Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[IdowhatIwant]

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

Content formula is a double edge sword. On one side we have a consistent patch schedule. On the other hand the patch cycle gets stale when it is unchanged.
I think the worst problem with it all is the sheer fact that we have had the same patch cycle, but with less content included in these patches as we get more expansions. Not sure why this is, maybe they complete the expansion and leave a very small crew to do the patch cycles while the rest of the team starts development on the next expansion? What ever the reason does not matter as something does need to change regardless.

[AziraSyuren]

StB was the best expansion for overall gameplay. Don’t @me

Agree on content, hard disagree on things like job design.

My hot take is that Stormblood was the absolute low point of this game's job design. It was stuck at the halfway point of ShB's formulaic yet intuitive and (mostly) clean design and HW's jank, funny, and hilariously imbalanced design with very few of the positives of either.

[Caurcas]

The Ascians and the Ancient plotline is meh in alot of ways, and all the bullheadness of fanboys/fangirls it spawned has made story discourse a slog.

[Kolsykol]

Gender-locked jobs are better than limited jobs.

I have mixed thoughts on this in Korean MMO's.
In a lot of cases the reason why gender-locks exist is because the character you play is an already established character in the lore, they have a name and a backstory etc.
Vindictus is an example that comes to mind.
I'd even argue Genshin Impact to some extent.

Something I also like about it in Korean MMO's is that it tends to open up for pushing masculinity and femininity more because the devs don't have to worry about people getting mad because their male character gets '' girly clothes ''.
It makes the designs a lot more unique and distinct imo.
I don't really like the hyper masculinity thing with enormous angry guys but I really like the hyper femininity opposite end.

Not saying all games need to do this ( altho it does bother me how the masculine is basically always treated as the default women need to adapt to... ).
But my personal preference is for hyper femininity to be pushed, and I can just accept hyper masculinity as the opposite end so that what I want can exist too.
I don't think it's possible without gender-locks tho because when it comes to masculinity and what men wear and how they look it's significantly more rigid and people would flip the hell out if their male characters got the same gear as the female characters.
I mean ffs there's people in FFXIV who lose their minds whenever female characters get a skirt, imagine if they actually did go with the same gear for both genders but *gasp* used the female gear as the default.
Male characters getting a skirt for a gear set would cause a huge mental breakdown from loud sections of the community.

FFXIV does have some gendered stuff too but it's the exception and it's usually not the gear itself you get from doing dungeons and raids.
I do prefer it personally tho when the whole class/ Job has all of its gear and style designed around it.

[Shibi]

Male characters getting a skirt for a gear set would cause a huge mental breakdown from loud sections of the community.

Every male healer in FFXIV says 'Hi'.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Slight spoilers i guess.

ShB was the beach episode of FFXIV and we could've done w/o going to another shard, yes we learned some about hydaelyn and zodiark but they could've simply done that in the source. Instead we used almost an entire expansion to build up ShB to barely revisit it once in a quest.

SE made the smart move to call it shadowbringers, branding us warriors of darkness. I like this because it shows that light isnt always the answer and darkness isnt always bad up till the very end of ShB! and then ... Darkness boss and you use the light to defeat it in QTE and they doubled down when the 5.3 boss was actually light based. Why did they not swap these 2 bosses ... the 5.3 one would've been as epic and iconic as the 5.0 one ... yes the story would've needed adjustments but it would've been entirely possible. The name Shadowbringers would've been a lot more impactful if we had defeated the 5.3 boss at the end of 5.0.

And while we are at it, the amount of recycling was to high in ShB, If i ever have to see another Shiva I'm going insane, there's 5 versions now.

Also Graha Tia is the most annoying char to me, i get some ppl get the "i need to defend this character" feeling, but dear god did i hope SE would off him.

[anhaato]

Gameplay having a bit of jank to it made things feel more active and engaging i.e. dps enmity management or cleric stance.

Doma was created with anti-Chinese sentiments.

When it comes to glamours, the team cares more about birthing memes than making sure there's an aesthetic for everyone.

Future expansions need to start simmering down to either just one new job or none at all, focusing on the rest of the gameplay instead.

Stormblood and Endwalker both should've been two expansions instead of one.

The writers try too hard to outdo themselves and it became painfully obvious in Endwalker.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

we have a consistent patch schedule.

Frankly, I like Structure. I like knowing and being able to Predict when X content is coming at X patch. And I like having a (mostly) consistent Patch Cycle.
Not a fan of the idea of not knowing when stuff is going to happen.
Plus this Predictable Structure tells me the Machine is Well Oiled and Running.

[Teno]

Frankly, I like Structure. I like knowing and being able to Predict when X content is coming at X patch. And I like having a (mostly) consistent Patch Cycle.
Not a fan of the idea of not knowing when stuff is going to happen.
Plus this Predictable Structure tells me the Machine is Well Oiled and Running.

All nice and good until your machine is an old beast and competitors have proven that there can be more without spoiling it all (and there's not one single competitor). I loved Bozja and solo deep dungeons are fun, but these are outdated/old, and they released this xpac with the same old formula of 2EX/savage, still with atrocious healer gameplay.

[Izar_Chillen]

So many of these "hot takes" are actually just bad takes.

It seems that a lot of you don't know what hot takes are.

For the clueless

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...glish/hot-take