At first it was supposed to be coming in 7.0, then that got corrected to mean that it is supposed to be coming in 7.2.

We now have half an expansion's worth of "improved encounter design", but genuinely, how the hell is this any different than before? Take the latest extreme trial for example. Nothing in that fight is novel, other than arguably yet another round of dynamo vs chariot, but you add a wild charge to it. And the rest of the fight is genuinely not even worth mentioning. It's 2026 and we still can't move beyond the pair/light-party read-the-mechanic-name-to-resolve-correctly paradigm. In Stormblood, the devs actually tried new things out, like Byakko's orb dodges, even if it was gimmicky.

The newest dungeon is even worse. It's almost like we have regressed since 7.0. Compare the 7.5 dungeon to Tender Valley. Tender Valley actually dared to stack multiple mechanics together (for example, bombs through pipes + spreads) and is faster-paced than whatever snoozefest there was in 7.5 -- puppet manipulation is a literal 11-second cast.

As for the Savages, I see we have just completely given up on anything other than "figure out what debuffs you have, then go to the assigned spot for your role/debuff". It was first novel in A8S and O4S, maybe O12S, but it's like we literally cannot design anything other than memorize-the-spot/use-a-second-monitor Hello World-style mechanics for the last turn. Well, I guess this time it has the barest of camouflage, in that instead of the debuffs appearing on your status bar, you have a clone storing your "debuff". *clap*

So when I see people being hyped by 8.0, I really have to wonder what the hell SE has done in the last two expansions to deserve any benefit of the doubt? Don't get me wrong, the evolved job concept can in principle be the shakeup that FF14 needs, and this time it actually looks meatier than all of the 'promises' they gave in the last two expansions. But we have, at this point, a decade of "shakeups" that pan out to be nothing consequential.