the sphinx lady in dragon's dogma 2

🫶 time to render

but to ur point with the msq handholding i feel they're defanging even some of their older games if they can pitch it right because they essentially rewrote cid highwind for FFVII rebirth because idk no one likes a millennial burnout with some anger issues that's ~too problematic~

absolutely, the bulk of the audience until shadowbringers were people who'd played at least one other FF title (and now the goal for the inclusion of some content is to funnel players for whom XIV is their first FF into buying and playing other titles)

no i could stand to hear more (but not publicly because my god, your mentions). but it is 100% true because SE does not exist in a vacuum and is not immune to the same issues

meanwhile ARR launched during a time of real financial stress for the company (and let's be real they still aren't as revered as they were in the VII-XII days), so in some essence i don't think it ever got the chance to just be its own little MMO in the same way

this is a bit of a stretch, but i've remarked to friends before that i think XIV becoming the load bearing source of income for SE puts it under a level of scrutiny FFXI never had to be, because many an XI player loves that world and its political nuance, but XI launched during a high point for SE

a lot of folks blame the writers and that they are just 'bad at their jobs' but imo that really glosses over administrative interference and the relationship of players to this game