Pet Peeves/Feedback from a new player

[Commoner]

I'm glad this game doesn't allow add-ons. If they ever did, they'd need to allow console players to have them too, which likely won't happen. I just don't want to have to install a bunch of third party stuff to do what SHOULD have been do-able in game.

Even parsers vs. non-parsers, if they'd tell us how we personally did, that would be a huge help...but I don't think they will. I'm not sure why.

Yeah, at least the stats totals would be so nice; individual, or otherwise. It feels like the dark ages not having this information. Add ons I can see being a lot of work and possible problems, but showing how well you're doing damage/heal/etc can't be that bad or difficult ...

[Niwashi]

2. At night (in game) it gets really dark; too dark; you have to turn up the contrast, brightness/contrast, etc, still, often, you can't see where you're going... literally ; just give me a "maximum darkness setting" please

This used to bother me a lot. I tried adjusting brightness/contrast, but when it was high enough to see at night, it made things look really weird in daylight. A while back I found another setting that really helped, but unfortunately, it was long enough ago that I no longer remember what I changed to fix it. I just know that it no longer bothers me the way it used to.

Sorry, I know that's not very helpful. When I'm back in game, I'll look and see if I can find what I changed.

3. "Repair All"; It's not really a repair all; you have to Repair all "equipment", then Repair All for main, then Repair All for .... and after you've done repairing all with Dark Matter, you have to do the same thing, again, at the vendor for the ones you can't repair ; annoying, not fun, ruins the game; please give a "repair everything I have anywhere" button

I usually just repair my current equipment and leave the rest until I'm on the job that uses it, so I've never been particularly bothered by this, but I have thought they seem to have a really weird concept of "all".

5. You have to run to a Aethernet shard to teleport while in cities .... while in a city, I want to just teleport to a destination shard (like the Aethernet teleport); frankly the Smith/Armor Guilds need a shard

I more often find myself wanting to use Aetherites as though they were Aethernet Shards. It just seems odd that when you're standing next to a big Aetherite, you can't do anything with it (unless it's in a city where it serves as both aetherite and aethernet shard).

6. "Enter the {location}" defaults are set to "No"; I want to go in there, but I have to select Yes, then enter (on the keyboard) ... why annoy me with 100's of extra detracting, "move the focus from 'No' to 'Yes'" on the 1 out of 100 off chance that I don't want to go in?

This is often annoying. (I play on console, which has the same "confirm" button pattern as keyboard.) Defaulting to "no" should be limited to things you cannot easily undo if you hit it by accident. If I go up to a ferryman and talk to him, and then select a destination, it's a fair bet that I want to go to that destination. Even including another confirmation of it is stretching it, but at least let that confirmation default to "yes" so it's just another click on the X button. If I somehow talk to him, select a destination, and confirm that destination, all by accident, then I'll just turn around and take the ferry back again.

My guess would be that it's probably due to some special situation within some quest, where there's a similar "go here?" confirmation that doesn't give you the ability to turn around and go right back again, so they wanted to be extra careful that we really meant it, but I wish they hadn't made that a universal rule that all "go here?" type confirmations would default to the negative.

[Niwashi]

This used to bother me a lot. I tried adjusting brightness/contrast, but when it was high enough to see at night, it made things look really weird in daylight. A while back I found another setting that really helped, but unfortunately, it was long enough ago that I no longer remember what I changed to fix it. I just know that it no longer bothers me the way it used to.

Sorry, I know that's not very helpful. When I'm back in game, I'll look and see if I can find what I changed.

Ok, I can't find anything special to account for it, unless I had first tried adjusting my TV's settings without much luck and later got it to work with the in-game display settings or vice versa. (On PC, you might have a third possibility with Windows' display brightness setting, but although PS4 has a few display settings, none of them seem relevant.)

If it matters, my in-game settings have: System Configuration -> Display Settings -> both "Gamma Correction" and "Character Lighting" at 100.

[Aurou]

2. At night (in game) it gets really dark; too dark; you have to turn up the contrast, brightness/contrast, etc, still, often, you can't see where you're going... literally ; just give me a "maximum darkness setting" please

Try adjusting this.

[Commoner]

Try adjusting this.

Yes I have. Thanks. Both this and the character lighting setting are high; both of them help a certain amount.

[Penthea]

Inventory Management; endlessly moving things from retainer, to inventory, to sale, to ... where was that ... oh, now I have to search for it ...

I understand how this can be irritating but it's something that can be easily fixed by managing your inventory better. You can designate one retainer to hold crafting materials while the other has misc items for example. Another thing you can do is just keep crafting materials you use super frequently in your character's personal inventory. I craft several times a day and I just found it easier to do this than interact with my retainers several times in short intervals.

At night (in game) it gets really dark; too dark; you have to turn up the contrast, brightness/contrast, etc, still, often, you can't see where you're going... literally ; just give me a "maximum darkness setting" please

This is quite literally the first time I have seen someone complain about this and I doubt everyone has an ips monitor. It appears that some good people here already pointed you to ways to help you with it.

"Repair All"; It's not really a repair all

This is minor but I agree that it's not what it says it is, and that it should be changed to actually repair everything. Or alternatively have both "repair equipped items" and "repair all" buttons.

Out-levelling content; I think the "Road to 60" and other exp buffs to catch new players up-to-speed are good, though, I would say this also comes at a cost; specifically, the worst for me is not being able to access content

I think players should be able to turn the Road to 60 buff off (as far as I know you can't) because it really does mess up the lvling experience of the game. The majority of content in this game is locked behind quests, which is normally fine but the Road to 60 buff turns this mostly smooth gating into a journey full of roadblocks. You can avoid the buff by not playing on certain servers but that's not really an option for people who want to play somewhere for a specific reason such as wanting to be with their friends.

You have to run to a Aethernet shard to teleport while in cities .... while in a city, I want to just teleport to a destination shard (like the Aethernet teleport); frankly the Smith/Armor Guilds need a shard

Yea I completely agree that some inner city locations you may frequently go to are too far away from an aetheryte. Ul'dah got an extra aetheryte recently, and I do think if another city does it should be Limsa. Some spots are poorly connected.

"Enter the {location}" defaults are set to "No"; I want to go in there, but I have to select Yes, then enter (on the keyboard) ... why annoy me with 100's of extra detracting, "move the focus from 'No' to 'Yes'" on the 1 out of 100 off chance that I don't want to go in?

Hmm this is not something I noticed but I'm a pc gamer so I don't have a cursor that defaults to anything. I would hazard a guess that all "yes no" prompts default to "no". If so it's probably like this to prevent players from accidentally hitting yes for something irreversible such as destroying or trading an item.

Yeah, at least the stats totals would be so nice; individual, or otherwise. It feels like the dark ages not having this information. Add ons I can see being a lot of work and possible problems, but showing how well you're doing damage/heal/etc can't be that bad or difficult ...

The parser debate is a heated one among the community. Some players want them, some don't and some are on the fence. SE don't like that parsers can be used to exclude players so they will never introduce an official one for the game. Having seen this for myself in other games, their fears are not unfounded. Parsers are very useful tools but sadly they're often deliberately or accidentally abused.

While I agree that someone under-performing should be dealt with, simply glancing at a parse result often doesn't give a clear picture as to what is going on but unfortunately this is how many people use them. For example a red mage's dps could look bad because a lazy healer forced them to off-heal or a melee dps could be having trouble landing positionals and lose dps from it because the tank has done very poor mob placement or moves the mobs too much. Yes an experienced or knowledgeable player would do more than merely glance at dps numbers, but the fact is people often don't. These people sometimes start throwing abuse at the player they perceive to be playing badly, or even vote kick or remove them without even saying a word. I have seen this happen in other games and I don't see any reason how FFXIV would be any different if there was an in-built parser. People are people. They're the same in every game. It just so happens that in some games it's easier to be unpleasant.

SE's official stance on parsing is a big fat no. But in reality they turn a blind eye if they're only used for self improvement. As long as there is no evidence of abuse or kicking as a result of a parse, they don't have a problem with it. If there is and you get reported for it...well, things may not go well for you.

There are in-game tools to test your dps. There are special dummies with a timer for raid content bosses. The idea is if you can kill them before the timer runs out, you have the dps needed to do the encounter. For more indepth information you will have to turn to third party sources.

But I wouldn't worry about any of this until you're lvl 70. Classes are not designed to be balanced while lvling.

Wow what a long post. If you have read this far OP, thank you and I hope you're enjoying the game ^^'