I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[VelKallor]

People can gloom and doom all they want about FF14's current state, but Square's struck a goldmine with their game design and target audience and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

SShhhh....the naysayers and doomsday mongers will never forgive that....

[WeissTuna]

1. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel all jobs play the same. They are all based around a 2 minute burst window, but I cannot agree on a Samurai playing or feeling the same as a Monk or a Dragoon. Dancer, Bard and Machinist also feel quite different to me. The same goes for magic DPS. I believe tanks suffer most from this issue. And healers too, but only their DPS related stuff. So I do see problems in those two roles, but even then, in my opinion they still feel different enough.

When people say that the jobs all play the same, they're taking all of that into account. Sure, all jobs have their niche and their spices that are different than the others, but they all work around that same 2 minute rotation. It's not hard to figure out what the optimal rotation is when you get a new job to 90 because its all centered around 1-2-(niche gauge builder)-(2minute cooldown) then blowing your biggest potencies and GCDs within that window and repeat when the 2 minute comes back.

The game has been shoved into a balance hole. Where fun goes to die. I'd much rather have classes be fun over them being tightly balanced and I say that as a raider.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm not sure if Naoki Yoshida understands what he is doing to his own MMORPG:

1. The Jobs feeling meaningless, more like copy and paste that reach the same conclusion which some forum goers have stated many times over.

He does know what he is doing. It makes the game more intuitive for new and casual players. Everything about these changes fits the description of intuitive, which the game previously was not in Heavensward where we lacked telegraphs and you were supposed to wipe to figure out mechanics and status effects of normal content. The problem was that people often never learned these things, so now they want it to be obvious.

other particular substats like elemental alignments (meaning a new materia system that have elemental sockets, so one could make a Fire Warrior or Ice Dark Knight).

We used to have that. You could stack fire defense to protect against dragon breaths, but then in the next fight you would be very weak. I found this idea exciting to toy with because you get resistance downs in tank swaps as well, but it's just a toy that required sacrifice to DPS or other important stats. All the other players weren't even thinking about it. Then they got rid of it.

There is a meta stat and that meta stat is either crit and dh or it's the elements. The only way elements could work is to have a separate materia slot that only allows element stacking.

Also have monsters be weak against certain classes like Avians weak against MCH/BRD.

If this happens, we will have to pick different jobs for different fights. Which could be fine, but people who main a single job won't be happy at the lack of balance.

3. Most of the normal monsters feel really meaningless, and their mechanics don't matter much. Maybe given its a relic from a time when MMOs were in a very different gameplay environment

Mob packs used to apply paralysis (annoying), blind (annoying, interrupts combos), stuns (annoying), silence (annoying). They started removing those when adding duty support, but they are probably still in the optional dungeons. What is fun about not being able to attack or having your attacks miss?

In Shadowbringers, they made certain enemies cast devastating aoe or buffs that a tank could interrupt, and if they did a large pull they had to pick out the correct enemies to interrupt or the healer would have more work. I haven't noticed this continue much in Endwalker and the enemies die a lot quicker with my Blade of Faith attacks, but it added something interesting for tanks to do.

4. There was some personal debate between me and a dear old friend who loved crafting if Crafting actually devolved after Stormblood (he left FFXIV when Crafting got very nerfed), I want your all opinions on this as I was not around during his ARR-HW era.

Old crafters say this and it is true that they said they wanted to make "endgame content for the disciples of the land and hand" for Shadowbringers (the firmament) and while doing that they always wanted to tidy them up. Their way of doing that was to make them easier and combine actions.

5. The Blue Gear every time its introduced also feels meaningless and its a waste of developer time to design all these clothes and gear only for it to be inferior to the Green Crafted Gear. It should be the other way around since Blue Gear seems like it was suppose to be a bit more special considering all the effort the Devs go into designing these things. Green Gear should be the first step, and then the Blue Gear being the 2nd step, and then finally Purple Gear.

Class/job gear is more for glamour. The green gear is first (dungeon and crafted gear). Then tomestone/raid gear is blue. Only thing that is purple is relics.

7. FATEs, I don't think I need to say much how some people feel about FATEs for years on these forums. I think Bozja FATEs

There is a FATE in Ultima Thule that involves orb donuts and orb aoes. That is a step in that direction because Bozja had that. One of them does a rotate mechanic. Some of these newer mechanics are good to see when most fates just do standard cone or circle aoes.

The Lochs from Stormblood come to mind as it seems like half its zone areas on the map never ended up being used for anything.

As someone that has done all sidequests and got all aether currents, they all got used.

There is definitely a lack of local lore that maybe players could read or find out about

Inspired by the popularity of the Azim Steppe FATEs, they made all FATEs tell a story about the lore of an area.

10) PVP gradually losing its maps

We have had 4 maps this expansion though.

PVP should be one of those things that should be a good filler between major expansions
The problem is Rival Wings which in my opinion offered more diverse gameplay

You can play Rival Wings during the tomestone events.

[hunkygladiator]

I have spoken to many crafters across three servers, each and everyone I have ever asked HATES HW crafting with a vengeance, so sorry, hell to the NO. GOD NO. ARR crafting at lower levels is a tossup, HW crafting was needlessly complicated, ate mats like there was no tomorrow, again having to level one up to get cross class abilities , whilst it looked good on paper, SUCKED in reality..the specialist jobs?

Abilities like Whistle Whilst you Work were..clumsy at best, a pain in the michta at worst.

Whilst I have seen back and forth on crafting then vs now, Im not sure anyone would welcome a return to pre SB crafting systems. Those who want "hard mode" crafting have it with 4 star recipe challenges, along with rare mats to make certain glam gear.

( And yes kirimu leather, for example, I am looking at YOU )

Having levelled crafting pre and post changes, I can comfortably say what we have now is a lot better across the board. With respect, as a master crafter, I would really rather NOT go back to that quagmire.

Rofl a "crafter" these days means hardly anything. Literally anyone can be a "crafter".

[VelKallor]

Thats quite correct, which is why Square made those changes back in 2020 and earlier, to help players get their crafters and gatherers maxed, to enable them to get into crafting and hence be self sufficient.

Glad you understand that.

[Ransu]

Ive commented on this before, but IMO, STEAM numbers alone arent enough. Whilst I am certain some trends may be identifiable, granted, I question its sample size validity. Others disagree, I know.

People look at the red numbers on steam and go "see see see!!!" but they don't look at the overall trend over the years, which steamcharts (as pointless of a metric as it is given its the extreme minority of users) shows a general upwards trend. There are more active daily users today than there were in the past showing the games growth. 2018 saw an average of 5k with peaks into 10k. Today there's an average of 15k with peaks of 30k.

People doom and glooming and going on about how the game is in a "rut" either no life the game to the point of burnout and they don't even realize it, or are way too heavily influenced by the garbage that infests the forums which is not even remotely representative of the games activity. The rest are just obvious trolls with their umpteenmillion alts.

My reply to these people will always be the same. Take a damn break. Unsubscribe until the next expansion or something. The game overall is doing fine and has more players at this point in time in the expansion than the past expansions did at their launch.

[caffe_macchiato]

I don’t notice any of these problems since I’m busy playing other games. Aren’t we supposed to be taking a break right now?

[Kaurhz]

I can mostly agree with the individual points. However, I do think he knows what he is doing - I just think he's not pleasing certain crowds enough in the game as to what they possibly could do.

4. - Crafting was never really as great as what people want to portray, outside of maybe Whistle While You Work, but even then it was still a profusely overpowered and underutilized system. Similarly the Specialist System has never been what it could or should be. I would say, however, that it did require more upfront and ongoing investment if you wanted to get to that level, but everything was also relative at the time, e.g., Titanium Tools back in HW were going hard for 100-200K per tool even midway in the expansion. It did have you interacting with a more diverse amount of content than what it does now. e.g., you were interacting with GC Seals, and Desynthesis, on top of the 'Aetherial Reduction' which was introduced in HW, especially at the 'Mastercraft' level. It depends on what they mean with regard to devolved, really. I always question this, personally, as I feel like a lot of people drastically overinflate the actual difficulty itself with crafting.

5. - The blue gear? It has always been this way really, minus the fact back in ARR you had occasions where the relic tool was released alongside major patches, and with that, raids. Green (or crafted) gear is just a full reset on each tier effectively so that everyone can start raiding each tier, provided they could market the gear, without necessarily needing to start from scratch and farm the tomestone/raid gear.

8. - This is such a missed opportunity, frankly. Always has been

[Jojoya]

The game has been shoved into a balance hole. Where fun goes to die. I'd much rather have classes be fun over them being tightly balanced and I say that as a raider.

I agree with the first statement since it's pretty much where classes/jobs in all MMORPGs end up.

The problem comes from the last.

How many players would end up happy that their class/job is fun to play if it also meant they were being excluded from content because it performed poorly compared to the rest?

Very few would if they play content where performance matters. Thus the balance hole gets dug.

[Duskane]

I don’t notice any of these problems since I’m busy playing other games. Aren’t we supposed to be taking a break right now?

respect his decision but this doesn't mean you don't release any lasting content especially while extending development time
Like it doesn't have to be a grind it just has to be something thats simple to step in and work towards it when ever you play