Innovation in gaming?

[Keiichi Morisato]

I have been hearing a lot lately that video games have become stale, or a certain video game franchise has gotten stale, even though the mechanics are polished to a shine and the stories are compelling in some of these franchise. which has prompted some companies to completely screw over what made a game popular in order to "innovate" and/or "to appeal to a broader audience". my question is, what in a video game you want innovated? talk about what you want in like Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, to be innovated? because I am genuinely curios as those franchises (in my opinion) are fine the way they are, they just need better story telling or new places to explore.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Is Final Fantasy really a series that's criticized for stagnating? I mean, sure, some people think it hit a bit of a dork age but that isn't because it's doing to same thing over and over.

The closest it's ever been to doing the same thing over and over was in FF IV-IX, since they all used the same basic ATB combat system. But even then, they all had completely different balancing, progression systems, settings and plots.

FF's problem is that XII and XIII were divisive (personally, love XII, dislike XIII) and All The Bravest and the original XIV were shit. All of those games are completely different to each other, though, and now XV is going for a fully real-time combat system with a traditional world map, apparently.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

Is Final Fantasy really a series that's criticized for stagnating? I mean, sure, some people think it hit a bit of a dork age but that isn't because it's doing to same thing over and over.

The closest it's ever been to doing the same thing over and over was in FF IV-IX, since they all used the same basic ATB combat system. But even then, they all had completely different balancing, progression systems, settings and plots.

FF's problem is that XII and XIII were divisive (personally, love XII, dislike XIII) and All The Bravest and the original XIV were shit. All of those games are completely different to each other, though, and now XV is going for a fully real-time combat system with a traditional world map, apparently.

I have had arguments given to me that it has. I honestly think that S-E has an identity crisis with FF, they keep changing things to appeal to a broader audience, when they should just do what they have always done, and make good games "stale" or not.