FFXIV draws too heavily on wow

[Jeeqbit]

Mao heard from friend whats played FFXIV 1.0 that designer of FFXIV 1.0 ignored what was learned from other MMOs and decided to "reinvent the wheel".

Ignored what was learned from other MMOs, that is correct. They didn't even play any other MMOs or do any market research.

However, a quick analysis of 1.0 and of FF11 makes it pretty obvious that they were trying to make FF11 version 2, because there are a lot of similarities between the two games. They did need a version 2 because I think that FF11's engine wasn't able to be salvaged (it seems they concluded it wouldn't hold up to future technology as early as 2005 because that's when FF14 development started and it's evident by the fact they gave up trying to port it).

There are some examples of less rigid ideas than 2.x had, for sure, but mostly it was taking inspiration from what the team knew (FF11).

It's not like they are incapable of doing things completely differently. They recreated FF15 and FF16 mechanics for the crossover events and they recreated Monster Hunter and Fall Guys. They made Deep Dungeons. And many of them worked on FF11 itself. It's just a choice to do it the current way.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Maybe Square should start and copy more from wow, so we have a real meta, good dungeons, nice open world content, nice chances for grind etc etc etc, because final is lacking in every aspect compared to wow

[Post]

I don't think they fully appreciated a lot of the variety the earlier versions of FFXIV (from 2.0, I mean) had because it aped so much of WoW when trying to turn things around.

At least as far as the battle system goes (including job design), many earlier dungeons, raids and trials brought more elements from RPG games to the table because they did so in WoW. As time has gone on, many elements have been "streamlined" away and they've focused on making more fights like Titan, more fights like a8s and fewer fights like Ramuh Ex, Ifrit Ex or a5s.

Whichever type most players prefer, over the years it has led to less variety in encounters and jobs and them trying to pass off FFXIV as a more traditional action game than as a hotkey based MMO, which it is not. I don't think it will easily or cheaply become a pure action game because the foundation wasn't built with that in mind. Many players tend to think of WoW as more responsive and fun on a moment to moment level in combat and I think that's heavily tied up with its generally better ping, and even despite that they tend to have more RPG elements than FFXIV at this point. And, while many enjoy (or even prefer) FFXIV's pseudo fighting game action timings involving "combo strings" of longer action chains and weaving abilities between spells/weaponskills, many in that system also cheat to increase the frames and time they have they can do these actions without clipping their GCD using add-ons, so I'm not positive that gameplay alone is enough to carry the battle system, especially as it gets more and more similar with the 2min meta singularity.