We covered hopes for 5.0, but what are your fears?

[Shurrikhan]

That's because SE did nothing to bring the bottom performers up to close the skill gap. Too afraid of telling players they need to engage there brains and common sense.

This.

What SE did instead was try and close the skill gap by pulling the top performers down. Making content easier and trying to put an artificial ceiling on skill. Which didn't work because players just smashed straight through the ceiling and kept on going up.. moving further and further away from the bottom performers...

They said that was their goal, yet many of their changes just made the classes less intuitive and more open to skill gap and dependence on low ping...

Also dumbed everything down so much the bottom performers can basically autoattack there way through content and still clear it effortlessly while watching Netflix or something...

That's... hyperbole, for at least the vast, vast majority of classes, unless you're referring specifically to overgeared dungeons.

[St0rmchild]

That's... hyperbole, for at least the vast, vast majority of classes, unless you're referring specifically to overgeared dungeons.

The problem is that if you just do your tomestones and augments in the previous tier, you will automatically be overgeared for the next dungeons.
Every. Single Time.

And that's without even touching the content that's supposed to be a real challenge, which will just make you that overgeared 3 months faster.

Consider this: we came out of 4.3 with i370 gear (and pretty much everyone who played at least semi-actively had gear between 365 and 370) and the item requirement for the 4.4 dungeons is i340.

That means you're already 20 to 30 item levels above minimum at patch release, and that's without even investing a bit of time to craft 380 gear, which would put you 40 item levels above the minimum. No wonder it feels like faceroll.
The last boss in the Burn was a great wake up call forcing poeople to actually think about the content they're doing.
Griping was easier than stepping up I guess.

And this cycle is persistent and won't break -- as much as I understand it's great that the game caters to people who subscribe a few months every half year, it's pretty much destroyed any "mid tier content" and split the game high/low with nothing inbetween.

[Duskane]

Tanks still need to meld Str on accessories

[Shurrikhan]

The problem is that if you just do your tomestones and augments in the previous tier, you will automatically be overgeared for the next dungeons.
Every. Single Time.

And that's without even touching the content that's supposed to be a real challenge, which will just make you that overgeared 3 months faster.

Consider this: we came out of 4.3 with i370 gear (and pretty much everyone who played at least semi-actively had gear between 365 and 370) and the item requirement for the 4.4 dungeons is i340.

That means you're already 20 to 30 item levels above minimum at patch release, and that's without even investing a bit of time to craft 380 gear, which would put you 40 item levels above the minimum. No wonder it feels like faceroll.
The last boss in the Burn was a great wake up call forcing poeople to actually think about the content they're doing.
Griping was easier than stepping up I guess.

And this cycle is persistent and won't break -- as much as I understand it's great that the game caters to people who subscribe a few months every half year, it's pretty much destroyed any "mid tier content" and split the game high/low with nothing inbetween.

Oh, I'll of course agree that's a huge problem there. It's just... clearly, tome dungeon dailies aren't all this game has to offer, and combat should not be judged by that alone.

I've been pushing for optionally increased difficulty, challenge modes, and so forth--most integrally for the standard "casual" content types--since ARR. I don't think dungeons ought to be limited to a mere stepping stone to already bemeagered catch-up mechanics.

Heck, I think after Pharos Sirius was nerfed I pushed hard for a challenge mode setting, with scaled mobs and bosses and rewards increased proportionately with the percent scaling, to a maximum of a dungeon scaled to that particular ilvl be default, only to get... Minimum Ilvl with no proportionate bonus.

(For whatever reason, I also wanted therein the option to don automatically the full dungeon set appearance. I guess it was for the 'complete dungeon experience' or whatever. I honestly don't remember...)

[NocturniaUzuki]

• A lack of originality. While I love FFXIV's gameplay the way it is, I also want them to explore new, creative approaches to content. I'd particularly enjoy some more hardcore light party content.
• New hotbar bloat. Seriously. I am running out of logical places to put new abilities. I would rather they focus on interesting modifications or the talent-tree-esque things people have been suggesting. It would also avoid the mess created in old content when old skills get changed. New traits that modify job gauges or existing skills under certain circumstances. New party-wide skills that make use of the LB bar without using ALL of it
• More DPS jobs. Please, while I have nothing against DPS, it's time for a tank and healer! (I think this is pretty much confirmed by now though?)
• Anything excessively grind-oriented.
• Can't frame this as something I don't want, so here's what I want instead: a way to encourage people interested in material reward to revisit old content. This could be by creating or modifying a rewards system. For example rework WT to give bronze seals for Unsync, silver for sync, and gold for MinIL, then lock the best rewards behind MinIL. Or rework totems to actually be useful, and again have unsync reward 0, Sync reward 1, and MinIL reward 2.
• Another want: rework the Duty Finder to remove needless restrictions. The mainstream is not going away, and they already have umpteen messages that say "WARNING: You cannot complete the duty with this party composition." Please let me launch any type of party with any jobs, in any size I like, for any content I like, with any settings I like. Having to get people to help launch things is getting really old. There is no reason to keep these restrictions at this point. The old argument about not wanting to confuse new players is null.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I fear that they'll respond to requests for higher difficulty with more instant death mechanics. There should be more to difficulty than pass or die.

[Dzian]

That's... hyperbole, for at least the vast, vast majority of classes, unless you're referring specifically to overgeared dungeons.

It may have been a slight exageration. But it was aimed at most content in general. Where it can cleared with ease playing your job at like 1/4 of it's potential.

It's not just dungeons. It's raids trials. Msq instances. All dumbed down so much you would actually have to try harder to fail than succeed.

It's not a huge exaggeration to say even a low end raid party of 8 can do more combined dps. Than 24 people tend to do in an average alliance raid boss fight.
When 24 people can't beat 8. It kinda highlights how badly people can play there jobs and still clear content.

If they want to close the skill gap. That's what they need to change.

[Awful]

Oh, I'll of course agree that's a huge problem there. It's just... clearly, tome dungeon dailies aren't all this game has to offer, and combat should not be judged by that alone.

I've been pushing for optionally increased difficulty, challenge modes, and so forth--most integrally for the standard "casual" content types--since ARR. I don't think dungeons ought to be limited to a mere stepping stone to already bemeagered catch-up mechanics.

Heck, I think after Pharos Sirius was nerfed I pushed hard for a challenge mode setting, with scaled mobs and bosses and rewards increased proportionately with the percent scaling, to a maximum of a dungeon scaled to that particular ilvl be default, only to get... Minimum Ilvl with no proportionate bonus.

(For whatever reason, I also wanted therein the option to don automatically the full dungeon set appearance. I guess it was for the 'complete dungeon experience' or whatever. I honestly don't remember...)

Or SE could buckle down and give us Mythic+ dungeons like WoW has just use different modifiers and maybe let us use Pomanders for the dungeons for like CC or a Re-Raise for emergencies etc that way we have something that's for people who want to do harder dungeons while getting rewarded. The only thing I'd want gone is Titanforging that aspect from WoW can stay there and die just give us gear that we can get that's on par with raid gear and gives us alternatives that way when you run higher lvl dungeons there's a purpose behind it, because as it stands the cycle we have is terrible.

It's like someone said above the min ilvl is 340 which is absurd considering you already have access to 360+ gear before even stepping into the dungeon which gives you ilvl 355 gear dungeon loot is so meaningless and is a catch up until you do your roulettes and get 300 tomes and replace and forget or you'll just naturally have better gear. But yeah I'm all for Mythic+ I feel it'd benefit XIV and give some love to endgame as well as dungeons.

I miss the old dungeons like Pharos and Wanderers Palace when the Demon Wall had bees and took longer AND gave gear we could actually use while you farmed Dark Light.

[PondHollow]

Dancer as a healer.

Most of the healer gear is already biased in favor of very feminine designs. Dancer as a healer, with its expected pandering to certain varieties of pervert, will make it worse.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Terrible reworks of jobs.

Such as cast times for BRD/MCH.

Because it's not they haven't done that once already and not like it wasn't terrible.




But seriously, them just deciding that any of the jobs need to be remade and have it's playstyle completely changed for no reason and generally trying to fix what isn't broken.