Quote Originally Posted by Eraden View Post
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.