years, and it's getting sad.

[Raikai]

The problem with healing is that there's no decision making or room for player expression when it comes to improvisation, no resource management. We have a slight glimpse of that during early prog... but not long after, you just start mapping out healer OGCDs to the aoes and tankbusters and then the act of healing becomes... meh.

Healers could live very well with a 2 button damage rotation if the healing was actually more engaging (which does not mean necessarily healing more) and variable.

A true overhaul would mean reworking the encounters themselves and the damage profile.