ONE thing You'd Change About the Game

Very simple and straightforward.

Only pick one per comment. Go with it. Detail why. Upvote other people's suggestions.

What's the one thing that would make this game truly enjoyable for you?

Exploratory Mission that Lasts The Entire Expansion.

Change:
Update the Exploratory Mission with new assignments and keep the relic alive every other patch. Believe in one concept and keep rolling with it. Make updates. Ease old time wasters for new ones. Keep giving people something to do.

Fix:
Too many ideas all thrown together in Dawntrail and it doesn't feel like there's enough support for any of them. We've got the moon crafting and the exploratory missions and the deep dungeons and all of these ideas mean that you don't believe in the core concept. You're throwing poop at the wall and seeing which one sticks.

Cross DC party finder. Even the most simplest form, that has no chat, and just insta travels you when you 'join' the PF.

That way people on the non Raiding DCs are fighting again one less thing that is corroding the social groups of this massively MULTIPLAYER online game.
If you are on a raiding DC this isn't a problem for you at all. If you are on a non raiding DC, you porbably don't even know or imagine, just how good life could be and is for others. You just think this sht is as good as it gets.

I'm on a raiding DC 'now'. It won't make me materially better at all. In fact it will probably hurt me. But it will make me feel 'the devs care about our players, so if I start caring again, I'm not exhausting my own reserves of energy just so Square can spunk them away on inaction and other profit chasing ventures to benefit shareholders. It probably wont get me back. But I don't matter now. That's just a fact. If things get better, there is always tomorrow. You never know.

An Open World That Interacts with Itself and You and Incentivizes Exploration

Change: The current overworld in FFXIV is really pretty, but lacks in things that encourage you to interact with it or even engage in side quests. There are FATEs and Hunts, but Hunts are generally just: big monster sits waiting to be killed. Most of the time our experience with these big beautiful zones is as we move from set piece to set piece in a straight line, with little incentive to explore.

Idea: I think FFXIV is, actually, close to achieving something here, but need to take a few more steps. I think most of it could be achieved with some tweaks to the FATE system. To achieve a more “alive” open world, I would love to see:
- Hunt targets that roam, hunting other monsters, and even attacking settlements
- More intelligent regular spawns, like for instance maybe the pirates in Middle La Noscea could actually wander and attack things
- Placement of treasure that spawns at places around the world, which players could interact with for small amounts of treasure or loot. Maybe not dungeon level loot, but a little something to tickle your dopamine receptors.
- Open world dungeons. Similar to FATEs but these could be locations on a map with rotating spawn points that can be engaged with. Imagine you’re wandering around and then the music changes. You’ve found an open dungeon. The mobs are higher level, more aggressive, with more challenging mechanics.
- NPCs recognize you as you do more open world content and side quests in a zone. This is an idea I’ve gotten from playing City of Heroes: basically, as you play in a zone and do more quests, the NPCs start to recognize you and have little flavor text bubbles as you pass by that say “there’s so-and-so! I hear they helped Such and such with a bunch of brigands.” Other players might see this flavor text and get the itch to do stuff too. It’s such a small thing but it makes the world feel more alive even if a little bit, and gives the sense that what you do in the world matters and makes an impact. Heck tie achievements to “being recognized” for how much you’ve helped the denizens of a zone!

All Glams Unlocked for all Classes (except DoW/DoM AF gear)

Yes, I know there's a billion page thread on this, but the amount of outfits we'd be able to put together would be literally endless if we could combine any and all gear types in a glamour plate. If I've unlocked the item, and I'm high enough level to wear it on that specific job subset even if I'm not that job subset, let me glamour it. I will carve out an exception for AF gear since it's meant to be Job Specific rather than paint a wide brush like Aiming/Scouting/Ect.

We are long past the point of "It'd be weird for a caster to wear plate" when we have plate-dress casting sets as of Endwalker, not to mention bikinis and maid dresses and all sorts of non-job civilian clothes available at this point. If I can add it to my dresser, and I'm high enough level to equip it on its respective job, let me use it as a glam. Especially DoH/L clothes that would make amazing parts to outfits and are locked behind the jobs we wear for 10 minutes before swapping back to our combat job.

Completely overhaul fates. Make them give bicolor gemstones at all level ranges. Let us exchange bicolor gemstones for many of the same items you can with hunt currencies. Give players higher EXP/Gems for chaining fates quickly, and make sure theres always at least 1-2 up at all times. Steal Rift's Instant Adventure system and let players queue into random zone 8 man groups to chain fates together and you get even more EXP plus tomes also for this. Ensure there is a gemstone mount or glamour every single patch from now on.

More things to do in the open world.

Only having the same 4 FATEs over and over is a colossal drag. I wish they'd stop chopping up everything interesting into separate instances.

Diadem- or Bozja-esque areas could definitely be part of the open world without killing whatever hamster is powering the developers.

Moderation for PvP

I think this one is mostly self explanatory? Nobody likes having AFKers in their Frontline games, or people who constantly leave matches in their ranked queues. It disincentivizes queuing for somewhat niche content in an environment where there's not many incentives to queue in the first place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WutWut

Moderation for PvP

I think this one is mostly self explanatory? Nobody likes having AFKers in their Frontline games, or people who constantly leave matches in their ranked queues. It disincentivizes queuing for somewhat niche content in an environment where there's not many incentives to queue in the first place.

---

Agree with this. I'd state it as "aggressive enforcement of ToS by GMs in PvP."

Jobs.
Tanks have too much healing
Jobs are getting easier to play
I want them to give jobs their Identity instead of simplification. If I want to play a tank I should feel like one. If I swap from dps to another I want to feel the change instead of it just being an aesthetic change.

Make relic system early so people can grind or do something.

Less system silo-ing, so making systems more intricately connected.

Never having dawntrail even be a remote topic or devolpment in general

I'd remove fall damage as a thing, outside of boss fight mechanics which specifically utilize it.

You can't interact with or get rewards from hunt marks outside of your world.

Doors that default to "yes" to open.

Removing things like having to do retainers one at a time, or having no ability to auto skip submersible cutscenes, or some beast tribe mini cutscenes.

Buffs and debuffs. Like real buffs and debuffs. Enough to make an actual support job instead of just tacking on a lame +5% dmg on some ability and calling it a support job.

Allow us to use coins to upgrade our job gear instead of tome gear, with a selection of minor alterations available to choose from and change the look just slightly with each step. And then allow another, optional step to use savage books or drops to upgrade it again to be equal with savage loot but with job specific bonuses attached and a minor glow to set it apart. It would go a long way to add just a small bit of job identity and be amazing for glams.

Also add a customizable mythic weapon that get's built on with every expac so you could literally use just that weapon. Have a trial of the magians (ffxi) sort of thing, or just make a weapon with some real beefy requirements, with drops from normal content like dungeons, trials, fates, beast tribes and field ops to extreme, savage, chaotic and criterion all the way to ultimate. Weapon would start at level 1 and end an expac as bis by a larger margin than 5 ilvls. Make it beefy and worthwhile with job specific bonuses. Something to be proud of having worked on.

Basically I just want drops that are exciting again, like we had in XI, instead of something you just shrug when you get because you know you are just going to trade it in for seals in a month anyway.

Decouple MSQ patches and gear progression

The ability to change linkshell number positions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gunz_Zbestest

The ability to change linkshell number positions.

---

This one is weird because you *can* change CWLS numbers. It should be in there by default.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

Make relic system early so people can grind or do something.

---

YES and PLEASE.

Either revert the graphics update or redo it with artists who understand how to capture the details and mood of the original faces.

I just want my characters' personalities back.

More attention to detail when it comes to animal ears and hats for Miqo'te, Viera and Hrothgar.

At this point there is no excuse for why the latter two can't wear hats and the former can. And the former shouldn't have their ears chopped off when wearing hats.

Like with Lalafell and Elezen, take the time to craft hats that allow ear holes or pockets for the Miqo'te, Viera and Hrothgar ears to be placed in or poke through.

For Hrothgar and Viera, when it comes to new hats. Attach the ears to the hats so whatever data that's being used for their ears to show in the place of hats can be swapped out for the former instead.

Delete mare and mods, so the plague that have been keeping the mediocracy of this company until the point of delivering 3 hour of content every 5 months can actually put them to work on improve. But since that's never going to happen meh.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnnRam

Delete mare and mods, so the plague that have been keeping the mediocracy of this company until the point of delivering 3 hour of content every 5 months can actually put them to work on improve. But since that's never going to happen meh.

---

I know the Lopporrits are a bit grating at times, but I don't think that merits deleting the entire Mare Lamentorum zone. I also don't think it'd be good for the game to get rid of moderators.

It's hard to say, really
I have a lot of small things that I think would be nice; mostly QoL improvements like having inventory storage
As for the one big thing I'd want to change?
It'd probably have to be the content we have in the overworld

Some of my favorite things to do in the game is either go into Eureka or Bozja but I know it isn't for everyone
I think having different FATE objectives in the main world would be nice, and having branching paths for it too depending on if a certain fate succeeds or fails
I read something where you used to be able to fortify encampments from assaults by the beastmen and that sounded really cool

More world events would also be fun
I have a lot of fond memories of the ones we have, like fighting Odin randomly in the Shroud but these days they all die too quickly
I think the big S rank hunts are supposed to be world bosses, but they're pretty much a joke too

Easily job design. Job design effects all content of this game if the job design is bad then the rest of the game will never be more then just mediocre.

To go into detail, bring back identity to jobs let them have unique upsides and downsides, tanks and healers should feel different from one another, dps should have a lot more going on such as proc based rotations, More rng, some focus on different combos (some tanks and healers can also follow this), The Job system needs to be fun.

New jobs need a actual purpose other then "yeah we add 2 jobs each expansion enjoy the visuals of them!" New jobs are currently not needed until the current jobs are actually fine and not just visual reskins of each other.

I think the most pressing thing for me at this very second is a phys ranged rework. Please give BRD, and MCH walking casts like they do in PVP so their damage can compete with the rest of the DPS, and because the mechanic feels great, and is so much more gun-like, and bow-like.

Make it skill based instead of memorization based. The end.

Change: Tell a good story in the MSQ.

Explanation: This is a story based MMO, so it should have a decent story, interesting characters with a comprehensible development, compelling opponents, and the like. For details look up the bazillion of threads regarding DT's story telling, and why it does not work at all. Square Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenix, listen to me!

it's toss-up between completely redesigning female Au Ra so they're tall and act like adults, or making Glamour unrestricted by Role/Job or level

The questing system is absolutely garbage. Find a better way of conveying a story than go here and there quests. It's bad, and it's been bad since ARR.

better gearing (and substats because they are tied to each other), having only 2 options to gear in endgame is so boring, and get rid of tomestones to make dungeon gear relevant in endgame too (and that would help gearing multiple job btw).

to make it more clear it would look like this : get dungeon gear (and component to craft said gear for ppl who want to gear multiple job without spamming the same dungeon) > you have the ilvl to tackle savage > savage gear is used on ultimate that rewards you a gear already ready for next savage tier (so you don't need but can run next set of dungeons for optimizing some stats). in that example normal raid doesn't reward gear anymore because at first it was added for story purpose so i don't see why it has better ilvl than previous savage. 24 man would be same ilvl as savage (because it's released at a later time and could be used for optimizing) just make 24man not so braindead. And if you don't do any of those things because you better afk limsa then you'll stay way underpowered compared to ppl you know that play the game.

previous example doesn't take into account chaotic etc but you could to put them somewhere if needed (even if it mean higher ilvl difference between dungeon/savage/ultimate)
all this to say that we seriously need a reason to interact with the game outside of the boring tome system. give us reason to run content.

A progressive dial down or total abandon of DDR scripted mechanics with a reintroduction of RPG flavored battle system intricacies instead.

Relax TOS regarding player interaction so that the TOS does not favour the aggressor as well as actually being able to tell someone that they doing something bad/wrong without risking a ban.

This whole "wrap people in cotton wool" / "Stick head in sand" culture is terrible, you'd swear this was some aimed for players 10-13 game. It sounds like a tiny change in the scheme of things of the game but a culture shift should naturally improve overall player interaction.

Revival of old content such as Diadem, Eureka, Bozja. The content exists you know? All they need to do is add new rewards for these types of content.
They might not be everyone's favorite, but there is always a group of players who'll do it. The content doesn't need to be remade everytime, just some new goals to complete them again.

Cross Data center travel -> NA, OCE, and EU can travel back and forth. (Jp can stay in their bubble if they wish, let my OCE bros to travel)

Cross Data PF-> it should have 5 tabs - > General-> Each region (NA-EU-OCE)-> Advertisements (static recruitment, FC, Events.. etc).

Initiative for players go back to old dead content.
FATE in old expansions, Eureka, Bozja they all become dead after initial release.
Some initiative like ARR relic quest line that put players back into those content give it a second life

Min Item Level roulette for dungeons, daily Faux Hollows for a random MINE Extreme, weekly Faux Hollows for a random MINE Savage floor.

It just seems so strange to avoid it when they've shown it is in their mind in interviews. It will now take an eternity for a new player to get enough Faux Hollows for all the rewards without buying them for hundreds of millions of gil, so it's already worth doing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ardeth

The questing system is absolutely garbage. Find a better way of conveying a story than go here and there quests. It's bad, and it's been bad since ARR.

---

Interesting idea. I had an alt doing ARR quests and I was so bored that I just leveled them up the capitalist way. I would certainly like a lot less quests in MSQ.

A separate dye inventory in the glamour dresser, collections, or somewhere else that keeps them out of my bags but able to be used when modifying plates. It's a hassle to move them around all the time.