Quote Originally Posted by SkizzleAbernath View Post
I’m genuinely trying to understand why this mindset exists how this game drifted so far from its foundation
People saying it drifted from its foundation is not about it being a "WoW clone". It's about how they "fixed" a lot of things by simply removing problematic or annoying mechanics, and not replacing them with anything new, simplifying and trivializing the entire game over time. Elements, damage types, job synergy with damage types/MP sharing/TP sharing, MP management, enmity management, positionals mattering, nuances (things doing more than just damage requiring you to actually read the tooltip).

Ironically, some of the complaints are about it not moving from its foundations - there have been many issues since the game was created that we let slide because we figured they'd get solved at some point. Of course they'd solve this or that issue by the time it's been 10 years, right? But here we are, 12 years later, with a lot of issues unsolved that anyone with programming knowledge would have solved in that time.
Before anyone jumps in with the classic “this isn’t a WoW clone” response there’s literally an interview where Yoshi-P told his team to study and play WoW, since it was the top-selling MMORPG at the time.
Well yes but they didn't even manage to make it the same as WoW. If you want a WoW clone, I'd suggest playing SWTOR. That's a game that actually pulled off the feat of copying WoW to the letter.
shouldn’t whatever you create still be unique?
After 2.0 release, this game drifted from WoW and just kinda added whatever was logical in response to players. It is possible some of these logical responses were also happening to WoW but it's pretty obvious that SE have been ignoring WoW for a long, long time. Yoshi-P had no idea WoW had a housing update, for example, and recently was surprised when an interviewer brought it up.
These days, FFXIV feels like a ghost town people don’t socialize, don’t chat, and many just log in to maintain their houses.
It's pretty simple why. SE just adds content with an expiry date. For example, you farm a mount from an extreme trial and then you're done, never to touch it again. What made older MMORPGs strong was their focus being on adding replayable systems that involved work and social interaction, rather than "content".

Requiring a player to craft for you is an example, something that you can't get from the market board or elsewhere. PvP is the most obvious example. Chocobo Racing with players, Triple Triad PvP, are examples that currently exist. Systems that make players rely upon eachother, have to socially interact, and therefore create a different experience every time, which makes it different every time and enjoyable to do again.

Helping new players was also a fundamental part of older games that made them fun to replay. It wasn't about you, it was about the new players. Helping them get their first steps and being the tutorial because these games didn't know how to help them with that. There are FCs that do this still, but it can be largely ignored by those players with Duty Support, Duty Finder. Raids being either extremely easy or being so hard that there are wipes due to a single mistake, with mechanics that disincentivise helping people clear savage (losing chest loot), makes it harder to get people into raiding, the main thing they spend development resources on.