Things that FF14 needs to improve upon

FF14 is a great game and we all know it but there are some small things that need fixing.

One would be things that make the gameplay not feel smooth. One example that really annoys me is the face target feature. An example would be how you follow a pack and attack it while moving and if u are sideways you suddenly change direction to attack it and then fall behind and can't attack the mob even if you are close by. With casters you would 180 to heal someone behind you when the spell doesn't even need you to face your teammate. One could argue you can just change the setting in the options but then placing dots with that same healer becomes clunky just because you are at a slight angle and so does dpsing with melee. Perhaps a change to the degrees in which you can perform attacks would be a very simple and easy solution.

Another gripe I have is the PvP. In my personal opinion I feel like FF14 PvP shouldn't have more than eight players per team and I think there should be only two teams instead of three. The game mods don't have to be convoluted, they can be simple. Mods like capture the flag are always loved by PvPers even if they are very simple. The spells and the rotations need some more love too and the balance with the healers feels a bit off.

Lastly some more polish on the UI would be nice to make it a bit more modern and easy on the eyes. Things like making the health bars on your party frames bigger and maybe remove some cluster of useless info.

These are a couple things that I personally believe can go really far into making FF14 the GOAT of MMOs

Level sync and available abilities, especially at the lower ranges. I want every duty I queue into to be a good experience, as unreasonable as that might be.

Sticking specifically to combat/gameplay related things:
The Tab targeting is absolutely terrible. There is no reason at all why when I have something punching me in the face that my Tab target should select something else 30 feet off in the distance. There's also no reason why when I have a mob flagged as a potentially hostile target specifically centered on my screen that the tab targeting should snap to a non-hostile water elemental way off to the side or in the far distance. If they can't make it smarter they should at least make it more configurable so that this sort of thing doesn't happen if you don't want it to.

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

Sticking specifically to combat/gameplay related things:
The Tab targeting is absolutely terrible. There is no reason at all why when I have something punching me in the face that my Tab target should select something else 30 feet off in the distance. There's also no reason why when I have a mob flagged as a potentially hostile target specifically centered on my screen that the tab targeting should snap to a non-hostile water elemental way off to the side or in the far distance. If they can't make it smarter they should at least make it more configurable so that this sort of thing doesn't happen if you don't want it to.

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You can keybind "target nearest enemy". But yeah, I agree the default tab targeting is terrible.

/autofacetarget can be both convenient and annoying. It's useful for most classes so that you don't press an attack and then it not hit because you are not facing it enough. It's annoying for healers though. On a healer, I macro my attacks like so.

Code:

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/autofacetarget on
/action "Ruin" <t>
/action "Ruin" <tt>
/autofacetarget off

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This makes sure that autofacetarget is off when healing so that I don't turn around while healing, which is a big problem if there is a gaze attack while healing, which actually happened in the one savage floor I healed. The problem with this is the attacks no longer queue, but it's something I'm willing to do so that I don't automatically face players while running just because I healed them.

PvP is already being changed soon and UI elements can already be changed, hidden and resized in almost every way. You can even use different UI themes including the traditional blue one from a lot of FF games.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

You can keybind "target nearest enemy". But yeah, I agree the default tab targeting is terrible.

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If you have target nearest enemy then you can't cycle, if you can cycle you can't target properly. This leads you to have only two ways to target properly, one being to have the cycle option and tab to target, escape to un-target then tab again to target the other mob you want to switch to or two you can have two binding one for nearest and the other for cycling. Both ways are extremely frustrating and clunky. Tab targeting shouldn't be this bad when the game is a tab target game, it can't have one if its core elements be this unfriendly to use.

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Originally Posted by Metalface_Villain

If you have target nearest enemy then you can't cycle, if you can cycle you can't target properly. This leads you to have only two ways to target properly, one being to have the cycle option and tab to target, escape to un-target then tab again to target the other mob you want to switch to or two you can have two binding one for nearest and the other for cycling. Both ways are extremely frustrating and clunky. Tab targeting shouldn't be this bad when the game is a tab target game, it can't have one if its core elements be this unfriendly to use.

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Exactly. Goodness knows I've tried the Tab Target options that are in the game multiple times, and none of them work the way they intuitively and logically should.

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

Sticking specifically to combat/gameplay related things:
The Tab targeting is absolutely terrible. There is no reason at all why when I have something punching me in the face that my Tab target should select something else 30 feet off in the distance. There's also no reason why when I have a mob flagged as a potentially hostile target specifically centered on my screen that the tab targeting should snap to a non-hostile water elemental way off to the side or in the far distance. If they can't make it smarter they should at least make it more configurable so that this sort of thing doesn't happen if you don't want it to.

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They just need to shorten the length of the targeting cone to half(?) its existing length. The logic is that when you are tab targeting you are cycling immediate threats which are usually right next to you, if you really want to target that mob standing off a mile away a simple mouse click is enough (not sure how this would affect consoles).

To start with, they need to at least catch up with modders in regard to basic QoL:

• An animation lock procedure that doesn't (doubly) punish players for their ping.
• Additional option to only automatically face targets for actions that require you to face target, to hide your EXP bar at max level, and similarly obvious choices.
• Showing shield (and predicted DoT) values on any and all HP bars.
• Chat messages timing out and fading separately.
• Consolidating abilities that would not (or, especially, cannot) be options at the same time anyways.
• Improved targeting (especially, being still able to target enemies who are too tall for their nameplates to fit on your screen when playing in Ultrawide aspect ratio without having to back out the camera to max and aim up from the floor...)
• Other UI improvements, including improved retainer and inventory interface, better world map, status effect filtering and prioritization, conditional UI elements, etc.
• Job-specific, auto-swappable UI layouts.
• Queuable macros (at least to their first usable action), so we can set up targeting schemes as we like.
• ...so on and so forth....

Thereafter, the big stuff:

• Put in the time to develop systems to save time later (else we'll just end up with longer and longer delays between patch cycles). Challenge modes and developing a means of syncing old content up, for instance, could be huge -- as could be, say, player-made (obstacle/combat) courses.
• Seriously reconsider avenues of time-gating and gear-treadmills as compared to just letting people do whatever's fun for them. (I realize gear progression can be a factor in that 'fun', but it's rarely the sole one.)
• Take more risks, but only where willing to put in the full effort to flesh them out. Additionally, build those new things with an endgoal in mind (Step A prototyping for Step B, which acts in turn for Step C, etc.), but always in the interest of greater ambition, not to trickle out an initial plan over a longer amount of time.

I just wish SE would fix the server tick rate if anything.

For people complaining about tab-targeting, it took me a disappointingly long time to figure out how simple it is, just different than how it's handled in many other games. Other games I play, pressing Tab cycles targets based on distance, with Tab going near-to-far and Shift-Tab going farthest to closest. In FFXIV, it's simply left-to-right instead. Tab targets the next creature on the right, and Shift-Tab targets the one on the left. Cycling in FFXIV became so much more sensible once I realized that.

Targeting needs work for sure. I ended up binding next/last target to my mousewheel. And alt-mouse wheel for zoom in/out. Still not perfect, and you still select that mob 150 yalms away, but it's faster for me.

I'd like crafting from storage, as in Rift. Want to craft something, doesn't matter which retainer has it, the mats are just grabbed from them by the system when you craft.

What I find the most annoying is being able to click other players or chocobos in battles. I have no reason to be able to click them in battle, but it happens while clicking my abilities on the hotbar and then I miss a GCD because of it.

The only thing that makes it feel unpolished is some abilities not being very responsive and others being too responsive, such as gap closers which executes two of them when I only intend to use one.

Focus more on developing content with longevity in mind. Be it on the easier or challenging side, arguably the biggest flaw FFXIV has (in my opinion, of course) is the utter lack of content longevity. Everything tends to have a finite life cycle that fizzles out within the same patch it's released. Eureka and Bozja have been the only real exceptions but both were a little too much on the safe side. Which segues into another problem: Take risks and innovate. While I actually liked Bozja well enough; particularly the Critical Engagements, it does boil down to yet another FATE grind. I'd like to see them be a bit more creative with this style of content. Take the upcoming Deep Dungeon. I really hope it isn't another reskinned Palace like HoH was but something a bit more expansive.

Suffice it to say, I'd just like more of a focus on content longevity to keep me invested in a patch cycle.

Giving jobs identity back.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Giving jobs identity back.

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I agree. Some are a bit too samey.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

For people complaining about tab-targeting, it took me a disappointingly long time to figure out how simple it is, just different than how it's handled in many other games. Other games I play, pressing Tab cycles targets based on distance, with Tab going near-to-far and Shift-Tab going farthest to closest. In FFXIV, it's simply left-to-right instead. Tab targets the next creature on the right, and Shift-Tab targets the one on the left. Cycling in FFXIV became so much more sensible once I realized that.

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This is the default behaviour, yes. But you can change it in the character settings (control / target / target type) and it will behave exactly like these other games (tab to target nearest to farthest in front of you and shift + tab to target farthest to nearest). There are actually a few great QoL options that even some experienced players don't know about.

Scaling content difficulty to teach players how to play the game. Normal mode content is braindead easy and doesn't prepare a player to enter EX content, let along Savage or Ultimate.

A new player progresses through the game to reach endgame and then goes into an ex and gets their teeth kicked in and they have no idea that they are playing their job poorly because what they were doing has always worked before.

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Originally Posted by van_arn

Level sync and available abilities, especially at the lower ranges. I want every duty I queue into to be a good experience, as unreasonable as that might be.

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Pretty easy to fix that imo if they just make it so that if you queue for an arr dungeon for example, you would have all the skills from lvl 1 to lvl 50. this way it is probably pretty easy to implement and they don't need to worry too much about balance and how the change would affect the experience. they can do the same for all other expacs too

Some of these are repeats but

>Fix the weird awkward delay on spells that makes using certain ogcd's frustrating and makes pvp feel clunky and awkward
>Let me hide other players mp bars, I'm a reaper, I do not care if our dragoon has mp
> Inventory management. Find a way to consolidate menus or ease the transitions between them. Just general user friendliness of certain parts of the UI could use some improvement.
> Let me zoom out a bit more please I beg
> Adjustments to tab targeting
> More options for when you turn to face your target and how that behaves, or even just removing the requirement for facing on things that don't have positional requirements anyway
> Dark mode for the new achievement window
>Adjust the pacing at which jobs get new abilities so sub 50 classes don't feel so bare bones for so long

Right click targeting should not exist on mobs and players, atleast not by default without any way to turn it off. It doesn't make any sense. Also right click move dialogue and so on, same stupid design. Especially annoying in group content when you turn camera, you use right click and it selects friendly player -.- . Then tab targeting madness back to the correct enemy

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

To start with, they need to at least catch up with modders in regard to basic QoL:[/LIST]

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Big time




Currently we can because they dont


Add:

The ability to hide map/mini map icons of your choosing

The ability to shows your personal debuffs and their time counters on your target enemy list, target and faceplate/hp bar

The ability to make your debuffs on the target hp bar larger than others so its easier to see

The ability to auto attack your target when non selected actually work

The ability to auto dismount when using an action

The ability to move the individual bars on the parameter bar HP/Mana and the HP/Mana text

The ability to move the text on enemy/target cast bar

The ability to show the HP of your target and your focus target

The ability to show shields on your parameter bar and to choose the colour of the bar

The ability to show timers on the party list for buffs/debuffs

The ability to show with an icon size of your choosing who needs cleansing on each player on your screen, and to show how is raising who on the party/alliance list with the option to choose the colour of bar that highlights said raise actions over a party listee

The ability to move the "toast" and Battle" messages anywhere you wish eg: Battlemessages : White bar dialogue you see in combat like in praetorium in the middle and upper area of the screen or the BnW text (toast) you get when say a retainer returns

The ability to show the actual time left on your retainer ventures eg 24:00:00 rather than 1Hr it would show otherwise

The ability to show what role is required as the ADV In need and for which duty as a chat/system generated message



and many more


the sorts of things this game should have as option anyways

"Are you sure you want to use this mandatory quest item on this mandatory quest interactable?"

The ability to /target specific players and NPC's via text command /target Deceptus

The ability to place markers on the map via text command. /placemarker 1 Dravanian Forelands (1,2) etc etc

The ability to only show ALL debuffs on a target only. Right now it's all of them or yours only. Most of the time I only care about status debuffs.

The ability to lower mob flashy spell / ability effects. We can do it for players but not for mobs and sometimes theirs are even worse.

The ability to lower the flashy effects of Limit Breaks.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

"Are you sure you want to use this mandatory quest item on this mandatory quest interactable?"

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Also:


Are you sure you want to use the transporter?


No I would like to stand here like an idiot in Praetorium getting hammered by the adds, that also dont disengage like normal adds when you get far enough away.

They should also remove the quests, where you follow people, or walk with someone. Pretty much every EW quest.
Also remove all quests where I have to type a word or sentence.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

They should also remove the quests, where you follow people, or walk with someone. Pretty much every EW quest.
Also remove all quests where I have to type a word or sentence.

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You mean you dont like typing "O Loveliest of branches, please offer me your succor!"

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Originally Posted by Metalface_Villain

FF14 is a great game and we all know it but there are some small things that need fixing.

One would be things that make the gameplay not feel smooth. One example that really annoys me is the face target feature. An example would be how you follow a pack and attack it while moving and if u are sideways you suddenly change direction to attack it and then fall behind and can't attack the mob even if you are close by. With casters you would 180 to heal someone behind you when the spell doesn't even need you to face your teammate. One could argue you can just change the setting in the options but then placing dots with that same healer becomes clunky just because you are at a slight angle and so does dpsing with melee. Perhaps a change to the degrees in which you can perform attacks would be a very simple and easy solution.

Another gripe I have is the PvP. In my personal opinion I feel like FF14 PvP shouldn't have more than eight players per team and I think there should be only two teams instead of three. The game mods don't have to be convoluted, they can be simple. Mods like capture the flag are always loved by PvPers even if they are very simple. The spells and the rotations need some more love too and the balance with the healers feels a bit off.

Lastly some more polish on the UI would be nice to make it a bit more modern and easy on the eyes. Things like making the health bars on your party frames bigger and maybe remove some cluster of useless info.

These are a couple things that I personally believe can go really far into making FF14 the GOAT of MMOs

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My big peeves:

1) Glamour System being too restrictive for no good reason;

2) UI is still pretty bad, period. The only good thing about it is the fact that we can reposition everything on our screen. We have way too many menus that could be condensed as options of the same popup interface, and the action spellbook could be much better organized, like for example, condensing the <you cannot put in actionbar> actions as a group with their father actions. Chat UI is insufferable with the constant autoscrolling when you're trying to read back stuff.

3) Action sync... or the lack of. I understand the issues that it might cause, but there must be a solution... I refuse to do old roulettes with any job but healers, because not playing your 90 rotation when most of your gameplay revolves around a 90 rotation is simply counter productive and in some cases even hard to get used to (what is my rotation again at 50?!).

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

"Are you sure you want to use this mandatory quest item on this mandatory quest interactable?"

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Oh that one is a pet peeve of mine.

Along with (fanfare) (big gold letters) "Venture Accomplished" (fanfare) (big gold letters) "Venture Commenced"

yeah yeah, he's stolenbrought back a Bom Boko or a single ice crystal, it really doesn't need the fanfares.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

They just need to shorten the length of the targeting cone to half(?) its existing length. The logic is that when you are tab targeting you are cycling immediate threats which are usually right next to you, if you really want to target that mob standing off a mile away a simple mouse click is enough (not sure how this would affect consoles).

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Some of us don't use a mouse or a controller in combat. FFXI keyboard only layout weirdo checking in!

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

They should also remove the quests, where you follow people, or walk with someone. Pretty much every EW quest.

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If it's good enough for nearly 90% of triple A games then it's good enough for XIV!

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

Also remove all quests where I have to type a word or sentence.

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This is a good idea though.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Giving jobs identity back.

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This legit worries me. Even if SE decides to keep xpacs at 1 job max, because their m.o is to tear some abilities from one job and hand them over to another job with a new coat of paint, the newer jobs have arrived at the expy bus stop. Even blu is looking more unique as expansions goes than the other jobs (yes, I know it's limited job).

Mystic knight is the current popular requested job and YoshiP has been good at fulfilling job request based on popularity. You know what he's been having a tough time at doing every time he does though? Making them mechanically unique. Oh sure, we're bound to see "En" spells for mystic/spellblader because they already exists as early as the first boss encounter in Tam Tara Deepcroft and a little bit further with some Amaalja but then what? Build a red(fire), blue (ice), yellow(lightning) meter? Inflict paralysis/burn/frost on hit? Silly kids, simplified game design doesn't support that type of meaningful debuff anymore. Dots maybe? Guess we'll just unify bard dots under a single and then allow spell/mys to use 2 so it looks "unique". The list goes on but you get the idea. And you know what, maybe the playerbase is fine with a shiny new truck that is totally different from the first three because this time, it finally came attached with a second horn that the last one didn't have and it's midnight blue instead of rolanberry red.

But one day, as a collective voice in mostly singular agreement, we're going to have to tell YoshiP that he's better off using his job developing resources for other things in the game rather than using them to create a ranger/hunter that's mostly gonna play like a machinist.

For me, make a proper movement/jumping physics engine a la Guildwars, and we'd be golden. Like, potential to have actual Mario-kart like races, real jumping puzzles... lots of potential in PvE.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

For me, make a proper movement/jumping physics engine a la Guildwars, and we'd be golden. Like, potential to have actual Mario-kart like races, real jumping puzzles... lots of potential in PvE.

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I gotta disagree with this a little bit, because 1 there are a lot of other way more important issues that many already mentioned and 2 making the movements and physics realistic isn't always a good thing when it comes to how people experience it while playing. I'll give you an example from our beloved company, Blizzard xD In Overwatch the movements aren't super realistic, you jump high, you don't have the weight you supposed to have, you got the same speed even if you switch to the opposite direction, you don't have to walk slow and build speed when starting to move etc. In some other shooters the physics and the movement work more realistically but guess which one feels extremely more smooth to play and move around with? Overwatch ofc, the same can be said if you compare GW2 that you mentioned with WoW. GW2 has better physics and movement but it feels way worse to move around and WoW feels much better even if it's super simple and doesn't obey the laws of physics. (note: this is strictly comparing the movement, I'm not saying those other games are better or worse)

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Originally Posted by Metalface_Villain

I gotta disagree with this a little bit, because 1 there are a lot of other way more important issues that many already mentioned and 2 making the movements and physics realistic isn't always a good thing when it comes to how people experience it while playing. I'll give you an example from our beloved company, Blizzard xD In Overwatch the movements aren't super realistic, you jump high, you don't have the weight you supposed to have, you got the same speed even if you switch to the opposite direction, you don't have to walk slow and build speed when starting to move etc. In some other shooters the physics and the movement work more realistically but guess which one feels extremely more smooth to play and move around with? Overwatch ofc, the same can be said if you compare GW2 that you mentioned with WoW. GW2 has better physics and movement but it feels way worse to move around and WoW feels much better even if it's super simple and doesn't obey the laws of physics. (note: this is strictly comparing the movement, I'm not saying those other games are better or worse)

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I mean this in the most absolute respectful way as I am assuming this is your only character (joined this month):

Come back to me after you do the 2.0 sightseeing log, and do Kugane's tower sightseeing point. I'm not asking for an accurate Mario 3D engine, I'm asking for us no to rely on invisible platforms or walls, or hit boxes we can't even see. Even the ability to adjust position mid-air while falling.

If in fact, this is an alt and you HAVE done those things, I apologize, but I still stand by it being AWFUL game design.

As a GW2 Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode veteran, (pretty good at jumping games), not being able to land jumps for no real good reason is infuriating.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I mean this in the most absolute respectful way as I am assuming this is your only character (joined this month):

Come back to me after you do the 2.0 sightseeing log, and do Kugane's tower sightseeing point. I'm not asking for an accurate Mario 3D engine, I'm asking for us no to rely on invisible platforms or walls, or hit boxes we can't even see. Even the ability to adjust position mid-air while falling.

If in fact, this is an alt and you HAVE done those things, I apologize, but I still stand by it being AWFUL game design.

As a GW2 Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode veteran, (pretty good at jumping games), not being able to land jumps for no real good reason is infuriating.

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I just made the forum account but I'm a double mentor and I been playing for 6 months now. I understand how you feel and it's ok to feel like that and have your preferences. I have also played a little GW2 as well and I know that there the jumping puzzles are a much bigger thing that they are in ff14. To change the smoothness and feel of the movement that is better for everything else (at least imo as i explained before) just to make the jumping puzzle fans happy isn't such a great idea, especially when there are a lot of things that are more important for way more people that need fixing first.