What does FFXIV lack?

XIV has an identity. Well, it had more of a unique identity before Shadowbringers... But it's current identity is simply being a "PlayStation Home" with a story. But replace PlayStation with Square Enix.
The game does have original lore in it, but by and large it exists to advertise Square Enix's other products. It's literally Square Enix virtual Disneyland.

This game lacks a dev team that's willing to do something that hasn't already been done before.

The content cycle is so "safe" at this point, that you can predict how the entire expansion is going to play out just by the very first few weeks.

You already know the kind of content each patch is going to bring. You know when you'll do trials/dungeons/etc. You know how the zones are going to look and feel. You know how the quests are going to feel.

You know how each job is going to play. You know exactly how the same tired, boring, dull 2 minute meta is going to feel.

There's nothing to look forward to that's going to be new and unique and exciting. There's no risks that are going to be taken.

It's going to be the exact same excuses over, and over, and over, and over. Every single time. Telling you how they can't do this, can't do that, can't provide this.
Can't fix housing, can't change the meta, can't add stuff, or job balance, etc mid-expansion. Endlessly.

The game is so stale at this point that it's no longer "stale". It's petrified.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Good tutorials for how to play your job.

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Fully agreed. And if you think PvE is badly tutorialised, look at the state of in-game PvP tutorials and weep.

There's a lot which should be improved here.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Good tutorials for how to play your job.

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I agree with you, and that’s why I keep saying the following:

1 – Skill distribution at lower levels needs to be reconsidered. It currently takes far too long to get a meaningful toolkit, especially in synced dungeons. With every expansion, skills are removed, merged, or shifted to higher levels. As a result, lower-level gameplay has become overly simplified. A level 50 job in ARR felt more complete than a level 50 job does today. Now, those brackets feel stripped down and lacking depth.

2 – Dungeons and trials should gradually return to a reasonable level of challenge. You don’t truly learn your job without some degree of struggle. I understand that difficulty was reduced so players wouldn’t get stuck in the MSQ or fall behind, but in reality, you improve by facing mechanics that require proper execution. I’m not suggesting everything should be tuned to Extreme level, but there should be consequences for poor play. Even in a dungeon, there should be a DPS checks on bosses. Tanks should need to mitigate properly or die. Healers should have to actually heal, more than just healing on the trash mob pulls. If roles are not played correctly, wipes should be possible. Dungeons also need more variety than the standard “two trash pulls, one boss” repeated three times.

3 – Leveling should be slower, especially at lower levels, and experience shouldn’t be awarded to jobs you didn’t actually play. For example, Frontline roulette allows you to queue as one job, swap, and level something you never actively used. You learn a job by playing it.

Wanting more challenge isn’t elitism. Right now, the difficulty curve is so flat that it’s no surprise many casual players struggle when they first encounter mid-tier content like Extreme trials. If you’ve never had to worry about DPS checks or proper rotation before, of course it becomes overwhelming later.

Developers shouldn’t lower the difficulty of group content to accommodate weaker players. If necessary, they could offer a dedicated “story mode” version for players who want to experience the narrative with NPCs on an easier setting. But when you queue with other players, the difficulty should be high enough that you’re expected to understand your role and perform it correctly.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

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I don't want to sound rude or dismissive and genuinely want everyone to have fun with the game.

But no one gets walled in the MSQ.
You either have trusts which now even have a "retry" at bosses, get help clearing by others like an MMO is supposed to or you can set the difficulty for solo missions to easy.
Taking a second try or a third with trusts isn't a shame. Even raiders sometimes die to dungeon mechanics but the ability to actually do fail is part of the fun a video game brings.

At the end of the day this is still a video game, players are already level 100 and at one point a game should ask for the basics.
DT dungeons aren't really harder than Stb ones back in the day. Faster yes but at the same time far more forgiving regarding the needed job execution.
No one in their right mind bats an eye if you make a mistake in a dungeon or trial (outside the WoL QTE or not using tank LB there).

That said though, I am of the opinion, like I said before, that we have a bit too much focus on hard content right now while normal content is thrown in like the unwanted child.
I simply don't agree with the notion that the normal content is in any way too hard.
I played too many video games in my life to think that.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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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Yes, thank you, I was trying to recall the exact details. It was parry/block that stopped working when struck behind. I liked this a lot. It asked tanks and parties to be mindful of positioning and orientation.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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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I disagree, I liked having to adjust my aggro <-> damage output balance depending on the situation. It promoted skill play for those who wanted it. And it left people that didn't care or didn't know about it just use tank stance with full aggro combos and be done with it. That is, for single target, because AoE was... a mess. It had little meaning with WAR/DRK, and PLD was just a disaster before Total Eclipse in SB. But Total Eclipse having no aggro modifier was actually nice, and I wished back then all tanks had one like this, and another like Flash or something in the vein.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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

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I'm not speaking about Cure I / Cure II and freecure or whatever. I did enjoy the resource scarcity in single target and bosses though. Most classes had to manage it. Dying literally drained this, overhealing drained healer and party resources, and a lot of the time when parties crashed back then especially in casual content, it was because of people running on fumes and unable to properly recover, and not just enough people failing to dodge a mechanic.

I'm also talking about healer dungeon experience once you got AoE tools, and this has been taken away entirely from the game — and also what made me abandon healing completely after. That was the whole point, like tanks could balance damage and aggro, healers also had to balance damage and healing in accordance to their finite resources, and this meant adjusting to a lot of variables, like the tank's own skill, their gear, but also your DPS gear and skill at burning down mob packs as you described it. The less efficient it was, the more it drained into resources, and I really, really enjoyed this. I didn't exactly enjoy being left unable to do anything once out of TP for DPS classes though, which was one of the bad parts of the design.

That's why I have felt so alienated by the game's direction since ShB, because it literally changed the whole paradigm of everything and that's not what I signed for nor what I liked about the game. People constantly telling me the game has always been the same are full of s*** (not aimed at you there, no offense intended).

This game lacks a lot of focus, it's like the ADHD of games, implement something, don't finish it, implement another thing and don't finish it or just do it poorly in general.

Devs who play their own game. Based on the abysmal state of balance and how supposed 'evergreen' features are regularly abandoned, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody at SE plays FFXIV outside of testing new content

On the last bit about Healers feeling unecessary. You feel this most in dungeons.

We desperately need hard mode dungeons. Actual hard mode dungeons. With mobs that make you think twice about wall to wall pulling, bosses that actually hurt outside of tank busters, and bonus mechanics that put unavoidable spread damage on the party. The design of tanks is that they have very good burst sustain cooldowns, but rely on healers to pick up the slack once they've burned through them.

That doesn't work when bosses are designed to only deal burst damage that conveniently lines up with a tank's sustain CDs. Even in low level dungeons where tanks don't have their sustain tools yet, it's kinda laughable how non-threatening everything is outside of big pulls. Why is it that I can burn all of my mits on trash and not feel even slightly stressed about the upcoming boss fight? You can chug through for so long with just your 123 sustain.

Healers will never feel important in dungeons so long as SE is afraid to make dungeons hard enough to fail.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Yes, thank you, I was trying to recall the exact details. It was parry/block that stopped working when struck behind. I liked this a lot. It asked tanks and parties to be mindful of positioning and orientation.

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Same. (Aside, but... it was also far more caster-friendly, as tanks were then forced to stop spreading out mob groups by placing themselves in the center, haha.)

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I disagree, I liked having to adjust my aggro <-> damage output balance depending on the situation.

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Fair, and in that regard, I agree. I just think it was executed upon pretty horribly, to the point that 90% of the minutial optimizations were actually traps while only the overarching 10% to remain were actually indicative of good play in any situation not born of someone griefing, ignoring their kit, or ****ing up terribly.

Even accounting for those screw-ups, though, it's strategic depth was still just dropping into tank stance, say, after Goring Blade has been used and swapping back out just before the next or next-next one, give-or-take a Royal Authority actually being used as such instead of replaced with a redundant (Strength Down already applied) Rage of Halone to exploit the multiplicative Enmity modifiers based on how much you think your Dragoon will refuse to use Elusive, your StB Samurai Diversion, your BLM Lucid Dreaming, etc. and whether your co-tank overused their defensives and therefore one of your might die over a 20% difference in DR or adds were about to spawn (though then you'd be looking at Flash anyways, so... then it's more a matter of Goring drift, though the stances each cost a GCD themselves so a single Flash actually realigned rotation /shrug).

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It had little meaning with WAR/DRK

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I mean, it had meaning on DRK, in that it cost MP atop a GCD and that MP was much more relevant for DRK than for PLD (for whom it was only used for Clemency, itself often cancelled just to guarantee that Shelltron was consumed by the tankbuster instead of an auto-attack going off just before it).

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I'm not speaking about Cure I / Cure II and freecure or whatever.

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Okay, but then... nothing else came from resource scarcity. You just had a lower portion of incoming damage counterable by oGCDs, so that healing spells were a frequent part of casts (instead of just at-offensive-cost backup actions all sharing a common pseudo-CD, MP). (Yes, Flash cost a bit of MP, too, but you rarely wanted to rely on RNG misses for boss-fights, and it was your only AoE Enmity source, so... that was mostly just rote outside per the basic type of pull.)

That resource scarcity in turn gave varied priority to things like Cure I / Cure II because you could use Cure II to get enough healing out immediately to then reapply your DoTs on time (with, due to Cleric Stance, every offensive cast, at the time, requiring 2 GCDs if fed off of a heal [2s] or instant-cast, or just barely more if fed off a filler attack [2.5s] without Swiftcast), but in itself it merely made viable losing some offensive throughput now (or, in the next few GCDs) in favor of uptime later (by not going oom) by using a Cure I and maintaining Regen, etc., where they wouldn't interfere or force panic-heals out of your cohealer.

All else was just a matter of damage intake relative to "free" healing output. If you gave a boss an Amnesia aura, locking us out of our abilities, or just increased the number of damage events beyond what we could safely deal with via abilities alone, and you'd see the same results minus the ability for Bards to sacrifice their own damage to bail out healers' bad decisions or excessive rezzes (that instead indirectly falling to Paladins).

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Most classes had to manage it.

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That management was (A) avoid Skill/Spell Speed (a bit more SkS permissible if receiving Goad), (B) hit your Invigorate/Shroud/Luminous/Aetherflow on CD, and (C) bring a Bard and/or caster for Manashift. Out of that, only Manashift, Goad, and... hitting the CD on CD... were remotely "gameplay", especially once we reached Stormblood (wherein Bard/MCH just hit their MP/TP songs on CD in order to maintain raidbuffs and avoid pulling off the tank).

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Dying literally drained this

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It still does, and via job gauge elements, in a far more variably punishing manner.

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a lot of the time when parties crashed back then especially in casual content, it was because of people running on fumes and unable to properly recover, and not just enough people failing to dodge a mechanic.

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A party can still run itself out of the ability to rez just as much now as then, at least in terms of resources.

The difference is simply that we basically don't use healing spells anymore outside of the rare cast in Savage, and therefore rezzes are the only real MP costs beyond the net-positive churn of DoTs and filler attack spam. Granted, we also now don't have any real Mage's Ballad, Promoted Bishop Turret, Ewer, or Mana Shift to make up for party mistakes (all atop vuln stacks going from almost never seen to a part of virtually every mechanic, all to better ensure death and prevent healers from compensating significantly via ST healing spells instead of just rezzes).

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The less efficient it was, the more it drained into resources, and I really, really enjoyed this.

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...Again, though, this was only a thing at a party level.

Like, if you used a NIN, WHM, PLD, +1, and the Paladin took Ultimatum as one of their Role Actions, they could run into Bartam first pull with Shield Oath, Total Eclipse as not to burn Blind duration early, and then drop stance for extra damage as they have the WHM Swiftcast Holy, pop a Cure II and Benison via the Lily generated, prep another Holy timed to stun just as the previous one's elapses, then Ultimatum, Smokescreen, and Shadewalker together to let the Paladin hold threat as it Hallowed Grounds through 10s more, then cycle defensives (including Flash itself, worth a little over 20% DR against attacks capable of missing) and reapply Shield Oath if necessary to maintain threat until the end or a GCD or two away from it.

But even in that, while all the extra damage at the onset allowed the party not to run out of resources, it was still an optimal strategy regardless just for kill speed. You'd still do the exact same thing even if TP or MP hadn't existed simply because of how huge the relative value of CDs (damage multipliers, %DRs, and things like Divine Seal) were, favoring throughput right now over later sustain.

That's my issue with it. Whenever you played well, the other parts of the game made resources irrelevant anyways. It felt either vestigial or just a strange and very dull Speed-punishing tax... from inception.

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I'm also talking about healer dungeon experience once you got AoE tools, and this has been taken away entirely from the game — and also what made me abandon healing completely after.

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...I'm confused. Healers got their first AoE heal at level 10 (WHM/AST) or 35 (SCH), and their first AoE attacks at 50 (WHM), 52 (AST) or 30/35 (SCH). And what's been taken away among them? That, before level 30/50/52, a healer 'dealt AoE damage' (in a manner of speaking) only through increased healing onto a tank forgoing tank stance while having access to an AoE attack (i.e., until Stormblood, only if one had a non-PLD)? That sort of 'you and me and I am you' instinctive party coordination, since watered down by everyone having basically the same direct tools anyways?

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That was the whole point, like tanks could balance damage and aggro

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Again, because of the way tank stances worked (having tremendous cost to and very few viable transfer point for swapping until 4.1 Warrior), not really a tight balance there.

After level 40, a tank ideally opened in tank stance, swapped out early on, and never looked back. And in ARR, Paladins had no reason to leave Shield Oath in AoE, being better off instead just tab-targeting Rage of Halone itself (since only the potency, not the Enmity modifier, required combo progress) or the combo (whoever got Rage before gets Fast next) between Flashes as able to still keep up with AoE threat (as not to waste Blind duration and its mitigation).

Until HW, PLD effectively didn't even have any non-aggro skills [as, lacking Goring or Royal, Riot Blade was just a refill for Flash].

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healers also had to balance damage and healing in accordance to their finite resources

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Almost never according to finite resources unless they sacrificed the stat and LB bonus of bringing a Ranger or there were a lot of rezzes required. Outside of proximity to DoT replacement, priorities were stable; you just sometimes didn't have the MP to filler-attack and instead just idled.

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People constantly telling me the game has always been the same are full of s***

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It's definitely different now, aye... but a lot of what we had before ended up having an illusion of impact while actually changing the game not at all relative to what you'd optimally do even if those systems hadn't existed, outside of the aforementioned idling.

Now, if we could replace those pretenses with depth and make the kinds of coordination-requiring optimizations (beyond just "hit your 'Helps Party' button whenever it's available, cus that is just bloat) that early gameplay seemingly wanted us to leverage more prominent and noticeable to players, I'd be all for that. I'm just pointing out what all actually had impact.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

I don't want to sound rude or dismissive and genuinely want everyone to have fun with the game.

But no one gets walled in the MSQ.
You either have trusts which now even have a "retry" at bosses, get help clearing by others like an MMO is supposed to or you can set the difficulty for solo missions to easy.
Taking a second try or a third with trusts isn't a shame. Even raiders sometimes die to dungeon mechanics but the ability to actually do fail is part of the fun a video game brings.

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I did, I absolutely got walled during the MSQ at various points. I couldn't just bring NPCs for Crystal Tower, Susano, Hades, or Warrior of Light, I needed to find other people that:

1. Actually existed and were willing to do it.
2. Weren't going to get mad if I failed something and died.

Suffice to say both of these things were in short supply, with Dynamis being so dead I was FORCED to data center travel for everything only to then mostly run into people who were not nice and patient at all (especially on Aether). It was bad enough getting kicked during Ivalice, as that was side content I guess I didn't "deserve" to be in given my skill level, but getting kicked over Seat of Sacrifice? Which I NEED to do in order to just see the damn story? That was the exact moment I lost what little trust I had in the playerbase and just wanted to use NPCs for everything because it was clear I wasn't playing an MMO anymore, if I ever was.

But like I said, NPCs aren't available for all mandatory MSQ content, and even the changes they made to Trusts with the "Willful" buff was added AFTER I had already finished Shadowbringers, so it wasn't something I could rely on back then. Not that it matters if I once again get stuck on an MSQ trial in EW/DT and have to once again rely on other players who clearly don't want to deal with me and get upset at anyone failing on "easy" content in EW, or will have a good laugh when I get filtered in DT's harder stuff.

I also did indeed struggle with solo duties in Stormblood and Shadowbringers, specifically any time they made me control different NPCs and ESPECIALLY when I had to heal while doing DPS because I'm not adept at being a healer. People can say all they want about how healing is so simple you can't fail but when you've never actually done the role before, you under and overestimate when you're supposed to do one thing or another and then people end up dead and it's undeniably YOUR fault. (Also AOE heals don't seem to work on NPCs in solo duties for whatever reason, and that's a large part of what makes healing players easier to manage in other content.)

And failure's fine in a single player game, but in a multi player one practically nobody has tolerance for that, not even in normal content it seems, and I myself don't like being dead weight that has to be carried across the finish line. It's better to just avoid other players in this game most of the time because I don't want to be a burden and nobody would want to put up with me anyway.
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Originally Posted by Voidmage

No one in their right mind bats an eye if you make a mistake in a dungeon or trial (outside the WoL QTE or not using tank LB there).

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Yeah, well, guess who failed the QTEs on their first try of Undying Gasp and Seat of Sacrifice and then got accused of being "another R-word or troll from Dynamis"...

They were unanimous votes, and certainly soured whatever "big damn hero" moment the developers were going for in the cutscenes when I finally cleared them later on knowing my Warrior of Light is such a massive screw-up they died on "baby mode" mechanics. (Though even the story its self makes us out to be such a useless weakling without NPCs to bail us out that I question why we're still considered the main hero of the game.)
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Originally Posted by Voidmage

That said though, I am of the opinion, like I said before, that we have a bit too much focus on hard content right now while normal content is thrown in like the unwanted child.
I simply don't agree with the notion that the normal content is in any way too hard.
I played too many video games in my life to think that.

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Maybe not hard for you, but I've definitely had problems, and at first it was just "ah well, I'll just not worry about this piece of side content" but then the MSQ kept cranking it up too and soon enough I didn't have much of anything to do or became discouraged from trying further.

There's just something so absolutely unforgiving about FF14 compared to literally any other MMO (or real-time RPG) I've ever played, and something about the community that's equally unforgiving when failure inevitably happens (outside of their pro-gamer static I suppose). The game constantly demands perfection of some kind that I'm just not capable of and there's no hands reaching out to pick you up and dust you off, they're reaching out to throttle you for causing a wipe or making something take longer than it should have because you wasted their time that you were never "entitled" to.

Something that WoW has no issue with doing: Bringing in NPC's and story beats from side content. If the player has not done it, he can ask that NPC to either tell him who he is or what story he was part of. Instead Squenix is treating all their side content as if it never really happened? Why? If people do not know an NPC or their story, they can either do it or have to accept that they will not understand parts of it. Why are they harmstringing themselves so hard with their attempt at keeping everyone on the same stage and page of the story? They have so many interesting story arc with interesting characters that just languish along. The whole story arc with the 13th could have been so much more interesting if they brought in our buddies from the 1st, but nope, can't do that, because gods forbid people would have to read up on stuff they skipped.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

There's just something so absolutely unforgiving about FF14 compared to literally any other MMO (or real-time RPG) I've ever played, and something about the community that's equally unforgiving when failure inevitably happens (outside of their pro-gamer static I suppose). The game constantly demands perfection of some kind that I'm just not capable of and there's no hands reaching out to pick you up and dust you off, they're reaching out to throttle you for causing a wipe or making something take longer than it should have because you wasted their time that you were never "entitled" to.

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You have my deepest sympathies for your bad experience. I have had my share of obnoxious partymates, and my time coming up through the MSQ was pretty rough. I would have quit in post-Heavensward if I hadn’t been able to use Warrior’s survivability as a crutch. I’ve gotten better at the game since then but it has been a long process. I do make sure to make allowances for struggling new players, especially when I’m healing and in a position to keep them alive and on their feet as much as possible. If I were still playing actively I would offer to help you through duties, but I’m only logging in for a few minutes a day to manage my retainers as I sell my stuff off and wind down in an orderly fashion before my sub expires.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

There's just something so absolutely unforgiving about FF14 compared to literally any other MMO (or real-time RPG) I've ever played, and something about the community that's equally unforgiving when failure inevitably happens (outside of their pro-gamer static I suppose). The game constantly demands perfection of some kind that I'm just not capable of and there's no hands reaching out to pick you up and dust you off, they're reaching out to throttle you for causing a wipe or making something take longer than it should have because you wasted their time that you were never "entitled" to.

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Hey, I started playing a bit before Dawntrail came out and the new player learning curve is still fresh in my mind. Luckily I had far better experiences (mostly) with other players, but I believe you when you talk about the bad experiences you've had. I just want you to know that there are still people in the game that are patient and nice. Making mistakes is normal, even for experienced players. I'm sorry that things were soured for you.

I'm on Excalibur too, and if you ever need someone to do things with, I'm happy to help.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I couldn't just bring NPCs for Crystal Tower, Susano, Hades, or Warrior of Light, ...

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Frankly, the MSQ variants of most of those (maybe not the Crystal Tower) should be solo duties anyway. This works better with how the story is told, too. Before we fight Nidhogg for the second time, we are explicitly told that we're doing it solo, for example, and before Susano Alisaie also tells you you're on your own. The current ones can be kept as side content.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

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As Wildmagick said, there are definitely people in game who don't just throw a tantrum at someone failing and truth be told it's the majority of people I encounter in-game.

I vehemently disagree that FFxiv is in any form more unforgiving than other MMO's.
You have no rezz limits, don't get blocked for the wrong class in normal content, even have NPC's for most of the mandatory duties, get levels and gear for free in the MSQ basically and outside a few instances like WoL nothing falls apart if you die, with the Phoenix Downs nowadays even if you play healer.

If anything this game is one of the most beginner friendly MMO's for new players to that genre.

I am sorry you had those bad experiences but they are definitely not the norm, especially in things like CT or dungeons and normal trials.
WoL is truly the only trial that has one unforgiving mechanic but even that had been done before a number of times so it isn't a new mechanic. It's also at the level 80 cap so people aren't new at that point anymore.
It's fine to fail it once and no one should give trouble over it but at the same time, no one should fail it repeatedly.

As much as I hate to say it, and I really hope it's not taken out of context here because I genuinely like to help new players, but there is a point were the handholding has to stop and people have to realize that they do play a video game at the end of the day.

It's not just my opinion here that the normal MSW is not hard at all. It's called NORMAL mode and not easy mode after all and other games are way more unforgiving on normal difficulty, not just something like a Soul like but genuinely "easy" games like Zelda.

So as much as I sympathise with people who struggle my stance stays the same even if it sounds stern or unfair.
The MSQ does not wall anyone to the point of not clearing it regarding the difficulty.
It simply asks at certain points of you to have understood the most basic of things and outside that doesn't even care if you die repeatedly.


That's all from me regarding this topic.
We won't agree anyway.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I can't get into an ever expanding quote spree

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I'm frankly too lazy to write an essay about this, but what you're completely missing is the MP changes literally mean that currently MP song is baked into base MP regen (much like Tank stances are now baked into Tank Mastery). MP used to regen incredibly more slowly. This is also when I say this made resource scarcity actually meaningful back then because raising was not only punished with hefty MP costs like today, but it wasn't magically fixed after a couple of GCD once your MP restabilizes by itself. Today it's just a raise amount cap to prevent people to keep raising forever. Back then, it literally played into MP management, and running low could be ugly because the resource was a lot more valuable. But what you said about GCD heals being used a lot more (less and less as we got new expansions with new free OGCD heals sadly), also played directly into that MP management gameplay.

Also perhaps I should have been more precise on what situation was being talked about: single target boss gameplay was dramatically different from AoE trash gameplay. I do believe the discussion arose from trash that used to be more interesting though, so my argument was fully centered around this. Every AoE move was extremely expensive to use — Holy costed 1600 MP for instance, on a total pool lof 15-16k MP with almost zero regen outside of Shroud of Saints (Lucid) and of course, out of combat, which was still slow. This by definition introduced a lot of considerations and management depending on the team, the skill of every player (tanks tanking well or not, and dps doing good damage or not), their gear, etc. No run was identical to another, especially on healers, because of this very reason. This is why the removal of all of this turned me off healing completely (at least from healing past the levels where healers get their main MP draining AoE damage tools).

Every single job had to deal with this to some extent. Some with more control over it than others, granted. BLM excepted I guess. Back in HW where AoE dungeon balance was completely out of whack (because the devs didn't care at all), you had jobs like DRG that could dish out an incredible burst of AoE damage but completely peter out after 20s. Some others like MCH notably in SB had an incredibly strong sustain in the form of Tactician and Flamethrower (11s of free resource damage). A lot of different profiles in fact.

The only thing I didn't like was how running out of TP or MP was extremely frustrating to play with especially on non healer jobs, and I wish the devs back then had thought a little more about how to address this state of demi failure on the party's behalf.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'm frankly too lazy to write an essay about this, but what you're completely missing is the MP changes literally mean that currently MP song is baked into base MP regen (much like Tank stances are now baked into Tank Mastery).

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They're not. The passive MP generation is the same, even in its impact from Piety. Our personal sum of MP-gen & MP-savings were also nigh-identical.

Spells retained the same % cost of at-level base (i.e., pre-Piety) MP cost. Piety was changed to % increase to MP gen only because max MP was standardized; when it increased max MP, its effect on MP gen was identical atop increasing you total 'battery capacity', so to speak. Lucid Dreaming's Refresh potency is the same as what it replaced. The difference is solely from the decrease in high-MP-cost GCDs. MP regened at 2% per 3 seconds. It now regens at... 2% per 3 seconds.

MP still isn't "magically fixed after a couple of GCDs" unless under Lucid Dreaming, just as it wasn't before unless having just received a Mana Shift or a whole Ewer, under Sacred Shroud, Luminiferous Aether, or having just hit Aetherflow, after using Energy Drains, etc.

Meanwhile, Shroud of Saints being 60p for 18s (360p total) at a time when Thin Air was considered a unique MP-saving perk (all casts free for 12s). Lucid Dreaming is now a 55p refresh for 21s (385p total) while only supplying 1 free cast per minute, down from potentially 6 per 2 minutes.

Again, the main change there... was truly just that an AoE heal had some 250%+ the cost of a filler attack while even a Cure/Physick still had 100%+ the cost of a filler attack. By reducing healing required relative to healing freely available, MP was made far less relevant.

Meanwhile, half the "benefit" of Tank Mastery just went into making all enemy attacks hit harder (fitting nearer to DPS stance than tank stance in terms of damage intake before the level 82 upgrades), increasing the gap between tank and non-tank damage taken far more so than actually increasing tank passive eHP relative to before Tank Mastery.

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Holy costed 1600 MP for instance, on a total pool of 15-16k MP with almost zero regen

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Passive Regen was identical to now, 2% per 3s. And Holy cost a ton because it did an absolute ton, allowing for the highest Burst in the game after triple-Flare.

Holy was 10% of your MP, but was also originally an effective 343 potency at a time when Doom Spike, for instance, which used 16% of total resource per cast, was just 130 potency (or 143, later 150, with Heavy Thrust), and even pre-nerf Flare was just 432 and would leave one waiting idle for their next MP tick to the point of being barely net-neutral unless having Transpose and a Firestarter and/or tick-syncing. And it had a 4s AoE stun at a time when tank oGCD stuns were only 3s (WAR) or nonexistent (PLD).

Holy had the highest ~20s Burst in the game, with only triple Flare (which required an MP pot and 3-minute CD) coming close (better at 12). It was not meant to be spammed. By the time it fell to mediocre, its MP cost also fell to 600 (same as Gravity, with which it shared potency in Diurnal) and once its damage was standardized entirely, its MP cost was likewise standardized, with the AoE stun being a free perk.

Altogether, the point better made would just be that healers could originally dump a ton more value into fewer AoE GCDs, more so than they were less efficient. I'd rather have 343 potency for 1000 MP than 182 for 600 a la Stormblood, and honestly even over for 400 as per Shadowbringers. It'd give more room for DoTs (which WHM had at 12, 18, and 24s back in HW, for instance), Regen, etc., which in turn better encouraged not wasting its stun duration.

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This by definition introduced a lot of considerations and management depending on the team, the skill of every player (tanks tanking well or not, and dps doing good damage or not), their gear, etc. No run was identical to another, especially on healers, because of this very reason. This is why the removal of all of this turned me off healing completely.

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Healer rotations in Alexander Savage were chartable down to the GCD unless there were major f-ups, largely the same as now. The change was just that, given greater dynamism via GCDs over one's total effective outputs, MP was still a bit more of a shared resource instead of just a number of remaining rez charges.

Now, I'll agree fully that the ability of healers to be able to contribute more meaningfully beyond just healing (real AoE damage, often above tanks and nearing that of DPS, for instance), even if in shorter spurts only, was preferable to the dull tread we have now. I even would agree that it was better when Cure/Physick could situationally play a real part (as much from needing to top off a tank already at 80% because stuff could actually hurt as from MP costs, but still). But I think you overestimate certain sources of those differences -- something that tends make people nostalgize over what would result in mostly the same gameplay instead of focusing in one what would actually lead to the results they desire.

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BLM excepted I guess.

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I mean, tick-sync was absolutely crucial, so if you count that as part of mana-management...

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A lot of different profiles in fact.

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True, and I do miss that, even if it did mean that dungeon balance went from one-pump-Chucks being useless (apart from SMNs, with both, why care about Burst if the overall is crap after 30s) to being one-and-done-Chads (Burst is everything).

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The only thing I didn't like was how running out of TP or MP was extremely frustrating to play with especially on non healer jobs, and I wish the devs back then had thought a little more about how to address this state of demi failure on the party's behalf.

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A somewhat frequent suggestion since ARR: Apportion spenders' potency and cost to %resource remaining. No actual starvation/lockouts, just gradual potency lost leading one to take a lower APM for a rotation or two before damage-amp-windows come back. Weakness then takes care of itself, even if more salvageable by ASTs, Rangers, and Mana Shift.

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Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

You have my deepest sympathies for your bad experience. I have had my share of obnoxious partymates, and my time coming up through the MSQ was pretty rough. I would have quit in post-Heavensward if I hadn’t been able to use Warrior’s survivability as a crutch. I’ve gotten better at the game since then but it has been a long process. I do make sure to make allowances for struggling new players, especially when I’m healing and in a position to keep them alive and on their feet as much as possible. If I were still playing actively I would offer to help you through duties, but I’m only logging in for a few minutes a day to manage my retainers as I sell my stuff off and wind down in an orderly fashion before my sub expires.

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I originally started on Dynamis myself (Maduin), and ended up having to do some much content unsync and solo because there just wasn't enough people available or willing to get through the game. It's only made more awkward by people trying to insist my experience would have been "so much better" if I could have just had a "new player auto MSQ skip" into Endwalker (which is when I started). But... not only would that have not done anything about the lack of people to play with, but I would have had zero things to do anymore because, well, it was already skipped over and I would have had no attachment or understanding of anything in Final Fantasy 14 to keep me here.

I came in wanting a journey with the supposedly "nicest and most welcoming" MMO, not a WoW-esque "only endgame matters" raid simulator as that was part of why stopped playing WoW in the first place; The world and lore didn't matter anymore and other players only saw you as an expendable asset to farm their endgame content.
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Originally Posted by Wildmagick

Hey, I started playing a bit before Dawntrail came out and the new player learning curve is still fresh in my mind. Luckily I had far better experiences (mostly) with other players, but I believe you when you talk about the bad experiences you've had. I just want you to know that there are still people in the game that are patient and nice. Making mistakes is normal, even for experienced players. I'm sorry that things were soured for you.

I'm on Excalibur too, and if you ever need someone to do things with, I'm happy to help.

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Thank you, I appreciate the offer, and there have been other friendly individuals who have reached out before as well, but I still get hung up on the idea of "wasting" somebody else's time in this game that I've never made good on those offers before.

I've even tried being helpful myself back when I was on Dynamis, but starting around Stormblood, I lost a lot of the confidence I had to explain fights or escort people through them when I was still failing a lot of STB/SHB content myself so I wasn't really in any position to be helpful anymore.
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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

Frankly, the MSQ variants of most of those (maybe not the Crystal Tower) should be solo duties anyway. This works better with how the story is told, too. Before we fight Nidhogg for the second time, we are explicitly told that we're doing it solo, for example, and before Susano Alisaie also tells you you're on your own. The current ones can be kept as side content.

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I wish we had solo MSQ versions for a lot of things, but then that causes people to start screaming about "casuals dumbing down the content" even when you specifically try to explain that it would be a separate version that doesn't touch the original.

Unfortunately, Square-Enix does in fact reduce the difficulty of the dungeons they make Duty Support/Trust capable, which only inflames the before-mentioned screamers to go "SEE!? SEE!? WE TOLD YOU CASUALS RUIN EVERYTHING" and then its like I'm expected to feel guilty when Square-Enix made a decision I had zero input about because I would not have wanted the original versions of the dungeons removed.
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Originally Posted by Voidmage

If anything this game is one of the most beginner friendly MMO's for new players to that genre.

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You're right, we won't agree on this.

More options to customize Eorzea's Barbie.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

XIV has an identity. Well, it had more of a unique identity before Shadowbringers... But it's current identity is simply being a "PlayStation Home" with a story. But replace PlayStation with Square Enix.
The game does have original lore in it, but by and large it exists to advertise Square Enix's other products. It's literally Square Enix virtual Disneyland.

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Unfortunately, I think this is the case, but that's more because SE had no idea what to do with the success they had during COVID. They still don't. There's no vision, no innovation, no real thing you can point to and say "This is what makes FFXIV unique and worth playing." Yoshi-P's captaining a ship with no rudder and no sails. I really don't have any faith in things changing too much with 8.0, either. I worry that after 7.0 being such an unmitigated disaster, they're going to play it safe and pander rather than try to recapture what made people get into FFXIV to begin with.

Its easier to list the things XIV has rather than what it lacks
XIV has:
1. Battle content
2. Toxic fanbase
3. Umm...
4. Good music

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

They're not. The passive MP generation is the same, even in its impact from Piety. Our personal sum of MP-gen & MP-savings were also nigh-identical.

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I had to recheck old footage but it seems I had a memory bleedover from the experience. You're right, the regen was similar. But in essence, on top of having a lot less free ogcd heals and more hardcast healing to do, there was definitely a combination of factors that made resource scarcity be a real deal. I've seen countless parties, either dungeons or trials/raids, just keel over because they ran on fumes. I haven't seen this happen in ages since SHB/EW (especially EW+, and I suspect it has to do that they really alleviated how MP neutral or negative some rotations used to be even in ShB).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Healer rotations in Alexander Savage were chartable down to the GCD unless there were major f-ups, largely the same as now. The change was just that, given greater dynamism via GCDs over one's total effective outputs, MP was still a bit more of a shared resource instead of just a number of remaining rez charges.

Now, I'll agree fully that the ability of healers to be able to contribute more meaningfully beyond just healing (real AoE damage, often above tanks and nearing that of DPS, for instance), even if in shorter spurts only, was preferable to the dull tread we have now. I even would agree that it was better when Cure/Physick could situationally play a real part (as much from needing to top off a tank already at 80% because stuff could actually hurt as from MP costs, but still). But I think you overestimate certain sources of those differences -- something that tends make people nostalgize over what would result in mostly the same gameplay instead of focusing in one what would actually lead to the results they desire.

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Again, I was speaking about trash dungeon gameplay. Adjusting was a BIG healer deal back then. That's what I enjoyed about starting as a healer, and why I've stopped playing one since then. There is no more management of anything left to do. No balancing act, no seeing how far you can go, nothing.

More casual content that doesn't have a boring gameplay loop (OC, roulettes) but keeps giving meaningful rewards. It's horrible design that hunts is the only way for casuals to upgrade their tome gear more than once a week, for example.

More rewards to spend nuts/MGP/tomes/gemstones on - that alone would make a huge difference.

More interesting fates or mini zone events or something. Rift did that and it was so much fun.

Better glamour system (having to go to an inn is ridiculous). Better housing (increased item maximum + more wards).

Better character creation tool.

More options in challenge log - no reason not to have variant dungeons, Bozja, OC in there, or the other deep dungeons. Or, heck, ocean fishing. And things like Island Sanctuary and Eureka logs need better rewards.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I had to recheck old footage but it seems I had a memory bleedover from the experience. You're right, the regen was similar. But in essence, on top of having a lot less free ogcd heals and more hardcast healing to do, there was definitely a combination of factors that made resource scarcity be a real deal. I've seen countless parties, either dungeons or trials/raids, just keel over because they ran on fumes. I haven't seen this happen in ages since SHB/EW (especially EW+, and I suspect it has to do that they really alleviated how MP neutral or negative some rotations used to be even in ShB).

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That's a part, certainly, but 100 MP saved on one's DoT twice per minute, for instance, really is nothing compared to a single healing spell (other than Cure and its equivalents) used over a filler attack even once per two minutes. The largest reason for MP feeling like a rez-charges tracker really is just that no other spender plays a significant part anymore, which is a problem in itself and before "resource scarcity".

Which is why my wishes remain mostly as they were in HW-EW: increase the number/frequency of damage events (more total damage without making anything randomly lethal) paced apart from existing bursts, make AoE heals split among allies affected if healing more than 4 people as to reduce their otherwise stupidly high throughput, and give us some real burst potential (even if we could potentially hang ourselves with it) and/or give abilities lower CDs but an MP cost while halving the MP cost of healing spells, etc.

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Originally Posted by Pricia

More options in challenge log - no reason not to have variant dungeons, Bozja, OC in there, or the other deep dungeons. Or, heck, ocean fishing. And things like Island Sanctuary and Eureka logs need better rewards.

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I'd be nice if the "3 dungeons with squadrons" log could be updated to include duty support and trusts. There's so very few dungeons you can run with squadrons and they get boring after a while, whereas duty support and trusts can do pretty much every dungeon now, and with trusts needing to be leveled specifically, any weekly incentive to level them up (or to keep using them post-100) isn't a bad thing even if its still company seals.

Alt friendly, coming from WoW, I have a hard time having everything on one character. So if I want to try something new, I start with a fresh char. But you can't just send things to your alt. I know the roundabout, but it shouldn't be necessary.
Blacklist and friends list needs a complete overhaul. If I remove someone, I should be removed, from their list as well. That this is still a thing in this day and age is insane.
Account wide items, mounts, minions.

Probably more things, but these were the first ones I could think of.

Open world improvements. Long term combat related goals for casual players. You can easily fix both at the same time.
-Revamp Fates; Update old expansion fates with new mechanics. Let people exchange bicolor gemstones for all the same items as hunt currencies. Make Fates gives more EXP and a chaining bonus.
-If possible create a system like Rift has where you can queue into a group to do Fates
-Every single patch needs to add a bicolor gemstone mount AND a bicolor gemstone glamour set
-Introduce the same system with uncapped tomestones. Every single patch add in a mount and a glamour set that costs like 10-20k tomestones in vouchers. This gives players a reason to keep farming tomestones at all times.
-When capped on weekly tomestones, any excess should be automatically converted into the uncapped tomestone
-Variant dungeon roulette where the NPC picks the path for you
-Once you reach level 100 on a job, you can choose to delevel the job back down to 1. If you level the job a second time (without purchasing a boost for it) it will unlock a special themed glamour or mount for that job.
-No more extreme/savage only content like Chaotic. If you ever do Chaotic again, create a normal version of it too. The only exclusive reward for the harder version should be a title, and more currency to buy its rewards.

okay, im going to be that guy. like throwing chum out into shark infested waters

what happened to the cultural advising 7.0 had for a good singular patch from the looks of things

Professionalism is a chief thing it's missing now that it had before.
I don't see it when a cheap shot of 'main character syndrome' shows up in a Variant Dungeon dialogue. If anything, it gives the impression the entire staff in charge of writing and signing off on the finished dialogue are all terribly jaded to the point of willfully attacking their subscribers who poke their nose into their newest content due to not liking Dawntrail (as most of this seems to be occurring during the most controversial and irksome expansion of FFXIV to date, with the most irksome faculty being safeguarded and kowtowed to). That's my basic impression; if they wanted to carry an air of professionalism or poise, I would presume attacking the many for the deeds of a few is not something that should come up at all.