I just can't get myself excited about Dawntrail. maybe it's an age thing but it feels like the lead-up to Endwalker was just recently, I remember being real hyped for Reaper and disappointed at how brainless it was. the game feels like it's falling into the same homogenization trap that WoW did ages ago. I'm one of those spergs that plays every class, but these days, I log on and think about doing roulettes, or Thaleia, or whatever, and I look at at my job set list, and I just default to my old faithful, Black Mage. but not because I'm really excited to play it in this new content, it's more that it's the only job that has even a hint of dynamism left. tanks and healers just feel like shitty discount DPS classes. the actual DPS classes are almost all the same shallow rotation cycle or just spamming your filler buttons until your gauges fill.
I wish, more than anything, that they would make healing an actual job. I went back to WoW for Dragonflight, briefly, due to some friends begging me to come play, and that game's only saving grace is that healing classes still take effort to play. healers in WoW actually have to continually cast healing spells, pay attention to the party's situation, react on the fly, and intelligently utilize downtime, rather than just spamming the same DPS button until a mechanic happens. the dungeon design, too, even in its modern degenerated state, still shows a spark of the old soul WoW had. the dungeons that aren't oppressively scripted shitfests are actual explorable zones rather than a completely linear theme park ride that plays out the same every time. you still have to worry about being smart with pulls, positioning, not drawing adds, and the like.
the problem is that everything else about WoW is repulsive. FF14 is far from a masterclass at this point but it's still got a ways to go before it's as far gone as WoW. what it needs more than anything is some of that dynamism. make classes that don't boil down to spamming the same shit every time in 30, 60, 120 sec loops. make dungeons where pulls take more effort than just running into them and spamming your AOE rotation. make story quests that offer more than just clicking on a bunch of sparkles and then watching a cutscene. back in 1.0, the story quests were actually dangerous. sometimes you had to sneak past mobs that could easily eat you alive to get deep into a zone. sometimes you had to make a difficult dungeon run. sometimes you needed some help to wade through the murderous wilderness in between you and your objective. bosses were hard. success was not guaranteed to the most retarded members of the flock. where the fuck did all that go? Yoshida got too afraid of alienating people and he's slowly ground down his masterpiece into an overly predictable borefest. every part of this game is so settled in its rut. new content is just a quick coat of paint on the old. every 4 man dungeon: trash pull, boss, trash pull, boss, trash pull, boss. every 8 man raid: learn the synchronized swimming routine and mash your DPS buttons until it dies. 24 mans, trials, even all the side content, if it's not just another iteration of something that's been done before, it's a very slight modification. Criterion Dungeons, Island Sanctuary. even this expansion's relic weapons feel like they just fucking gave up. this kind of oversimplification and homogeneity, and the devs' refusal to acknowledge it as a problem, is ultimately what killed WoW. I hope Yoshida recognizes the peril before it gets that far.
