Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

When people say the story is good they seem to regularly forget the qualifier "for an MMO", probably because it sounds a lot less impressive considering the competition.

But to bounce off of what Vyrerus has already said, XIV didn't just miss the mark when it comes to portraying the gravity and scale of it's events as those escalated over the years.
It takes little advantage of the strengths of it's own visual medium, video games, in general, the majority of the MSQ is just walking to an NPC and then reading a whole lot of textboxes.

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I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

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I will say that garlemald had an uncommonly good selection of solo missions - metal gear thancred, tailing that npc, in from the cold. With a few tweaks that defend the train one could have been not bad too - I don’t remember the convoy having a fail condition through damage as in fates for instance. Now the pretty severe caveat is that this is relative only to the rest of the msq, not in absolute terms. (And of course the difficulty seeing aoes on white blue is pretty well known.) It is unfortunate that when they do show a spark of creativity it gets stamped out rather than kindled.

I can’t help but wonder if their internal processes disincentivise creative encounters or storytelling. Obviously there’s not many who can answer, but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects. That kind of creativity feels lacking in solo encounters which should be more suited for experimentation given uptime complaints and wearing thin through repetition are unlikely to rear their heads.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

I will say that garlemald had an uncommonly good selection of solo missions - metal gear thancred, tailing that npc, in from the cold. With a few tweaks that defend the train one could have been not bad too - I don’t remember the convoy having a fail condition through damage as in fates for instance. Now the pretty severe caveat is that this is relative only to the rest of the msq, not in absolute terms. (And of course the difficulty seeing aoes on white blue is pretty well known.) It is unfortunate that when they do show a spark of creativity it gets stamped out rather than kindled.

I can’t help but wonder if their internal processes disincentivise creative encounters or storytelling. Obviously there’s not many who can answer, but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects. That kind of creativity feels lacking in solo encounters which should be more suited for experimentation given uptime complaints and wearing thin through repetition are unlikely to rear their heads.

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I think it is all deadlines and if it's not broke don't fix it. And I can understand that. I just feel like at this point, you have an established fanbase that is pretty much ride or die. I'm not saying completely change everything, but a 45-degree shift might be refreshing enough to revitalize a rather dead method of story exposition. I think part 1 of Garlemald is fantastic, but unfortunately after that the rest is rather formulaic and honestly horribly disjointed as a story in terms of pace, but I'm not going to beat a dead horse about the failings of Endwalker.

Yoshi P is an idiot when it comes to healers and the same goes for the rest of the dev team, that's my hot take.

Wuk Lamat has the best weapon skill in the game.

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

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I’m in the middle of a replay of NG+ with a friend and one of the biggest things I’ve noticed is the MSQ is explicitly designed to be “broken up” and feels badly paced and way too “small” when you don’t

Like everyone always says that doma stole stormblood from ala mhigo (which is true) but go back and do a NG+ run and it’s almost comical how fast they rally half the far east and take back doma, the entire cadence of the MSQ really relies on you taking on a lot of side quests and doing roulettes because the story is not that good when experienced alone

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Originally Posted by fulminating

but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects.

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The real sad part is, if we got the Sophia fight in EW or even ShB we would not have had the tipping at all. They would have just made scales appear and if they tipped to one side you would have 1 aoe, if they tipped to the other you would have a different aoe. Cause that is the most effort they put into fights these days. I mean look how dirty they did Nald Thal with his scales. The only saving grace that had was a sweet cs, but the content is so easy and was outgeared even in its own patch, so new players will never see it cause he goes down too fast.

With regards to Nald'thal, good! Any instance that puts in a mech that ONE person messing up (intentionally or not) wipes the whole raid is a s--- design.

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

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The npc walking with us felt kinda like old school single player games that got me hooked on FF in the first place. I liked the vibe, AFTER they changed it so that you could mount or use aethernet without them pissing off back to the start point

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

Yoshi P is an idiot when it comes to healers and the same goes for the rest of the dev team, that's my hot take.

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Or maybe they're just tired of idiots?

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Originally Posted by Maltothoris

Yoshi P is an idiot when it comes to healers and the same goes for the rest of the dev team, that's my hot take.

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I feel like this is a ice cold take if im honest.
I'll even extend this to tanks, They all feel samey boring. In most content they added way more mitigation to tanks but didn't scale the baseline of tanks, also the rotations are very boring and continue to get worse every rework, I'm sure it won't be long before we tanks join the healers in the 3-4 damage buttons

I feel like they just need to either A: Focus on the DPS elements more on tank/healer jobs or B: Actually make those support elements fun and useful/interesting (which i doubt)

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I feel like this is a ice cold take if im honest.
I'll even extend this to tanks, They all feel samey boring. In most content they added way more mitigation to tanks but didn't scale the baseline of tanks, also the rotations are very boring and continue to get worse every rework, I'm sure it won't be long before we tanks join the healers in the 3-4 damage buttons

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The thing is, realistically, the only tank worth playing is Warrior. Paladin is dull garbage, it always has been since release. Dark Knight is a squishy ass tank with the most boring animations and vfx you can find in the game and Gunbreaker is just for flexing your cool coat glam on limsa.


So, yeah, only Warrior remains.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

The thing is, realistically, the only tank worth playing is Warrior. Paladin is dull garbage, it always has been since release. Dark Knight is a squishy ass tank with the most boring animations and vfx you can find in the game and Gunbreaker is just for flexing your cool coat glam on limsa.


So, yeah, only Warrior remains.

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Counterpoint , warrior is for people who can't tank effectively so they have to use game breaking self heals that have no business being part of a barbaric, viking style, axe wielding, basket case's skill kit.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

So, yeah, only Warrior remains.

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This is always the correct answer.

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Originally Posted by Gordita

Counterpoint , warrior is for people who can't tank effectively so they have to use game breaking self heals that have no business being part of a barbaric, viking style, axe wielding, basket case's skill kit.

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I resemble that remark!

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Originally Posted by Gordita

Counterpoint , warrior is for people who can't tank effectively so they have to use game breaking self heals that have no business being part of a barbaric, viking style, axe wielding, basket case's skill kit.

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Don't blame me, most people like fast and efficient, and the one that towers above all is Warrior, regardless of how you feel about it.

in any case, keep sending feedback, perhaps they change it someday lmao.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

Don't blame me, most people like fast and efficient, and the one that towers above all is Warrior, regardless of how you feel about it.

in any case, keep sending feedback, perhaps they change it someday lmao.

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I'm not sure I'd ever call WAR fast. To me its kinda so abysmally slow that I lose track of time.
But as to playrates,
I view WAR as popular for the same reason SMN is popular. Its braindead easy, and overtuned for what it is.

All alternatives to WAR take more to execute on and have more engaging gameplay loops, but WAR offers the path of least resistance paired with the fact its abilities are absurdly forgiving and end up having more of a reward than the other jobs.

The amount of hoops DRK and GNB have to jump through just for there to be nothing to reward them is one of the biggest balance issues with tanks right now, especially when you see how many of WAR's skills read like modern Yugioh Cards with "Additional Effect" text.

I've just chalked it up to Developer favoritism at this point.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

Don't blame me, most people like fast and efficient, and the one that towers above all is Warrior, regardless of how you feel about it.

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Towers over all in how incredibly dull it is as a job maybe.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I've just chalked it up to Developer favoritism at this point.

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If developer favoritism means your main job gets turned into the gameplay equivalent of watching paint dry then I'll gladly offer said favoritism to any other job.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

If developer favoritism means your main job gets turned into the gameplay equivalent of watching paint dry then I'll gladly offer said favoritism to any other job.

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I'm just talking about from an Effort:Reward standpoint. SIO Overtime was never needed, Nascent Flash is insanely overtuned compared to its counterparts, Equilibrium is basically the baby do-over button, which of course needed Aurora stapled to it as an Additional Effect. And any sane developer would have just nerfed Holmgang rather than trying to design an entire raidtier around its existence. But again, thats the developer favoritism I'm talking about.

In terms of how boring tanks can be, WAR has it the worst by a mile.

Fuck other jobs complain when their rotations are boring at lower levels, like Reaper before enshroud is just miserable to play.
Well Pre-Enshroud Reaper is literally just doing WAR's endgame rotation.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I'm just talking about from an Effort:Reward standpoint. SIO Overtime was never needed, Nascent Flash is insanely overtuned compared to its counterparts, Equilibrium is basically the baby do-over button, which of course needed Aurora stapled to it as an Additional Effect. And any sane developer would have just nerfed Holmgang rather than trying to design an entire raidtier around its existence. But again, thats the developer favoritism I'm talking about.

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Oh absolutely, not disagreeing there, there is no effort involved in doing anything on Warrior anymore. Not to say it was a difficult job in the first place, but you had at least some job mechanics that weren't completely on auto pilot.

SiO never needed the HoT, arguably even the 300 cure potency heal was overdoing it. Nascent got the component that actually required some kind of effort removed in EW, Equilibrium lost it's downsides with the botched "tank rework" in 5.0, and imo Holmgang should've never lost the effect that locks you in place which would've probably been a big enough nerf in today's world of constant mechanics spam.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I'm just talking about from an Effort:Reward standpoint.

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It wasn't always so. In days of yore, WAR had a really satisfying build/spend thing going for it while having most of their mitigation tied to a GCD that they had to trade DPS stance and Fell Cleave for, though as a result, their DPS/tank stance swap was oGCD with only a 10 second cooldown. Equilibrium also had to be used while in tank stance for it to be a heal in those days, if you did it in DPS stance, it restored 200TP (optimizations for it was to spam it at fight start in tank stance for enmity, hilariously). You had 3 different combos. One for slashing resistance down and your atk buff originally from Maim. One for Storm's Path's 10% atk penalty debuff to the monster. And one for damage/enmity (yes, when they removed enmity combos, they removed WAR's basic damage combo, which was the very satisfying Skull Sunder into Butcher's Block). Even had the situationally good 30 second DoT in Fracture.

Meanwhile, all of PLD and DRK's mits at that time were long lasting oGCDs, with their tank stances actually providing mitigation instead of HP. Way easier to play, even accounting for DRK's MP management requiring to never 0 out or lose their DPS (though DRK was quite punchy with like 9 oGCD attacks, making it feel like playing DRG but a tank instead).

Stormblood set a bad precedent for WAR, as it had been dubbed too OP in HW and they decided to give its stance swapping a severe penalty. Players were outraged, so the Devs took away the penalty. Players then began to complain about truly banal irritations with the job, saying it was too hard to get its entire burst off etc. So come SHB, they altered Inner Release, and pretty much introduced us to the dull, two combo, Storm's Path oriented WAR we have today.

God I miss Butcher's Block.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Stormblood set a bad precedent for WAR, as it had been dubbed too OP in HW and they decided to give its stance swapping a severe penalty. Players were outraged, so the Devs took away the penalty. Players then began to complain about truly banal irritations with the job, saying it was too hard to get its entire burst off etc. So come SHB, they altered Inner Release, and pretty much introduced us to the dull, two combo, Storm's Path oriented WAR we have today.

God I miss Butcher's Block.

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Inner Release was changed way before ShB, in 4.2, from 120s recast, 20s duration, 50% Beast Gauge reduction to the 90s recast, 10s duration, 100% Beast Gauge reduction and 100% critical direct hit.
All Shadowbringers did was staple the Storm's Eye extension to it.

And arguably people weren't wrong about pre-4.2 Warrior. You had to spend 2 minutes building up to your Inner Release+Berserk burst to get your big 6 Fell Cleaves, Upheaval and like 2 Onslaughts and any kind of downtime would throw a wrench into it, back when melees still had a lot more downtime and during a raid tier where the last boss reset aggro, forcing you to build up enmity again which completely threw off your expected Beast Gauge gain.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Inner Release was changed way before ShB, in 4.2, from 120s recast, 20s duration, 50% Beast Gauge reduction to the 90s recast, 10s duration, 100% Beast Gauge reduction and 100% critical direct hit.
All Shadowbringers did was staple the Storm's Eye extension to it.

And arguably people weren't wrong about pre-4.2 Warrior. You had to spend 2 minutes building up to your Inner Release+Berserk burst to get your big 6 Fell Cleaves, Upheaval and like 2 Onslaughts and any kind of downtime would throw a wrench into it, back when melees still had a lot more downtime and during a raid tier where the last boss reset aggro, forcing you to build up enmity again which completely threw off your expected Beast Gauge gain.

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Everything after 4.1 is a blur to me. But thanks for the reminder. Whenever it was that they rolled Berserk into Inner Release was a dogshit tier update to WAR, and I hated it.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Everything after 4.1 is a blur to me. But thanks for the reminder. Whenever it was that they rolled Berserk into Inner Release was a dogshit tier update to WAR, and I hated it.

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At the time I didn't mind it, it made the job more usable without having to map out the entire fight and Warrior's gameplay still had some nuance to it. Optimizing your Deliverance crit buff through gauge management, minimizing Storm's Eye uses while making sure you had at least 17 seconds left on the buff when you went into IR, GCD manipulation with Onslaught and knowing when to use Infuriate so you never accidentally overcapped or wasted cooldown reduction during IR.

But had I known that 4.2 was the beginning of what would eventually lead to current Warrior I would've been livid.

I actually still have the 4.0/4.1 guide document for the job, it's a nice throwback. Especially the "When everything goes to shit" section and the "Raid Buffs" section not showing 120s on everything.

WAR is just a collective insult to the entire game at this point and I hate how many people are willing to defend it from both ends

Casuals- hahaha healing go brrrrr
Raiders- why you angry at casual content WAR is only 50% too strong in savage that’s not that bad

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

WAR is just a collective insult to the entire game at this point and I hate how many people are willing to defend it from both ends

Casuals- hahaha healing go brrrrr
Raiders- why you angry at casual content WAR is only 50% too strong in savage that’s not that bad

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I agree, I don't even mind the self healing, but its the fact how effective it is in AOE (Per enemy needs to go) also how it has group and target healing better then a Paladin... Warrior to me doesn't even fit its job fantasy its just boring and gets everything other tanks get but better, Wouldn't be surprised if they gave warrior a second aoe mitigation, but it's not only if you can position it like PLD's at this point

Personally I think Tanks & Healers Need a rebalance, Both should Work together Instead of having a tank be able to solo stuff without losing any damage at all for it. I think partly they need to increase the general damage tanks take, reduce some self healing, focus on Tanks & Healers having fun Damage buttons while also making Utility kits at least a bit more intresting then they do.. with utility/defensives I'm starting to think Less is more.

Well on that topic, my own hot take is at this point not many jobs in XIV fit their fantasy, nor match their classic gameplay styles. Healers and tanks specially.

DRK for example was stripped off its trademark mechanic to be turned into an edgy parody of itself.

I agree with that

SCH’s descent from a “bag of tricks” battle tactician to an “UWU fairy mage” pains me to this day

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Originally Posted by Gordita

Counterpoint , warrior is for people who can't tank effectively so they have to use game breaking self heals that have no business being part of a barbaric, viking style, axe wielding, basket case's skill kit.

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Spoilers: many of those WARs still can't play effectively even with their game breaking self heals. Mostly the ones that pops BW the moment their health drops to 80%. They are still getting carried by the other 3 players.

The bar is really low.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Spoilers: many of those WARs still can't play effectively even with their game breaking self heals. Mostly the ones that pops BW the moment their health drops to 80%. They are still getting carried by the other 3 players.

The bar is really low.

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WAR actually doesn't teach you to play well.

Proper tanking focuses entirely on preemptive mitigation, using your mitigation at low health does nothing because there's nothing to defend after all. This is true of all tanks but especially Dark Knight.
WAR has a very strong feedback loop for Regenerating health, so a lot of players are going to take damage raw on WAR and try to regen it back. This is completely viable in normal content, and feels more effective than standard tanking.

That style of WAR completely falls off in high end content, because high end content tbs will just kill you unmitigated.
You end up with a lot of WAR players who don't know how to mitigate well.

I also think its why Dark Knight gets such a weird rep, people buy into the idea that it just plays like WAR, go to play it and then just eat shit because Dark Knight simply can't do the regen health after damage loop.
So obviously the job is bad and it has nothing to do with the fact you're trying to play Dark Knight like Warrior.

Hot take?
This game is going down the path of WoW in terms of gameplay and the direction the game is going. All we need is a 9.1.5. nuclear disaster at this point, lol.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Hot take?
This game is going down the path of WoW in terms of gameplay and the direction the game is going. All we need is a 9.1.5. nuclear disaster at this point, lol.

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I will say this I do kind of hope the game gets less and less players if the current game is designed like EW or worse then EW, I think it's actually a good thing if the game starts to drop a decent amount in player counts as I feel like SE would be more challenged to step up there game a bit, Current content and gameplay isn't doing it for me and a lot of players

I'm also not trying to say this because i dont want the game to do well... more I think if the game keeps doing "just fine" as it is it will not reach it's full potential, it will just remain the bland "passing" game it currently is to me.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I'm also not trying to say this because i dont want the game to do well... more I think if the game keeps doing "just fine" as it is it will not reach it's full potential, it will just remain the bland "passing" game it currently is to me.

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I'm with you 100% when it comes to this mindset. I've seen a LOT of games fall down this rabbithole of trying to please everyone (including the suits that force a cash shop) and it always results in a game that is so warped that it doesn't even look or feel like the game before all these cooks are cramming themselves in the kitchen trying to steer the game in the "right" direction.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

I'm with you 100% when it comes to this mindset. I've seen a LOT of games fall down this rabbithole of trying to please everyone (including the suits that force a cash shop) and it always results in a game that is so warped that it doesn't even look or feel like the game before all these cooks are cramming themselves in the kitchen trying to steer the game in the "right" direction.

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That's the current issue with ff14, it tries to appeal to everyone but in doing that it's stretched too thin and only really appeals to people doing content the first time Imo. Once you gain more awareness or repeat the games "core content" aka the battle system you start to realise how Boring it all is. The next step in ff14 once you done most up to date normal battle content is to basically start going into hard content until you get burnt out or bored of waiting for 8 months until the next tier, if there was intresting class design maybe repeating that on different jobs would bring a different experience but in ff14 that's becoming less and less true when everything is all samey for the sake of "balance" which mind you i dont think is actual balance it's just a way to make jobs quick and easy to tune, jobs are basically VFX packs a lot of the time (sometimes you do get hidden gems like BLM, some jobs are noticeably different, this is a massive issue with tanks and healers though in particular)

I think If the game focused more on it's gameplay rather then experimenting with new things that most people really don't care about it would actually be a lot better, as much as PVP was interesting that's just not FF14's strength with the laggy gameplay and slow refresh rate. Island sanctuary? yeah I don't think most people liked that, Criterion dungeons? a good Idea but the design for the harder stuff wasn't great theirs no real scaling difficulty... but the worst is that the rewards are just non existent making the content dead on arrival.

I like ff14 It's a fun "social simulator" for me as I've got quite a few friends on there, but at the end of the day the gameplay is mildly amusing at best which honestly I don't think is good enough. I will most likely play for story content and play with friends and that's about it nower days instead of being actually immersed into the game like i used to be.

Maybe a hot take, maybe not, but it blows my mind that I come back to get caught up before DawnTrail's release (less than two months left) and they STILL have weekly tombstones CAPPED. Like oh wow I guess I get the luxury of grinding the same hallway dungeons over and over again for two months instead of just being able to knock them out in one or two weeks. Brb saying F that and going back to FF7R2.

You could cut and consolidate 50-100 quests from ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood EACH and you know it!

Hot take: People talk all the time about how there's tons of people playing and there's always queues to get in. But that's just because the game doesn't boot you after 30 minutes like any other game. How many people do you see in the cities that never move or log out, except for when they're forced to for maintenance? How many people you think afk 24/7 in their homes/apartments.

I'm still thinking about that person a long time ago who said they hate logging out because they feel like it's causing their character physical harm when disconnected.

I have so many takes they won't even fit in one post, but I'll share one.

tldr; kill Alphinaud

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

WHM is the worst healer to pick up for someone new to healing.

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Im curious, why?

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Originally Posted by Rikizza

Im curious, why?

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WHM teaches all the wrong habits about modern healing design as it doesn’t get any oGCD’s till 50 and the first oGCD you get is benediction which to someone who doesn’t play healers feels like a panic button (even though it’s not)

In the same level range a healer like SCH has access to the fairy, an AOE oGCD regen, an oGCD mitigation and healing amplifier and 3 charges of lustrate. Using your oGCD’s first and spending more time doing damage is what you should be doing as a healer

Since WHM basically forces you to rely on cure 2 for 50 levels it ingrains all the wrong habits

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

WHM teaches all the wrong habits about modern healing design as it doesn’t get any oGCD’s till 50 and the first oGCD you get is benediction which to someone who doesn’t play healers feels like a panic button (even though it’s not)

In the same level range a healer like SCH has access to the fairy, an AOE oGCD regen, an oGCD mitigation and healing amplifier and 3 charges of lustrate. Using your oGCD’s first and spending more time doing damage is what you should be doing as a healer

Since WHM basically forces you to rely on cure 2 for 50 levels it ingrains all the wrong habits

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Can confirm, I treat oGCD's like an emergency button. Am terrible healer.