Letter TO The Producer

Hi,

It’s unlikely this will ever be seen by Staff or Yoshi-P himself, as posts like this often end up as echoes in the void. Still, I want to voice my concerns for the future of FFXIV - not because of any recent event, but because of the trajectory the game has taken over time.

Classes / Jobs

As the game has evolved, jobs have become “samey.” DPS follow near-identical patterns, tanks blur together, and healers are split only by shield versus pure heal. The unique utility that once set jobs apart has been stripped.

One of my fondest memories is of my first Lakshmi clear as a Red Mage. I spent most of the fight rezzing and mana-shifting MP to healers so the party could stay up. That gameplay made me feel valued. Now, Red Mage is just another combo-driven DPS. And the same can be said for most if not all classes. I miss when jobs felt valuable.

Content

Content feels complacent. Earlier expansions were exciting and adventurous; patch days carried genuine surprise. It feels like everything now must follow a rigid schedule. Why repeat the same formulas like introducing another Deep Dungeon when HOH or POTD could simply be expanded to newer levels?

Why must every patch include the same structures - two dungeons, a raid series, a trial? Why not shake the formula? Where is the variety, the adventure?

Customization

Viera and Hrothgar hats arrived, thank you. But long-promised hairstyle contest winners remain missing, years later. Across an entire expansion cycle we might see two or three new hairs, which feels painfully limited.

Why stop there? Where are new horns, faces, tails, ears, and racial features? When was the last addition to face paints? Players yearn for more tools to express themselves. And aside from Gear / Dyes, they receive bare minimum.

Story

Don’t be afraid to return to the game’s roots. Dawntrail was meant to be a “chill” expansion, yet still landed in another futuristic setting. We’ve seen Garlemald, Amaurot, the moon’s, and now cyber cities. How much more 'futuristic' can we get?

What about a return to rustic, medieval fantasy? Not as instanced zones or one-off dungeons, but a proper city-state with the feel of Alexandria. Or literally anything else but 'advanced technology'?

Fix / Expand Existing Systems

Grand Companies remain untouched for years, with three placeholder ranks still locked away. Why?

The Gold Saucer hasn’t seen a true mini-game in ages.
Island Sanctuary updates feel abandoned.
Systems launch with fanfare, then gather dust.

FFXIV markets itself as a “theme park” MMO, but too many rides stop running after their debut.

TL;DR: I love this MMORPG deeply, but it has evolved into something nearly unrecognizable from the game many of us first fell in love with. Please, consider change. Bring back identity, surprise, and a willingness to nurture what is already here. Remind us why this MMORPG captured our hearts in the first place.

You forgot to also mention that there are so many Nostalgia baits nowadays, wherein previously it used to be more subtle with much more touches of originality

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Originally Posted by spuffyre

As the game has evolved, jobs have become “samey.” DPS follow near-identical patterns, tanks blur together, and healers are split only by shield versus pure heal. The unique utility that once set jobs apart has been stripped.

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It'd be nice if they addressed this in a meaningful way - despite all the promises for changes in the next expansion every change they've made since 7.0 has only homogenised and simplified jobs further. It's insane that jobs have more buttons to press but less stuff to do.

I think they're scared of giving jobs extremely unique utility after seeing players ignore or lambast jobs that don't get to flex is "high tier" content. Game balance and player tenacity shows that any comp can clear ultimate, but watching every FRU team get carried by Pictomancer felt bad to everyone.

I like Machinist. What's it's group utility? Nothing. It was deliberately designed to be the most solo-friendly job in the game. No reliance of teammates for buffs nor vice-versa, extremely mobile, high burst damage. It's the go-to for solo DD and very easy to perform at it's peak in any PUG. The result? Players considering it the worst job in the game.

And the sheer terror of nerfs from the devs point of view is a terrible attitude. That's why Pictomancer destroying the meta happened, but also why Warrior remains overtuned for literally years and why they simplified Black Mage to keep up with the far easier to play Pictomancer.

The two-minute meta, as well. God, screw that thing. It's almost always the culprit why every job feels rotationally samey. Gotta fit everything in that two minute buff cycle. I hate it.

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Originally Posted by spuffyre

As the game has evolved, jobs have become “samey.” DPS follow near-identical patterns, tanks blur together, and healers are split only by shield versus pure heal. The unique utility that once set jobs apart has been stripped.

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They are aware of that but said they don't want to address it at the same time as addressing battle content ie. like how they've reduced hitbox size, reception to M5-M8 and things like that. We don't have to like that they are waiting for it but they seemed determined to put it off until 8.0.

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Earlier expansions were exciting and adventurous; patch days carried genuine surprise. It feels like everything now must follow a rigid schedule.

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Not really? People were complaining about "the schedule" and "formula" and all that back in Creator (Heavensward) and Stormblood even. Because the pattern of a new MSQ, dungeon, 4 raids, 1 extreme was clear even by that point and they'd unsubscribe between patches.

When Stormblood released I 100% expected 3 beast tribes, a deep dungeon, an extreme trial per patch, normal/savage raids every 8 months, alliance raid every odd patch... guess what I got? Exactly what I predicted. Eureka wasn't even a surprise because they had been discussing vaguely about it prior to Stormblood release the way they did with Island Sanctuary.

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Why repeat the same formulas like introducing another Deep Dungeon when HOH or POTD could simply be expanded to newer levels?

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POTD was extended with newer levels. The result is it's the most daunting one to solo because it's 200 floors and takes all day just to probably wipe after 180 levels. HoH and EO already are going to take your day up soloing with just 100 floors.

Doing it with a party isn't much better. I got pretty far through POTD near to 150 and someone had to leave. They just AFK'd permanently so we couldn't use the teleporters. Maybe it would be better with the increased amount of checkpoints they have in Pilgrim's Traverse but that isn't going to be retroactive.

I also have to ask why you think it is "adventurous" to not go anywhere new ie. Il Mheg and instead "adventure" through places you've already been a lot like the Black Shroud or HoH (where we reach the literal top from what I recall)?

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Why must every patch include the same structures - two dungeons, a raid series, a trial? Why not shake the formula? Where is the variety, the adventure?

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1. Players know what to expect.
2. In order to develop things, they have to know what they are developing over 8 months prior to it, so it can go through the entire process of brainstorming, concept arts, modeling, texturing, animation work, lore, localization, testing, etc. Needless to say, a formula keeps that process smooth and on track.

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Don’t be afraid to return to the game’s roots. Dawntrail was meant to be a “chill” expansion, yet still landed in another futuristic setting. We’ve seen Garlemald, Amaurot, the moon’s, and now cyber cities. How much more 'futuristic' can we get?

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The game being futuristic and sci-fi has obviously gone way further than you'd expect from a fantasy game, but in fairness to SE, Final Fantasy has always been different, and has often incorporated technology into that fantasy - such as Shinra Inc in FF7, traveling to the moon, time travel in FF8 was it?, FF15 has the protagonist driving a car. And in a lot of cases, they manage to make it feel fantastical and magical despite that. It's just gone really far in that direction lately such that you could almost say it's trying to compete with STO and SWTOR on that front.

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What about a return to rustic, medieval fantasy? Not as instanced zones or one-off dungeons, but a proper city-state with the feel of Alexandria. Or literally anything else but 'advanced technology'?

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I'd prefer that. And it's why I prefer Urqopacha > Kozama'uka > Yak T'el > Shaaloani, where they go back to basics and have hunters fighting turali vidraal or dealing with dangerous beasts in Shaaloani. Everything after that, I can appreciate it, but it's not my thing. Cyberpunk has always put me off.

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Grand Companies remain untouched for years, with three placeholder ranks still locked away. Why?

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I've tried to understand why and after thinking about it enough, the answer is pretty obvious. Their team structure is such that they are 100% working on the "next patch" because that is where the money is and what will make people resubscribe.

But after 12 years of that, the neglect has become obvious and exhausting, with about 5 QoL per major patch and a Graphics Update being about all the improvements to past systems.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I've tried to understand why and after thinking about it enough, the answer is pretty obvious. Their team structure is such that they are 100% working on the "next patch" because that is where the money is and what will make people resubscribe.

But after 12 years of that, the neglect has become obvious and exhausting, with about 5 QoL per major patch and a Graphics Update being about all the improvements to past systems.

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I can't, in good faith, recommend this game to friends and new players basically because of that neglect.

Producers don't care about the quality of the product, they care about line going up. DT has made line go down, that's why the investors got mad at Kiryu and asked why he was cooking their only golden goose in the last investor's meeting. If you want quality, ask Mr. Yoshida. He IS the captain behind the USS XIV after all!

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Originally Posted by spuffyre

Hi,

It’s unlikely this will ever be seen by Staff or Yoshi-P himself,

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When you would bubble in the correct answer on a multiple choice test, but you choose to do the wrong thing anyway in real life, that's basically the most puerile thing imaginable.

I hope for the games health, that when the new story drops it has no prerequisite of the previous story. If they don't do that, then they are just killing off new players, as its ridiculously long now to get to the end (a catch up video would suffice each expansion and enter them at that point).

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I hope for the games health, that when the new story drops it has no prerequisite of the previous story. If they don't do that, then they are just killing off new players, as its ridiculously long now to get to the end (a catch up video would suffice each expansion and enter them at that point).

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They've been asked about that and said they won't be doing it. They thought about it, but they get a lot of people coming to them telling them how much they enjoyed the story and were glad they got to experience it, and that wouldn't happen if they skipped.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They've been asked about that and said they won't be doing it. They thought about it, but they get a lot of people coming to them telling them how much they enjoyed the story and were glad they got to experience it, and that wouldn't happen if they skipped.

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Wouldn't really be a skip (Two separate stories unrelated) it would be a choice i.e Do you want to start from A realm reborn yes or no this can't be undone..

Yes Starts from A realm reborn
No Starts from 8.0

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Originally Posted by spuffyre

[...]
Customization

Viera and Hrothgar hats arrived, thank you. [...]

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As a Viera:
No, no "thank you" for the lazy devs.
It took over HALF A DECADE to get a few hats. Not all by the way, including cash shop hats that still don't work.

That this took years only shows the devs didn't care and did some very easy things that are long overdue to make the unhappy people a tiny bit less unhappy.
Putting hats on Viera and Hroth took modders weeks I would have accepted if it took them a few months, but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.
This was not planned but "emergency implementation" I bet.
Cause if they had planned that earlier then they would not have created hats that won't work for Viera and Hroth all throughout Endwalker and Dawntrail.

Not to mention the hat-solution and chat bubbles are worse than what people did in their own free time for free.
No new models for hats, just lettign stuff clip and many still look weird when put on Viera and Hroth.
Chat bubbles... baerly usable for their intended purpose at all.

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Originally Posted by ViinaS

As a Viera:
No, no "thank you" for the lazy devs.
It took over HALF A DECADE to get a few hats. Not all by the way, including cash shop hats that still don't work.

That this took years only shows the devs didn't care and did some very easy things that are long overdue to make the unhappy people a tiny bit less unhappy.
Putting hats on Viera and Hroth took modders weeks I would have accepted if it took them a few months, but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.
This was not planned but "emergency implementation" I bet.
Cause if they had planned that earlier then they would not have created hats that won't work for Viera and Hroth all throughout Endwalker and Dawntrail.

Not to mention the hat-solution and chat bubbles are worse than what people did in their own free time for free.
No new models for hats, just lettign stuff clip and many still look weird when put on Viera and Hroth.
Chat bubbles... baerly usable for their intended purpose at all.

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Chat bubbles are something that they very obviously only considered kana and kanji for. The maximum length being what it is makes perfect sense for them, but is comically short for any Romance language.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I hope for the games health, that when the new story drops it has no prerequisite of the previous story. If they don't do that, then they are just killing off new players, as its ridiculously long now to get to the end (a catch up video would suffice each expansion and enter them at that point).

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At best, I'd expect a sale of those skips on Mogstation.

But yeah, they really need to set a new start point (post-Endwalker), whether that be 7.0 or 8.0; for new players that start clean, without the need for Mogstation boost. If people want to experience ARR~Endwalker, let them get that via new game +

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Producers don't care about the quality of the product, they care about line going up. DT has made line go down, that's why the investors got mad at Kiryu and asked why he was cooking their only golden goose in the last investor's meeting. If you want quality, ask Mr. Yoshida. He IS the captain behind the USS XIV after all!

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That's probably closest to the truth

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Wouldn't really be a skip (Two separate stories unrelated) it would be a choice i.e Do you want to start from A realm reborn yes or no this can't be undone..

Yes Starts from A realm reborn
No Starts from 8.0

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As long as it's done on a per character basis. So if someone wants to play ARR-7.0 on a second character after they first pick the 8.0 locked character, they can.

Or make NG+ available starting from ARR for the players who blow through the 8.0 story and then decide they want to go to the older stuff after all.

Edit: Thing is you CAN do this right now if you pay them extra for a story skip and job level skip..... so perhaps bake that into a Deluxe 8.0 Edition that costs $20 more than the base expansion, but includes your choice of one level 100 job and throws you back into an updated edition of Hall of the Novice. Then you start the 8.0 story from scratch.

Maybe your character has amnesia coming out of 7.55 if you do this.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

... watching every FRU team get carried by Pictomancer felt bad to everyone. ...

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Falsehood. I didn't know anyone, and I 'used' to know a lot of people, who gave two hoots, what was happening with job compositions in high end, and certainly not ultimate. It's what was only a minority of people, with no view much beyond their statics, and their fellow high end players they had any admiration for, who gave damn. Some of whom were a loud minority with their YouTube platform.

I'd sympathise, that all jobs ought to be viable for savage, but by the time you get to ultimate there absolutely no expectation of entitlement to clear.
If your job isn't meta, play the job that is meta. If your not good enough at another job it's ultimate, it's the one time you can finally just say "get gud". Or form your own static that agrees to a non meta comp, but if you don't clear, tough, it's ultimate. If the ultimate is too easy with pict that I sympathise with. Well then they should just tune it so you can only clear with 4-6 picts. Problem solved. It's ultimate, adjust, get gud. If the savage is too easy, go clear the ultimate.

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Originally Posted by ViinaS

but they designed hats that don't work for Viera and Hroth still to this day in 7.3.

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I will honestly be surprised if they bother to even finish implementing the remaining hats before 7.55

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I feel like their "Road to 80/90" buff on Dynamis sort of WAS their attempt to create a "in-game story skip" of sorts by allowing new players to ding 60+ before they're even half-done with ARR thus making it easier to just unsync solo most of the game and clear parts of the story faster. But... even that approach comes with a lot of problems that keep it from being ideal, and the buff doesn't exist on data centers with no "preferred" worlds.

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Another way is just unlink the story and leave level and ilvl as the requirement for unlocking content. I mean they could easily say "if you want to learn more consider doing X dungeons" throughout the story. If the story is good and the exp is good, people will still watch it and the usual skippers will still skip it.

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Originally Posted by Brandr

That's probably closest to the truth

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No, it literally is the truth. There is no hyperbole behind the statement that top shareholders speaking up about DT's shortcomings is why the devs suddenly upped some production quality in 7.3's MSQ and why they're starting to change the content cycle going forward. That's capitalism, baby!

And honestly, that's why I'm hopeful for the future.

Being hopeful for the future because of capitalism is certainly not a thing I expected to read today.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Being hopeful for the future because of capitalism is certainly not a thing I expected to read today.

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Right? What a world.

I think the OP has a great letter TO the Producer.

I agree with everything said by the OP.

I personally would like more references to old-school FF games, and more crossovers. Surprise us like you did with the recent patch. It was fun.

But in terms of inviting my friends to FFXIV? I can't in good conscience. Dawntrail was really bad. The Alliance raids Echoes of Vana'diel are interesting but not enough to hold this expansion over.

- Cloud of Darkness Chaotic had too many wipe mechanics to be fun
- Occult Crescent ended too quickly
- Forked Tower wasn't thought through for casual-extreme players
- Lunar crafting was terribly boring
- The storytelling is absolutely terrible with forgettable characters

I love Final Fantasy XIV, but I feel like this is the worst expansion of all time, even worse than 1.0.

The amount of new things added seems to be lower and lower lately, with more and more being added on the shop, which is frustrating. There's not even a way to get things on the shop like there is with WoW tokens, for example, in another game, and shop items are not account bound short of non-holiday mounts. Again - very frustrating. I wish there was an example taken from WoW at least with a monthly trading post. Sure there's a lot of mount 'recolors' in that, but at least it's something.

I dunno. It's just tiresome, I guess.

I will say if the game was more alt-friendly, I'd put more effort into doing things like content. But I really don't need everything on one character and don't have the time/desire to waste gameplay repeating content I've already done on my main.

It would be nice if they took examples from other games like the Trading Post and Collections Journal, at least.

We are getting new stuff, but people only focus on the things that stay the same, not the things that are changing.
Chaotic, Quantum, phantom jobs, Beastmaster, Dawntrail has and will introduce a lot of new stuff, no matter how much people want to deny it.
Only problem I have is with the time it takes between patches.

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Originally Posted by SyferU

We are getting new stuff, but people only focus on the things that stay the same, not the things that are changing.
Chaotic, Quantum, phantom jobs, Beastmaster, Dawntrail has and will introduce a lot of new stuff, no matter how much people want to deny it.
Only problem I have is with the time it takes between patches.

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You are correct, however, most EW patch to current content (and most of the regular content we consistently see more of) has had the issue of not having enough "staying power." Because the patch cycle is a month-ish longer than before, that flaw is a much sharper problem.


The short answer is there really isn't anything in DT that's a fun and especially lengthy grind. The devs keep fumbling something with every new release in DT and they fully acknowledged it. IMO, a well done Deep Dungeon is exactly the kind of thing we need right now. Key word is well done. So here's hoping.

Sir.

This is a forum.

Not a post office.

People complaining about the sci-fi look don't remember that there were robots in the sky in the original Final Fantasy.

That being said, Dawntrail looked to be the mesoamerican culture tie-in, so I'm over here looking forward to jaguar warrior and eagle warrior armor and seeing nothing of the sort.

Lunar cosmic exploration could've been a reskin of Diadem and we'd have loved it. Instead, it's insanely boring (and I say this as someone who has leveled all crafters and still goes to Diadem for fun. It's relaxing to gather!)

I was so looking forward to playing a Ranger in the Occult Crescent, only to find that their abilities are like "run 10% faster for 5 seconds" while Canoneer gets massive boom power.

We. Need. More. Stuff. To. Buy. With. Wolf. Collars. (Not marks! Collars!)