Honestly, What's the verdict for you?

[Jeeqbit]

Or it could be not doing new stuff is stagnating the game?
MMO's have to innovate or fall behind, ff14 has not innovated nearly enough

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Whether those were well implemented is another story, but they at least reserve capacity in their schedule for experiments.

Then I learned that you loose exp and levels on failure, and I immediately noped out - not going to deal with that sort of garbage mechanic.

I don't get why. Just do a few FATEs and CEs and you're back to max level. It's not even a big deal. In Shadowbringers, when we got Zadnor, I think just 1 or 2 Skirmish was enough to return all the lost EXP. That takes no time at all.

Consequences for dying are meant to be part of video games, and it's weird that people think that when you mess up that you should continue to be invincible and succeed.

It's also there for social reasons, by the way. Almost always, someone will resurrect you and this will prevent you losing levels and EXP. Although rare, sometimes people die far away from other players while searching for treasure - which thus makes it social because they have to ask in /shout or /party for a resurrection. Social interaction is obviously the point. And if you find that hard? Just do a few CEs and you're back to max level - the CEs don't even take into account level so it doesn't affect the content you're doing anyways.

Or me finally losing interest when 8.0 turns out to be the same uninspired nonsense as DT

To be fair, they said what their inspiration was (AI), and well, clearly Cyberpunk and westerns. It's just an obnoxious and overbearing mix, with the shift in theme so sudden and drastic that it's hard to appreciate.

[Basteala]

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Chaotic Sure. Kinda. It's like Savage with Alliance Raid. How innovative is that really?

The other two we haven't seen yet.

[SophiaDL]

They might not innovate enough but they do try new things each expansion, technically:

• ARR: everything that was in ARR
• HW: Normal/Savage, Diadem, Deep Dungeons, Squadrons
• SB: Ultimates, Blue Mage, Eureka (Diadem-like area) being tied to relic, Logos Actions, Command Missions (squadrons), Doman Mahjong
• ShB: Ishgard Restoration, Trusts, CEs, Ocean Fishing
• EW: Variant, Criterion, Island Sanctuary, introducing single player-esk mechanics into an MMO (story NPCs following you like FF8, proximity following NPCs, a Metal Gear Solid duty, or In From the Cold).
• DT: Chaotic, Beastmaster, apparently the Deep Dungeon will work differently

Whether those were well implemented is another story, but they at least reserve capacity in their schedule for experiments.
I don't get why. Just do a few FATEs and CEs and you're back to max level. It's not even a big deal. In Shadowbringers, when we got Zadnor, I think just 1 or 2 Skirmish was enough to return all the lost EXP. That takes no time at all.

Consequences for dying are meant to be part of video games, and it's weird that people think that when you mess up that you should continue to be invincible and succeed.

It's also there for social reasons, by the way. Almost always, someone will resurrect you and this will prevent you losing levels and EXP. Although rare, sometimes people die far away from other players while searching for treasure - which thus makes it social because they have to ask in /shout or /party for a resurrection. Social interaction is obviously the point. And if you find that hard? Just do a few CEs and you're back to max level - the CEs don't even take into account level so it doesn't affect the content you're doing anyways.
To be fair, they said what their inspiration was (AI), and well, clearly Cyberpunk and westerns. It's just an obnoxious and overbearing mix, with the shift in theme so sudden and drastic that it's hard to appreciate.

There's so many of those new things !

The things in question :

Old thing A mixed with old thing B
Old thing C mixed with old thing D
Old thing E mixed with old thing F

"See it's brand new and innovative !"

[Asari5]

i blame stagnation and streamlining.

there is barely any friction anywhere and everything kinda feels the same.

im part of a very casual static. its fun with them and they are the reason i've overcome the urge to unsub several times over the last year.
but more than ever i think about leaving that group. not because im more than ever bored of the game. im not. but because raiding got so boring over the years. its all more or less the same but jobs get more and more streamlined.
the add phase in the second fight is fun and i do enjoy it, but thats it.
getting another kill for some equipment im gonna replace next tier anyway or even a first kill of a new boss doesnt get me excited anymore.

i dont wanna start about the story. i didnt enjoy 7.0.

daylies are all the same too. beast tribe quests? 2-3min per quest... even faster when skipping the dialoge

and roulettes? crystal tower? msq roulette? no chance of getting me into these lullabies.
levelling is better, but dungeons are all the same corridors anyway.

there are no stakes in game play, no friction and no variety and therefore its less satisfactory and less exciting to do something.

its probably partially because i've played this game for too long. but thats just part of it

[PercibelTheren]

Not just your FC. Our FC and my friend list both have people who haven't been on in months and most of the rest is just raidlogging. I think a big part of this is the stretched out time between patches and generally content with little longevity/bad balancing in content difficulty. If you cater almost exclusively to high-end raiders for the FIRST YEAR of an expansion, casual players will dip because there's nothing for them to do. That and the game is just painfully formulaic. Job reworks have been systematically lobotomising jobs to make room for DDR gameplay. And the MSQ in Dawntrail was a garbage fire. Honestly, if not for the handful of friends who do still log in, I'd be gone, too. And when they go, so will I.

[Carin-Eri]

I'm still not quite there in terms of experiencing the lack of interest that others here are talking about.

I'm one of the few forumites here who doesn't think Dawntrail was a catastrophe. Was it as good as Shadowbringers? Nooo. Was it as good as Endwalker (which I, personally loved)? Nope. But I enjoyed what 7.0 gave us for the most part - to be honest I just immersed myself in the story and didn't really reflect on the positives and negatives until afterward; and really enjoyed the direction the story took with 7.2.

I don't enjoy crafting, so the whole 'space' thing was never anything I was going to invest any time in.

Occult Crescent is a mixed bag - I like it in itself, although found the Atma drop-rate insulting and the phantom jobs of limited interest.

Otherwise, teamed with a group of friends to play Recollection Extreme and cleared it last night. Had a blast with that!

So yeah - still finding things to keep me invested.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Or it could be not doing new stuff is stagnating the game?
MMO's have to innovate or fall behind, ff14 has not innovated nearly enough

Innovation doesnt work with the current FFXIV Community. I mean take a look at the Phantom Jobs its something new and people already complaining like shit, you know how new things in the world are innovated? with trial & error, experiements and fails but the FFXIV Community doesnt even give Square the Room for Fails and Experiments because the moment something is only 1% off like 99% is perfect 1% is bad, i guarantee you the people here will focus on the single 1% not the 99% which is good

[SophiaDL]

Innovation doesnt work with the current FFXIV Community. I mean take a look at the Phantom Jobs its something new and people already complaining like shit, you know how new things in the world are innovated? with trial & error, experiements and fails but the FFXIV Community doesnt even give Square the Room for Fails and Experiments because the moment something is only 1% off like 99% is perfect 1% is bad, i guarantee you the people here will focus on the single 1% not the 99% which is good

I mean take a look at the Phantom Jobs its something new and people already complaining like shit

Probably because its pointless and boring?

[Daralii]

Innovation doesnt work with the current FFXIV Community. I mean take a look at the Phantom Jobs its something new and people already complaining like shit, you know how new things in the world are innovated? with trial & error, experiements and fails but the FFXIV Community doesnt even give Square the Room for Fails and Experiments because the moment something is only 1% off like 99% is perfect 1% is bad, i guarantee you the people here will focus on the single 1% not the 99% which is good

Phantom Jobs are a new iteration of logograms and lost actions that are better in that they aren't consumables, but worse in that there is no customization, very few actions that synergize with existing job kits, and very few that alter the basic gameplay at all. It has also been nearly 7 years since the first version of the system released(4.45 and Eureka Pyros released in November 2018), with this being the fifth version of it. The next batch of phantom jobs will be out around February if they do not slow down, which goes back to the problem with your point about the community not "letting" them iterate: it takes them fucking forever to do anything and it's frequently one step forward, two steps back.

[Uki]

After witnessing the project auto-completion from the Cosmic Exploration i decided to stop playing the game daily.You know it's bad when the game auto-completes your content instead of leaving it be so the players can finish it when they feel like to.

It clearly shows that the QA team(if theres one) are not doing their job properly.Either that or they're just new hires.

My veredict is that they have 2 options: either push the big red emergency button (add TONS Final Fantasy 7 stuff in the next expansion in order to attract the fanboys) or just let it die slowly like Final Fantasy 11.