Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something...

[Wolf Kanno]

...cool? The premise is simple, in terms of future FF games, what is something old the series did you would love to see come back, something completely new, and finally something borrowed from another game series.

[maybee]

Come back : Turn Based System pls

New : Would love to see a underwater FF, like Bioshock

Borrowed : Vocal Battle Themes from Persona

[KleinerKiller]

Old: Turn-based combat. I'm fine with active stuff, but their implementation of it seems to be getting worse by the game -- the combat was one of my least favorite parts of XV. I like having time to strategize and being able to properly manage my party's abilities.

New: A main female player character who isn't stoic and nearly emotionless, maybe? I love Terra as much as anyone, but the only other female lead is Lightning. More variety, please. Let's have a player character like Tifa or Rydia or Ashe.

Borrowed: Tough one, but I'd kind of love it if the next game borrowed GTA V's seamless button-press swapping between third-person and first-person play. It's not often that you get to see a gorgeous FF world directly through a character's eyes, and I think it'd be at least something cool to have.

[Sephiroth]

New: A main female player character who isn't stoic and nearly emotionless, maybe? I love Terra as much as anyone, but the only other female lead is Lightning. More variety, please. Let's have a player character like Tifa or Rydia or Ashe.



Lightning is far from nearly emotionsless. She is distanced because of the mentality she had to used to for Serah but also very grumpy often. Being grumpy is not being nearly emotionless. And all that grumpyness and sorrow comes from way more so whenever people try to pin her down to something like "emotionless" this is not really accurate.

Old: Overworld Map
New: Sidequest Ideas
Borrowed: Drakengard's Keiichi Okabe as Composer

[Wolf Kanno]

Something Old - World Maps: I'm starting to think that the movement to seamless world design is what ultimately has led the series into pacing issues and poor dungeon design. I feel if we just ditched the concept of "realism" the designers would have to be forced to really work to make the dungeons a bit more exciting and perhaps the pacing of the game would be easier since we're no longer trying to make two locations feel realistically far enough apart to not screw with suspension of disbelief. Then again, I may just want to finally have a real airship again.

Something New - Better World Building: The series has always had interesting worlds, but lately, they have not been told well. I don't really want to have some old dude info drop everything for me, nor am I really wanting to stop playing the game to spend twenty minutes reading all of the datalogs. I wish the series could find a more organic way to make the world detailed and feel alive, like better NPCs or perhaps just some new means of dispensing important info without jerking me back to the reality that I'm playing a game.

Something Borrowed - Diverging story points (Chrono series): I was originally going to say "take MegaTen's Press Turn combat system" but figured SE would water it down into something boring and meaningless like FFX's CTB system. Instead, I wouldn't mind being given story choices that actually affect the plot, even if only a little. I'm not asking for a Persona style "two stories, one game approach" nor do I wish to venture into a boring "evil/good" moral system with dialogue changes. I'm talking about choices that can net you new characters, have you explore a different dungeon/town, or alter NPCs/party members on a permanent basis.

[FFNut]

Something Old: I am torn between a world map, and turn based systems. The world map I want for just the pure joy of exploration and finding hidden little places. Turn based battles because Square had that mastered, their active battle systems really haven't been very impressive so far, and has felt clunky.

Something New: I would like to see them add to the world around them. Maybe rival hero's that will take your quests if you wait to long to do them. Or possibly have the NPC's have more of a life then the... "Hello, I run the inn. It will cost you 25Gil a night. Would you like a room"?

Something Borrowed: I first saw this in Breath of Fire II, then saw Skyrim do this well also with their Hearthfire DLC. Build your own homes and towns! A custom area for the hero's custom built bye the player to his likes. In Breath of Fire II's case, The town doubled as the airship if you showed mercy to a man who ended up being Ryu's father.

[Vermachtnis]

Old: Jobs and subjobs. I love customizing my team with this stuff. And by customizing I mean breaking the game in fun ways.

New: An evolving main character. Sometimes you pick options and the more silly options or serious options, it changes their voice clips in battle and how others act towards them.

Borrowed: Social links for a lack of a better word. Getting to know the world better and getting bonuses for the party. Since in games with job systems the party is limited to four or three this is needed. Combined with the above the social links would be different from playthroughs.

[Pumpkin]

Old: ATB and job systems

New: Some type of "free time" event system

Borrowed: Better character interactions, like Tales does. The casts tend to revolve around 2 or 3 characters whereas in Tales each character has their own relationships and I love that. Could also do a social link system like Vermachtnis said

[Yubel-Lover]

Something Old: More variety in the maps. Let's look at FFIV as an example: you have the regular world map, you can go underground, you can go to the moon... Something to make the exploring more exciting and diverse.

Something New: The possibility to make choices that actually influence the story and let you unlock alternate endings depending on what you choose. Also a "reputation system": by doing certain missions you can increase your reputation and gain advantages (for example buying stuff at a reduced price at specific shops) and viceversa.

Something Borrowed: if they keep going for the action route I'd like to have different fighting styles, like Devil May Cry 3, each character with his/her own styles and weapons.