Extremely Frustrated, come on SE

[Belhi]

Its a bit late for me to address the entire opening post but Ill make two comments.

Firstly with the story, it was probably about the same length as ARR 2.0 but with a lot less running back and forth. It sounds like you rushed with it. I took my time and smelled the flowers. I usually do with Expacs. After all, a lot of development time is spent on the actual levelling experience and new endgame is going to be a few months away at least. While I agree on a few of your points about the story (Ul'dah was a wash) I do notice you've missed quite a few details which would have answered other issues you had such as the effects of the Blessing of Light and stuff on the echo. They actually injected a lot more depth to Y'shtola's story as well.

Secondly, while several of your other issues are notable, its not due to laziness on the devs part. One of the reasons that 3.1 is coming so late compared to other patches is cause the devs got their first vacation since the game launched two years ago. They have been working non stop since then. They aren't lazy. Several of the issues you raised are due to engine and server constraints that aren't easily or quickly solved. Perhaps there is an issue with the number of devs and resources devoted to FF14, but to say that the devs that do work on it are lazy is pretty unfair.

[Pomelo]

The Uldah plot line to me was the worst thing about HW, which is ironic, because it was one of the best things about ARR.
Easily destroyed.

[Mycow8me]

Replace storyline with Hildebrand. Problem solved. Seriously, who was the guy that scripted all that. Take all of my money, ALL OF IT. Just make sure you really continue it.

[Nalien]

Not disappointed by stats? That's probably my biggest frustration with the game...

I mean just look at the main six stats, they might as well not exist... Strength and Dexterity just boost your Physical Attack Power, based on Job (and it's a 1:1 conversion, if you have say 100 Dexterity on Bard, your Physical Attack Power is 100...), likewise for Intelligence and Mind, for Attack Magic Potency and Healing Magic Potency respectively. Vitality and Piety are a bit better (that's to say 1 Vitality =/= 1 HP), but you could still effectively remove all Vitality/Piety from gear, and just have +HP or +MP instead...

What's worse, this is something Heavensward dumbed down. Strength used to boost Block and Parry strength, Dexterity Block and Parry rate. That wasn't amazing, and it only really impacted Tanks in any meaningful way, but it is something Heavensward removed. That said, the changes to Skill Speed, Spell Speed, and Critical Hit Rate? I like those, those stats got more complex with Heavensward, not less. The Speed stats now also increase DoT potency, and Critical Hit Rate also boosts Critical Hit damage. If anything, that is what they should be doing with all the stats. Why not have Vitality boost Physical Defense as well, and Piety Magical Defense, for example. Another example I like is Accuracy, because right now it is a terrible stat, while this isn't truly the case, for players Accuracy is effectively binary; Do you have capped Accuracy for the encounter? If you do, congratulations, you need no more Accuracy. If you don't, you suck and get to enjoy the frustration of missing. Much like Critical Hit Rate gained the effect of increasing Critical Damage, I think Accuracy could benefit from also boosting Critical Hit Rate (just the rate, not the actual stat that also boosts damage now). After all, the more Accuracy you have, the more accurate you are, the more likely you are to hit a targets weak spot for massive damage.

Then, of course, is the actual issue of how these stats are used. Itemization in this game is, I'm afraid, rubbish. While it isn't strictly true that all Jobs gear up in the same way, some make better use of Critical Hit Rate than Spell Speed, for example, it effectively is the case... Stats in this game do nothing to really cement a Jobs identity... In fact, Jobs don't really have an identity, that as well has been distilled down to its most basic function; DPS are DPS, Healers are Healers. There is some flavour between Jobs of the same role of course, but I really wouldn't praise what's there... Back to itemization and stats though, what kind of combat do you think of when you think of a Ninja? Stealth obviously (and don't get me started on how Hide is so damned rubbish now...), but when they attack, you think of fast, precise actions, right? We have stats that could enhance that sense if they were focused upon; Skill Speed, Accuracy, and Critical Hit Rate. If anything though, Ninja should avoid Skill Speed, because its terrible TP recovery is matched only by Tanks... Now lets think of Monks, how do they fight? Again, fast hitting, but they're more blunt, they're using their fists after all. Greased Lightning adds a lot to that, but we're talking about stats and itemization here; Fast and Blunt? Skill Speed and Determination. Critical Hit Rate really shouldn't come into the equation for Monks, but it does because the stats in this game, and the stats on obtainable gear does nothing to solidify this kind of identity.

Now lets look back at the main six stats and Jobs... Every piece of gear in this game has Vitality on it... That, I think, is stupid. I think the system 1.23 had was far better, even if it didn't quite make sense at times... Bard benefits from Dexterity for it's attacks, that makes perfect sense, what else does Bard do though? Well, it should cast Songs (don't get me started on how unspoony Bard is...), and Songs use MP. Isn't Piety the obvious choice for secondary stat there? What about Warrior, they're the DPS Tank; Strength and Vitality makes perfect sense. Paladin? Another case similar to Bard, but I think a Job that historically had White Magic should benefit from Mind to a fair degree, as well as Vitality. Dark Knight? They burn through a lot of MP, another case of Piety (and if Piety also boosted Magic Defense? Well, that's just Dark Knights thing, isn't it) and Vitality. Monk? Historically a DPS, but historically a DPS with insane amounts of HP, this is a case of Strength and Vitality (its current set up) actually making sense to me. Dragoon? In 1.23 they had Strength and Piety, that didn't make a lot of sense to me, have Piety boost Magic Defense though? I don't know about you, but it certainly makes sense to me to have a Job that fights fire breathing dragons to have some kind of added resistance to fire. Ninja gets a bit more obscure, but I'll just ask one thing; What is Raiton? Magic Damage, hello Intelligence. The other Jobs I wont bother with, because; A) You get the point, and B) They're harder to actually work this for, though it should still be possible. You know what something like this would do? It would essentially make that little "Bonus Attributes" system worth a damn.

And this, all of this, doesn't even touch on my most favorite of subjects when it comes to gear and stats; Stats which directly enhance your abilities and traits.

Final Fantasy IX damned well got that subject right, and Final Fantasy IX wasn't even a bleedin' MMO (further proof to it being the best damned Final Fantasy game ever). Balance is obviously an issue with such stats, but if you tie them only temporarily to gear, you effectively remove that issue. You create a new issue of having to go out to obtain sets you "don't need" (for example, I have i200 on my Bard, i190 gear is not an upgrade but may hold a stat I wish to unlock, thus I need to obtain it anyway), but "MMO" and "Grind" go hand-in-hand IMO, and I'd rather farm new gear which is redundant for me (like the upcoming new dungeon/Void Ark gear) for an actual bonus, than solely for a Glamour. Ultimately it may not even be much of an issue to balance out, depending how you distribute the stats. Everyone gets tomestone gear, for example, so the logical choice is to put the more desirable stats on tomestone gear. It may not even be much of an issue to balance out depending on which stats you boost with such stats. Here's an example; Lets say I could get Enhances "Shukuchi" effect on Ninja, which boosts the range of the skill somewhat, that is a very minimal boost, some might not even consider it one at all (though anyone who PvPs will instantly disagree). Similarly, Enhances "Mug" effect could literally just up that 1% chance of Mug actually doing anything to 2%, or swap it could add some minor TP recovery, again not a massive boost to Ninja, but it's something you can argue is useful.

Most Jobs have skills like this, that are not a main stay of their rotation, that boosting isn't going to cause some massive balance issue. What's more, some of these skills aren't particularly useful in Light/Full Party encounters, but when you start soloing, or playing with a small group of friends, which is something some content allows for, but more importantly more content is allowing for (Undersized Party option, Sky Exploration), that's when these skills start to shine. Take Fists of Earth on Monk, at best you'd currently use that for some mitigation on a party wide tank buster, right? Here are some effects you could add to it; Counter, something Monk traditionally had, not the same as skills like Vengeance though, since Fists of Earth is a stance, more like "With Fists of Earth up, you have a % chance to Counter with an auto-attack when taking damage". A HP boost, or extra % to its mitigation, same thing it currently does, just a bit stronger, that would be useful in Party based encounters, but I can't imagine it would tip the scales from wipe to victory at all... Enmity boost. "What?", you all say, well think about it... If you're not playing with a proper Party, perhaps you're missing a Tank and Monk is filling the shoes. Would turning Fists of Earth into a Tanking stance suddenly make Monk a Tank? No, not by a long shot, but if two friends want to go do some Sky Exploration with just a Monk and White Mage, that is potentially useful.

So yeah... Enhancement based stats don't necessarily create some massive headache to balance, it depends what skills you enhance and how you enhance them. Some might argue that having 5 extra yalms of Shukuchi, or Quick Reload style TP recovery on Mug are essentially worthless inclusions (though I doubt any Ninja would argue that...). I'd argue that it at least adds some depth to gear and some small amount of character customization, I'd argue that it is essentially a baby step towards "serious" enhancement stats. The alternative, to any of what I've just said really, is that we continue to just raise the item level, get more HP through Vitality, get more MP through Piety, more Attack/Healing Power through our main stats, and a selection of Accuracy/Critical Hit Rate/etc., and our i300 gear is just a bigger number version of out i30 gear. Is that what people want to invest there time in these days? Do we want to talk up to 4.0 and go after gear solely for the looks, because the stats are ultimately the same? I'd rather go after new enhancements, I'd rather look at two sets of gear and go "This give me more Piety for Dark Arts and Magic Defense, but this gear gives me more HP and DPS" (which is perhaps a bad example, because Tanks are basically the only role which kinda get to do this already), instead of the loot systems in this game effectively being a meal ticket. That is effectively what gear is in this game, "Here's your next set of gear, maybe it'll have some lasting value if it looks nice", while I wouldn't like to see certain pieces retain their value indefinitely (which is what Final Fantasy XI did, although even then, much of the gear (especially the AF) in that game ended up being something you could upgrade in a similar way to our Relics, though Final Fantasy XIVs development team seems deathly afraid of keeping old content relevant in such a way, despite forcing new players to slog through the entirety of the story to get to Heavensward... Someone remind me why something like Crystal Tower can't be a requirement for Void Ark again? That's basically what they did with Heavensward... For gear they could essentially do what they did for dyable AF, you upgrade a piece with new content, rather than new tomestones just giving you a piece...), well that was a long side point... Err yeah, I would like to see gear retain its value through some means... Having a "This gear has an awesome stat, Spiritbond it to unlock permanently unlock it Final Fantasy IX style!" system, or a "Rather than new tomestone gear, this set of tomestones will let you upgrade an older set to the current item level!" system would be ideal IMO, the benefits to older content seem obvious. Nobody runs Crystal Tower anymore? Well, if i220 was "Bring me Scylla's Robe Of Healing and a Royal Vest, and I'll make you a new piece for some tomestones", instead of "Bring me some tomestones", we wouldn't quite have that problem... Though I'm sure many would loath the idea of putting any serious amount of effort into gearing up; One Extreme Roulette a day is totally deserving of some of the best gear...

That went on longer than I expected... Have something irrelephant;

I'm scared to even talk about skill bloat now... Though with that I'm less annoyed at the bloat itself, and more annoyed at the utter lack of diversity it provides... Everyone still has a fairly static rotation, there are a few exceptions, based mostly on RNG (Dragoon and Astrologian spring to mind), but for the most part everyone is the same doing the same thing... What's more Heavensward destroyed some of the odd little things I kinda liked... Haymaker is, by no means, worth putting on my crossbar, but the way I could use Perfect Dodge to force it? I loved that concept, even if the utility wasn't there, it was something they could have worked on... I loved dodging Landslides or Divebombs, too, and calling it Perfect Doge (so funny, much clever, wow)... Now I have Shade Shift though, and I hate everything...

Another thing I dislike, but hopefully wont rant about, is sub-class skills... Remove these please... It is completely arbitrary to lock a Job down to two sub-classes for skill selection... You know what I'd rather see? Standardized side-Job quests, that have a secondary Class level requirement (which can also be standardized, so no more "You need Pugilist at 42 but only Marauder at 26" BS), to unlock required sub-class skills, like Provoke. I guess that kind of goes against the sense of customization I just ranted about, since we'd get the skills we need, rather than having an option, but the sub-class skills simply don't work (seriously, who at SE thought any White Mage would set Physick?), but I honestly mostly just want to turn Second Wind into the Suiyaku skill NPC Ninjas have access too... Ultimately though, giving Jobs skills they need, rather than what two arbitrary Classes give them access to, should be simpler to balance without running into the problem of something like giving access to Lancer skills for Invigorate, and Archer for something useful like Quelling Strikes, and running into the problem where they have Raging Strikes and Blood for Blood. Tanks could effectively get Invigorate this way, for example, without being locked down to a selection of Gladiator skills, when all they really want is Provoke.

[LunaSnowfield]

Story on this game is literally garbage (for your character) , just the typical 'Oh you're the invincible that kills everyone and everything.

Honestly my character haven't suffer a single hit on cutscenes since ARR.

[Sekundessounet]

Don't know what you're doing wrong with your DRG's hotbar. I just need 2 bar for the main skills and 5 slots more for my cross-class skill, still got plenty of space.

[Dante_V]

New drg rotation is perfect imo. I actually like the rng over the brain dead rotation from ARR (that people still couldn't do and complained about until it was nerfed)

[odie]

I actually agree with most of this....I'm also bothered that its been months and the new duties and zones are still not available in the party finder. How has that not already happened? And yes...the conclusion of ARR was amazing...and i was loving it...and then the whole exile thing...and then suddenly it wasn't a thing...nobody was looking for me, its like the game went to pretending that all of the crazy stuff that happened as ARR wrapped up never happened. It was weird.

The Heavensward expansion as a whole seemed rushed...they hyped it up by saying it was going to be bigger than 2.0 was. But honestly....a lot of the quests were "hey go here and stand in this purple circle, and we'll spawn about the exact same sets of mobs over and over for each of the quests...." At that point I was just ready for the questing to be over with. Parts of the story had my interest but otherwise seemed like it was poorly put together. Don't get me wrong, overall I have loved the game. But this felt more like a bunch of content patches rolled into one but mostly the same as the others and not so much like an expansion. I don't know....I expected more from Heavensward but I feel mostly disappointed with it. I'm hoping that after coming back from their break the devs can whip up some pretty epic content, and I'm really looking forward to the Island Exploration as it is. We'll see.

Also...I'm pleased with the new White Mage skills...they made me pretty happy.

[Mature]

I'm pretty happy with everything APART from the only 2 dungeons.

[RocheKat]

I'm pretty happy with everything APART from the only 2 dungeons.

That and alwaysreap is super annoying. Trash that spams aoes, the instance itself has aoes and all three bosses have immunity mechanics you have no choice but to deal with.

Ravana Ex and Bismark Ex were both very easy fights. The most trouble I had with them was finding players on my server who didn't fail the dps check on Bismark or knew how to handle the debuffs and marks for Ravana. Months later and I STILL cannot queue up for Bismark/Ravana Ex via Duty Finder. Most groups on my server fail miserably and I would have loved the chance to at least attempt these runs cross-server. Again, months have gone by and SE fails to turn on the cross-server flag for these two fights.
And to anyone reading this who's only response is 'change servers', I'm not throwing away my hard-earned gil due to low gil caps during server transfers, or leaving my friends behind just because SE can't add fights to DF in a timely fashion. That would make me quit this game even faster.

This has got to be one of the funniest things I have ever read. "super easy fights that no one can do"... seems SE was smart in not putting it in DF. If premade groups can't handle it then DF is a waste of time. And then later on you go on and on about how DF sucks. I don't even... /giggle

Don't get mad when people disagree with your opinions, such as #12 in particular, because let's be honest, I stopped taking you seriously right there.

I get the feeling he is one of those guys that creates PF groups for stuff 20+ ilvls over what the content was designed for and then fails anyway. It always seems to be the people running around screaming about how awesome they are and how much everyone else sucks that ends up screwing things up.

"Why is this run so slow?" says the healer who spends half the run jumping in circles.
"Why are you not pulling bigger groups?" says the dps who refuses to aoe.
"Why are you letting me die?" says the tank that pulls half the zone and doesn't use cooldowns.