What’s your FFXIV Hot Take?

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Originally Posted by Korbei

Here's mine: Outside of towns and camps, night music sucks, ruins the energy and I'd toggle it off if I could.

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I actually agree with this lol so it's not raising my pulse none. Yeah the night tracks can be nice but reaaaaaaally I'm slightly more partial to the ambience being interrupted by the dawn jangle into the full daytime track, if I'm honest. It's just a nice gentle transition, and it's only in ARR zones. Sadge. Maybe it's because I'm a nyctophile and the silence is part and parcel to my enjoyment of it.

This on the other hand...

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

People who chose Swift or Full Swing as your role action, in Frontlines, are cowards and dumb

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This did get a reaction from me hue. I take Swift on MNK for a less stressful time RoE bombing and also to extract choice targets with Wind's Reply better (and not have them go off in completely the wrong direction). The worst thing you could do is call me a coward lol.

Can't speak of the Full Swingers. Maybe you could ask the ones that double punt me away what value that gives them (could be a gigabren move in disguise tbh!)

I don't have anything to contribute to the topic, outside of a random mystery box chilli of misc hotness that may or may not have been already mentioned: PvP in this game is actually not terrible when it's given an iota of respect.

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Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

This did get a reaction from me hue. I take Swift on MNK for a less stressful time RoE bombing and also to extract choice targets with Wind's Reply better (and not have them go off in completely the wrong direction). The worst thing you could do is call me a coward lol.

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I’m not intending to offend you, but I genuinely think SWIFT is one of the worst options for Monk.
Maybe you have a different playstyle that makes SWIFT work for you, and that’s fair.
But personally, I would never pick it because the tradeoff feels like a significant loss in combat effectiveness and pressure potential.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

I am not intend to offend you but SWIFT is really the worst option for MNK.

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Not the way I apply it my friend. We'll agree to disagree there.

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Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

Not the way I apply it my friend. We'll agree to disagree there.

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Like I said, you may have your own playstyle to make SWIFT work for you, there is no judgement.

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Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

PvP in this game is actually not terrible when it's given an iota of respect.

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Absolutely a chill take (jk). But I agree with this 100%

My hot take for FF14 Frontline is this:

Every time I load into a match and see my alliance stacked with ranged jobs, especially multiple Machinist and Bard players, I immediately assume I’m on a losing team.
And honestly?
That observation rarely fails me.

Rebranding the game as a full-on ERP modbeast experience would triple revenue.

To bring this thread back up...

A lot of NPC hair styles look god awful on players, stuff like Omega-F's and Azeyma's, not that those are bad hairstyles, rather that they relied on the whole to truly shine, and it is impossible to have a character carrying the same energy as the original characters who wore those hairstyles, even while wearing the exact same outfit.

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

To bring this thread back up...

A lot of NPC hair styles look god awful on players, stuff like Omega-F's and Azeyma's, not that those are bad hairstyles, rather that they relied on the whole to truly shine, and it is impossible to have a character carrying the same energy as the original characters who wore those hairstyles, even while wearing the exact same outfit.

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The fact we got Azeyma's disaster of a ponytail and not simpler, more pleasant (and probably easier to implement) hairstyles like Menphina's fluffy twintails or Nymeia's fluffy bob still bothers me.

Omega-F was a hairstyle I wanted for years, but the baffling decision to make the side bits float like has resulted in no one wanting to wear it. I was surprised, though, that it doesn't look terrible ona Hrothgal because their shoulders and chest are about the right size for the bits that stick up to lay alright.

endwalker final zone wasn't sad at all due to knowing ff14 is a shonen, there are no risks. We already knew we had a mcguffin.

made the story beats of the scions really, really meh.

Creative Studio 3 actually became less inspired and creative once they were renamed from Creative Business Unit 3.

Spoiler warning etc etc

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Originally Posted by Avenheit

endwalker final zone wasn't sad at all due to knowing ff14 is a shonen, there are no risks. We already knew we had a mcguffin.

made the story beats of the scions really, really meh.

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Cold take tbh, I think a huge portion of the player base agrees with you, me among them. I stopped thinking scions could get hurt after ShB with both Thancred and (for the THIRD time) Y'shtola did fakeouts, and Thancred croaking then and there would be objectively better storytelling than keeping him around. I think everyone knows at this point that scions aren't really characters anymore as much as they're marketing objects.

People really dont know what a Hot Take is, do they ?

Any story past Stormblood with its traveling to different shards and time travel feels that it was just added as a wooow factor.

Dungeons not being dungeons, we can argue about design decisions, but older dungeons, again, pre-Shadowbringers (and of course not all of them) dont feel like dungeons but are meant as a 1 stop point for story and after that it makes 0 sense lore wise to go back in them, older dungeons had this "old place, bad stuff keeps happening, needs to be culled once in a while" feel to it, new ones, not so much.

Make Airships and Ships a viable way to travel across the world (Remember there are Ariships in Gridania ? with even animations ??? or Ships in Limsa Lominsa ?????)

Remove flying outside of special Aether rich zones (Sea of Clouds for example) and make maps smaller and instead utilize the above mentioned Ships and Airships.

Return class and gender restriction to gear.

Stop QoL the whole soul out of the game, if i want to play a lobby simulator, i would not play Final Fantasy.

Alright, now burn me on the pile.

Blacklist needs to be expanded to have an FC block feature. Players are only blocked so long as they're in that FC.

Kefka is a boring choice for an Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Kefka is a boring choice for an Ultimate.

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See now THIS is a hot take, because I feel that Kefka has a billion times more personality and entertainment value than Thordan ever did, the fact it seem to be slowly turning out to be one of the most fucky Ultimates only adds to that entertainment.

When I saw the 3 button whm in evolved mode. I was hyped.

It is bad if rare items are given out like candy after a year. A MMORPG is allowed to have rare items stay rare.

Free companies, grand companies, fellowships - can be replaced by a linkshell and a vendor who takes in useless gear for gil.

Submarine gil should be replaced with clown facepaint.

Open world should be dangerous.

SE should cater less to roleplayers and newbies.

Frontlines should be queueable as 8man group.

The game should be designed in a way that healer are 90% of the time healing in PvP and PvE.

Legacy tattoos should come back, just call them replica in the selection screen.

The rework of dungeons hasn't always made them better, but just made them clearable by AI/Trust easier. This game seems made for solo experience.

Quests cutscenes are very often unnecessary. Don't give options if there is no different ending.

Elezen should be remodeled like lotr elves.

Not enough people die. Or too many fake die. As if the player can't handle the death of a sidequest NPC.

Consumables and chat should work in PvP.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

It is bad if rare items are given out like candy after a year. A MMORPG is allowed to have rare items stay rare.

Legacy tattoos should come back, just call them replica in the selection screen.

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It's bad for rare items like tattoos, to be given out like candy. It should stay rare, given that those players stuck it out with SE for 2 year and 9 months playing a game everyone else quit. And continues to play on that avatar. after a 12 years. I can't believe you said those two things in the same post

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Originally Posted by Stilla119

It's bad for rare items like tattoos, to be given out like candy. It should stay rare, given that those players stuck it out with SE for 2 year and 9 months playing a game everyone else quit. And continues to play on that avatar. after a 12 years. I can't believe you said those two things in the same post

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Because the game clearly decided against rare items already. So what does it matter now?
They still have lower sub fee.
So when people paid sub to get veteran rewards, and now they are part of achievement points, super trivial to get, you see no problem?

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Because the game clearly decided against rare items already. So what does it matter now?
They still have lower sub fee.
So when people paid sub to get veteran rewards, and now they are part of achievement points, super trivial to get, you see no problem?

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I see a problem where you want rare items to stay rare, but you want the most rare item in the game. The tattoo is tied to the story. Where that avatar was protected by Louisoix Leveilleur.

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Originally Posted by Stilla119

I see a problem where you want rare items to stay rare, but you want the most rare item in the game. The tattoo is tied to the story. Where that avatar was protected by Louisoix Leveilleur.

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While I disagree with that person in general, I feel the need to point out they long gave up on the narrative distinction between legacy and non-legacy character, and they did so back in ARR, at the end of Coils, Louis will speak to you as if you had been in Carteneau regardless if you are a legacy character or not, so even a character created today was canonically protected by Louis.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

So when people paid sub to get veteran rewards, and now they are part of achievement points, super trivial to get, you see no problem?

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No, because I have what I wanted, and I couldn't care less if someone else gets what I have in an easier way

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

No, because I have what I wanted, and I couldn't care less if someone else gets what I have in an easier way

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So we can do the same for legacy tattoos, okay - you couldn't care less if someone else wants it after all?! We got white raven earrings from 1.0 anyway, it is not like it has never been touched before - similar glam items from back then appeared already too. They just have different name or icon, or slightly different style.

Limited item availability is just FOMO that someone wants to flex about.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

It is bad if rare items are given out like candy after a year. A MMORPG is allowed to have rare items stay rare.

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I agree with this in principle, but honestly this design just doesn't work out too well in a game that is known for short-form content rather than long-form.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

So we can do the same for legacy tattoos, okay - you couldn't care less if someone else wants it after all?! We got white raven earrings from 1.0 anyway, it is not like it has never been touched before - similar glam items from back then appeared already too. They just have different name or icon, or slightly different style.

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I have better things to care about than pixels in a video game, so no, I don't care

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I agree with this in principle, but honestly this design just doesn't work out too well in a game that is known for short-form content rather than long-form.

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Which I think is bad for the overall health of a game, because rare items are usually time intensive to get - so it would be something for players that need a long-term activity. Otherwise people stop subbing.
Still wonder why there is not something like a PvP relic with this massive devaluation of wolfmarks - 1million wolfmarks is not that hard to get anymore. Or housing skin recipes with ingredients that are hard to obtain and Bind on Pickup, so cant resell. Same could go for hunting, e.g. an armor set for hunting that maybe boosts spawn chance, based on monster drop items from A or S mobs. Grand companies feel abandoned. I don't know how much changed lately as I didn't play.
Having a long term goal, makes grouping up for a longer duration more useful too. You have a goal. Atm it is often only necessary for raids and maybe achievement hunter who grind treasure maps. This whole social aspect is being given up to third parties like discord and mod communities. I don't know if I know a game where guilds were as meaningless for gameplay as here.
But this is all a different topic than what this thread is about.

More repeatable quests and wok things

The graphic update was unnecessary and did absolutely nothing for the game. The time dedicated for this should have been used to plan and make more content.

The game is basically at that point in age where it probably needs to ease up on the grinding and try to find other ways to keep people engaged. It really gets to start feeling like being at the laundromat watching clothes drying with dawntrail.

People whine too damn much about Cure 1 and its equivalents.

If your group is progressing fine and nobody is dying, just shut up and let it be.

Hot take 1

• That the entire game from Lvl 1 to the latest ultimate should be designed around the 'skill' that can be attained without EVER using a parser or looking at someone else's logging of your play. Not to analyse instances, and not to improve rotations outside the instance.

By this I mean the skill that can be achieved by the % of players you intend to clear the content. It's no god saying that you have 1 team of 8 savant-number-cruncher/carrier-sortie-fighter-pilots/tennis-grandmasters/tetris-record-holders who were able to clear it within a month from a basement in datacentre just fine.

And that anyone who wants to play challenging content, but then make it easier by using log parsers instead of pure practice and trial and error, should be ignored, allowed to acquire a year of skill in 2 months, left to clear 2 months of prog in 1 day, and expected to move on to play other games.

Stop pandering to people who claim to enjoy a challenge, but then use tools to make it a 'little' bit easier here... and a 'little' bit easier there. "oh, its ok becuase its not actually resolving the mechanics for me". Frankly I've got more respect for the people who use the full cheats because the instance design has become a bit of a joke from the outside.
Watching ultimates has little appeal within FFXIV actually, at the time I'd played the game for 4+ years and never in an of my discords heard anyone raving about watching the ultimate.
The push to make FFXIV world first races a big pro sport event utterly failed because the instances are an unintelligible mess. (possibly quite tedious but I wouldn't know, I've never watched for long enough)
I hear people are practising mechanics actually outside the game now, because its neigh 'unbearable' for the entire player base to tolerate each other without it. I'll repeat that "its approached neigh unbearable to play this multiple game, except as a solo game.". So really, what is the point.

Hot take 2, but its basically the same

• There should be a version of the ultimate, with all the mechanics the same, that can be cleared, and all the same awards (saving a color reskin) that can be cleared by the skill level I describe. You can then just speed up and and tighten damage and heal checks for people who want to use loggers, and a little tricks here and there to make it easier to eek out more performance.

Hot Take 3

• There isn't a single person, not a one, not in the entire universe, who has cleared a modern ultimate without using loggers, and considerably at that. If they weren't logging themselves, they used friends logging to inform their general gameplay, in other instances and dummies at the very least. Not a single 1.

You say your that person? Well I'm sorry I don't believe you. It's allowed within hot-take rules.


Hot take 4,

• Or failing the above, just add a logger to the game. It's part of the game already, YES IT IS. ("you know it. I know it. Every - body - knows it"). But as yet the logger isn't open source, and its dev team and governance is utterly opaque and I don't have the time the money with today's SSD costs to setup an entire sandboxed OS. so I expect Square Enix to step up and step in.

Hey, here is a thing. IF THEY provided the logger, they could disable it for casual content, and enable it for Extremes upwards. I actually think that would be very ANTI Toxic.
It would be honest.
I think the High end game is enhanced by logging. Its unarguably part of the fun for 50% of savage raiders, and 75% of ultimate raiders. I resent I have to use a third party application that isn't from an incorporated organisation with an address that I can sue if they leak malware onto my machine.

There are people who have Playstation based free companies, if they clear an ultimate, they would have had no tools. But I don't believe they would clear it blind, they would use the knowledge of people who used tools.

Skill isn't just damage output, even if current encounter design makes it seem that way. I am not against introducing it, but I think the community will get more toxic, because people will start using at template if someone is good or bad. There should be a ready check for it similar to record duty feature, if it is implemented, so people can just opt out.

Cross-class skills were a fun addition. I liked that learning other classes gave you bonus abilities to use on your main.

I understand that some of the cross class skills were considered 'essential' and that that made it not fun... But cross class skills gave me one of my favorite memories of the game.

As a blm, I healed Sastasha when the healer disconnected because I had been leveling arcanist and thus had access to physick. I had to spam it, occasionally throwing in a blizzard 1/2 to not let umbral ice fall so that my mp would keep regening so I could keep healing.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

People whine too damn much about Cure 1 and its equivalents.

If your group is progressing fine and nobody is dying, just shut up and let it be.

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The funky legacy stuff that hasn't been cleaned up is a piece of the bigger problem, but the real issue isn't that. I was huge into savage, EX raiding, etc. Burned out back around patch 7.2 and quit the game to come back in patch 7.5. This game has a major issue with end-game activities due to terrible tunnel vision on end-game progression. I'm leveling blackmage right now while doing the atma phase for the new relic, just as I did with monk. Everything is working great because I'm progressing my class while also getting a side benefit and I feel like I'm making progress. The second I cap this entire experience changes into boredom because they so heavily kneecapped any progression route outside of raiding. If not for some minor things I'm doing on the sides I'd probably have unsubbed from the game again to wait for the promised "class overhauls" of 8.0 and I wouldn't even be making this post.

Atma/demiatma grind is good, actually.

Dawntrail's relic quest is the best one they've made.

What is my hot take?

For a game that prides itself on having the most welcoming community in gaming, the actual daily reality of Eorzea feels less like a vibrant world and more like a room full of mannequins running programmed loops. We have traded genuine human connection for a hyper-individualistic, transactional culture where everything is plastic, performative, and deeply shallow.

The mandatory "Hi, let’s do our best!" at the start of a duty isn't kindness... It's a scripted protocol. The moment you break that script by answering a casual "How are you?" with actual honesty, people recoil with awkward resentment because you forced them out of their comfortable bubble. No one actually wants to socialize or build mutual support; they want a low-effort echo chamber where they can protect their personal comfort at all costs. This weaponized positivity is used as a shield to avoid any baseline accountability or real human messiness.

Layered right on top of this apathy is the inescapable, performative lewdness that dominates every major hub and the Party Finder. It's disgusting... Walk into Limsa or open the venue listings, and you are flooded with hyper-sexualized attention-seeking and superficial flexing. It has become a cheap substitute for actual intimacy, reducing a vast fantasy realm into a cliquey high school playground. If you refuse to play along with this counterfeit performance and actually want substance, honesty, and respect, you are immediately iced out. The community isn't inclusive, it’s just aggressively complacent and utterly indifferent to anyone who calls out the rot behind the "wholesome" PR hype.

Connection in online games, not just FF14 no longer exists because almost everyone online is too fearful to allow you the chance to have depth and empathy for them and too shallow and apathetic to have actual depth and empathy for you.

No one wants a trauma dump from a stranger.