A recent fundamental problem with FFXIV

[Krisom]

The story was nothing like IX's story so the idea that it does anything to 'tarnish' it is a ridiculous notion.
Other than Alexandria's architecture and loose history(that does not even line up with IX's in the first place before things 'changed') the closest thing is Otis(Ortis?) being a somewhat Steiner character and even that is far removed, that's already more than Sphene's similarities to Garnet.
It's clearly done that way so it can be its own thing than a rehash of IX's story which wouldn't fit and would confuse players who haven't played IX, the story itself didn't even try to be anything like IX.

[ROOTFayth]

They know fan service rakes in the money.

FF7R is a ghastly, disfigured replica of FF7 but they don't care.

They defiled FF9 in DT and they don't care.

dunno about the ff7 part, FF7 rebirth is probably going to be GOTY for me, dawntrail is going to be disappointment of the year

[AddictedToWitches]

STARTED TO?
My brother in christ they've been referencing other FF games since 1.0
Almost every final fantasy game is like this.

[AddictedToWitches]

The story was nothing like IX's story so the idea that it does anything to 'tarnish' it is a ridiculous notion.
Other than Alexandria's architecture and loose history(that does not even line up with IX's in the first place before things 'changed') the closest thing is Otis(Ortis?) being a somewhat Steiner character and even that is far removed, that's already more than Sphene's similarities to Garnet.
It's clearly done that way so it can be its own thing than a rehash of IX's story which wouldn't fit and would confuse players who haven't played IX, the story itself didn't even try to be anything like IX.

SPOILER AHEAD:
Everkeep is a mechanical lifa tree
Zoraal ja fills a similar role to Kuja and Garland
Wuk Lamat has similar character traits to Zidane (one can also argue her being a hrothgar is a subtle reference to trance zidane)
Viper is literally the Zidane class
Sphene and Krile both fill similar roles to Garnet. Sphene is meant to be a direct Garnet expy though Sphene goes through a different character arc than Garnet while Krile fits Garnet's actual role more clearly
Otis is obviously Steiner yeah
Queen Eternal/Queen Engine looks similar to Necron, and the battle theme has callbacks to necron's theme
Oblivion is kinda similar to Tantalus
It's definitely not a rehash but the callbacks are plentiful and some story beats are the exact same, primarily with the whole souls thing

[Isala]

Yes. They've been "referencing" other Final Fantasies since the beginning, but the really big references were side content. Before they made CT mandatory for MSQ for Shadowbringers, which is where the "HERE'S ANOTHER FINAL FANTASY!!!!" cracks started showing in the story, every reference was not part of the main XIV story. CT, Ivalice and Nier were 24 mans. Omega and Alexander were raids. And yes, they borrowed enemies. Every FF has done that since the very beginning. We're not complaining about that. You're going to see a Bahamut. You're going to see some variation of the summons/primals/eidolons. You're going to see things like a Cactuar, or a Tonberry, or any of the hundreds of iconic FF enemies.

However, even when they did put a nod, or a similar story in the MSQ, it was always presented as "here's XIV's take on it". Such as the aforementioned Shadowbringers reference to III's lore, in which the world had been consumed by light. Then we come to the post Depression Bird content for EW. It's literally just IV. They added two new NPCs, jazzed up the plot a tiny bit, and went "Here's IV. Here are iconic IV places, here are iconic IV bosses, here are iconic IV plot devices. Including the moon. Again." Also, we're going to sideline THE ACTUAL GODS DAMNED GODS into 24 man content, instead of giving them the focus they deserve. When you start sidelining the actual XIV story for references? That's when you know you've gone too far. And it's continuing into Dawntrail. We're just straight up ripping from IX for MSQ content again.

[Zakuyia]

Im kinda wondering if op making brain rott for this discussion...this game is heavily built of fan service and refrences...hell bozja save the queen, ivalice, mustadio, diamond weapon, omega raid, fran, lightning, dragon quest event....with op logic this game been suffering this since the start

[Reimmi]

dunno about the ff7 part, FF7 rebirth is probably going to be GOTY for me, dawntrail is going to be disappointment of the year

The gameplay has been really good so i disagree with that
the story is pretty bad but if they deliver on content i'll enjoy it more than endwalker in the end

[Krisom]

The only ones here I agree with are with Everkeep and Otis parts which I picked up during the story. (Even though the Iifa Tree is referenced in text separately)
Zidane 'job' is a bit hit and mostly miss. You can argue that Reawaken is a Trance and that the dual-blade is a reference to Zidane but everything else is so far removed, there's no other aesthetic it takes from Zidane that comes directly from IX, Zidane is a Thief and doesn't have any aesthetics of a Viper that takes from its name if someone told me "I feel like Zidane when I play Viper!" I'd be stunned wondering why because outside of those two, and one of them might just be its own thing I don't see the resemblance.

I personally think Sphene is NOTHING like Garnet and I can't for the life of me see that from Krile at all even personality wise nor the journey they take.
Wuk Lamat isn't similar to Zidane at all (and I am not going to humour the her being a Hrothgar is reference to Zidane at all, not to be rude sorry.)- Zidane is competent well rounded individual that people come to for advice and offers it and naturally from the start fits into the leader role even with resistance he gets from Steiner and later Garnet due to his own actions. You could argue that they go out their way to help people but that's a such a generic trait of a good-willed protagonist but swap the roles of Wuk Lamat and Zidane in their respective games and it'd be a completely different story, I don't see them being similar at all.

I would love to hear the Necron part of the of Queen Eternal's theme if you don't mind just telling me what section of their song plays if you will, IX is my favourite FF game I'd love to hear it (and can't believe I would have missed it, unless it's incredibly subtle).

But again I feel that the while there are similarities the major themes of the story are just so mismatched that DT heavily pushes forward the community/culture as opposed to the theme of IX even the character journey don't match for any character that's supposedly a parallel to their IX counterpart.
It's like people think that "This is DT re-telling the story of XI" when really they using material in a way that fans of IX can enjoy it and those who never played IX would be oblivious to it even being a reference and not be lost.

The only time I thought this went a bit too far was in EW's .1-.4 patches.
Though that might be a detriment to be playing the game before, I am not sure how it'd affect people who haven't played IV but I do know people who have not touched IX(or interested FF in general) and they didn't know any better for the IX references in this game.

[Jojoya]

The problem isn't the fan service as such.

The problem is how poorly they incorporate the fan service into the game at times and how much players who want to relive the old FF games then turn around and spoil things for those who haven't played them. Too many players of the other games want to show off their knowledge without regard to how that knowledge can turn out to be a spoiler for others.

I'll be fair - this is not a fault that is limited to FFXIV. Just about every game I've ever played that tries to incorporate some sort of fan service outside of out of the way Easter eggs fails to do it well. As much as some players might ask for fan service, they rarely end up pleased with the result. There are almost always complaints about how it didn't do justice to the original.

Better to leave the fan service to the non-canon crossover events that are totally separate from the lore and story of the game's world if it's necessary to add it.

[Fawkes]

I say this because I find the best stories in FFXIV are the original ones, it's almost is they're shy to just write an original story but when they did, it was the best one.

Didn't Natsuko Ishikawa say a big part of the inspiration for Shadowbringers was older FF games that she grew up on? It definitely has that same kind of story progression.