What would casual gamers like to see with regard to 'battle' content?

What would casual gamers like to see with regard to 'battle' content?
Casual is for this purpose is:

• content you can gear for by doing other casual content.
• content that you can enter whenever you like. (You don't need statics, you don't need to join discords, you don't even need PF [at least until PFs reputation is improved])
• no preparation needed. your not going to feel bad if you don't know the mechanics yet. You are not going to need to spend an hour rewinding guides if you dislike that.

Me:
I'd like them to 'expect' players to be better by the time they have done 'ARR & HW & SB & ShB & EW, assume they have done most of its content and are experienced. This means:

• All instances (must include dungeons) your play must have consequences for your character. just for example, if neither the healer nor the tank can do any of the mechanics, your going to have to pull again, unless there is another role able to carry 'unusually' well. By all means make the mechanics easy to learn, easy to do, but there will be some that kill on every boss and for the 'vast' majority of the expansion, not only if everyone is min Ilvl.
• increase the speed. Just a little. Increase the speed. (Extreme shouldn't be a total shock. You could actually put a Chaotic speed hand mechanic in, just kill one person not your healer + tank) Put a chaotic speed suck or pushback (just don't kill everyone or start doing it telegraphed random mixed with memory)
• put a memory test mechanics in. Just slow it down. 1 per expansion will do even.
• do more un orange telegraphed, look at boss mechanics 'you've got to teach that before Extreemes' and its got to kill! (or people aren't going to notice) Make those 'really' slow, but make them count.
• Alliances shouldn't ever be as easy as Void Ark, shouldn't ever be as easy as Jeuno (Jeuno can be easy to carry, but it doesn't even KO either) . Rabanastre/Dunscaith should now be your stating point. Your expecting people to be experienced now. Thalaia was unacceptably easy for a final raid (repeat mechanics should have been hitting REALLY hard to punish you for 'still' not knowing after Aglaia and Euph, because by and large people did know them and it was a cakewalk). Again if you are training people "juuuuust a little", it not going to be as much of a problem.

Dungeons used to have to be easy, people didn't hit end game and have 500 hours of experience. You don't have to do that anymore.

Use the core content you are already doing. Get people from 'casual' to Extreme.
Extreme can be casual, you can prog it blind, if you are more patient than the average PF expectation.

• I recommend marketing it to casual by saying, "if you clear each Extreme just once, we'll now be giving you an extra new mount at the end of the expansion. We will be adding a second token per instance. Youll need 30 of each. Do it while its high end and we'll give you 30 for clearing once (not 15! ALL 30), do it while its expansion but not high end well give you 10, after expansion well give you 1". A mount that is a bit cool not just a recolour.
• people will already be less likely to be shocked and run screaming because you've made instances more challenging above, you've 'trained' them at least a little (your not training them at all so far. Forget new novice, wrong kind of training. That's just basic Ed)
• We are going to improve PF culture. We are adding prog point flags to the instance. You'll get 1 of the current game's totem for reaching P2, total of 3 for reaching P3, total of 6 for clearing 'Provided the party votes to agree to leave' if there is an abandon, no rewards. If don't want to stay for a P3 party where just 1 person keeps wiping P1, *FROM NOW ON ITS GOING TO BE TOUGH! NO YOU DONT GET TO BE TOXIC if you want rewards just for prog*
• BUT ITS NOT GOING TO BE THAT TOUGH, because we are scaling back the totems to 80 for example. We calculate you are not going to spend more time when all is said and done.
• We will be adding a new PF requirement where you have to have some/any type of item in your inventory, configured by PF leader/poster. We will be giving you special untradeable inventory items for reaching a prog flag. Don't lose it or you'll not be able to prove you reached it and will have to re prog. 'game will check your inventory for <batwing>'.

Again get people into high end.

• delay just a bit. Just two. Give people 2 weeks for MSQ to 'enjoy' it. 2 Weeks to farm Normal. 2 Weeks to prog Extreme (they wont be done if they are new). Then release saavage.
• After Savage is out, Extremes should provide uncapped raid gear equivalent to crafted, but which you can't pentameld.

Ideally MARKET 'non' savage criterion better.

• Have it issue a currency that you can use to also buy that Extremes non Penta gear. Do any criterion you want.

Savage criterion, market it better. Just offer a title, and an almost ultimat sshiny weapon. Make people aim for it. I don't believe weapons are expensive to develop, unless you've got some thing about outsourcing. In which case, you've got a choice to make about if this game is going to survive.

idk I play to have fun and I think they should release the field operation much sooner than they do
in the absence of those I like variant dungeons

I do miss the old dungeon designs where you actually had things to do rather than run straight to the end until a wall stops you
they could probably take some features from variant dungeons and add them to the main ones we run through the story

An open world that actually has meaning outside of gathering and poorly/outdated designed hunts, and isn't thrown to the wayside after story. Open world should have meaning.

There needs to be repeatable content to engage with, that isn't just the same artificially extended longevity of "Complete 2000 S-Ranks" or "Go with frontlines 3,000 times", or "Do 10,000 levequests". Bozja and Eureka are great examples of repeatable content, as is Deep Dungeons to a lesser degree.

Normal Mode content feels like a meaningless afterthought that is only necessary through story. There's no reason that normal mode gear should be invalidated in the same patch it is released. Normal raid gear should have a small edge over crafted, or have something added to it later on that enables players to augment it, from, say 710 to 720 or 725. It has been well over a decade since this game has actually given a lot of people a reason to actually do normal modes, especially with how affordable crafted is. It worked in HW when you were still paying 900K - 1.5Mln per piece. Not so much when it is 75-230K. It's the same ordeal with Jeuno.. Why am I going to bother doing it more than once when I will already have plenty of the uncapped tomes to fully augment crafted gear from 710 to 720 anyway. Obviously substats does mean there would be an optimization factor, but for the most part players are just going to go with the highest item level available to them, and when you compare inexpensive crafted gear with something locked behind a weekly loot, the answer becomes very, very obvious.

Way too much depth and excitement has been erased from this game, crafting is a pathetic husk of what it once was. If you wanted to craft, this is something that could keep you occupied for very long periods of time, it was exciting, and it encouraged actually doing other content, it gave people leeway to optimize things like a concealed node window, it encouraged people, everyone to actually engage with Grand Company since they were necessary for crafting and become a lucrative source of Gil, even for the most casual of players. These days if I want to craft it's just exciting for the first day, then it's a miserable experience. Expert recipes? Oh what joy, where the vast majority of your success is determined by what buffs you get and not necessarily how well you actually executed the craft. Sure, they are challenging and can be engaging, but after a certain point it's a miserable and pathetic experience because the amount of control over the outcome you have is just weighted as much to ridiculous buffs like Pliant and Centered not turning your obnoxiously 5 rapid synths needed into a complete and utter masquerade. Thanks for the courtesy token of experts as a result of your completely gutting the crafting system. Know what would've made this fun? If they didn't make the mistake of erasing WWYW, this would allow you to combat RNG in creative ways, it would allow you to craft in a creative way. Of course, this is my own personal opinion.

Devs need to stop making the mistake that not going into raiding means that you do not have any interest in being remotely challenged whatsoever, or that you do not thrive for at least a glimmer of resistance.. Like, you can hate raiding, but still be interested in being challenged, or meeting resistance. This is what made high floor deep dungeons extremely fun, and even when doing it solo.. Now it's just the same downtrodden formula. Can't believe we're 3 iterations into this content and we still don't have something equivalent to Logograms and Lost Actions to enhance gameplay and add some gimmick features.

I quite enjoyed the "hard" version of dungeons in ARR. I assume some are easier to make than one from scratch because of asset redundancy. Repeating that for other expansions with ilvl scaling to make them genuinely more challenging than MSQ content would be a helpful addition IMO.

And if we're talking about all battle content, there is so much room for improvement/expansion in PvP.

• Special boss fates that drop unique weapon glamours, emotes, or titles. Stormblood had a few of these. I'd love to see more. Imagine at the end of a FATE chain, you get a token unique to that chain. Complete 3 chains and you have 3 tokens. You can exchange those 3 tokens for a Mount.
• A way to do the Hunt without GC levels or a similar but separate version of the The Hunt (It has huge potential in my opinion). A single unified Hunt currency for current content (and a 'poetics' version) would be great for old content. No more Centurio Seals/Sacks of Nuts.
• Field Operations released far far far earlier.
• A personal request but I'd love there to be some sort of queueable 1v1 trial; inspired by the Bozja Duels and solo MSQ fights we get.

Major improvements should be made to hunts, and FATEs. The advantage overworld gameplay has over other instances is that it comes prepackaged with an expansion launch, the barrier to entry is incredibly low, and they have the potential stick around long after. I want to make a big overworld improvement wishlist post one day.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Major improvements should be made to hunts, and FATEs. The advantage overworld gameplay has over other instances is that it comes prepackaged with an expansion launch, the barrier to entry is incredibly low, and they have the potential stick around long after. I want to make a big overworld improvement wishlist post one day.

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Oh God, please!

I don't know if it's your idea but making every overworld have a few FATEs like the ones on Bozja would already be a massive improvement!!
(I think they're called skirmish, the ones we have to register and teleport).

The most important thing for me is replay value. I'm sick of 95% of my friends list disappearing within 2 days of patch release.

Okay, I am super casual. I never had much interest in raiding and I also dislike Dawntrail so not really doing any progression at all this expansion. I still do old content though. Mainly play WAR. I respect and love to watch other players do the hardest content though!

Zones like Eureka and Bozja are fun, Frontlines PVP is really fun for me so I wish they had better game modes on the large-scale side of things and more maps. So pretty much "zones" that allow me to just hop in and grind with other players are fun in my opinion, allowing me to AFK whenever I need too and not waste other peoples time. If they could somehow simulate a giant on-going warzone that mixed PVE and PVP together I'd have a blast, and add in gear somehow that'd be great. And to clarify it doesn't have to be 100% PVP... think a circle of PVE and in the center is a bit of PVP would be fine also.

Personally I hope FFXIV goes back to their roots of how ARR was and focus more on the alliances and their lore as well. Let Limsa Lominsa have pirating back on the menu, and Ul'dah being cutthroat traders... and Gridania crying about whatever, heh. Introduce new factions to join besides the big three would be awesome as well like Ishgaard, Garlemald, Ala Mhigo, etc. And then let these factions go into conflict with each other! There is much they can do but they seem so focused on the Scions and saving the world plots. Lore needs to become a a lot more grounded and everything might just follow suit naturally in my opinion, a least in terms of the developers creating new ideas and designs for gameplay.

This is off-topic, but I'd also really like if they continued the stories of the initial classes we choose to become something of a "pure" class. What would happen if our characters continued being a pugilist or marauder, etc and never used the soul crystal? Could add a bunch of new skills and flare to these classes by the time they're max level.

Maybe it's time for a Realm Giga-Reborn. And this time, our characters are no longer the Warrior of Light... but just another person in the world of Final Fantasy.

Okay, I am super casual. I never had much interest in raiding and I also dislike Dawntrail so not really doing any progression at all this expansion. I still do old content though. Mainly play WAR. I respect and love to watch other players do the hardest content though!

Zones like Eureka and Bozja are fun, Frontlines PVP is really fun for me so I wish they had better game modes on the large-scale side of things and more maps. So pretty much "zones" that allow me to just hop in and grind with other players are fun in my opinion, allowing me to AFK whenever I need too and not waste other peoples time. If they could somehow simulate a giant on-going warzone that mixed PVE and PVP together I'd have a blast, and add in gear somehow that'd be great. And to clarify it doesn't have to be 100% PVP... think a circle of PVE and in the center is a bit of PVP would be fine also.

Personally I hope FFXIV goes back to their roots of how ARR was and focus more on the alliances and their lore as well. Let Limsa Lominsa have pirating back on the menu, and Ul'dah being cutthroat traders... and Gridania crying about whatever, heh. Introduce new factions to join besides the big three would be awesome as well like Ishgaard, Garlemald, Ala Mhigo, etc. And then let these factions go into conflict with each other! There is much they can do but they seem so focused on the Scions and saving the world plots. Lore needs to become a a lot more grounded and everything might just follow suit naturally in my opinion, a least in terms of the developers creating new ideas and designs for gameplay.

This is off-topic, but I'd also really like if they continued the stories of the initial classes we choose to become something of a "pure" class. What would happen if our characters continued being a pugilist or marauder, etc and never used the soul crystal? Could add a bunch of new skills and flare to these classes by the time they're max level.

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Originally Posted by Brandr

Oh God, please!

I don't know if it's your idea but making every overworld have a few FATEs like the ones on Bozja would already be a massive improvement!!
(I think they're called skirmish, the ones we have to register and teleport).

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Oh absolutely! It be great if they were like the large scale fights like Castrum or Dalriada but a bit more friendly to small groups.

Do something, ANYTHING with the open world that isn't the same 5 recycled fates.

WoW has been doing good with this with world events. The Dornogal theater play would fit perfectly into XIV.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Do something, ANYTHING with the open world that isn't the same 5 recycled fates.

WoW has been doing good with this with world events. The Dornogal theater play would fit perfectly into XIV.

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I'm not familiar with WoW so I don't know what that is, but I think more world events would be a lot of fun. I think the special marks are supposed to be like that, or the fates like Odin and the others but idk those hunts die too fast and the special fates feel too infrequent, but I don't go looking for them so that could be entirely my issue

It'd be cool to get something like what GW2 does for theirs

I have fond memories of fighting that massive zombie dragon and having to jump to avoid the waves it caused

Mao wants boss fights to be more random with less mechanics barfage. That is the way to make dungeons regain spirit of adventures and be more funs and repeatable agains. Characters get to use toolkits in more varied ways. DDR-style fights is BAD because once learned, is become same old same old. By tooling jobs to fit DDR-style fights, jobs also becoming more boring and unbalanced. To has random elements in fights means is more space for less powerful jobs to contribute.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Mao wants boss fights to be more random with less mechanics barfage. That is the way to make dungeons regain spirit of adventures and be more funs and repeatable agains. Characters get to use toolkits in more varied ways. DDR-style fights is BAD because once learned, is become same old same old. By tooling jobs to fit DDR-style fights, jobs also becoming more boring and unbalanced. To has random elements in fights means is more space for less powerful jobs to contribute.

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Exactly this. And while it's apparent that some players enjoy the process of learning the dance, the majority of us do not. In fact this is where I see the real hardcore/casual divide.

Well, for starters, remove the 2 minute meta lol. Secondly, bring back some RNG into the game. Everything being so static and same-y is what's killing the combat. They need to make each tank/healer to be different, each with different difficulty to master (WHM/WAR being the easiest for example, while GNB/AST could be on the hardest). It doesn't have to be extreme difficulty, but there needs to be something different than same attacks with different effects.

There are quite a few outdoor unique activities I'd want simply to fill in the time that doesn't resort to me going back to Gold Saucer, but Square's answer to that will always and forever be "F*** you, you'll buy our sh*t and play it anyway because you own a house".

I want a relic grind. With relic armor.

But I think they don't even need to give us more content, they just have to use the content better we get. Most of it is dead on arrival. Mostly because tomestone gear is simply too strong.

We basically are skipping over normal raids and to some degree alliance raids. Normal trials are nothing more than a roadblock for new players because of the duty finder queue times. Variant dungeons were done in 4 hours (12 x 20 minutes), even a casual player can do that in two evenings. Deep dungeons lost the 100 easy floors which you could run with duty finder or even solo, which made them unatractive for casual players.

People say there is soo much casual content, but it all boils down to doing 5 times expert roulette and one time alliance raid in a week.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Mao wants boss fights to be more random with less mechanics barfage. That is the way to make dungeons regain spirit of adventures and be more funs and repeatable agains. Characters get to use toolkits in more varied ways. DDR-style fights is BAD because once learned, is become same old same old. By tooling jobs to fit DDR-style fights, jobs also becoming more boring and unbalanced. To has random elements in fights means is more space for less powerful jobs to contribute.

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Ohhh I like that! Make casual way more random! Make the mechanics easy-to-do/easy-to-learn, but make them punishing, and make them properly randomised. Where your leaning the dungeon, yeah some pulls will wipe the y party because they are still learning some of them. People who do it once and move on. Will be wiping for years. Dungeons will cleared by repulling for the chance combinations of mechs you know. (Some may not like the feelinging it's RNG on mechanic selection that clears you to begin with, but it might work). There is another down side though, sounds dev expensive.

Another idea, add a roul that picks from the current expansion. It's either expert or some roul that could end up being lvl 50... Again.

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Originally Posted by Rehayem

Well, for starters, remove the 2 minute meta lol. Secondly, bring back some RNG into the game. Everything being so static and same-y is what's killing the combat. They need to make each tank/healer to be different, each with different difficulty to master (WHM/WAR being the easiest for example, while GNB/AST could be on the hardest). It doesn't have to be extreme difficulty, but there needs to be something different than same attacks with different effects.

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This is all just to pander to high end again. And they are going to get their way again and wreck Picto. You know it's coming. Just let then do ultimate with four pictos, or fight among themselves for who is Picto, or bitch that they cleared ultimate in two weeks.
Honestly, your logged the hell out of your rotation, logged the hell out of your fight, min maxed the life out of it, and metad your party comp... and the ultimate challenge got too unchallenging?
Talk about stupid games and stupid prizes.

Stop ruining 16 jobs , when no matter what you do there will always be a top 8, and people will only use those.

Let ultimate be unclearable with the wrong party. Your not good enough to do ultimate with your backup main? Boo hoo get gud, it's ultimate. Savage to easy with meta? Fine. People can do ultimate after. Just make sure savage fights are tuned to the worst party comp, pf market forces will have to do the rest.

Some people will put up unrestricted PFs. If DRK is underpowered, but they force the other 7 players to be meta don't be surprised if it doesn't fill to carry you.
They are letting logging ruin this game. This is all about how the player base behaves because 'Nin' or whatever is meta, and people whine at the Devs *All because of fflogs*.

I mean, I would like to see some rewards giving some purpose to grind normal content.

Currently due to the one item weekly cap, you can’t even grind the newest alliance raid for glams, so there’s no real reason to do it more often than once a week. And there’s currently no other reason for doing normal content in game other than glams (if you aren’t leveling) and that doesn’t even include normal raids, considering how undyeable glams are pretty much useless.

I think variant dungeons were a move in the right direction where both normal and hardcore versions had a mount reward, but imo the normal mount achievement should be a bit more grindy

Generally adding nice rewards like mounts or cosmetics locked behind grinding normal duties would be imo the best solution to make them more engaging and give some purpose to grind them. Kinda like what they do with pvp but maybe bound to particular duties instead of a missable all content “battle pass”.

You'll never get a straight answer, because they'll be divided between "something to grind" and "something we don't have to grind."

Nobody wants more ARR Zodiac books or Atma farming. Nobody wants another Manderville tomestone-to-relic exchange.

Ultimately, what the complainers want is just not this game. They ain't gonna Ship of Theseus this thing and rebuild a new game out of it.

You can balance grinding somewhere in the middle, some relic farms were definitely too long for average casual player, but you don’t see too much complaints about PvP series grind being too long or too shorts (most complaints about it come from people who just hate pvp)

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

You'll never get a straight answer, because they'll be divided between "something to grind" and "something we don't have to grind."

Nobody wants more ARR Zodiac books or Atma farming. Nobody wants another Manderville tomestone-to-relic exchange.

Ultimately, what the complainers want is just not this game. They ain't gonna Ship of Theseus this thing and rebuild a new game out of it.

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There are 431 answers provided on this Reddit post from 11 hours ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._what_content/

The "complainers" want a better version of this game, not a different one.

Good casual content would be content where you don't need to learn and prepare tactics in advance to succeed. So it would need to be combat content designed around rewarding successful improvisation, rather than requiring to learn the specific patterns of a particular fight.

An example of something that it kinda like that is the second Vanguard boss. It uses only familiar mechanics, but overlaps them in a way that requires you to think on your feet. As such it doesn't require you to plan with other players in advance of the fight (a la "group X should go to this place during phase Y"), and it doesn't even need you to have done the fight before to have a chance to succeed.

(casual doesn't have to mean "easy" by the way, it should just mean "doesn't require significant preparation, coordination and a premade group")

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Good casual content ... would need to be combat content designed around rewarding successful improvisation, rather than requiring to learn the specific patterns of a particular fight.

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This.
I still remember the Ivalice Raids. The robot that targets you with a sniper rifle while you get a shield that covers 70% of your body. Surely this shield will protect you from the sniper, right? RIGHT?
Or this Thundergod Whatsoever guy, where you need to look at the ground to see what's happening at your feet, and at the same time look high up into the sky to see how he's waving his swords around in the air. First, I have no idea how to look in two different directions at the same time. Second, even if I could, I had no idea what his sword gestures mean.
And then... prime numbers, anyone? Of course I can do the calculations... but when I have read the tooltip and found out what the heck I'm even supposed to do, I'm already dead.

This was one of the first times in FF14 where I thought to myself "this content is just not made for me". Of course you can watch guides, memorize 5 dozen spell names, gestures, AE colors and whatnot - but this is not fun gameplay to me. Casual raid content should be about combat, not about hours of memorizing arbitrary stuff for every single boss in the place.

So what was fun battle content to me? The latest dungeon "Cowabanga field station" comes to mind. I went in blind, and the mechanics turned out to be challenging - but not obscure. Same with the variant dungeons that I did just recently. Went in blind (used a guide only to find the 12 different pathes), and managed to finish them all. So this is the kind of content I'ld like to see more of.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

This.
I still remember the Ivalice Raids. The robot that targets you with a sniper rifle while you get a shield that covers 70% of your body. Surely this shield will protect you from the sniper, right? RIGHT?
Or this Thundergod Whatsoever guy, where you need to look at the ground to see what's happening at your feet, and at the same time look high up into the sky to see how he's waving his swords around in the air. First, I have no idea how to look in two different directions at the same time. Second, even if I could, I had no idea what his sword gestures mean.
And then... prime numbers, anyone? Of course I can do the calculations... but when I have read the tooltip and found out what the heck I'm even supposed to do, I'm already dead.

This was one of the first times in FF14 where I thought to myself "this content is just not made for me". Of course you can watch guides, memorize 5 dozen spell names, gestures, AE colors and whatnot - but this is not fun gameplay to me. Casual raid content should be about combat, not about hours of memorizing arbitrary stuff for every single boss in the place.

So what was fun battle content to me? The latest dungeon "Cowabanga field station" comes to mind. I went in blind, and the mechanics turned out to be challenging - but not obscure. Same with the variant dungeons that I did just recently. Went in blind (used a guide only to find the 12 different pathes), and managed to finish them all. So this is the kind of content I'ld like to see more of.

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Agreed with much. The sniper mech is great except it makes no sense. But it would have been more fun if theyd made it a small shield, that you had less time to position.

Agreed on the gestures. Make easy to learn but punishing.
Show the mech three times or more.
First time you pause (sniper style) and force them to look. 2nd time you pause and show the second gesture.
Then you repeat the mechanic later without forcing them to look. Just think very carefully before you add a four part memory game and distract the hell out of people.
Why is it always all or nothing. Braindead or savage, little in-between.
Alpha 3 is perfect this way. It's punishing, fast you have to look at the biss, but you HAVE TO LOOK AT THE BOSS, they are not tricking you, causing you to not look, and have no idea what's killing you again and an again.
Less mechs combinations. Faster mechs. Harder hitting mechs, Less ground aoe telegraphs, be very careful that combining mechs doesn't make hard to see what's killing you, or leaves you looking up guides to learn the position solutions.

(Edit: I know lots of people brought up randomness before me so I'm not making any novel point here. I'm just frustrated with the game's current state so you'll have to endure my long-winded rant.)

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

(casual doesn't have to mean "easy" by the way, it should just mean "doesn't require significant preparation, coordination and a premade group")

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So much this! This really is the key for me.

I want something that is mentally engaging but that I can engage with without much of an entry barrier. I want to do the thinking inside the content, the thinking and problem solving should be part of the fun gameplay.
Preparation for hardcore content makes sense and is an integral part obviously but I don't always want to do (relatively extensive depending on the content) dry homework before playing just to be able to have any fun.

Right now this game only offers two extremes:
* completely stale and easy content you run almost mindlessly (esp. the more often you repeat it)
* Hardcore content that requires a lot of preparation

The middle ground is entirely lacking in PvE.
I want something I can jump into and that I can complete in a reasonable amount of time but that still keeps me on my toes.

And imo there is a factor that could greatly help with that (and that would ensure that it keeps more of its difficult over time because currently even hard content turns into DDR autopilot at some point). The problem is that it would require SE to fundamentally depart from their formula:

(Pseudo) Randomness.

Regarding both the order of attacks in a fight as well as randomness in a fight itself.
(Compare it to the design of a Soulsborne fight (minus the difficulty) where you have to read and react to your enemy's random attacks and even then the attacks themselves don't always play out the same way. Though I'd like it if FF14 added even more randomness to the attacks themselves.)

Making the order of boss attacks random would already help but I don't think it would solve everything.
If you run trial roulettes most won't have memorised the order of every fight either but can still easily clear them because of a general familiarility and the simplicity of many mechanics.

But I think if you combine a random attack order with (more) RNG-based attacks you'd have a nice level of adequate challenge that forces you to think in the moment.

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Adding randomness to dungeons would help a lot as well. I don't know how much effort it would amount to but if the dungeon path(s) were generated randomly (plus monsters/bosses with random attack patterns) then this would already add a lot of value even if the fights themselves aren't hard. You'd have an exploration element that keeps you engaged and that makes you feel like you are actually in a dungeon again.

I can somewhat understand why they wouldn't do this for story dungeons even though I think it is a shame and they should expect at least a little more competence at higher levels.

People like to complain how badly many casuals play (DF hell yadda yadda) but the thing is: Right now non-raider casuals have no incentive or content to grow.
Adding "mid-core" content with a low entry barrier and more in-fight thinking and problem solving could teach people to be better over the course of 100 levels.

(At the very least it could inform the design of the optional capstone level dungeons.
Or bring back optional "hard-mode" dungeons and implement a randomness-based design there if you want to keep it out of normal dungeons.)

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That's why I play PvP almost entirely now because every game is different. I always have to think inside of a match, assess the situation an react accordingly even in casual matches.
PvP I can legitimately play for hours because it's intrinsically fun to me. I can absolutely not say the same about PvE, even though I'd really like to do that because in theory I love PvE boss fights and dungeons.

At the same time you can transition smoothly into hardcore PvP (discords, advanced guides etc.) if you want to. Jumping back and forth between both modes/"worlds" is very easy.

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Also, ilvl trivialising a lot of content doesn't help. I understand it's useful for farming older EX fights and making daily roulettes even easier/faster to farm and so on but it also makes them very bland and boring. If older fights retained their risk to a player's health this would also contribute to having to think more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

You'll never get a straight answer, because they'll be divided between "something to grind" and "something we don't have to grind."

Nobody wants more ARR Zodiac books or Atma farming. Nobody wants another Manderville tomestone-to-relic exchange.

Ultimately, what the complainers want is just not this game. They ain't gonna Ship of Theseus this thing and rebuild a new game out of it.

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No what people wants is for the developers to have some more self-respect in the substance of content they produce. The fact your perception is that they would need to "Ship of Theseus" this game and rebuild an entirely new game tells me that you don't actually understand many of the complaints levied against the game.

Personally I would like a proper roguelike mode where you start with a basic attack or two and gain access to various skill from current jobs/bozja actions/blu spells/etc to build your own rotation out of.

I'm not a casual player, and this isn't about "battle content" but I'd like to see Hrothgar and Viera hats implemented properly for a change.
I have a Matoya Hat collecting dust there, while people with illegal software can easily wear it.
You're telling me mod makers have more resources than Square Enix, the developer of the game?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LinaAkayomi

I'm not a casual player, and this isn't about "battle content" but I'd like to see Hrothgar and Viera hats implemented properly for a change.
I have a Matoya Hat collecting dust there, while people with illegal software can easily wear it.
You're telling me mod makers have more resources than Square Enix, the developer of the game?

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Honestly, it may not be battle content, but it is a different symptom of the exact same problem that other pieces of content in this game face.

Nothing is going to change until they make the jobs better. More unique and interesting. Gameplay, looks, lore, story. Not all of those parts are necessary, but AT LEAST the gameplay.
While having access easily to all the jobs is a great feature and I don't want that to change, they need to give you that "oompf" to stick to one job and love it.

One way to bring back job quests, I think I had another thread about making the jobs matter in the worlds stage again, like having WoW style class-halls and questlines for legendary weapon glams or mounts, pets etc that are related to your job. Honestly if they are so overworked as they claim they are and nothing fits in their schedule, just remove most of the sidequests in towns, most of them in Dawntrail surmount to "Oh, this apple cures a sickness, get me an apple". Leave ones with more elaborate stories and lore. The sidequests dont give any exp, nor any gear, nor anything of value aside from lore tidbits that in Dawntrail really go nowhere.

As far as fights go? I'm not a big fan of the DDR memory position dancing for every fight and spamming the same rotation over again, reducing my tank to a glorified DPS. There's no kiting, there's no rng that makes me have to react, no mechanics as a tank that really speak to me even in dungeons. The bosses always reset to the middle, making my efforts to position them moot, if they arent full wallbosses.

The gearing system doesn't really push me to TRY bigger content either. It's stale, materia is just for show, the stats don't REALLY matter, theres no uniqueness, no build variety, nothing to test. It's just glam and funny that. Like two or more dungeons are only accessories? IF YOU LIKE THE SYSTEMS, good for you, I am happy for you. But to get someone like me to even consider trying something harder? The systems need to change, the gearing needs to change, the jobs need to change.

And for crying out loud, get some more devs or something to solve the hat issue for Viera and Hrotgar already. This is honestly embarrassing from a large company with such a legacy. Like actually embarrassing.

Anything where we can join and leave without much accountability or effect to other players' enjoyment and success.

To me, that's the definition of casual.

Roguelike mode that doesn't eschew pve completely like deep dungeons do. Something that truly takes from the genre, and where completing the instance isn't the primary end goal. Something with a strong sense of progression, and that rewards grit in the face of attrition. Something that everybody can jump into and isn't tied to individually centered binary checks, where you can support and help each other and build a sense of teamplay.

Casual has nothing to do with skill level, as this game is p..s easy anyway and mostly memorization. What it means is that, that someone doesn't want to go through the agony of "socializing" and finding 7 other people who are not *can't say this here*, *can't say this here* or *can't say this here* in FFXIV, which is an enormous task in itself, only to get the last 1% out of a single player game.

Imagine playing FFX and then you beat the base game and want to do the monster arena and dark aeons to uncover the last couple secrets and items in the game but it suddenly told you to go online and find people, because that's essentially what FFXIV does.

All the content should be doable with TRUST bots and it should be optional to do it co-op with other people, not the other way around.