Please Make this the Best MMO

[Rohen]

Please bare with me as I never post anything anywhere online.

I started playing MMOs back when EverQuest was still a thing. I've also invested heavily in WoW before it went Pandaish. I've tried almost every single other MMO out there but they have zero personality. I then started playing FFXIV ARR during beta and have kept coming back every expansion.

These games when I first started to play them were magic, an unexplored virtual world, the immersion with the exploration and the consequences of going down a dungeon unprepared with whatever party you wanted and with ZERO loading (one seamless experience), the choices that you were free to make, it all had meaning.

FFXIV ARR on the other hand, gives you almost no choice in anything, and thus has never had that magic. Perhaps it doesn't want to and perhaps it will never go down that path of the classical MMO which I and a couple of other unique souls crave, but I guess that's something that unfortunately we'll have to live with.

So at least let's just get some things right with the current system. The immersion breaking ability to switch out classes in an instant, even though this is part of the FF classical way of having and managing your class, is incredibly immersion breaking, or the quick teleportation that just always has me asking myself, "just sneak in and place a teleportation thingy and teleport into the enemies' base and presto", or the incredibly ridiculous way the characters are always skating around with their little animation lock, or the way in which all classes are 100% exactly the same and offer no variation, no uniqueness, minus the cosmetics, or the fact that not a single ability in the game makes you feel powerful nor special.

I keep coming back to FFXIV ARR, and I really want this game to shine, because quite frankly, not only am I an MMO fan, but a FF fan as well.

So with that out of the way here is a list of things I would really hope they get worked on sometime in the future.

[Rohen]

Please fix the unresponsive movement

• Now I play FFXIV ARR on both a powerful PC with an incredibly good internet connection and the PS5 Pro, and previously on the PS4 normal and Pro. The game has always had a sort of "lag" when characters are running around on screen.

• This is even more obvious during PvP, all characters look so weird when they're running around because it's almost as if the servers are trying to keep up with the user inputs, perhaps because of several layers of processing to know where the player actually is. Also, when dodging those red circle on the ground you just never know if you dodged it in time because it just doesn't feel responsive. WoW feels incredibly responsive and quick. If you are out of the red in WoW, you are 100% sure you are out of it, but in FFIXV, if you are out of red you could still get hit because to the server you actually was not.

Please fix the skating

• When you are performing an action with a cast time and have to move, the body is in an animation lock during movement. It looks really bad, very immersion breaking, and I cannot believe they've never improved on this.

• I know this can be fixed because the ninja "almost" got it right. When casting mudra when standing still, there is one animation. But when casting mudra during movement, there is no animation happening and it looks more natural... that is until you cast the actual mudra and are once again doing the standing still animation while you are still moving.

Please give characters abilities that are actually fun make a difference during combat

• The vast majority of classes in the game don't have fun abilities to use, OR the fun abilities they do have are very limited in use either because it's locked behind a long cool down or a limited number of uses. Why?

• Example, the ninja's teleportation, why just two? It's very fun to teleport around in smoke, why are you limiting that? The black mage's "sliding" ability, only works with the ley line active! While on the Black Mage, the ley lanes just give the black mage a faster cast time, and that is not at all fun.

• Another example, the black mage just casts fire, thunder, ice, and have ONE crowd control ability, sleep, that is never used... for anything! It could potentially be really fun for crowd controlling pulls, giving the black mage a more unique roll but nope. The deep dungeon has an item that turns everything into a frog... why doesn't the black mage have this?

• The red mage's uniqueness, the melee attacks, are few and far in between and always the same! The dragoon's jumping ability, few and far in between. Every character can only dash/charge twice... WHY. Give us crowd control, remove unnecessary cool downs and ability restrictions, let our characters feel more powerful. Why does the warrior of light feel so weak!

[Rohen]

Please avoid punishing players for playing lower level content

• As it stands playing a lvl 20ish dungeon as max level, for example, is punishing, highly unrewarding, because the abilities are removed. There has to be a better way to handle this that doesn't involve punishing the max level player.

Please fix PvP

• Changing and decreasing ability count for PvP was really the wrong move. What is the in game explanation behind it?

• Crazy skating movement, weird animation locks, and the movement lagging, going back to the first and second point. If that's fixed I would think that PvP is drastically improved.

Please make travel in the world meaningful

• The current travel system in the game is teleportation to an "atheryte". However in most FF games travel occurred using an airship, a boat, a vehicle. It seems like it would have been a bit more authentic to the game if travel actually happened using a vehicle around the world to "landing zones" but whatever, the atheryte is the decision they made and it's too late to change it.

• It would be unrealistic to suggest it, but I have to put it out there regardless. In the future I would recommend replacing this "atheryte" system and replacing it with airships and landing zones around the world. It can still be an instant click of a button, but it would be more immersive.

Just a final thing that annoys me
Being a FF7 fan I had to buy the bike mount. It looks great! And to my amazement it flies. What in the world were the devs thinking, why can this bike fly? At the very least give it some wings or something. I mean come on... it's as if FFXIV ARR is trying very hard to break my immersion constantly.

Why else would I play an MMORPG, if not to be immersed in a role with a massive amount of online players from around the globe.

[DrWho2010]

sounds like someone doesn't know how netcode works or game balance.

fast travel will always be preferred over "slow" travel.

[Rohen]

sounds like someone doesn't know how netcode works or game balance.

fast travel will always be preferred over "slow" travel.

Hey there toxic first responder, your points are invalid, they can still balance the game nicely and the travel I'm suggesting will still be fast travel. Also the very use of the word "netcode" makes me thing you don't even know what "netcode" really is.

As I've very clearly stated, if you would have read, I am not arguing against fast travel, I'm arguing over the reason of why we can fast travel.

[Jeeqbit]

Teleporting is immersion-breaking, but it's convenient. Who wants to use a taxi system to get everywhere? You can do that when you feel like role playing and immersing yourself, but when you just want to teleport somewhere to unlock a raid that your party is waiting on you really don't want to have to use something like a chocobo porter to get everywhere.

Switching classes to an entirely different gearset without going home is immersion-breaking but again it's giving the player the freedom to role play if they want. If for your personal immersion you don't want to be able to switch classes without going home, you can always travel back to a house before switching. The game just gives you the freedom to not role play if you don't feel like it right now.

I don't agree that there is a lag when characters run around on the screen. If you race someone you may see yourself in front while they see themselves in front but that's true in a lot of games because of ping. Try turning up your system and character settings.

Even with 200 ping, if I move out of red right before the cast ends then I'm out of it. I've been dodging red at 95% of the cast regularly farming the latest raid, and it works every single time.

I don't know what abilities you think are not fun, but on a tank I find my abilities make a difference. I have used my party mitigation or Reprisal many times and resulted in everyone surviving with 1% health, especially when they have vuln stacks, and whenever that happens I know I made a difference and that they would have died otherwise. On a dark knight I sometimes apply my shield to someone low on health who is about to die to a raid-wide AoE and it saves them and sometimes that is the last healer or a red mage, so it makes a difference. In Shadowbringers dungeons you can interrupt the worst casts in trash pulls and if you do it's a lot easier for the healer so it makes a difference as well. I could go on because there are so many more examples of why I find tanking fun.

[Arbales]

Your name seems weirdly familiar hmmm...
I agree with a lot of immersion points despite teleports, but i still prefer they way it works now. Its respects my time and im glad for it.
I would love improvement on pvp content, but i do belive it is imposible with the way its "server tick" works

[Kaedan]

Now I play FFXIV ARR on both a powerful PC with an incredibly good internet connection and the PS5 Pro, and previously on the PS4 normal and Pro. The game has always had a sort of "lag" when characters are running around on screen.

Not really sure what you're referring to here. Never seen anything like this unless I was running too many things at once on my comp.

When you are performing an action with a cast time and have to move, the body is in an animation lock during movement. It looks really bad, very immersion breaking, and I cannot believe they've never improved on this.

Unfortunately, that's something we're stuck with. It's a carry-over from 1.0 and something that's far too ingrained in the coding to be "fixed".

Example, the ninja's teleportation, why just two? It's very fun to teleport around in smoke, why are you limiting that?

Because of balance. They build Savage and Ultimate raids around what abilities can be used and how often. If you could suddenly have on-demand movement anywhere, that would be game-breaking.

As it stands playing a lvl 20ish dungeon as max level, for example, is punishing, highly unrewarding, because the abilities are removed. There has to be a better way to handle this that doesn't involve punishing the max level player.

This is the one thing I agree with you on. I think they should allow us to use our full kit in level sync, just sync our damage down appropriately.

The current travel system in the game is teleportation to an "atheryte". However in most FF games travel occurred using an airship, a boat, a vehicle. It seems like it would have been a bit more authentic to the game if travel actually happened using a vehicle around the world to "landing zones" but whatever, the atheryte is the decision they made and it's too late to change it.

It's been done in countless MMOs, and the vast majority of people hate being forced to manually travel. So they definitely need the teleport travel. If you want to travel manually though, you kind of can. There's a fishing boat you can take, and you can also turn off skip cutscene so you see the airship take off and land.

[Rohen]

Teleporting is immersion-breaking, but it's convenient. Who wants to use a taxi system to get everywhere? You can do that when you feel like role playing and immersing yourself, but when you just want to teleport somewhere to unlock a raid that your party is waiting on you really don't want to have to use something like a chocobo porter to get everywhere.

Agree, but they could have added a better back story than just turning into final fantasy atoms and going into the "stream", without making the user run anywhere if they don't want to, having an airship at your command can even be faster than having to run to an atheryte that's always in the same place.

I don't agree that there is a lag when characters run around on the screen. If you race someone you may see yourself in front while they see themselves in front but that's true in a lot of games because of ping. Try turning up your system and character settings.

Even with 200 ping, if I move out of red right before the cast ends then I'm out of it. I've been dodging red at 95% of the cast regularly farming the latest raid, and it works every single time.

100% sure it's there. It's not internet lag, more like the position polling for characters is very off.

I don't know what abilities you think are not fun, but on a tank I find my abilities make a difference. I have used my party mitigation or Reprisal many times and resulted in everyone surviving with 1% health, especially when they have vuln stacks, and whenever that happens I know I made a difference and that they would have died otherwise. On a dark knight I sometimes apply my shield to someone low on health who is about to die to a raid-wide AoE and it saves them and sometimes that is the last healer or a red mage, so it makes a difference. In Shadowbringers dungeons you can interrupt the worst casts in trash pulls and if you do it's a lot easier for the healer so it makes a difference as well. I could go on because there are so many more examples of why I find tanking fun.

Well it's just that... just hitting a button to increase defense... sound so lame, as well as just hitting a button for more DPS... it's super boring IMO.

[Rohen]

Because of balance. They build Savage and Ultimate raids around what abilities can be used and how often. If you could suddenly have on-demand movement anywhere, that would be game-breaking.

Hi there, then it sounds like they need to rethink raids. An example take the WoW Mage, they can blink constantly and the only limiting factor is mana. Why can't we have that! If we have an ability that allows us to get out of trouble, then let us use it, it's why we chose the class in the first place right, because they have that one skill we really like ? It's their job to think of these game balancing solutions and not take the easy way out with just limiting actions and giving us limited character abilities.