Small rant on combat end game content...

First off I love ffxiv but when it comes to things to do when you have msq done combat content becomes really limited and stale. If we get savage and ultimate out of the equation there's not much you can do about end game combat content in this game. Roulettes? Boring as fuck and realistically you only have to do one daily. Bozja? You are done with bozja in like 3 days with work and limited play time. Maps? Maps is really only there for gil and can get tiring after 2 sessions and not to mention you are level synced on it. Every time I log in into xiv I find this same issue of me having no combat content to do and im sure many more "casual" players go through this as well but they are either unsubbed or just going for the more social aspect of the game since the casual combat content is lacklusting. I know many won't share my opinion and just tell me to unsub as well but I hope some can sympathize... just wish there were a few more fun things to do about combat in xiv.

I somewhat agree with you. I do think there is a lot to do but once you’ve done it all, it’s just whether you want to do it again.

They could make some things more replayable I think. For an example I can’t think of why you’d do emerald weapon normal more than one time.

I’m going to Eureka after the Diadem stuff is done, but once I’ve spent decent time in there I’m in the same boat as you, nothing to do unless I look at extremes/savage (which gets way too much dev attention imo but that’s another topic).

They want you to do extremes and savage.

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

If we get savage and ultimate out of the equation there's not much you can do about end game combat content in this game.

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So put them in your equation.

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Originally Posted by Vickii

I somewhat agree with you. I do think there is a lot to do but once you’ve done it all, it’s just whether you want to do it again.

They could make some things more replayable I think. For an example I can’t think of why you’d do emerald weapon normal more than one time.

I’m going to Eureka after the Diadem stuff is done, but once I’ve spent decent time in there I’m in the same boat as you, nothing to do unless I look at extremes/savage (which gets way too much dev attention imo but that’s another topic).

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I wish I could experiece eureka for the first time again :/...

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

I wish I could experiece eureka for the first time again :/...

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I’ve only just popped my head in so far :) But I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in Bozja, now the Diadem, so the last thing to cross off my list is Eureka. I’m looking forward to it, it seemed good!

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

I wish I could experiece eureka for the first time again :/...

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Alts are a good way to replay through the content you felt was the most enjoyable.

Well if you get rid of all the content there's no content

If only they added something like TERA's alliance system into FFXIV. TERA had 3 alliance's which you could choose from just like FFXIV has the 3 Grand Companies. The alliance system composed of maps/areas where you would do alliance quests such as killing mobs, gathering and fetch quests. You would get alliance points you could use to trade for stuff. There was also PvP allowed. And of the weekends there were big PvP battles to storm each other's base/camp for awards. So basically just think about Eureka/Bozja but split up into 3 big parties on a PvP enabled map(s) while doing quests and stuff. Thing is, i dont think a PvE/PvP map would be in their specialty.

PvP is also a solid choice if you need a change of pace when having reached endgame, it might be flawed, but it is at least something and the PvP community could always need a few more vic- err, people of course.

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Originally Posted by Minarisweet

im sure many more "casual" players go through this as well .

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Hard disagree there. I've been playing since ARR launch, and am pretty dang casual these days (maybe two hours a night) and I rarely ever run out of things to do between patches. Roulettes are a fun easy source of daily income, and I have access to savage and extreme fights if I want a challenge. There's also tons of horizontal progression content like hunts, Eureka, Relics and so on. If there was any more "required" daily stuff it would easily be overwhelming for people who don't spend hours a day playing.

Personally I'd like to see more content that is designed to be 'middle of the road'. Somewhat difficult, but easy to just jump into/designed for a small group of players.

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

100% This. The content is a nice diversion. I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed it and how fun it was. Just goes to show that you should take your own opinion instead of everyone elses.

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I would 100% disagree, but it's probably just not my thing. Just like healing isn't my thing. If people enjoy something then they should do so and not worry about what others think.

Extremes and unreal are fun, have you done those?

i strongly agree here , i wish we had harder dungeon modes , like hard/extreme dungeons . also more content like The Great Hunt trial i really loved it and more soloable content would be nice i understand some people will disagree because (it's an mmo) but blue mage's Masked Carnivale is extremely fun and soloable so more stuff like that would be great.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

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Fair point. I did like what I experienced as BLU.

To be frank, this expansion started strong and they had good ideas. The reason this end game is so bad now is because those ideas didn't get implemented properly, and we had an overly long 5.2-5.3 because of COVID. Also this was the expansion where they finally pushed crafting pretty hard, and succeeded at the onset. The only problem is that the later waves of Ishgard became just as stale as doing bazja, and they made crafting such a painful mess to do for anyone who isn't penta-melded that they might as well not even be doing it.

I mean, I'm fine with hard end-game crafts that someone can do to sell on the market, but the way they did skybuilder stuff, even the dedicated crafters are getting tired grinding hours on end.

Oh yeah, if you are wondering why I am mentioning crafting, that is also why end game combat content is stale. They dedicated resources to ishgard restoration as an event and sort of got themselves divided between that and bazja.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

If only they added something like TERA's alliance system into FFXIV. TERA had 3 alliance's which you could choose from just like FFXIV has the 3 Grand Companies. The alliance system composed of maps/areas where you would do alliance quests such as killing mobs, gathering and fetch quests. You would get alliance points you could use to trade for stuff. There was also PvP allowed. And of the weekends there were big PvP battles to storm each other's base/camp for awards. So basically just think about Eureka/Bozja but split up into 3 big parties on a PvP enabled map(s) while doing quests and stuff. Thing is, i dont think a PvE/PvP map would be in their specialty.

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I miss TERA combat styles and their glamours, quitted around KDHM because how unbalanced it became and the salty, which is one thing the XIV did a lot better.
Still, I agree on wishing our PVP is more like TERA.

I think atm we mainly need a better option at repeatable content as a good middle ground between patches.
Maybe something like some people have suggested, unreal dungeons, heck add unreal raids too.
Think about doing satasha but scaled up with your full kit. Even if it's still easy as heck, simply being able to use more then 4 skills in satasha could spice it up just enough, then do the same for Crystal tower or heck even alex, and other trials that most forget about, like ultros and Greg.
Maybe a weekly dungeon and raid?
Like one week its unreal snowcloak and alex 3[pepsiman], then the next its sohm ahl hard, and world of darkness.

I still have to complete 5.4 MSQ, haven't even unlocked Emerald, still have not found a group capable of clearing Seat of Sacrifice EX, and the new role quest released in 5.4 is also collecting dust on my end. And I don't even touch savage, which I would imagine prog groups would consume a lot of game time if I did do them. I do log in most days, and I'm just working on other things that have my full attention currently.

If you can't find things to do in the game outside combat, your experience will get stale very quickly. If you do want more combat and you are not doing savage/ultimate, then the answer is right in front of you.

There is a dire lack of harder repeatable content. There is only really Ex, Savage and Ultimate, first doesn't help with gear prog and isn't THAT hard, then gets repetitive really fast, one is on a weekly lockout and is done for the week within 1hr to 1hr30 with a static, and the last one is arguably much more difficult to access.

Also the gear you do get isn’t worth anything outside of a relevant Ultimate or if you just want to to parse runs all day

You don’t actually need the savage gear for anything else. So if you’re a person who just likes battle content and progressing, there isn’t much content in this game.

Thank goodness for glamour.

A way I keep myself entertained is going back and trying to solo old Savages and Extremes. It can be quite fun. I especially enjoy soloing Warring Triad Extremes, because of the little side story blivit about them being reality augmentation forms for training Allagan Elite soldiers, who are then going to be used for cloning a whole army of elites.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

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Oh this! May want to wait til 5.45 but definetly check it out if you haven’t. This is casual battle content that will keep you busy for a bit. I really enjoyed.

From my PoV the problem is if you're not willing to deal with potential social drama and weeks of practice, there isn't that much PvE content for people who like PvE more than the theme park stuff in the game. There are deep dungeons, which ShB lacks, Bozja, which has a roadblock in form of Castrum, and extreme/unreal trials which are more like moderate difficulty compared to savage/ultimate.
Personally I used to enjoy dungeons before Heavensward. They're definitely much easier than extreme trials, but I liked when not every run was the same because sometimes I'd queue with groups who wanted every treasure or explore to fill their maps, or new players had trouble with specific dungeon gimmicks, even if that struggle was brief. Now every dungeon is essentially single hallway with 2 pulls between bosses. Gorgeous hallways but single hallways nonetheless. IMO they should have made a few harder dungeons with rewards isolated from the tomestone race that wouldn't be part of roulettes, so that they could be designed less faceroll driven.
Alliance Raids can't accomplish this because they're designed for 24 players, and if you get too creative with them, the experience gets simply frustrating (just look at how many people avoid Castrum Lacus Litore). Pre SB raids were bite-sized versions of this sometimes, but since they're also roulette content people started complaining when a raid wasn't just a boss fight.

Those are things that have been seriously bothering me about XIV since I finished leveling all jobs in my main. Coming from playing jRPGs and other FF games, I don't come with the mindset that "glamour is the endgame" and minigames were more than a side diversion. I like PvE and being rewarded for doing it. It's the main thing I look forward to in jRPGs. If this really is a FF first MMORPG second I wish ShB hadn't been such a departure from what I was used to. I just wanted some mid-tier difficulty content to cycle through, since ilvl sync just makes savage rewards pointless to me.

I'm not a fan of the job "balance" either but that ship has already sailed. You have no idea how much I miss needing to manage enmity and having more utility actions that weren't designed to be just another step in every boss dance.

I think there's potential in a mid-difficulty between Normal and Extreme / Savage 1-2 (and 3, these days). If we had some form of content harder than normal mode, then savage wouldn't have to compromise difficulty on the first floors, and Extreme could do with some step up.

Because while the last floors of savage and Ultimate are the high end content, we have them every 8 months or more and that isn't enough to keep you busy for so long if that's the content you like in FFXIV. Especially when gearing up makes these fights easier and easier (Ultimate being the exception).

I do agree. The issue is that outside of extreme cases of bad play, everything that isn't EX, Savage or Ultimate is designed so you beat it first try. So you're done every dungeon in half an hour, you clear the 8 man and 24 man normal on day one and ...well, that's it. Grats. Hop on the hunt train for tomes or level an alt, there's nothing left. Dungeons in particular are a huge waste of dev resources and it's sad that instead of realizing why this is, they cut them instead of making some of them challenging and rewarding

EX and Savage are fine, but EX isn't enough and Unreal has been very niche.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

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Agreed. I wonder how they could have promoted BLU better and bumped interest. The biggest challenge to getting into BLU is finding other players to group with.

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Originally Posted by DarkDaifuku

I miss TERA combat styles and their glamours, quitted around KDHM because how unbalanced it became and the salty, which is one thing the XIV did a lot better.
Still, I agree on wishing our PVP is more like TERA.

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It would be great if we could get a few instanced areas which are all about PvP, it is one of my biggest hopes for the incoming expansion, altrough i know that there won't be any significant PvP changes anyway, since Squeenix clearly hates the idea and only inplimented it, just so that they can say that they have it.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

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My only issue with that aside of the Morbol mount (which is quite an undertaking that depends on other people too), there's a lack of meaningful rewards or incentive to run everything else. One might say to just do for the "fun" of it, but then even at that, you'll be facing the barren situation of players not running anything consistently atm or the Masked Carnivale extreme scripted nature not being that fun after the second time doing the fights.

Don't get me wrong, I really love Blue Mage for what it is designed, but my only peeve is that they didn't make their "endgame" more engaging, and I really hope it to be revised either in 5.5 or 6.0.

As a casual player I wish sometimes that older bosses were easier to solo.

I don't want them made weaker or to have fewer hp or anything but the forced phases that cause them to become invulnerable to harm and drag out a fight are really, really tiresome.

This seems to happen especially often with ARR bosses. Except Cuca Fera. I think it might be actually impossible to solo Cuca Fera if you are not a red mage or healer.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

My only issue with that aside of the Morbol mount (which is quite an undertaking that depends on other people too), there's a lack of meaningful rewards or incentive to run everything else. One might say to just do for the "fun" of it

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I personally felt the blue mage was my reward. The glamours, the spells, the ability to do the blue mage arena, and the story.

I guess people are incentivised by different things. The Marlboro mount while very nice seems like far too big of an undertaking for me but I was very satisfied with what I got out of BLU - we also get cute justice, some orchestra rolls and a big top up of ARR hunt tokens which for many is riding maps.

There's a lack of "meaningful rewards" to run anything in this game to be honest. There is a reason why people say glamor is the true end game... (and that's totally fine like that IMO. I don't think I'd want to have horizontal progression in this game)
Doing things for fun is basically the whole point of any piece of content. Thing is : it needs to be fun AND satisfying. Now that satisfaction can come from the rewards (dropping the mount in EX trials), or from simply clearing a fight, or reaching a higher floor in your solo HoH attempt, or seeing the door open in the treasure dungeons.

That's also why some players have been asking for a Mythic+ type of system. Not because of the rewards, but because it could become fun and satisfying to clear dungeons.
At the moment, the only satisfaction I get from replaying through a dungeon is when I get an expert roulette that doesn't take 25/30 minutes....

Also, BLU doesn't only need a "more engaging" endgame. It just needs an endgame...I still want them to do a BLU-only version of PotD....
That said, BLU was one of the most satisfying things for me this expansion....but being done with it in just a couple days is sad...

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Originally Posted by Vickii

I personally felt the blue mage was my reward. The glamours, the spells, the ability to do the blue mage arena, and the story.

I guess people are incentivised by different things. The Marlboro mount while very nice seems like far too big of an undertaking for me but I was very satisfied with what I got out of BLU - we also get cute justice, some orchestra rolls and a big top up of ARR hunt tokens which for many is riding maps.

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Yeah, I get your point... But when it comes specifically to a job, as alternative as it would be, I personally expect it to have much more replayability potential than that, because you listed 4 things that are just static features.

I mean, not asking for a whole intricate structure, but as some point out, making the deep dungeons available for Blue mage soloing challenge would be huge, since there's a lot that can be gained, other than the completion trophy, by running them a lot of times. Plus, despite knowing that means nothing at this point, it would compose some of the 'solo job' charcteristic that the job was sold upon before release.

I don't think there's much combat content even if you do savage and ultimate fights to be honest
you do your weeklies (ultimates have a weekly restriction when they come out as well) and that's it, what's left is eventually speed kills and "fun runs" but even then, you're just repeating content that you've already cleared
I agree on the rest