This is actually something that worries me far more long-term than badly written Mary Sues DMPCs. None of the writers working on XIV seem to be able to write long-term anymore. In 1.0 / ARR, each City State had its fair share of background conflicts (refugee crisis, Ishgard isolationism, Empire shenanigans and of course the Beast Tribes) that weren't solved and could take center stage anytime, and in some case did. Everything since post-EW (arguably post ShB) has closed more than it has opened. The Void is a non-factor, the Twelve will never appear again, Emet's list is already almost done. Tural is magnitudes bigger than Eorzea but feels narratively so small in comparison. We're not even one MSQ into our new arc we already have a dimension hopper as if the writers feel like Etheirys is a deadend. 8.0 will probably be better than 7.0, but every story from now on being "follow the new character in nth Continent / Shard and help him solve the entire regional conflict forever" really doesn't inspire me.

FFXIV needed to end at EW and make XIV-2 or whatever mainline number they want it to be.

Any game, even an MMO, needs a refresh once a fucking decade and I don't think this is some wild or crazy god damn concept to throw out there. WoW needed a WoW 2 however many years ago, XIV needed an XIV-2 where DT is instead.

The coding problems, the "we can't really wring anything else out of this setting" problems, the absolute completely different gameplay between ARR/HW and the rest of the game, problems in the early game with player retention because it's quite literally a "It gets *slightly better* gameplay wise 20 hours from the start" type of issue where the only thing they could do to "fix" it was to make it fucking F2P.

A rank hunts have been broken for the greater portion of a decade or an outright decade now, old systems like command squadrons were remade with trusts then remade again for Duty Supports, high player count absolutely eviscerates the entire game by fucking with not only the gameplay but the literal graphical playability since the engine doesn't handle it for shit, it's in the phase of "post game" story wise for a FF where the "Attack" command is all 9999s and there's no real way to change that hence why there will never be another long term antagonist, this shit was on PS3 which ended compatibility with PS4 and now it's reaching the point where the PS4 version will end compatibility for PS5.

Holy fuck, just restart us on another reflection as their version of a WoL and move on or truly start over from scratch with only the overarching basic themes still being retained. Feel like I'm taking fucking crazy pills over here.