Small rant on combat end game content...

[Gemina]

I still have to complete 5.4 MSQ, haven't even unlocked Emerald, still have not found a group capable of clearing Seat of Sacrifice EX, and the new role quest released in 5.4 is also collecting dust on my end. And I don't even touch savage, which I would imagine prog groups would consume a lot of game time if I did do them. I do log in most days, and I'm just working on other things that have my full attention currently.

If you can't find things to do in the game outside combat, your experience will get stale very quickly. If you do want more combat and you are not doing savage/ultimate, then the answer is right in front of you.

[ZedxKayn]

There is a dire lack of harder repeatable content. There is only really Ex, Savage and Ultimate, first doesn't help with gear prog and isn't THAT hard, then gets repetitive really fast, one is on a weekly lockout and is done for the week within 1hr to 1hr30 with a static, and the last one is arguably much more difficult to access.

[Thoosa]

Also the gear you do get isn’t worth anything outside of a relevant Ultimate or if you just want to to parse runs all day

You don’t actually need the savage gear for anything else. So if you’re a person who just likes battle content and progressing, there isn’t much content in this game.

Thank goodness for glamour.

[Vyrerus]

A way I keep myself entertained is going back and trying to solo old Savages and Extremes. It can be quite fun. I especially enjoy soloing Warring Triad Extremes, because of the little side story blivit about them being reality augmentation forms for training Allagan Elite soldiers, who are then going to be used for cloning a whole army of elites.

[Vickii]

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

Oh this! May want to wait til 5.45 but definetly check it out if you haven’t. This is casual battle content that will keep you busy for a bit. I really enjoyed.

[ReynTime]

From my PoV the problem is if you're not willing to deal with potential social drama and weeks of practice, there isn't that much PvE content for people who like PvE more than the theme park stuff in the game. There are deep dungeons, which ShB lacks, Bozja, which has a roadblock in form of Castrum, and extreme/unreal trials which are more like moderate difficulty compared to savage/ultimate.
Personally I used to enjoy dungeons before Heavensward. They're definitely much easier than extreme trials, but I liked when not every run was the same because sometimes I'd queue with groups who wanted every treasure or explore to fill their maps, or new players had trouble with specific dungeon gimmicks, even if that struggle was brief. Now every dungeon is essentially single hallway with 2 pulls between bosses. Gorgeous hallways but single hallways nonetheless. IMO they should have made a few harder dungeons with rewards isolated from the tomestone race that wouldn't be part of roulettes, so that they could be designed less faceroll driven.
Alliance Raids can't accomplish this because they're designed for 24 players, and if you get too creative with them, the experience gets simply frustrating (just look at how many people avoid Castrum Lacus Litore). Pre SB raids were bite-sized versions of this sometimes, but since they're also roulette content people started complaining when a raid wasn't just a boss fight.

Those are things that have been seriously bothering me about XIV since I finished leveling all jobs in my main. Coming from playing jRPGs and other FF games, I don't come with the mindset that "glamour is the endgame" and minigames were more than a side diversion. I like PvE and being rewarded for doing it. It's the main thing I look forward to in jRPGs. If this really is a FF first MMORPG second I wish ShB hadn't been such a departure from what I was used to. I just wanted some mid-tier difficulty content to cycle through, since ilvl sync just makes savage rewards pointless to me.

I'm not a fan of the job "balance" either but that ship has already sailed. You have no idea how much I miss needing to manage enmity and having more utility actions that weren't designed to be just another step in every boss dance.

[Mansion]

I think there's potential in a mid-difficulty between Normal and Extreme / Savage 1-2 (and 3, these days). If we had some form of content harder than normal mode, then savage wouldn't have to compromise difficulty on the first floors, and Extreme could do with some step up.

Because while the last floors of savage and Ultimate are the high end content, we have them every 8 months or more and that isn't enough to keep you busy for so long if that's the content you like in FFXIV. Especially when gearing up makes these fights easier and easier (Ultimate being the exception).

[Liam_Harper]

I do agree. The issue is that outside of extreme cases of bad play, everything that isn't EX, Savage or Ultimate is designed so you beat it first try. So you're done every dungeon in half an hour, you clear the 8 man and 24 man normal on day one and ...well, that's it. Grats. Hop on the hunt train for tomes or level an alt, there's nothing left. Dungeons in particular are a huge waste of dev resources and it's sad that instead of realizing why this is, they cut them instead of making some of them challenging and rewarding

EX and Savage are fine, but EX isn't enough and Unreal has been very niche.

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

Agreed. I wonder how they could have promoted BLU better and bumped interest. The biggest challenge to getting into BLU is finding other players to group with.

[Anhra]

I miss TERA combat styles and their glamours, quitted around KDHM because how unbalanced it became and the salty, which is one thing the XIV did a lot better.
Still, I agree on wishing our PVP is more like TERA.

It would be great if we could get a few instanced areas which are all about PvP, it is one of my biggest hopes for the incoming expansion, altrough i know that there won't be any significant PvP changes anyway, since Squeenix clearly hates the idea and only inplimented it, just so that they can say that they have it.

[Raikai]

Blue mage exists if you dare. It’s way more fun than the forums think.

My only issue with that aside of the Morbol mount (which is quite an undertaking that depends on other people too), there's a lack of meaningful rewards or incentive to run everything else. One might say to just do for the "fun" of it, but then even at that, you'll be facing the barren situation of players not running anything consistently atm or the Masked Carnivale extreme scripted nature not being that fun after the second time doing the fights.

Don't get me wrong, I really love Blue Mage for what it is designed, but my only peeve is that they didn't make their "endgame" more engaging, and I really hope it to be revised either in 5.5 or 6.0.