But by ending with "It'll be fun to see the rage", you're saying that you're looking to getting a rise out of people. That would be flamebait, regardless of how much time you put into it.

no, that means that, given the content involved, I acknowledge that it doesn't matter how logical or rational I am, people are gonna be upset about it, so I might as well enjoy it.  

Tends to happen whenever you go about subjective things oh so strongly. That would certainly garner a reaction from people whose argument only has to be "I disagree" to be just as correct.

There will always  be people who disagree.  I know people who actually think Battlefield Earth was a good movie, or that The Green Lantern was a masterpiece.  People will argue for the sake of argument. 

Someone who doesn't expect Final Fantasy to be the same as 7 or 8 or 6. I just don't get why you would want it to be the same as any past Final Fantasy. I have enjoyed most Final Fantasy games and i actually play other SE games and I don't judge the whole company soley on FF. They make plenty of other games than those.

Well, if you had seen my post history, you'd know that I consider FFVII to be the most overrated game of all time and one of the worst games in the series. FFVIII was just plain bad. So I wouldn't want any new Final Fantasy, or any other game for that matter, to be like them. I did/do like FFVI. It's not my favorite game in the series but I do consider it one of the best.

What used to make Final Fantasy so great was the combination of great characters, story, and immersive/imaginative setting. FFXIII surpassed FFVII as my least favorite game in the series and I actually think it had one of the best settings in the series. The setting itself was fine. The lore contained in the datalogs was compelling. Unfortunately I found the cast to be some of the worst characters I've had the misfortune of experiencing in the genre. Hope and Vanille were especially atrocious. Despite having such great lore, the story to FFXIII was anything but compelling, and the dialog was so bad that it was unitentionally hilarious at times.

makes me happy and will glady buy the game, but lighting better be the only star of the damn game.
also for me i love ff10-2, since ff10 is my 2nd favorite ff game ever and hoping it gets a hd remaster like ff10 is .

I never said you thought FF 7 was the best. I was talking about the overall community how they praise FF 7 as being the best game in the franchise. Personally i think FF 10 is the best, although i agree with you about the characters (none have been as memorable as Cloud, Tifa, and Sepherioth) I personally have enjoyed the lightning games. Vanille was awful, Hope was annoying and Sazh and Snow were meh but i some how got past the poor characters and enjoyed the story. 13-2 was better some what in the regard of characters i liked Yuel and Ciaus but found serah a little annoying. Noel i have no comment on.

So what do you guys think they mean by this "new direction" ?

A friend of mine suggested that maybe they will go for an action rpg with Lighting to bridge the gap between XIII and Versus XIII.

Any ideas ?

I can totally see a ARPG with Lightning being the only playable character but I want to see a return to form with the battle system. The FFXIII battle system was amazing...then in XIII-2 you could just mash X and win as the difficulty was zero. 

Then a new direction could mean a different system...3DS or Vita

Or a new direction could mean a CGI film or interactive novel instead of a game.

Or a new direction could mean the band NEW DIRECTION will make the theme song..YAY