What does FFXIV lack?

Evergreen content

Meaningful set bonuses, gear stats or something that makes your character unique

More battle choices instead of a meta everyone follows

A way for every world to play content together

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Originally Posted by Diablo_Eichenwald

I agree. They really need to hire world-class screenwriters and make impactful stories which are told like an epic movie. Also, they need to make characters move more realistic and beyond the emotes waving and stuff. It was fine 10 years ago but now it just feels lazy as hell.

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IMO they don’t even need world class screenwriters, they just need ones with a bit of courage to write something different and more interesting. There are plenty of decent fantasy writers out there who could do the job for reasonable pay. Or have Natsuko Ishikawa take the lead like she did with Shadowbringers, that was my favorite FFXIV expansion story.

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Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

IMO they don’t even need world class screenwriters, they just need ones with a bit of courage to write something different and more interesting. There are plenty of decent fantasy writers out there who could do the job for reasonable pay. Or have Natsuko Ishikawa take the lead like she did with Shadowbringers, that was my favorite FFXIV expansion story.

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Ishikawa was only the lead for EW, which was messy. She wrote Emet, and she's good at character writing and small, self-contained stories, which is why she excelled at things like the DRK job quests.

A updated character creator with more face and beard options for each race.
A updated friends list and blacklist.
Cross data center duty finder/party finder.
Housing system where everyone can get a house.
Better job diversity.
Voiced cutscenes for at least all MSQ and important side story quests.

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Originally Posted by Miguel85NYC

FFXIV lacks..

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A spine.

Jokes aside though. I haven't played a whole lot this expansion so I don't have too many complaints with recent validity.
One thing I would love is more clarity for in game information. So many times I have to google or look up in discord for some trivial things that should be in game. Things like where an item drops from per example.
If they don't want to add more explanations they could use the following.
I've been playing a ton of OSRS instead in the last couple years and one thing that's added (to the runelite client) that makes this so much easier is a wiki button. You just press wiki and then whatever you're curious about and it opens up the wiki for that thing in particular.

Something else that would be nice is a death recap to have more clarity on wtf killed you.

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Originally Posted by Thurmnmurmn

A spine.

Jokes aside though. I haven't played a whole lot this expansion so I don't have too many complaints with recent validity.
One thing I would love is more clarity for in game information. So many times I have to google or look up in discord for some trivial things that should be in game. Things like where an item drops from per example.
If they don't want to add more explanations they could use the following.
I've been playing a ton of OSRS instead in the last couple years and one thing that's added (to the runelite client) that makes this so much easier is a wiki button. You just press wiki and then whatever you're curious about and it opens up the wiki for that thing in particular.

Something else that would be nice is a death recap to have more clarity on wtf killed you.

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Both Guild Wars games also have a /wiki command that will open a page on whatever you type afterwards, but I think all of those wikis are owned or hosted in some capacity by the studio. I'm sure that there's a button somewhere in the menu labyrinth that opens the Lodestone, but it's much more disorganized and awkward to use than something like the ffxiv.consolegameswiki site.

Classes that, by themselves, have interesting gameplay loops, and vary noticeably in how they play.

Boss encounters that are less scripted, or at the very least, HP % Based instead of timer based (like it was in ARR/HW)
(possibly as an alternative endgame to Savage Raiding)

Dungeon Trash that does more than just take hits

Meaningful overworld content

It lacks the ‘RPG’ part that’s meant to come after ‘MMO’

I may not be meant to add a second post but since people keep mentioning RPG, I would support having more role specific options in MSQ, even Star Trek Online acknowledges it's classes and gives class specific routes through MSQ quests like fixing a shield generator or healing people or preparing explosives. None of them change the actual story but it's still nice in the moment.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I may not be meant to add a second post but since people keep mentioning RPG, I would support having more role specific options in MSQ, even Star Trek Online acknowledges it's classes and gives class specific routes through MSQ quests like fixing a shield generator or healing people or preparing explosives. None of them change the actual story but it's still nice in the moment.

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There’s that one scene in Stormblood where they react differently if you’re a healer class, so it’s definitely possible. It would be nice if they did more to have NPCs acknowledge the breadth of jobs we have now, even if it’s just on a per-role basis (I.e asking healers to assist the injured, tanks to assist with reinforcing defenses, dps to scout the area, etc).

Honestly I think the lack of job quests is related to that too. It’s all well and good telling a player ‘ok you’re this job now’, but to me it was things like doing the quests and exploring the history of the jobs that actually made you feel like, ‘ok you’re this job now’ lol. Let me cleanse more taints, SE!

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Originally Posted by Connor

It lacks the ‘RPG’ part that’s meant to come after ‘MMO’

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Lacking both to be quite honest with you.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Lacking both to be quite honest with you.

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‘Massively multiplayer’ but the ‘multiplayer’ part means trusts lol.

The ‘RPG’ part of the game comes when you RP that they’re real people.

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Originally Posted by Connor

There’s that one scene in Stormblood where they react differently if you’re a healer class, so it’s definitely possible. It would be nice if they did more to have NPCs acknowledge the breadth of jobs we have now, even if it’s just on a per-role basis (I.e asking healers to assist the injured, tanks to assist with reinforcing defenses, dps to scout the area, etc).

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The only other examples that immediately come to mind are Estinien saying that the group has two Azure Dragoons shortly before The Aery and Y'shtola talking about our familiarity with Reaper practices somewhere in 6.3. I think that both of those are just dependent on having finished the job quests, not having the job equipped.

A way to enjoy content if one is not able to find players. I often come late to content, this means that by the time I can do something, everyone has already done it and moved on. An example, is the Blue Mage content, getting players to do the extreme trials is not easy another example is Variant dungeons. Content should not have FOMO timers, instead there should always be a reason for the players to want to do these content or SE need to add duty support to more contents.

To many things are FOMO or DOA like the recent Fork Tower.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Hien, Yugiri, and Gosetsu have their current state tied to side content (EW phys ranged role quests), so they're never going to show up again. It's just what CS3 does.

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Sure, it's like that now, but they don't need to do this, and it's something they should really reconsider. I second the notion to see Hien and Yugiri again, or at least have them hang out in the Doman Enclave or something.

Also they really need to change some of the things the Eorzean NPCs say (such as the Brass Blades, Wood Wailers in Gridania, etc.) because they still act like your some sort of dirty criminal despite the fact we've already saved Eorzea and fought for their city states countless times!

Besides from this having new places to explore is the thing I'd like to see the most. Mainly building interiors and places you can enter, as I like the architecture in the game. There's a ton of locations in the game where it's just like "man, I really wish I could go there and gpose".

I think they should also make it so that you can purchase food and items and such from the vendors in recently added places like solution 9, because right now you can't even interact with them. I know it might be kind of a "useless" thing, but sometimes I'll just hang out at one of the bar/restraunt locations in the overworld, like The Drowning Wench in Limsa Lominsa or even that one bar in Camp Drybone, purchase one of the food items from the vendor, take a seat, and then just take in the scenery while eating the item. It's very calming and immersive, and something that I miss a lot in the recent expansions. I know it's probably a selfish ask since most people probably don't do this, but it does add a lot to the immersion of the game and hopefully would be easy enough to make some of the npcs already there sell food items, or things related to their store.

Edit: To provide some positive feedback though, since I don't want the devs to be demoralized. As it stands they have already added two things the game was definitely missing, mainly unrestricted glamour and previous pvp series rewards available to be purchased, so I'm happy that they were able to do that. I'm definitely a lot happier with the game now then I was a few months ago, that's for sure. 7.4 has been an excellent patch overall and a step in the right direction. :)

There is a lot I could list. But that would be a waste of time. Nobody with any power will read and forward anything here. So I'll just list one.

-A good netcode and network provider for connections outside of Japan

Dungeons are terrible in this game. Trash is boring and it feels like the only thought they put into it is what enemies they want to appear. Almost nothing happens and tanks barely take damage, and that's almost every dungeon nowadays. Some older dungeons actually have enemies that need to be interrupted or enemies that will do raidwides you want to prioritize. Why has the aspect of dungeon design been dropped? Dungeon boss design is at least decent, but I don't think anything they've added in the past few expansions was as good to me as the original Midgardsormr fight, and that's been long gone to ensure everything can completed with bots.

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Originally Posted by mewlynx

Dungeons are terrible in this game. Trash is boring and it feels like the only thought they put into it is what enemies they want to appear. Almost nothing happens and tanks barely take damage, and that's almost every dungeon nowadays. Some older dungeons actually have enemies that need to be interrupted or enemies that will do raidwides you want to prioritize. Why has the aspect of dungeon design been dropped? Dungeon boss design is at least decent, but I don't think anything they've added in the past few expansions was as good to me as the original Midgardsormr fight, and that's been long gone to ensure everything can completed with bots.

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The battle content designers only care about bosses, to the point that the new criterion is removing the trash encounters entirely and will just be a boss rush. If they thought they could, they would probably replace every dungeon with a trial.

Social aspects like hangin with the scions outside of missions, or actual clubs or cafes that aren't player owned, or maybe like a roller coaster or something flashy. We should also be able to use trusts in deep dungeons, dont know why we cant now.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The battle content designers only care about bosses, to the point that the new criterion is removing the trash encounters entirely and will just be a boss rush. If they thought they could, they would probably replace every dungeon with a trial.

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The sad thing is that "trash" in the sense of many-mob fights can make for interesting encounters, similar to any "council" fight but yet larger-scale, with even more freedom to break away the enemy's abilities or trigger their enrages, etc., in the order you please, and often without CC immunity cutting away that part of your party's kits (that is, if XIV even had them 1-2 skills per role).

Proper full beards.

• Job variety and depth - I'll largely blame the 2m meta here for homogenizing jobs into 1m/2m bursts. Most jobs are built on 40, 60, and 120s timers for their rotations so as to keep it constantly aligned with the buff window. Previous expansions could let some jobs have 90s burst timers and rotations (old WAR and BRD), sustain damage profiles as opposed to burst profiles (old PLD and BLM). I wouldn't want to see raid buffs go entirely, but I do hate how rigid they end up making the job designs.
  Edit: to add to this, MP should be more prominent in job design, stats should be more meaningful, actual build variety to let people choose different ways to interact with the jobs. The idea of a Piety DRK (yes, Piety) playing differently from a Crit or Speed focused DRK is something that would be neat to see. Extremely difficult to balance, but I'd rather Square take the chance to offer some actual player expression here.
• Fight variability - Mix the script every now and then, toss in a mechanic that may not appear the next time you fight the boss, make mechanic X come out at the 4 minute mark instead of mechanic Y because RNG decided so. Some level of randomness and unpredictability helps makes fights more dynamic instead of a static script.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The sad thing is that "trash" in the sense of many-mob fights can make for interesting encounters, similar to any "council" fight but yet larger-scale, with even more freedom to break away the enemy's abilities or trigger their enrages, etc., in the order you please, and often without CC immunity cutting away that part of your party's kits (that is, if XIV even had them 1-2 skills per role).

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They used to be interesting, ironically enough. Trash isn't anymore because it's encounter designed for older battle mechanics which have been 99% weeded out of the game at this point.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The battle content designers only care about bosses, to the point that the new criterion is removing the trash encounters entirely and will just be a boss rush. If they thought they could, they would probably replace every dungeon with a trial.

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This is actually what annoys me the most.
The whole game has basically become a boss gauntlet. Raids as well haven't been true raids in along time and even the A-raids feel mostly like boss arena to boss arena in this game.
I would actually go further and say if they could they would remove dungeons themselves and only do raid encounters. It's kinda obvious that Savage is one of the only things the devs care about nowadays and put effort into.
Sometimes I wonder if some devs have ever played a Final Fantasy or MMO before actually.

Making interesting trash mobs is not even hard. One enemy that ignores the aggro table here, an npc that has to be healed while being attacked there. Even something like the last trash mob in Underkeep is at least something.
Pilgrims Traverse feels more like a dungeon than the actual dungeons imo.


What the game needs imo is:
More interesting jobs that allow skill expression again,
a more interesting Overworld in the style of the ARR zones,
more content that isn't just boss fights,
a story that doesn't shy away from dark themes again and having consequences for the main characters.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

This is actually what annoys me the most.
The whole game has basically become a boss gauntlet. Raids as well haven't been true raids in along time and even the A-raids feel mostly like boss arena to boss arena in this game.
I would actually go further and say if they could they would remove dungeons themselves and only do raid encounters. It's kinda obvious that Savage is one of the only things the devs care about nowadays and put effort into.
Sometimes I wonder if some devs have ever played a Final Fantasy or MMO before actually.

Making interesting trash mobs is not even hard. One enemy that ignores the aggro table here, an npc that has to be healed while being attacked there. Even something like the last trash mob in Underkeep is at least something.
Pilgrims Traverse feels more like a dungeon than the actual dungeons imo.


What the game needs imo is:
More interesting jobs that allow skill expression again,
a more interesting Overworld in the style of the ARR zones,
more content that isn't just boss fights,
a story that doesn't shy away from dark themes again and having consequences for the main characters.

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We have 2 mob control role actions that have little to no use. Stun and Interrupt are the only ones needed. Meanwhile as rdps I have options for Heavy and Bind that will never see play (we can throw Sleep in there since I've never seen it used personally).

Nothing else to add. I fully agree with the rest.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Sometimes I wonder if some devs have ever played a Final Fantasy or MMO before actually.

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We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

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The last is quite the stretch. Many of those wanting harder normal stuff are those who specifically don't want to have to bother with PFs and never do Savage. Heck, normal content was harder / more involved nearer to the game's launch (or arguably even whenever before Shadowbringers), and not just before Savage started.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The last is quite the stretch. Many of those wanting harder normal stuff are those who specifically don't want to have to bother with PFs and never do Savage. Heck, normal content was harder / more involved nearer to the game's launch (or arguably even whenever before Shadowbringers), and not just before Savage started.

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Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

Take the repeated cries for no walls in dungeons for example, what is that if not people wanting to boss rush even faster? Hell, there's only a handful of people that want the mobs to be dangerous themselves (I can only name me and Valence off the bat), but there's other people who don't want to deal with trash mobs AT ALL to the point that there's been very little mumbling about removing them from the new Variant that's coming up, or how people seemed howling mad about that one Savage tier that involved mobs and seemed relieved when things when back to normal for the rest. I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types, and I know people miss doing Duels from Bozja which were 1-on-1 boss fights too I believe.

Not to say people can't have their harder content/boss-only modes, it just gets a bit tiresome when some people (including the developers it seems) act like that's how the whole game should play, with little to no breathing room for variation whether its opponent type or challenge setting.

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Originally Posted by Valence

They used to be interesting, ironically enough. Trash isn't anymore because it's encounter designed for older battle mechanics which have been 99% weeded out of the game at this point.

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Agreed, I think? but only if you mean general battle mechanics (typical vulnerabilities, mobs just not being outright immune to heavy/bind/pacify etc.) rather than anything specific to those trash in particular.

I've been playing since 1.x, and even as far back as ARR, the only thing allowing for interesting trash was hyper-optimizing among Enmity, compositional variance across earlier levels* (especially, say, levels 30 to 40), party DoTs, and sequenced oGCD stuns, scarcely anything to do with the trash itself (all of which remain unchanged). Even by the time Doomspike could be acquired, most was negligible outside of tank-less runs.

* This included things like mass-DoTing, a BLM AoE Sleep (which didn't break from anything other than direct damage back then), and then nuking enemies one at a time in order so that neither heals, tank stance, nor any further uses of Sleep were necessary, for a gain in total kill-speed on fewer than 4 targets, or fewer than 5 if a member lacked AoE (say, DRG before level 40); having Bards kite the melee units in circles while tank dealt with the ranged mobs; using SCH as DPS for the Cleric Stance and greater Maim and Mend trait while a SMN healed and tanked through/via Titan and/or all party members kited melee enemies via Miasma 2; etc.

What few other things existed were almost solely to activate short casts (such as crocs' caudal swipe) to offer some extra indirect mitigation to the tank or just briefly holding an oGCD stun to use it on a mob instead when they'd attempt a special attack or, lacking any such opportunity, an AoE attack that'd otherwise deny safe access to uptime.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

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The group I've seen most commonly requesting harder normal content over the last 12 years has consistently been those who want dungeons to "feel more like real dungeons" -- a return to the likes of pre-nerf Pharos Sirius and the relative difficulty of Coil rather than something wipe-proof or reliance upon DDR memorization. They're... almost the exact opposite of those who want everything to be a boss gauntlet, and I've yet to see any Savage raider demand that the likes of normal content (the only non-boss-rushes of which are literally dungeons and ARs anyways) be even more like boss gauntlets.

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I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types

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I wouldn't be surprised, either, but that's because all the ways we could mechanically leverage interest out of trash before via our kits have been removed. We no longer have AoE specialists, burst specialists, opportunities to kite, reasons to focus down certain mobs, etc., even outside of the disorganized churn that is OC FATEs, so why would anyone prefer what is absolutely barren gameplay over merely shallow gameplay?

A horde mode of some kind. Sadly, I stopped playing 1.0 before they let monsters in the main cities on repeat to experience it. I'm going to get crazy here, but one of the new main cities should have random attacks like how XI did Besieged and Campaign. If you lost, you have to rescue vital NPCs from captivity from the enemy stronghold. Said stronghold would be an open world dungeon, flying is disabled and enemies are tougher (like having B, A, S, SS Rank monsters). Only problem is this might be bad for low pop data centers, so they'd have to modify the strength of the stronghold depending on who's in the zone.

You know how Gold Saucer in FF7 had a battle arena? That would make for an interesting attraction on XIV's Gold Saucer. It's solo content like MSQ duties, but with good rewards. The BLU masked carnivale was such a solid idea that other combat jobs could benefit.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

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I really don't see what the people you describe, wanting to have harder baseline difficulty and removing trash and whatnot, have to do with people that don't like the MSQ and would like to skip it to access the parts of the game that interests them though. I mean maybe there is a venn diagram somewhere, but that's still a huge stretch as a comparison to make.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

Take the repeated cries for no walls in dungeons for example, what is that if not people wanting to boss rush even faster? Hell, there's only a handful of people that want the mobs to be dangerous themselves (I can only name me and Valence off the bat), but there's other people who don't want to deal with trash mobs AT ALL to the point that there's been very little mumbling about removing them from the new Variant that's coming up, or how people seemed howling mad about that one Savage tier that involved mobs and seemed relieved when things when back to normal for the rest. I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types, and I know people miss doing Duels from Bozja which were 1-on-1 boss fights too I believe.

Not to say people can't have their harder content/boss-only modes, it just gets a bit tiresome when some people (including the developers it seems) act like that's how the whole game should play, with little to no breathing room for variation whether its opponent type or challenge setting.

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The reason a lot of people don't want to deal with trash mobs at all is because the devs have given up on trash in SHB and beyond where most party resource and scarcity mechanics, as well as aggro mechanics, got scrapped for good. Even in SB raids turned into just boss gauntlets. Is it such a wonder that a lot of players, especially the ones that never actually experienced what it was before, think trash gameplay is... trash, and want a focus on bosses, which is where the developers are actually putting in all of their efforts?

It's exactly like any service, if you want to get rid of it, just stop funding it until people complain and ask to get rid of it in favor of other things. It's a clear design direction. They do not know what to do with trash beyond the basic AoEs to dodge because that's what they made the game all about: dodging crap. If they increased the difficulty trash would become like what we have in higher floors of Orthos and Pilgrim (aka no telegraph AoEs that oneshot). So the difficulty has never been a solution. The solution has always been the re addition of actual engaging gameplay battle systems and mechanics to build something solid upon.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Agreed, I think? but only if you mean general battle mechanics (typical vulnerabilities, mobs just not being outright immune to heavy/bind/pacify etc.) rather than anything specific to those trash in particular.

I've been playing since 1.x, and even as far back as ARR, the only thing allowing for interesting trash was hyper-optimizing among Enmity, compositional variance across earlier levels* (especially, say, levels 30 to 40), party DoTs, and sequenced oGCD stuns, scarcely anything to do with the trash itself (all of which remain unchanged). Even by the time Doomspike could be acquired, most was negligible outside of tank-less runs.

* This included things like mass-DoTing, a BLM AoE Sleep (which didn't break from anything other than direct damage back then), and then nuking enemies one at a time in order so that neither heals, tank stance, nor any further uses of Sleep were necessary, for a gain in total kill-speed on fewer than 4 targets, or fewer than 5 if a member lacked AoE (say, DRG before level 40); having Bards kite the melee units in circles while tank dealt with the ranged mobs; using SCH as DPS for the Cleric Stance and greater Maim and Mend trait while a SMN healed and tanked through/via Titan and/or all party members kited melee enemies via Miasma 2; etc.

What few other things existed were almost solely to activate short casts (such as crocs' caudal swipe) to offer some extra indirect mitigation to the tank or just briefly holding an oGCD stun to use it on a mob instead when they'd attempt a special attack or, lacking any such opportunity, an AoE attack that'd otherwise deny safe access to uptime.

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Vulnerabilities yes, but it also goes hand in hand with what they allow us to do with job crowd control abilities, that have been weeded out immensely for most classes beyond some role actions (stun, and rphys useless binds that get removed as soon as damage is done, lolwut). They still have some room left to design around this if the devs were even remotely creative, by bringing back ranged mobs for tanks to manage, perhaps even introduce AIs behind that try to stay at range, or to just have situations like Voidmage expose above with healer mobs (that would stop healing if they get attacked), some mobs with no aggro table, introducing some targeting priorities and mob triaging, etc. Although I do feel that the devs seem to think that even this is too hard for the baseline (as seen in deep dungeons as well, just check story floors, they're no different from regular dungeons). It's sad in a way because I do think you can still have all of those mechanics regardless of difficulty if they don't really wipe the party anyway.

But, we still have lost a lot of other mechanics, notably:
- Enmity management for tanks
- Mob positioning (hits in the back doing crits was removed in SB, ranged mobs and patrols stopped being a thing after ARR)
- General party resource management, because MP behaved differently which introduced different constraints on healers and a balance to reach between damage and healing, and this also meant running out of cooldowns and resources was more likely to happen if the DPS slacked off (no I'm not saying bring back running dry of MP/TP and be left with nothing to do type of gameplay though, not everything was perfect and nobody is saying it was)

I only started in HW so kiting mobs was really not a thing anymore unfortunately. At best we still had casters sleeping a mob in low level dungeons at times although it wasn't really mandatory to do and I suspect was a remnant of older days. Still, could help sprouts back then.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

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After EW, the dungeons being a bit harder was desperately needed and they are in a good spot right now.
One part of the problems is definitely an overfocus on Savage with the balancing bleeding into normal content too much, something I repeatedly say and will continue to say. It basically completely destroyed older content through the job design.
The other part of the problem though was the "free candy nature" of EW and people getting used to not having to put effort in, same as the relic weapons there, especially given that "hard" old dungeons already existed way before.

Like others said, it also wasn't the hardcore crowd that asked for harder dungeons (those don't care for them in the first place) but normal players who actually do not want to step into the harder raids.
Another person was YoshiP himself who straight up admitted that he almost fell asleep in a dungeon at one point.

The DT dungeons aren't hard, people just forgot that older dungeons also were able to kill you. The second boss of Halatali Hard was straight up harder then the first boss of Mistwake and they are basically the same monster.

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Originally Posted by Tracewood

A horde mode of some kind. Sadly, I stopped playing 1.0 before they let monsters in the main cities on repeat to experience it. I'm going to get crazy here, but one of the new main cities should have random attacks like how XI did Besieged and Campaign. If you lost, you have to rescue vital NPCs from captivity from the enemy stronghold. Said stronghold would be an open world dungeon, flying is disabled and enemies are tougher (like having B, A, S, SS Rank monsters). Only problem is this might be bad for low pop data centers, so they'd have to modify the strength of the stronghold depending on who's in the zone.

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The number one reason that FFXIV would never have something like Besieged, is that the writers want to resolve all conflicts in each expansion, so there wouldn't be any enemies at the end.
ARR: We break the Garlean legion
HW: We stop the war and form an alliance with the dragons
SB: We push out the Garleans, and then later they are destroyed off-screen
SHB: We defeat most of the threatening Lightwardens so only small, unorganized pockets remains
EW: All over the place, but the crisis is solved and stopped
DT: We make friends with the Alexandrians

For something like Besieged to work, we would need an organized opponent that is allowed to remain in place after the expansion ends.
ToAU's story was never about the player solving Aht Urhgan's beastmen problems, so that conflict remained after the expansion moved on. In FFXIV we would have tried to befriend these enemies.

FFXIV would need to completely change how the story is handled for something like Besieged or Campaign to happen. And it sucks, those are events that could make the game feel more community focused, like with Cosmic Exploration upgrade fates.
But not even Bozja gives this feeling with, even though the conflict is allowed to be kept in place, since it's just fates that have no meaning on the world.

(This is simply one man's opinion.....it is not gospel......)

It lacks an identity. Hence, XIV is like the less cooler brother, who takes everything from the old brother but it does not hit the same.

XI had an immersive, deeeeeeeeep world. That is what XI is known for. It was like, if Fromsoft made an MMO.

Example, Notorious Monsters within the open world of XI were basically cryptids. They were difficult to find, or claim most of the time. Like other players, I would question if this monster even exist......standing there camping it all day.

That is basically the hallmark of cryptids. They are rare, and ppl doubt they even exist.......Very few "See" them. Some "Do" by happenstance.

Oddly, many encounters of NM are simply ppl passing by. Other times, a NM was deemed a hoax (Fazasher Death Weapon, Yensho, etc).

XI is a beautifully constructed title. I retired from XI retail last year.....but this thread might make me come back lol.......I digress.......

....XIV does not have an identity imo. Just my opinion....One man......

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Originally Posted by MonsutaMan

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Despite all the issues with it, I think XI embraced its identity and never apologised for what it was. Even with all the changes they’ve made over the years to make it more easily accessible / modernised / etc it’s still more or less the same beast it always was; for better for worse lol.

XIV, conversely, seems intent on doing nothing but apologising for what it is and desperately trying to change that to cater to the widest possible demographic. It feels like they actively seek to undermine any sort of ‘identity’ the game could develop from fear it would negatively affect profit margins. Which ultimately just means it’s a game for literally nobody (but also everyone, somehow lol).

Everything is pre-scripted what does kill any excitement of the game.

The script after 15 years doesn't work anymore.

There is complete lack of fresh air in this game. - It's too stale...

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Originally Posted by MonsutaMan

Fazasher Death Weapon.

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Man, I remember this one. The myth even went so far that the devs made Shikigami Weapon based on this.

FFXI devs weren't shy of giving no directions in the game for some really obscure events. Still remember the Gobling Wolfman, only reason people knew of it was because of datamining, and they only had a hunch that Goblin Drink was used to spawn it. Yet noone had any idea how to get or craft this drink, so one crazy player tried every imaginable combination based on the drink's description, and after a long time it was created.

Sorry if these seem nit-picks, but just trying to balance out any nostalgia-farts others might otherwise trigger for themselves:

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Originally Posted by Valence

But, we still have lost a lot of other mechanics, notably:

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Mob positioning (hits in the back doing crits was removed in SB, ranged mobs and patrols stopped being a thing after ARR)

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This was only on Raw Intuition, which guaranteed parries to the front and crits received from behind (and originally also heals from behind because... XIV and sensible coding have never gone together, apparently). All enemy autos could, at the time, critically strike (and crits couldn't, again because of bizarre coding decisions making them mutually exclusive to RNG mit categories, be blocked or parried), with that chance increasingly mostly just with level disparity, iirc. What was significant was just that you couldn't block or parry attacks from behind altogether.

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Enmity management for tanks

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True, but this was frankly a pretty awful mechanic except when treated as a party-wide consideration. Unless optimized for, it was 6 buttons of bloat for tanks and 1-2 more for all other roles for, at best, a game of The Price is Right based upon the combination of your DPSs' output and --especially once in Stormblood-- their refusal to use their party tools (among which Diversion was decently important). In early ARR, the choice offered different approaches to small-but-threatening pulls, but... nothing else. Large pulls and very small pulls (so, some 80% of ARR and HW leveling dungeon pulls and then 99% of everything else) offered no real choice and therefore no strategic variance.

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General party resource management, because MP behaved differently which introduced different constraints on healers and a balance to reach between damage and healing, and this also meant running out of cooldowns and resources was more likely to happen if the DPS slacked off

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The only "balance" it struck was in very rarely preferring Cure over Cure II (and the SCH/AST equivalents of each), since the first healed for 60% as much for just 40% the MP [or effectively 25% for Cure if including Freecure averaged RNG]) and made Regen far more valuable. You still spent no time idling unless oomed by necessary rezzes, and that cost would still be more favorably taken up by the Bard, whose raid buff song at the time only affected elemental magic and whose MP song was a smaller penalty to their own damage than a damage benefit to even just one healer. Apart from that, they simply each further penalized Spell Speed and Skill Speed, since they alone did not increase output-per-resources-spent and meant that a pull could be lost within its first 25s or so even if it took 70s or so to die, simply because lackluster physical DPS meant that they could run out of the ability to hit any weaponskills except every third GCD or so before the mobs died, extending the fight into so late a time that the tank and healer run out of CDs and are inevitably overwhelmed.

On which note, unless it's used as a way to skip ahead on combos and make the GCD more flexible (e.g., by having a GCD of 2s but only being able to sustain an average of 2.25s) AND we start to see reasons to want to stay in or get out as deliberate choices with melee being rewarded commensurately to that increased risk (while casters/rangers get their own due added complexity and variable reward in turn), I really do not at all care to see TP reintroduced. As for MP, I have zero attachment to it, either, and would almost prefer it be used primarily as a shared resource system for special actions (the rest being mostly negligible) instead, akin to HW Ruin III or being used mostly be abilities if we wanted to reduce the frequency of their use without reducing their in-a-given-moment's availability.

/shrug

Good tutorials for how to play your job.

How many cure 1 white mages do you see failing to heal thru a big pull because they aren't using cure 2? Hall of the novice is garbage and too many players aren't taught how to play correctly until somebody wrongfully rages at them over it and then they dont wanna play anymore. It is not the noobs fault that the game and community can fail to explain important mechanics.

There's a similar problem with new players trying to jump from brain dead normal mode content into ex or savage. It's a big jump for casuals and I wish there was something to mitigate this.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I wouldn't be surprised, either, but that's because all the ways we could mechanically leverage interest out of trash before via our kits have been removed. We no longer have AoE specialists, burst specialists, opportunities to kite, reasons to focus down certain mobs, etc., even outside of the disorganized churn that is OC FATEs, so why would anyone prefer what is absolutely barren gameplay over merely shallow gameplay?

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That's why I would like some of that back. It never ceases to annoy me as someone who mains NIN, MHC, and RDM (and plays DPS in general) that I have "Role Actions" that barely see any actual use most of the time, or how NIN in particular doesn't work at all like stealth classes do in other MMOs where in-combat sneak attacks are an actual thing, instead I somehow I get yanked out of hiding when SOMEONE ELSE pulls aggro in this game. Maybe I'm the weird one for wanting to be a DPS who needs to care about more than bloody parsing all day and my value comes from utility too. Even just having a target to Stun or Interrupt feels like begging these days.
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Originally Posted by Valence

I really don't see what the people you describe, wanting to have harder baseline difficulty and removing trash and whatnot, have to do with people that don't like the MSQ and would like to skip it to access the parts of the game that interests them though. I mean maybe there is a venn diagram somewhere, but that's still a huge stretch as a comparison to make.

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Because the ones wanting to skip all over the MSQ are much like those wanting to do away with mobs; They don't want to deal with what they consider "time-wasting trash" so they can hurry up and get to the only parts they care about, which is mostly endgame raids with a pinch of side content. At which point both groups want mostly the same thing; Hardcore bosses they can prog and farm for hours each week.

The Venn diagram is much closer to being just a circle then you might think, especially when those wanting the hardcore fights need people to "hurry up" past the MSQ to join them in the PFs, and the ones skipping the MSQ require people ready and waiting for them in their interested content.
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Originally Posted by Voidmage

After EW, the dungeons being a bit harder was desperately needed and they are in a good spot right now.

Like others said, it also wasn't the hardcore crowd that asked for harder dungeons (those don't care for them in the first place) but normal players who actually do not want to step into the harder raids.
Another person was YoshiP himself who straight up admitted that he almost fell asleep in a dungeon at one point.

The DT dungeons aren't hard, people just forgot that older dungeons also were able to kill you. The second boss of Halatali Hard was straight up harder then the first boss of Mistwake and they are basically the same monster.

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For me Stormblood and Shadowbringers dungeons (along with the trials and raids) were hard enough and generally not all that fun to the point I was spending more time with a leaver penalty than doing actual runs, which is why it's been discouraging to be told that Dawntrail dungeons/trials/raids are "even harder" because I'm likely to end up one of those people who get stuck in the MSQ even with Trusts, which ironically keeps me stalled not even doing Endwalker because there's this feeling of "why bother" with the current part of the story if I won't get to see the rest of it? But that's been my problem with a lot of the game's content in general, it starts off simple enough, then stonewalls me with a difficulty spike until I give up and the MSQ its self eventually starts doing the same thing apparently.

Which then leaves me unsure of what group I'm even part of then if it wasn't hardcore players demanding hardcore dungeons but supposed normal/causal players. I just don't understand how all these people find so much content "brain dead" and "sleep inducing" when I struggle on the same things, like I'm just some stupid asshole if I'm the only one dying and failing on "baby mode" content all of the time to where I've left normal content runs halfway through out of embarrassment and cringe at myself because I was the ONLY one who died on something that everyone else always dodges so effortlessly.

In hindsight, asking for harder mobs is dumb of me, because I probably couldn't handle them properly either even if there's no floor crap to avoid.