Quote Originally Posted by Sjol View Post
Those all seemed to be variations on things we can already do. We already have jumps and hidden buffs (dodge = teleport move + hidden invuln buff on a short timer)
You could even break down FF16 to be using a lot of things that FF14 can do. The FF16 event even shows the contrast well. They just overtelegraph everything in FF14 and give you a lot of time to react compared to a single player game. It's clearly a deliberate decision, rather than an engine thing.
Quote Originally Posted by Sjol View Post
Based on and forked years ago doesn't mean that it's the same.
Similar enough that if they did make changes, they could go to their team members in the FF16 office next door and ask to copy some of their code over or make a work based upon it... it also feels like they did do this for the burger eating stuff.
Also, could be doing anything that they were doing in FFXVI ignores a lot of differences between how FFXIV and FFXVI work. Certainly, they don't need to load 50 customizable outfits dynamically based on anything.
That's their reasoning for a lot of the reduced quality.

But I think some of it is just that they were trying to copy the "target, click, loading bar" concept MMORPGs at the time had, and now find themselves with competition that is far more realistic than that.
And with respect to the engine, we're probably also only talking about pieces of it -- certainly not inventory management or any of the networking stuff.
Well networking isn't relevant and the inventory in FF14 involves networking as a core part of it, so they would have to be different.
Rathalos was interesting, and he did introduce a couple of new ideas, but ones that don't seem too outside what is already possible in their combat system -- ignoring enmity and blocking healing.
That's sort of my point. A fight like Rathalos has always been possible in the current engine (and even gets done in Stone Vigil HM), they just decide to do it differently most of the time. These are decisions, rather than engine limitations tbh.
Mostly, I think the problem is they have is around AI, including pathing (where are my wandering monsters)
They actually use the standard "walk in a random direction every few seconds" system that many games have used. I always hated it and felt, as someone who can code this sort of stuff, that it could be done in a more ambitious and realistic way. And even if automating it runs into issues there can be pre-determined pathing like there is for NPCs in the city states.