Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Videra]

*ehem*

Housing was integrated as a privilege, not a right, and maybe it should've stayed like that.


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See, that's a hot take, cuz I'd get witchhunted for saying it, not something mildly debatable a lot of people already agree with :P

They could, and should, have just implemented instanced housing like any other smart MMO dev team ever. But they went with the neighborhood approach.

[ameliaw]

They could, and should, have just implemented instanced housing like any other smart MMO dev team ever. But they went with the neighborhood approach.

I love neighborhoods and I'm glad we have them. If housing was instanced from the beginning I doubt I'd be as interested as I am.
There's no reason why we can't have instanced housing alongside it though, especially now that we have a ISLAND for ourselves

[BRVV]

Housing was integrated as a privilege, not a right, and maybe it should've stayed like that.

If that is also the standing of SE than i just don't understand why they market housing as a feature. They don't market savage glamour, PotD ranks or anything else gated by skill or chance like that

[Panic_at_the_Discord]

Warrior and Dark Knight cooldowns have their flavors reversed. Warriors should be the ones who retaliate with a huge attack when they take enough damage, and Dark Knights should been the ones with lifesteal and sustain.

[Eelanos]

Condensing rotations and removing button bloat isn't inherently bad.
An example of this is RDM, where many of the buttons are flips and not standalone buttons. As long as the job feels like you're playing DDR with your fingers, it doesn't matter if a rotation of 60 buttons is condensed into 10.
And no, healers are not a good argument against this because it's not a rotation condensed into a single button, it's a single button with nothing to rotate whatsoever. Just like there's a maximum number of buttons that are enjoyable to play with, there's also a minimum, and if in 10 years the 1-2-3 rotations are condensed into a single button, nothing important will be lost provided they add extra buttons to constantly keep your attention and keep your fingers busy.

[SaberMaxwell]

Hot take response to the above:

Square won't add anything meaningful to replace anything they condense. That'd be too much work when they could just butcher it and leave people who liked previous iterations in the lurch.

[ReynTime]

XIV is on a downwards trend of mechanics and those they keep feel unfinished, some made sense but a lot of them its like ... why

- Hunting log, yea i guess thats not really something we miss.
- Retainer can become a full job, which makes no sense from a lore perspective and the only thing it adds is they can equip gear.
- Dungeon variety: I understand that most dungeons are beelined, but i still feels bad that everything by now is 2 packs > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > 2 packs > boss > 2 packs > 2 packs > boss.
- Area based achievement fates were dropped, only the rare big ones remain.
- Job based quest lines were tossed
- After Airships and Submarines nothing was really added to FC's
- Beast tribe final quests were tossed.
- The big grindy content is still not rolled out fast enough (relic weapon)
- Deep dungeon and Adventure map used to be given both, Potd+Diadem ... Hoh+Eureka, in shb deep dungeon was droped and the missed exp implemented into Bozja. From an outside perspective i do not belive that thet new dungeon is going to be as much content as Bozja, so thats a downtrend again.
- A lot of Goldsaucer side content is completely neglected, Chocobo racing, Majong and Lord or Verminion are basically "there"
- Our Companion still has had no update since ARR
- Treasure Map dungeons overtime were reduced in whats in them and their room size, the additional rare maps were tossed
- We still have not found the cure to the housing problem, but we are on about 20 layers of ductape now.
- A lot of Achievements are discontinued, no new tank mounts either, what happend to Commendations etc.
(trimmed)

People in general need to stop using "we" in these instances. I WISH they didn't stop with hunting logs or battlecraft leves. More OPTIONAL content in the overworld that can be done for experience and cheap rewards is never a bad thing.

[Kansene]

DISCLAIMER: Speaking from a filthy "normal mode" player point of view, and also from the perspective of a healer:

Boss fights could actually do with a bit more of rng mechanics beyond "will the boss hit with their left or right hand first?"
I'm thinking stuff like debuffing a couple of party members and them needing esunaing, hi-damage bolts on randoms that encourage actually using a healer GCD to heal someone, more individual healing in general that isn't exclusively limited to when people fail at mechanics.

There is a certain satisfaction to be had from perfecting a tightly scripted encounter, but I've always been more on board with "thinking on your feet."

[Johners]

snip for characters

The problem that XIV has is that Square Enix's game design is now just restricted by the underlying technical limitations of the game client and server infrastructure. This is ultimately a legacy of ARR in which SE pumped out content and features without much, if any, thought on long-term viability of the technical implementations.

Prime examples of this are the housing system or glamour catagloues in which we've had layers of duct tape fixes and Square Enix mostly walking around the underlying problem when responding to player criticism on the matter.

Now that the big story arc is done, Endwalker is setting up the future of the game and these underlying issues are going to be more important than ever.

We're already at the stage in which there's ton of legacy systems they should just remove such as job stones because underlying classes are dead and the idea of cross-class abilities are gone also. The job is just the class and the game should be modernised to reflect this. Not to mention all the systems like challenge and sightseeing log in which SE don't really have an idea of what to do with it but also won't remove it.

The big sticking point in all of this is that truly modernising the game, which can be done without starting again if you just look at World of Warcraft, is the money requirement. It's no secret that FFXIV is the cash cow which Square Enix use to reinvest into everything else such as FF7R and FF16... plus allthose games that flopped like Babylon's Fall, Avengers and Outriders.

At some stage, if we're not already there, the excuses around no glamour catalogue or the terrible housing system is just SE not wanting to spend the money to modernising the game. Instead we'll get systems like Island Sanctuary that repackage a mission table mechanic with other recycled mechanics.

[Allegor]

DISCLAIMER: Speaking from a filthy "normal mode" player point of view, and also from the perspective of a healer:

Boss fights could actually do with a bit more of rng mechanics beyond "will the boss hit with their left or right hand first?"
I'm thinking stuff like debuffing a couple of party members and them needing esunaing, hi-damage bolts on randoms that encourage actually using a healer GCD to heal someone, more individual healing in general that isn't exclusively limited to when people fail at mechanics.

There is a certain satisfaction to be had from perfecting a tightly scripted encounter, but I've always been more on board with "thinking on your feet."

As a fellow filthy casual, I strongly agree more rng would be nice. Kinda why I like playing alliance raids, because it's gauranteed some people will always screw up and it's really exciting to place a shield on a non-tank party member and watch them absorb the damage, "it's a dps loss" be damned.