Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

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Originally Posted by EmoPanther

Tataru needs to die somehow.

Your Miqo'te/Au ra/Viera in skimpy clothes is not original, stop asking people what they think, you look like everyone else that does it.

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Lmao, Tataru absolutely needs to die somehow. Also there's nothing original about the Miqote/Au'ra/Viera period. They're humans wearing props after all.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Then, let's see an example of that which would benefit raiders by, as per what you quoted, removing guarantees as to raid content -- i.e., where "let's mix thing up by moving beyond the current content formulas (the backbone of which is raids and all else is merely a tack-on)" is double-speak for "give us more raids (and screw anyone who likes content that is not called a "raid" because we only care about raids, despite that term somehow including both 24-mans and ultimates, which could scarcely be more different from one another."

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First off, your demand isn't even coherent, but I'm reasonably sure you were trying to create an unanswerable "gotcha" question. Like I said, seen the tricks for 20+ years.

You and I both no, the second the current content formula is broken it would be open season from raiders demanding more "hard" content and endless whining when "casual" is added. Hell, they do it now when they know it won't work...do you think it they would do it less if there were a chance it might?

Anyway, I'm done with this subject, I have no interest in arguing in circles indefinately.

What's with the antagonism towards raiders? We're all just trying to have fun playing the same game here.

Cid is one of the most annoying characters in the game and sucks the life out of the story when ever he shows up unannounced. and the game would be better if he just died....or got anal fissures or something.

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Originally Posted by Conundrum

First off, your demand isn't even coherent, but I'm reasonably sure you were trying to create an unanswerable "gotcha" question.

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You made a claim that moving away from a set content formula as per...

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

We don't need a content formula any more. It's boring.

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...would only lead to raiders directing "content... to them at everyone else's expense."

Despite that person you quoted pointing out that their issue had nothing to do with raiding and was instead because...

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

the content is so formulaic you can predict what content is dropping in what patch. I can tell you how many bosses will be in each dungeon, how many pulls you will have in each dungeon. That's a problem.

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...you insisted that a request --to no longer adhere perfectly to the typical content formula-- made also by casual players who want less fixation on raiding... would most likely be double-speak by those who actually just want a greater portion of developer resources to be spent on raid content.

I therefore asked you to give me an example of past language that has, despite seeming more likely to move attention away from raids, would be double-speak by those who wanted greater developer attention to be spent on raids.

:: In other words, I asked that you give at least a shred of evidence to support, or at least exemplify, your claim.



My own position, btw, can be summed up here:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A central side-content form the ties the rest together would actually be good for a given expansion; it just has to be done well.

For instance, imagine if instead of just another Diadem-rehash, an utterly disjointed alliance raid, and another 2 years of just the same old Expert Roulette spam and isolated tiers, we had actually gone off to revitalize the Light Waste, using the connections between Stasis (Light) magic and Echo/timespace travel to join those elements together. For instance, rather than the Light Waste being a small vista from which to access Eden cutscenes, we could actually go out to explore, using the evolving Eden to echo the pre-apocalyptic world as to rediscover and (through defeating monsters and absorbing their aether), resituate, and repopulate it. NieR, in that context, could actually make sense, and open-world and instanced content could actually share an interesting, synergetic connection.

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It, too, would require we move away from just the current content formulas. That does not, however, make it double-speak for "give us more raid content." Quite the opposite.


tl;dr: I get it. Raiders bad. But maybe don't read agenda into suggestions that have nothing to do with that agenda?

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

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Originally Posted by Minato777

....or got anal fissures or something.

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Can we talk about this and why this would improve the MSQ? I do not doubt you, but I need to see how this workshops.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

Can we talk about this and why this would improve the MSQ? I do not doubt you, but I need to see how this workshops.

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Cid has just been our hackneyed MacGuffin / Deus Ex Machina provider for the last few expansions. Need something to fight? Cid does a dumb and thereby gives you something to fight. Wouldn't be able to progress through X? Cid makes something to get you through X, removing that would-be complexity.

Now, that's hardly unique to him, but variety of sources (more not-Cid, in its varying forms) at least provides some reprieve, so I can see why some would want him pushed out the door.

My hot take:

SMN doesn't need Shiva, Ramuh, or Leviathan summons. But it could stand to have Alexander and Eden summons.

I've never liked the missing trio in other games, and XIV has developed them in a way where I think they have transcended those roles:

* Leviathan has never had much personality in any game, always felt like filler. Now he fills the role of mysterious, eldritch deep-sea dragon. We don't really have the personal rapport and investment in him like we do the main three tribal primals. He's just kind of better representing the unknown.
* Ramuh always bothered me as just this old man we were summoning. Nothing bestial about him. Not to mention he's part of the kind of underconsidered appropriation of Hindu gods in FF. In XIV he serves more as a spokesperson, source of wisdom, and really a secondary character than a true threat like the other primals. I think it would dilute his character and role in the story to just make him a summon at this point.
* Shiva is by far the worst summon in all of FF history. Misgendering AND misappropriation of blue skin. I am not religious or South Asian but the sheer "blueface" of it all just offends me scholastically. In XIV she is pretty much a main character, on a completely different level than Ifrit/Titan/Garuda, and it absolutely would undermine Ysayle's character arc if Shiva were made a trite summon in SMN's rotation. I think a "Diamond Dust" spell might be an appropriate homage to Heavensward, but nothing more.

As it stands, Summoner's summon kit hits a really nifty "Persian" aesthetic niche. You've got very balanced representation of Greek (Titan), Arabic (Ifrit), and Hindu (Garuda) cultural influence on that region, with each summon riding a comfortable line between "mythological creature" and "definable character" from mythology (as opposed to being quite clearly a singular god-like entity like Shiva/Ramuh/Leviathan). And then those are couched by a more generalized creature that spans from Egypt to Russia to China (Phoenix). And a more generalized Semitic figure from that general region that has been redefined as FF's Ur-Dragon (Bahamut). It doesn't lean too heavily on either the Judaic or Hindu religions like prior iterations of summoner do, instead of opting for a very egalitarian cultural mixing pot ala Macedonian, Bactrian, or Mughal culture. To add *more* of any particular mythological leaning with Leviathan, Shiva, or Ramuh, would kind of ruin this cool new identity SMN has forged for itself.

In a similar vein, SMN has a very primal aesthetic that I think would be somewhat diluted if we got Alexander. BUT I could maybe give it a pass since Alexander also kind of emphasizes an interesting intersection between Greek, Egyptian, and Persian cultures AND is a reference to a library which would gel with SMN's book aesthetic. It just barely works. And if we got an Eden to pair with it as kind of Temple of Artemis/Mausoleum of Halicarnassus moment, I think that would be just an epic af pairing.

Devs please: No Shiva/Ramuh/Leviathan Summons. Yes Alexander and Eden. Both or nothing. I know it is very tempting to make a Shiva diamond. Don't do it.

Also, adding some kind of reference to Zanarkand (based on real-world Samarkand and all that of the summoning connotations it has from X) would also be rad af under this "Iranosphere" interpretation of Summoner.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Cid has just been our hackneyed MacGuffin / Deus Ex Machina provider for the last few expansions. Need something to fight? Cid does a dumb and thereby gives you something to fight. Wouldn't be able to progress through X? Cid makes something to get you through X, removing that would-be complexity.

Now, that's hardly unique to him, but variety of sources (more not-Cid, in its varying forms) at least provides some reprieve, so I can see why some would want him pushed out the door.

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That's all well and good, but what does that have to do with

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Originally Posted by Minato777

anal fissures

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

My hot take:

SMN doesn't need Shiva, Ramuh, or Leviathan summons. But it could stand to have Alexander and Eden summons.

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Have one from each expansion, so to speak, over one of each element?

I wouldn't hate it, as much as I'd like elemental mixing and matching, but I can't say I'd be too fond of summoning, essentially, giant robots (Eden and Alexander)... I don't really see how either would fit alongside the nice Asia Minor / Persian / Bactrian mixes we have now with Titan, Ifrit, and Garuda.

If I liked Alexander's movesets (and assuming summons ever get enough unique to them to possibly be called a "moveset"), I'd probably be okay with him, but Eden... probably not.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

Also, adding some kind of reference to Zanarkand (based on real-world Samarkand and all that of the summoning connotations it has from X) would also be rad af under this "Iranosphere" interpretation of Summoner.

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Now that I'd love, especially if it fit with the next expansion's world.

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Originally Posted by Jybril

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

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There are so so so many variables in play so everyone please take this as a range of mountains of salt, but I've long a sense for what is like wind or water over long ages of rock that includes all else that ails the game (issues flowing on the streams)... just simply age makes familiarity and is the enemy for many players in games that are meant to 'never end'.

Sure there are some old games that some people still play, and by old I mean not last 5 years. But, as something ages and is in some way required not to evolve 'too much' yet things around it do (because they're new).. I think this is one major factor to WoW constantly in search of the glorious days. Yes, YES of course there are many other issues to point at... but I feel for 'most' people around 10 years is a long life span for a game. It's literally around the age of many pets.

I guess I can make this my third attempt at a hot take, 'MMORPGs are not meant to last forever', it's okay they don't. Certainly you do want them to last longer than a couple years lol, and taking breaks can make it easily last longer- particularly in MMOs that allow you to take a break without getting punched in the face. In a general sense FFXIV allows that, though not financially if you own a house lol. Cataclysms might help, but given you can't stray too far from the source without angering people is also dangerous and potentially less fruitful than just making it different enough they can coexist. Say for example if in 2-5 years SE announced another MMO, my bet would be it'd have a substantial departure from FFXIV somehow that allowed FFXIV to live on like FFXI did (and FFXI still has a good chance to live on with it's small crowd and perhaps even more if they did ever pick up that mobile concept again).

Such a thought is why I occasionally openly wonder if they're secretly working on "titan 2" and hopefully they don't pull a WoW and kill it lol. My personal belief is WoW was going to slowly corrode no matter what, but given certain actions they've done both recently and not so recently have helped speed that up. Hence the water / wind analogy and what extra deeds are carried on the current. Like WoW did I'm certain SE can keep FFXIV making good for many years to come, and I've no doubt they can keep making expansions, but it makes me quite curious how they're going to batter and fortify against the river of time (and I'm not even sure if that's possible). No doom is coming to FFXIV soon, imo, I am talking in the frame of multiple years..

Maybe another analogy is eating at the same restaurant every day, without break. With break it'll help, with the restaurant changing the menu up it can also help (or hinder even lol), but there is still this sense of diminishing returns (slowly, very slowly, it's a many many year process, hopefully), and the shadow of the golden days growing taller when it was still a new experience.

Just my thought that MMOs do have a half life that is exceptionally hard to maintain the desired users through (you can /absolutely/ carry the 'never quit' fans though, like FFXI probably has players from the original days, there are some people who never stop playing the same game over and over and over, I think most people are not exactly like that though). I note that often the 'over and over' games are usually PVP, which helps keep a sense of variability throughout all else- I think that is probably a HUGE constant in most of those games that are quite old and yet still played a lot.

I personally don't find FFXIV currently boring, though I of course love to imagine hence I enjoy the forums as well lol, but I also have a decent amount of work and will make time for other games occasionally (like right now I am enjoying God of War now that is on PC). So I'm more paced than perhaps someone who finishes everything on day one patch or streams a game as a job lol.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

That's all well and good, but what does that have to do with

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When some people want certain elements/people gone, they want them to be removed in the most painful ways they can imagine?

So many of these "hot takes" are actually just bad takes.

It seems that a lot of you don't know what hot takes are.

FFXIV is known as a game for perverts because of the rampant oversexualization of characters in the game. There are people that think this game's main selling point is catgirl/au'ra/bunnygirl ERP.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

FFXIV is known as a game for perverts because of the rampant oversexualization of characters in the game. There are people that think this game's main selling point is catgirl/au'ra/bunnygirl ERP.

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This is your third post tonight about being angry over the furries, are we okay over there?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Have one from each expansion, so to speak, over one of each element?

I wouldn't hate it, as much as I'd like elemental mixing and matching, but I can't say I'd be too fond of summoning, essentially, giant robots (Eden and Alexander)... I don't really see how either would fit alongside the nice Asia Minor / Persian / Bactrian mixes we have now with Titan, Ifrit, and Garuda.

If I liked Alexander's movesets (and assuming summons ever get enough unique to them to possibly be called a "moveset"), I'd probably be okay with him, but Eden... probably not.

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Alexander is like a weird amalgamation of the figure of Alexander and the lighthouse of Alexandria, especially in recent games where he more clearly took on aspects of the former (XIII), latter (XI), or both (XIV). Alexander conquered what was pretty much the Persian empire and attempted to syncretize Greek and Persian cultures, something which survived him and arguably was what led to later Greco-Buddhist developments in regions like Bactria. The lighthouse of Alexandria of course is an edifice that really straddled the line between Greek and Egyptian culture. I think "Alexander" as envisioned, especially in more recent iterations which emphasize a "library/lighthouse" reference, could somewhat squeeze into SMN's aesthetic while adding something new.

But I also think it's just begging to be balanced out by the reimagination of Eden in the ShB raids. The final design of Eden is very clearly taking inspiration from the statue of Artemis from the Temple of Artemis (another world wonder alongside the lighthouse of Alexandria). The statue of Artemis at Ephesus was actually the appropriation by the Greeks of a pre-Hellenic Anatolian goddess. Using that in XIV for a final boss of an Eden raid is freaking brilliant because Ultimecia is really just a poor localization of "Artimesia" (which is semi-confirmed by Loghrif's true name Artemis). And, if you go back to how VIII portrayed Ultimecia/Artimesia, *she* was heavily inspired by a different Artemisia, Artimesia II who built the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (a third ancient wonder) to mourn her late husband--which ymmv if you like the R=U theory, but we do seem to have some additional love for that myth with the Halicarnassus boss. But that was also a Persian Satrap, again making Eden's design this really weird and beautiful Greco-Persian amalgamation.

Alexander is already quite book-adjacent, and Eden is already quite summon-adjacent. They both also have wings, which would work really well with the aesthetic of SMN's job bar. I just really appreciate the amount of cultural referentialism both have been imbued with in XIV, and think they are wayyyyyy more deserving of being referenced in SMN's moveset than Shiva/Ramuh/Leviathan. I don't think SMN necessarily even needs more summon phases. We could just have one big Alexander Summon spell and one big Eden summon spell. Bam. SMN complete. Chef's kiss.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

There are people that think this game's main selling point is catgirl/au'ra/bunnygirl ERP.

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Well it certainly isn't the gameplay!

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Well it certainly isn't the gameplay!

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Lmao, well I guess we can say some of the music is good.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

1.23 had the best potential of XIV and every good it had was scrapped for no good reason.

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What good things would that have been, though? Incaps were removed before 1.23 on account of its making certain jobs obligatory. Customization was shallow and illusory at best, what with Yoshida having already imploded the Armory and "build your own job" systems. Combos then worked just as poorly as now, except in that they took several auto-attacks to unlock (via TP costs) and their costs roughly tripled the cost of hitting any "combo" button out of order. The netcode was worse. The engine (a clipped version of Crystal Tools) couldn't support a Z-axis. (Though, its frame-bogging, upon fixing the issues inherent to the game's Full Screen rendering, were badly overstated.) Job depth and identity were both far shallower. The storylines were brief and, with few exceptions, incredibly basic. End-game content was limited to dungeons (of which there were only four) and trials (only 2; 5 if you include the chief NMs and Skirmish). Behests were just escort FATEs; Hamlet defense was a disjointed mess. Leve-grinds, the predominant way to level up (until people used up their allowances as just mob-farmed), frequently took more time traveling than in combat.

Modern XIV has its problems, but it's difficult to find any threads worth developing from 1.23. The earlier, pre-alpha "Guild FC Wars" design concept, complete with primal summoning, garrisons, ship- (and cake-) building, highly involved guild activities, and large-scale and naval combat? Maybe. The original Armory concept? Maybe. The already watered-down unambitious principles of 1.23, though? Nah.

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Originally Posted by Jybril

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

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Content formula is a double edge sword. On one side we have a consistent patch schedule. On the other hand the patch cycle gets stale when it is unchanged.
I think the worst problem with it all is the sheer fact that we have had the same patch cycle, but with less content included in these patches as we get more expansions. Not sure why this is, maybe they complete the expansion and leave a very small crew to do the patch cycles while the rest of the team starts development on the next expansion? What ever the reason does not matter as something does need to change regardless.

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Originally Posted by OhNooo

StB was the best expansion for overall gameplay. Don’t @me

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Agree on content, hard disagree on things like job design.

My hot take is that Stormblood was the absolute low point of this game's job design. It was stuck at the halfway point of ShB's formulaic yet intuitive and (mostly) clean design and HW's jank, funny, and hilariously imbalanced design with very few of the positives of either.

The Ascians and the Ancient plotline is meh in alot of ways, and all the bullheadness of fanboys/fangirls it spawned has made story discourse a slog.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Gender-locked jobs are better than limited jobs.

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I have mixed thoughts on this in Korean MMO's.
In a lot of cases the reason why gender-locks exist is because the character you play is an already established character in the lore, they have a name and a backstory etc.
Vindictus is an example that comes to mind.
I'd even argue Genshin Impact to some extent.

Something I also like about it in Korean MMO's is that it tends to open up for pushing masculinity and femininity more because the devs don't have to worry about people getting mad because their male character gets '' girly clothes ''.
It makes the designs a lot more unique and distinct imo.
I don't really like the hyper masculinity thing with enormous angry guys but I really like the hyper femininity opposite end.

Not saying all games need to do this ( altho it does bother me how the masculine is basically always treated as the default women need to adapt to... ).
But my personal preference is for hyper femininity to be pushed, and I can just accept hyper masculinity as the opposite end so that what I want can exist too.
I don't think it's possible without gender-locks tho because when it comes to masculinity and what men wear and how they look it's significantly more rigid and people would flip the hell out if their male characters got the same gear as the female characters.
I mean ffs there's people in FFXIV who lose their minds whenever female characters get a skirt, imagine if they actually did go with the same gear for both genders but *gasp* used the female gear as the default.
Male characters getting a skirt for a gear set would cause a huge mental breakdown from loud sections of the community.

FFXIV does have some gendered stuff too but it's the exception and it's usually not the gear itself you get from doing dungeons and raids.
I do prefer it personally tho when the whole class/ Job has all of its gear and style designed around it.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Male characters getting a skirt for a gear set would cause a huge mental breakdown from loud sections of the community.

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Every male healer in FFXIV says 'Hi'.

Slight spoilers i guess.

ShB was the beach episode of FFXIV and we could've done w/o going to another shard, yes we learned some about hydaelyn and zodiark but they could've simply done that in the source. Instead we used almost an entire expansion to build up ShB to barely revisit it once in a quest.

SE made the smart move to call it shadowbringers, branding us warriors of darkness. I like this because it shows that light isnt always the answer and darkness isnt always bad up till the very end of ShB! and then ... Darkness boss and you use the light to defeat it in QTE and they doubled down when the 5.3 boss was actually light based. Why did they not swap these 2 bosses ... the 5.3 one would've been as epic and iconic as the 5.0 one ... yes the story would've needed adjustments but it would've been entirely possible. The name Shadowbringers would've been a lot more impactful if we had defeated the 5.3 boss at the end of 5.0.

And while we are at it, the amount of recycling was to high in ShB, If i ever have to see another Shiva I'm going insane, there's 5 versions now.

Also Graha Tia is the most annoying char to me, i get some ppl get the "i need to defend this character" feeling, but dear god did i hope SE would off him.

Gameplay having a bit of jank to it made things feel more active and engaging i.e. dps enmity management or cleric stance.

Doma was created with anti-Chinese sentiments.

When it comes to glamours, the team cares more about birthing memes than making sure there's an aesthetic for everyone.

Future expansions need to start simmering down to either just one new job or none at all, focusing on the rest of the gameplay instead.

Stormblood and Endwalker both should've been two expansions instead of one.

The writers try too hard to outdo themselves and it became painfully obvious in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

we have a consistent patch schedule.

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Frankly, I like Structure. I like knowing and being able to Predict when X content is coming at X patch. And I like having a (mostly) consistent Patch Cycle.
Not a fan of the idea of not knowing when stuff is going to happen.
Plus this Predictable Structure tells me the Machine is Well Oiled and Running.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Frankly, I like Structure. I like knowing and being able to Predict when X content is coming at X patch. And I like having a (mostly) consistent Patch Cycle.
Not a fan of the idea of not knowing when stuff is going to happen.
Plus this Predictable Structure tells me the Machine is Well Oiled and Running.

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All nice and good until your machine is an old beast and competitors have proven that there can be more without spoiling it all (and there's not one single competitor). I loved Bozja and solo deep dungeons are fun, but these are outdated/old, and they released this xpac with the same old formula of 2EX/savage, still with atrocious healer gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

So many of these "hot takes" are actually just bad takes.

It seems that a lot of you don't know what hot takes are.

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For the clueless

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...glish/hot-take

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Originally Posted by Izar_Chillen

For the clueless

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...glish/hot-take

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hot take if do not understanding the joke of hot takes in the context of MMO criticism then boast about how you know a dictionary definition you should not be allowed to use the forum

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Every male healer in FFXIV says 'Hi'.

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I don't think that's the same thing, but yes to some extent it kinda gets into what I mean.
Even just the hint of something that is perceived as feminine and suddenly it's a gigantic problem, but as a woman/ someone who prefers feminine fashion in 99% of games you're just expected to deal with everything being designed for men first and women being an afterthought.

The shoe is on the other foot and suddenly reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

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Originally Posted by Snorky

That is the dumbest thing I've ever read.

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If this the dumbest thing you have ever read then you must not frequent these forums very often or your standards of dumb are very very low. That or you just wish to insult me.

Regardless, this statement is still true and if you'd like, I could absolutely derail this whole thread with articles and citations from credible sources to prove this statement.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Even just the hint of something that is perceived as feminine and suddenly it's a gigantic problem, but as a woman/ someone who prefers feminine fashion in 99% of games you're just expected to deal with everything being designed for men first and women being an afterthought.

The shoe is on the other foot and suddenly reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

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Women tend to look good even if they wear gear that leans more towards the masculine side.
When men wear feminine clothing, it doesn't look right, at least to me anyway. Probably because a lot of feminine clothing are built around and compliment the female form.

If you ask me why, I wouldn't really be able to tell you. Women just pull off a wider range of clothing, feminine & masculine, better.
I'm not saying men shouldn't wear feminine clothing if that's what they want to do. Men can wear feminine clothing if they want and there's no problem with it. I guess this is just another one of my hot takes.

IDK much about how hot those are, but here are some takes. Maybe lukewarm at best

1. While i enjoyed the story that Endwalker tried to tell more than Shadowbringers (mostly), the way it actually told it sometimes ranged between bad and awful in quite a lot of story moments (And by that i mean both gameplay and, well, story parts of it).

2. 2/3 of Ultima Thule had nice zone lore. Actual MSQ, however, with all sacrifices and all that, was pretty bad and i really dont know how people got emotional at most of it. Few exceptions obviously.

3. ShB's sapphire weapon instance was a mistake and should not have costed us second expert dungeon.

4. Level cap should not be raised in future expansions. Endwalker has shown that sqex is running out of ideas for new skills, and pretty much all jobs just get to potency increases in 81-90 stretch.

5. XIV's cash shop is hideous. The only reason its better than WoW's is lack of token. Remove it from latter game, and Turns will Table quite fast.

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Originally Posted by Senn

Women tend to look good even if they wear gear that leans more towards the masculine side.
When men wear feminine clothing, it doesn't look right, at least to me anyway. Probably because a lot of feminine clothing are built around and compliment the female form.

If you ask me why, I wouldn't really be able to tell you. Women just pull off a wider range of clothing, feminine & masculine, better.
I'm not saying men shouldn't wear feminine clothing if that's what they want to do. Men can wear feminine clothing if they want and there's no problem with it. I guess this is just another one of my hot takes.

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It depends a bit on the clothing but generally speaking I agree with you.
However I also think this has significantly more to do with the fact that we're not used to seeing men in feminine clothing and I also think that feminine fashion looks way better and is A LOT more varied and diverse.
I mean if you go back and look at a lot of clothes historically that men used to wear it often looks effeminate but used to be considered very manly.
These things obviously changes.

My overall point tho is that I feel like normally what ends up happening is that feminine fashion tends to get limited or even be non-existent in games because of this and I think it's sad and annoying.
And I also think that people should relax and not flip the hell out when they get something different every once in a while.
If you play a male character it shouldn't really be a big deal if you got one skirt per expansion it's not worth flipping out about and there are people who enjoy it too.
Not everything needs to be designed for male characters first and then just thrown unto female characters but that's how it tends to work.

In New World it was so bad female characters actually had bulges because that's how little effort they put into female characters ( and they had a ton of titles with the wrong gender ).
I think both that female characters shouldn't be an afterthought and also that people should widen their horizons a little on what men can wear.
I mean look at kilts and Roman soldiers ( Romans not necessarily skirts, but it looks like a skirt in armor ).
A lot of this is in peoples heads and how they've been socialized, I think you definitely can make a lot of this stuff work for men too the problem is a lot of people are very resistant to anything that on first impression they think is '' weird ''.
If they managed to get past that initial reaction tho they might actually end up liking it.
Roman and Ancient Greek soldiers are some of the coolest soldiers in history imo, but they essentially look like they're wearing skirts lol, that's not even getting into a lot of their other clothes that are sorta like dresses in a sense too.
It's really no different even if people think of it as different.

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Originally Posted by Remish

If this the dumbest thing you have ever read then you must not frequent these forums very often or your standards of dumb are very very low. That or you just wish to insult me.

Regardless, this statement is still true and if you'd like, I could absolutely derail this whole thread with articles and citations from credible sources to prove this statement.

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I wish to apologize to you, I looked up toxic positivity and it is real. I just never knew it was. I will say people take it too far though. I happen to enjoy FFXIV and my reaction is one of defence when people constantly critize this game. Sure it has faults sure things need to be worked on. But you have to admit some people just critize to jump on the band wagon and this thread is a good example. My hot take is: I'm going to read another thread with a more upbeat take.

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Originally Posted by Snorky

I wish to apologize to you, I looked up toxic positivity and it is real. I just never knew it was. I will say people take it too far though. I happen to enjoy FFXIV and my reaction is one of defence when people constantly critize this game. Sure it has faults sure things need to be worked on. But you have to admit some people just critize to jump on the band wagon and this thread is a good example. My hot take is: I'm going to read another thread with a more upbeat take.

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I appreciate the apology. I also do agree that the forums is overly negative and can be a cess pool about it. It's not always unwarranted though, the forums is after meant for feedback, and feedback is usually negative. People who have no issues with the game don't normally have a reason to frequent the forums. They are to busy having fun to even think about this place. The rest who do have complaints wish to be heard and come here to vent. Hoping the devs take notice. I find Reddit to be a bit more positive than here because all of the content creator and influencer energy is over there. Compared to here, we have virtually no content creator positivity, presence, or influence here to mitigate the negativity. And when we do see them, they are usually here to mock and ridicule us for virtue signal PR points. The forums could be a healthier place if stuff like the fashion report was posted here, to name an example. But until then, the negativity will always seem overwhelming. That's not to say Reddit is better because it has it's fair share of problems.

The removal of attributes, crowd control, multi-player combos, buffs/debuffs from our arsenal to instead implement a game of dodgeball really dumbed down and made combat just ok.

SE are way too quick to pull the nerf trigger on quests and various pieces of content. Even if a handful of players cry hard enough, they nerf whatever into the ground all while creating less and less content for ppl who actually like some challenge. Which is detrimental to the game as a whole. There needs to be a balance.

The content/gear of a patch being outdated with the arrival of the next, when you have a patch cycle as quick as xiv's is really poorly thought out and is leading to more problems as time passes.

FATEs are just bad, and SE knows it. But instead of doing something interesting with the system, they just slap the quick fix of a currency on them and lock a bunch of goods behind them to pump up the numbers of people who complete them to make them seem more popular internally. We have had only about 6 objectives on repeat for a decade, they have no influence on the zone or anything directly around them and they offer no rewards outside of said currency. They also rely way too heavily on the system, see the next point.

The original relic had us do many steps and the most hated of all those steps was the fate grind. SE said they heard our feedback and were going to try to do something the players found more interesting, but instead just created Eureka and Bozja which turned the relic into nothing but one prolonged fate grind in zone designed to be nothing but places to grind fates, instead of eliminating fates from the process completely, like most players wanted.

Endwalker was from start to finish, an incredible let down. They turned a relatively good story into a bad anime. Point and case: making the main villain a small girl instead of any of the actual interesting enemies we have already had or coming up with a concept that wasn't a cliche.

The escort-a-scion and follow-that-npc quests are just escort missions, and no one like escort missions. SE is basically trying to turn things players do not like (escort quests/fates) into features because they are just out of original ideas. The fact they are making them out of something that are notoriously disliked just shows how out of touch they have become.

They apparently think a ranger who knows a couple songs is a bard. FFXIV's bard is the least bard a bard could possibly be.

Hrothgar stereotypes, and those playing into them ruined the race for normal people. See Roe as well.