What are your unrealistic expectations for the upcoming Combat Live Letter?

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Originally Posted by Vandso

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the drg rework we were promised

I echo the same sentiment of hoping that the pvp DRG stuff gets brought over to the pve version, the limit break for that fulfills the "dragoon" job fantasy far better than most things in the current kit rn IMO

I'm praying that DRG doesn't become a reskinned RPR, and I'm hoping that its timings get more sane because right now they are just so awkward (nastrond only being able to cast like three times while it's up).

My unrealistic expectations is that I'd love for AST to become, straight up, a deckbuilder with each arcana being a specific buff that you can randomly get and hold onto for a limited hand (maybe 3 cards?), and SMN getting the ability to augment its 3-gem cast via effects from later primals. For instance, getting the option to apply Ramuh or Ravana to all gems for that bout of rotation and resetting when they're used up. My even more unrealistic expectation is that healer DPS is more than spamming one button until your hand falls off lol. SGE is already actually a good example of how they can make that work - having buttons like toxicon that are reliant on your healing/shield effects in real time more closely ties in the healing/dps duality.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

No butt-capes on new armour sets.

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depending on whether they've reworked how clothing physics worked, we might actually get this.

Cap aoe skills in pvp to 5 targets

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I've had thoughts in the past in that you don't necessarily need to remove the raid wide buffs, just change them to only affect the damage of the user, and not just by a flat % buff. It is more that, you buff your allies and they provide the resources for the user.

Take Brotherhood and Arcane Circle. Take away the 5/3% damage increase and you are left with buffs that only increase the damage of the user, but rely on the other members of the party to make full use of. In the case of Monk, any GCD has a chance to provide a Chakra and for Reaper, getting a stack of Immortal Sacrifice.

This was all in my thoughts overall that, in order to get away from the 2 minute meta completely and push jobs into different playstyles, you need to have each job be selfish, but the above idea was a way to still allow parties to rely on team mates to help them do more damage, whilst not needing to be reliant on having to fit them into 2 minute buff windows (or any buff windows except the user).

Alternatives are, rather than having full selfish, make it more of a 50/50 split. Say, SAM/DRG/VPR are the selfish melees and MNK/RPR/NIN are more party damage orientated (so they still have party wide damage increases).

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Because I don't actively participate in savage and ultimate encounters, I can only speak from a preferential standpoint. It's easy for me to say, "Just take the raid buffs away." But I really don't know how this would affect the raid scene. However, I really like the idea that the kind of support any particular job/role brings to the party is heavily based on what is innate to that job/role. That's why I say tanks bring mitigation, ranged/magical DPS bring DPS support, and melee DPS have strong self-buffs, but I know in the back of my head that it is not that simple due to current encounter design.

I also know that I do not like the 2-minute meta and how it forces not only job design, but also how the job plays. It also greatly limits the creativity the dev team can put into any of the game's jobs. But perhaps this is favorable to the dev team, because if they have a basic template to go off of then it makes their jobs easier. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this comes at the cost of unique, enjoyable, and engaging gameplay. As such, this direction needs to be corrected/avoided.

The game as advertised is supposed to function off of the holy trinity infrastructure. This means that players must rely on each other to obtain their clears. The dev team has deviated from this to the point that they either need to abolish roles entirely, or course correct back into allowing players to rely on other players. Current design is absolutely unacceptable in terms of the concept of job roles.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

In-Build XIV Alexander or No Clippy on ff14. I mean we got graphic update, I'm hoping some less spagetthi netcode.

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Straight up, if they don't fix the netcode in 8.0 you'll never convince me the devs listen to anyone outside of JP.

Most unrealistic? These won't be super original but...

- Tank self sustain nerfed into oblivion
- Sage being reworked to heal almost exclusively via kardia, more ways to apply kardia, and a super in-depth damage rotation
- Scholar's fairy being its main healing throughput source with the scholar themselves being the main shield-er. Also DoT's/debuffs are back
- WHM gets afflatus spells under 50
- Every job is more or less feature complete by 50
- Every new job is getting weapons for old ultimates
- Virtually all raid buffs are removed save those that are integral to a job's identity (tech step, bard songs, trick attack)
- Dungeons are no longer hallways. Also hard mode dungeons are back (leveling dungeons brought to max level with different/harder mobs and more mechanics. Similar difficulty to Ivalice Raids)
- 24 Man raids are actually hard and fun again
- Kaiten is back in some form or another
- Red Mage's resource management is made slightly more difficult
- Filler rotations are now more interactive and not just 1-2-3 over and over and over
- AST's rework is actually unique and fun, not just a WHM reskin.

[Mid-core difficulty]: Especially when it comes to raiding!
A way for casual players to dip into a bit higher difficuiltiy content
w/o it beeing too demanding in both time and effort.
More focus on fun/creative mech!

Multiple focus targets and the ability to pre-link individual skills to specific focus targets ;p

Lazy dragoon ftw.

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

I honestly hate how the majority of melee plays in this game.

So my unrealistic expectation is that it resembles something out of World of Warcraft in that it's based on procs instead of focusing on a buff that constant needs to be refreshed either by you pressing the buttons to do so or it's rotation refreshing it. I can't stand babysitting buffs, but that's me. I know I don't speak for everyone.

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I'm there with you man, buff baby-sitting isn't cool, high skill gameplay, it's just annoying, especially when there's no "do I / don't I use it" decision making, it's just mandatory. They were brave enough to change Enochian, maybe it will continue.

the DRG rework being a prank
and also more positionals for all melee

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

[Mid-core difficulty]: Especially when it comes to raiding!
A way for casual players to dip into a bit higher difficuiltiy content
w/o it beeing too demanding in both time and effort.
More focus on fun/creative mech!

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This word for word, describes EX encounters.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This word for word, describes EX encounters.

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It really isn’t, EX tips too heavily towards being savage light in the modern day

The closest thing we have to that sort of description would be ozma

Something harder than the Diablo armament but easier than your general extreme (also I’m not saying this because I’m bad at the game, I’m a savage raider I just don’t think EX is the right description)

Procs visible as auras on our character so that we don't have to look at the bar all the time. Let me look at my character more.

As someone mentioned putting certain things on the UI overlay, like MNK stances would be a nice QoL benefit, though I'd love to see them reflected in the 3d world as well.

I kind of get tired looking at the little buff and debuff icons. Doom should be highly visible on anyone who has it. If I'm an BRD, MCH or NIN with a sufficient gauge why not show my character as powered up somehow.

Also, I'd love all the split overlays to be merged like BLM is. I don't know why some of them are split and some are merged.

Also, until the netcode is fixed, please get rid of the NIN bunny or make it do something. The number of times I've done the button presses, but not to the satisfaction of the networking gods... grrr

And, no, I don't expect any of that to be fixed/changed.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It really isn’t, EX tips too heavily towards being savage light in the modern day

The closest thing we have to that sort of description would be ozma

Something harder than the Diablo armament but easier than your general extreme (also I’m not saying this because I’m bad at the game, I’m a savage raider I just don’t think EX is the right description)

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Not all EX are created equal. I can agree that mechanics such as enums/partner stacks, multiple heal checks in a small time frame, tether trading, limit cut, and tight enrages might be a bit much for the entry level into more difficult content. There are several encounters off the top of my head that I feel qualify though. Ravana, Sophia, Susano, and Hydaelyn aren't too demanding, but still punishing if you screw up the mechs. Players should have to coordinate and learn basic set ups such as clock spots, light party stacks, and role splits in these encounters, and EX is where it starts.

The fact that so many people are incapable of imagining a hypothetical content whose difficulty is (ON AVERAGE) higher than normal but lower than extreme is downright mind boggling.

wish it was something like "ohhh we changing combat , to a more action oriented instead of tab targeting" kinda like New genesis or even GW2

hey i can dream.... :(

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

[Mid-core difficulty]: Especially when it comes to raiding!
A way for casual players to dip into a bit higher difficuiltiy content
w/o it beeing too demanding in both time and effort.
More focus on fun/creative mech!

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This is exactly what extremes do. The gap between normal content and extremes leaves almost no room for a new tier.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

The fact that so many people are incapable of imagining a hypothetical content whose difficulty is (ON AVERAGE) higher than normal but lower than extreme is downright mind boggling.

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It's not that we can't imagine it, it's that it will be incredibly niche. Where are these players who want more difficulty than normal but can't handle extreme content?

-Healers get something to do beyond spamming their 1 keys.
-Less incoming damage that can be dodged. The dance should mitigate damage, not eliminate it.
-Change dances from a memorized sequence to modules that occur with randomness. E.g., if X then Y, not A happens then B, C, and D...
-Severe pruning of skills until every class comfortably fits their rotation in 20-25 buttons. Make timing matter more and bar stuffing matter less.
-Kill and bury the 2 minute meta.
-Eliminate tank sustain in instances.
-Eliminate Bard DOTs in favor of maintaining a self buff or two.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

This is exactly what extremes do. The gap between normal content and extremes leaves almost no room for a new tier.


It's not that we can't imagine it, it's that it will be incredibly niche. Where are these players who want more difficulty than normal but can't handle extreme content?

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There is 100% room for a tier that sits in the middle

Let’s imagine something that looks like T1 (binding coils turn 1)

A mini boss with mechanics, some interesting trash, then a boss

The mini boss could be something that acts like about the difficulty of a current top end normal raid (something like E8) with damage scaled up a bit to encourage mitigation, you could also add things like shield cheeses and cleanses or interrupts

The trash could look like criterion’s trash with a bit more leeway

The final boss could look something like ozma or the Diablo armament but with an enrage and mechanics that do more damage


So the collective teaches what you need to know about not falling asleep but mistakes of one person don’t spiral as hard as your average extreme, then you can reward gear stronger than casual but weaker than savage

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

The fact that so many people are incapable of imagining a hypothetical content whose difficulty is (ON AVERAGE) higher than normal but lower than extreme is downright mind boggling.

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At Stormblood launch, a lot of people were calling Shinryu a "baby extreme." It had dps checks that weren't too bad, but kept you on your toes. There was a "soft" enrage. One-shot mechanics. Mechanics where you had to interact with the environment, which changed throughout the fight.

This is the kind of difficulty we should have as a baseline for midcore content. Shinryu/Nidhogg/Ozma/TGC at launch. And then go up incrementally from there.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

The fact that so many people are incapable of imagining a hypothetical content whose difficulty is (ON AVERAGE) higher than normal but lower than extreme is downright mind boggling.

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Is Extreme not midcore already? How many levels can there be.

My wish for the game in general: Increase the server tick rate to make the AoE animations line up with damage snapshots. We had servers that updated 1000 times a second in CS 1.6 20 years ago with 32 players, I'm sure SE can pull it off it with 8 players with today's vastly faster computers.

My wish for my main: New LB3 animation, maybe something that looks like a bigger Passage of Arms. Job is fine otherwise.

It would be nice to hear about some low level reworks so key abilities like AoE are available much earlier for some classes. Hopefully this will be part of what happens in the DRG rework.

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Originally Posted by Moqi

Is Extreme not midcore already? How many levels can there be.

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I'd consider extremes to be midcore, even if I find the more recent phenomenon of body-check mechanics that bled over from savage into for example Voidcast Dais EX more annoying than anything. I already have to deal with 1 guy potentially resetting all progress in savage, I don't need it in extremes that I'm expected to farm like 50+ times.

The problem is with the onboarding process, the lack of a gradual difficulty curve. Because everything below extreme is so ridiculously easy that even extremes are a significant jump.

New players go from baby's first MMO content (MSQ, dungeons, treasure maps, hunts, alliance and normal raids), where you can faceroll to the finish line, straight into a brick wall that now suddenly expects precise positioning, individual responsibilities and the ability to keep up decent dps while you deal with mechanics in comparatively short timeframes.

I think there is a discrepancy between “midcore content in a generic MMO” and “midcore content in 14” entirely driven by how easy 14’s casual content is

If you put most extremes into WOW the WOW playerbase would characterise them as midcore however since 14’s casual content is so damn easy there is still a large enough gulf between the hardest casual content and extremes that it feels like it pushes extremes higher than they actually are

Either casual content needs to be made harder (which is what normal raids and alliance raids used to be as they were optional) or there needs to be another tier added in between like I explained above, you can argue what I explained isn’t really midcore by “generic MMO” standards but that gulf needs to be filled in 14

Brutal” dungeons should live up to their name a little better. It could represent an interesting transition between extreme and normal.

Otherwise:
- Enhance the dps cycle for healers, implement synergy between heal and dps.
- Raise limitation.
- Eliminate tank stance
- (Irrealistic) Shorter GCDs.
- Possibility of making visual effects less invasive. Currently the game sometimes looks like a pinball table, and I'd love to have a way of making the effects more transparent (without them being invisible).

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think there is a discrepancy between “midcore content in a generic MMO” and “midcore content in 14” entirely driven by how easy 14’s casual content is

If you put most extremes into WOW the WOW playerbase would characterise them as midcore however since 14’s casual content is so damn easy there is still a large enough gulf between the hardest casual content and extremes that it feels like it pushes extremes higher than they actually are.

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Well, what is it? In a previous post, you said EX are light savage. Now you're saying EX content is higher than they actually are.

One thing I think we can agree on is that casual content is too easy. Myths of the Realm were a complete joke, and Pandemonium was nothing like the Omega or Eden raids in terms of difficulty. Encounters like Deltascape v4.0, Alphascape V3.0, Eden's Gate: Sepulture, and Eden's Verse: Iconoclasm along with Alliance raids being around the level of Ivalice and NieR raids should be the standard. I actually enjoy doing these raids far more than current content despite the power creep present in them because they have mechanics where if you don't do them correctly, the power creep isn't going to save you.

The problem isn't that EX is too difficult to be considered midcore. The issue is casual content does not challenge players like it should. It's faceroll, and that's a big problem.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I'd consider extremes to be midcore, even if I find the more recent phenomenon of body-check mechanics that bled over from savage into for example Voidcast Dais EX more annoying than anything. I already have to deal with 1 guy potentially resetting all progress in savage, I don't need it in extremes that I'm expected to farm like 50+ times.

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This is a good point, I'd rather body check mechanics be left to Savage and up too. Midcore to me is "a competent player who watches a guide can farm it in PF with randos and little communication/planning" level difficulty.

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The problem is with the onboarding process, the lack of a gradual difficulty curve. Because everything below extreme is so ridiculously easy that even extremes are a significant jump.

New players go from baby's first MMO content (MSQ, dungeons, treasure maps, hunts, alliance and normal raids), where you can faceroll to the finish line, straight into a brick wall that now suddenly expects precise positioning, individual responsibilities and the ability to keep up decent dps while you deal with mechanics in comparatively short timeframes.

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This is the niche that optional but "normal" content should fill ("Hard Mode" endgame dungeons, normal raids, alliance raids, trial series sidequests, role quests) but they've neutered and cut so much content.

Red mage gets a real aoe finisher, and more ways to be mobile, mobs die so fast they sometimes get caught in non-casting loop, smn can at least swap to a faster carbuncle.

smn gets actual attacks in content below lvl 90, i actually like the job but it blows seeing different speeds of what is it? tridisaster? in almost everything under max level content.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Well, what is it? In a previous post, you said EX are light savage. Now you're saying EX content is higher than they actually are.

One thing I think we can agree on is that casual content is too easy. Myths of the Realm were a complete joke, and Pandemonium was nothing like the Omega or Eden raids in terms of difficulty. Encounters like Deltascape v4.0, Alphascape V3.0, Eden's Gate: Sepulture, and Eden's Verse: Iconoclasm along with Alliance raids being around the level of Ivalice and NieR raids should be the standard. I actually enjoy doing these raids far more than current content despite the power creep present in them because they have mechanics where if you don't do them correctly, the power creep isn't going to save you.

The problem isn't that EX is too difficult to be considered midcore. The issue is casual content does not challenge players like it should. It's faceroll, and that's a big problem.

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You misunderstand (edit correction I wrote my post badly my bad)

I meant that the 14 community specifically makes them out to be harder than they are because our casual content is so easy

Extremes are midcore to me, but the general community is more debatable

The way the 14 community defines midcore would probably lean more towards “difficult casual”, in this way the current extreme design leans too far towards savage light to be good bridging content

I also still think there is room between red girl and extremes

1. All healers will have more depth in their DPS rotations.
2. We are going to tone down warrior self-sustain and party-wide mitigation. We did not intend to over buff them. Our mistake.
3. We will bring back pet mechanics to SMN. We did not realize that the rework cured people's insomnia

New beastmaster announcement: "just kidding, it's not going to be a limited job, it will be a full one!"

Healers get reworked so their AoE healing capacity is reduced and they get more dps skills.

Tanks and dps have most of their self-healing and party mitigation removed.

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Originally Posted by HappyHubris

This is exactly what extremes do. The gap between normal content and extremes leaves almost no room for a new tier.


It's not that we can't imagine it, it's that it will be incredibly niche. Where are these players who want more difficulty than normal but can't handle extreme content?

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*raises hand and cries*

I don’t really care for more content of that nature though. I don’t bother with EX unless it’s unsynced. I’m here for casual-friendly stuff. So I would try it but I’m not looking for it.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The way the 14 community defines midcore would probably lean more towards “difficult casual”, in this way the current extreme design leans too far towards savage light to be good bridging content

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It's hard to compare FFXIV's encounter design to Warcraft, because they diverged ages ago.

Based off of what I remember, Warcraft tended to have stricter restrictions on battle raises, being on 10 minute cooldowns and only available on two or three classes. Contrast that with FFXIV's implementation, where Raise is ubiquitous, can be readily made instant cast, and Healer LB3 raises everyone at once. Auto damage is another influential factor as well, because a dead tank in Warcraft could lead into a string of oneshots.

When you take away these failure conditions, then fights continue until you hit a body check or enrage, so long as a couple of people know the mechanics. This means on average you will clear story mode content, irrespective of what the mechanics are, even if the player dies to the first mechanic and grabs a coffee while it plays out.

Extremes are essentially the lowest tier of content where there's any sort of failure condition present. There's no way to make the transition softer than that. If you wanted to make normal mode content more challenging, you could place variable restrictions on raises, similar to what we saw them experiment with in Criterion. But at some point in the difficulty curve you have to introduce in a mechanical pass-fail check that causes a raid wipe. If a player can't get over that fact psychologically, they're never going to put themselves in a place where they'll be challenged, regardless of how you brand the content difficulty level.

Limit Break 4 for all jobs at lv100 in 8 man content.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If a player can't get over that fact psychologically, they're never going to put themselves in a place where they'll be challenged, regardless of how you brand the content difficulty level.

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Except many of us can if the difficulty curve is smoother. It's not like the people who are failing miserably don't know they're failing miserably. There's a range between hard-fought and close but lost; and face-plant over and over with no feeling of progression. I definitely know people who aren't interested in anything remotely difficult, but there are a bunch of people who don't have the schedule for statics but are interested in pushing themselves with friends or just PF but have trouble finding stuff in the middle to get better at.

I'm also frustrated at how poor the combat log is in that it doesn't tell you what ability killed you. That's basic information that's kept from the player. The log just says, "You take [type] 4567 damage." I did raid in WoW back in the day and when I died, I would check to see what killed me so that I could focus on avoiding that. That's also not something I expect them to change. The combat log feels like an afterthought for the game.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This word for word, describes EX encounters.

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Ex doesn't have a set difficulty level, their difficulty is all over the places.
Also it's just one boss - barly any content at that.
To understand what i mean
one must have played other mmos than ffxiv,
since ffxiv doesn't have that which i define midcore.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

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It's not really about personal skill. You can learn any fight that you want with enough practice in PF, regardless of time/schedule constraints. As you learn more combinations of challenging mechanics across multiple fights, you progress through newer fights faster. I think if you just go into PF with the mindset that you want to see past the next mechanic, then you'll get there eventually. Even if you wipe prior to that point, you're still building up consistency. When you're consistent enough, the stars will align with the other seven players and you'll cross to the next prog point.

That's also how you can tell how far into a fight someone is. There's a complete difference in consistency between someone who is clear ready and someone who has just seen the mechanics and understands them on a theoretical level. You'll see that very quickly if you jump back into an earlier prog point just for a bit of extra practice.

It's not about difficulty. It's just that you have to face the discomfort of wiping and disbanding in order to progress and get better. It does help to do fights as close to release as possible, just because you'll get matched up with more consistent players. This is especially true for Savage tiers, where you save progression time by investing it early rather than late. But there's no 'challenge' without a failure condition and wipes, much like there's no 'platformer' without 'pitfalls'.

As for the in-game combat log, you have four panels, so you can easily customize one of them in the game settings to only filter through the relevant information. The problem with the default battle tab is that it gives you too much information. Debuffs are a really good one to pair with damage taken, because it often tells you what debuff was responsible for the lethal damage. You'll often see a double instance of damage if you take an effect under a vulnerability. Enemy casts are also useful because they give you a framework on what mechanic is happening at the time. This could be made more intuitive, but there are ways of making it more readable. You just need to get the settings right.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Ex doesn't have a set difficulty level, their difficulty is all over the places.
Also it's just one boss - barly any content at that.
To understand what i mean
one must have played other mmos than ffxiv,
since ffxiv doesn't have that which i define midcore.

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This exactly. So many 14 players play 14 and only 14. It’s like Socrates’ cave. All they know is normal, which is so easy you cannot possibly fail. Followed by extreme, which is so hard it will on average take hours of progression when trying really hard. Followed by savage which will take weeks of prog. Followed by ultimate which will take months.

They can’t conceive of the fact that the gulf between normal and extreme is 1. Fucking giant and 2. A gulf a majority of players want filled by something rewarding and repayable.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's not about difficulty.

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For you. Others may have limited investment time and having difficulty that can be managed in hours, days, weeks, months, etc. at different timescales allows people with limited time to tackle the level of difficulty they have time for. I don't have the time to play to master Ultimates. My life is at a different point where putting aside that many hours when people are still tackling it, it's feasible. And I'm not saying don't have Ultimates. I'm saying that a sliding scale of time investment is good for a broad-appeal game (wanting millions of players would imply FFXIV wants to be broadly appealing).

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Ex doesn't have a set difficulty level, their difficulty is all over the places.
Also it's just one boss - barly any content at that.
To understand what i mean
one must have played other mmos than ffxiv,
since ffxiv doesn't have that which i define midcore.

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If the discussion encompassed other mmos other than FFXIV, then what you define as "midcore" would be relevant. I honestly don't know what your point is other than, "I play games other than FFXIV. Rawr!"

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

This exactly. So many 14 players play 14 and only 14. It’s like Socrates’ cave. All they know is normal, which is so easy you cannot possibly fail. Followed by extreme, which is so hard it will on average take hours of progression when trying really hard. Followed by savage which will take weeks of prog. Followed by ultimate which will take months.

They can’t conceive of the fact that the gulf between normal and extreme is 1. Fucking giant and 2. A gulf a majority of players want filled by something rewarding and repayable.

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The training wheels have to come off at some point. Some of you make it sound like casual content difficulty never goes beyond Hall of Novice. This just isn't true. I have already brought up several duties that give players difficulty to this day, and that is just a handful of many that do. The game does plenty to teach players of mechanics and what to expect in the higher difficulty tiers. There will always be a wall players will hit when their screwups no longer allow for the content to be cleared. It's just how it goes. That's what EX does and introduces. It is Final Fantasy XIV's version of the wall.