Zepla: Most Wanted Changes in FFXIV

[VerdeLuck]

Level sync removing actions is a necessary evil.
The community of this game chases the path of least resistance, so getting a sprout with fewer spells is going to mean you go slower in all content. Really wouldn't want to see sprouts kicked so people can do their roulettes faster.
This is the community that would harass sprouts into skipping cutscenes in praetorium or just flat out speedrun it at the detriment of them, because they just wanted to clear asap.

[Oizen]

Level sync removing actions is a necessary evil.
The community of this game chases the path of least resistance, so getting a sprout with fewer spells is going to mean you go slower in all content. Really wouldn't want to see sprouts kicked so people can do their roulettes faster.
This is the community that would harass sprouts into skipping cutscenes in praetorium or just flat out speedrun it at the detriment of them, because they just wanted to clear asap.

Then design the jobs to be played at all levels instead of the levels you unlock them. Its really that simple.

Why does WAR get small versions of Fell Cleave, Bloodwhetting, Inner Release, and so on while RPR is stuck pressing 123 until lv 70.

[PyaKura]

I wish they did more with the Unreal system. As someone who just wants a reason to play the game just for fun, I'd love to dive into older fights upscaled to the current power levels. I thought that's what they were going for with Unreal fights, but the fact that you only get 1 single Extreme every 4 months is just disheartening. And I'm really not a fan of revisiting older content with a good chunk of my kit missing, or unsyncing which entirely removes the fun out of actually fighting bosses.

"Fun" fact, as far as regular content goes, the game currently has (as of 6.4):

- 89 dungeons (including 32 leveling dungeons)
- 83 trials (including 37 Extreme trials)
- 14 Alliance raids
- 89 8-man raids (including 40 Savage raids)
- 5 Ultimate raids

out of which only

- 3 dungeons (inc. Manalis to gear up for DSR)
- 1 Extreme trial
- 4 Savage raids
- 2 Ultimate raids

form the bulk of the current relevant repeatable endgame PvE content for any player who has been playing FF14 regularly (and I'm being generous, I doubt most regular players even run Expert anymore). That is roughly 3.6% of all regular instanced PvE content, which means 96.4% of that content is obsolete/dead with little reason to no reason to be ran. And I'm not counting the more unique pieces of content that are not present in every expansion such as Eureka/Bozja, Criterion, Deep Dungeons, and such, which would overall bring the percentage of "dead" content even higher.

It's even sadder that for quite a few regular, long-time endgame raiders, the replayability of the latest content is solely driven by 3rd party activities related to a certain website (y'all know what I mean), and not because the content itself is worth doing over and over again on its own.

FFXIV has a ton of content to be discovered for first timers and that's absolutely great. I just wish the vast majority of it had a longer lifespan than at worst, 4 months, and at best, an expansion.

I'll say it again because it's really my biggest gripe with the game: the Unreal system could bring so much more to the game than what it does in terms of replayability. The instanced fights in this game are overall amazing, they look great, they are fun, they have varying levels of difficulty for all kind of players. If you can't produce more new fights that you already do, SE, then recycle more of that old content!

And here's a hot take: Dawntrail should be the last power creep/(i)level increase we should get, and the game has to evolve towards horizontal progression while bringing the old content up to date. Just look at GW2 which seemingly has an endless amount of content for all player types despite keeping the same level cap and overall power level since the game launched 11 years ago...

And one last thing: the overworld maps are gorgeous, but it's a shame that you only ever visit them for the MSQ and then pretty much never again (aside from gemstone farming for Shadowbringers and Endwalker - does anyone actually have fun farming those ?).

[AnnRam]

Level sync removing actions is a necessary evil.
The community of this game chases the path of least resistance, so getting a sprout with fewer spells is going to mean you go slower in all content. Really wouldn't want to see sprouts kicked so people can do their roulettes faster.
This is the community that would harass sprouts into skipping cutscenes in praetorium or just flat out speedrun it at the detriment of them, because they just wanted to clear asap.

You really believe sprouts have fun using 2 skills and taking 20 minutes to do an ARR normal dungeon.

They don't care about the first boss in Sastasha or the lore about why there is a tiger that suddenly spawns out of nowhere

[VerdeLuck]

You really believe sprouts have fun using 2 skills and taking 20 minutes to do an ARR normal dungeon.

They don't care about the first boss in Sastasha or the lore about why there is a tiger that suddenly spawns out of nowhere

It doesn't matter if they have fun with it or not because regardless they're only getting those 2 skills because that's all they have at that level.
No removing skills when syncing down means the party of lvl 90s kicks the sprout conjurer because they don't have cure 2 or benediction yet, and they have to do smaller pulls now.

It is exactly how the community has acted when something gets in the way of their efficient farm, and it will happen if they were to ever make that change.

[ForteNightshade]

It doesn't matter if they have fun with it or not because regardless they're only getting those 2 skills because that's all they have at that level.
No removing skills when syncing down means the party of lvl 90s kicks the sprout conjurer because they don't have cure 2 or benediction yet, and they have to do smaller pulls now.

It is exactly how the community has acted when something gets in the way of their efficient farm, and it will happen if they were to ever make that change.

You get around this by simply offering weaker versions of the existing skills. Give Reaper baby Enshroud that only lasts for three GCDs instead of five or costs hundred gauge instead of fifty. There are ways around balancing issues that SE simply refuses to explore. Regardless, dungeons nowadays have been power crept into oblivion, you'll never be in a scenario where a sprout healer can't handle them. In fact, a synced tank would be even easier to heal since they'd have more CDs.

At some point this needs to be addressed. We're approaching the fifth expansion and level 100. Having an absolute slog of a combat system for upwards of 70-80% of the leveling experience will make it that much harder to attract new players, especially in a 10+ year old game.

[VerdeLuck]

You get around this by simply offering weaker versions of the existing skills. Give Reaper baby Enshroud that only lasts for three GCDs instead of five or costs hundred gauge instead of fifty. There are ways around balancing issues that SE simply refuses to explore. Regardless, dungeons nowadays have been power crept into oblivion, you'll never be in a scenario where a sprout healer can't handle them. In fact, a synced tank would be even easier to heal since they'd have more CDs.

At some point this needs to be addressed. We're approaching the fifth expansion and level 100. Having an absolute slog of a combat system for upwards of 70-80% of the leveling experience will make it that much harder to attract new players, especially in a 10+ year old game.

What you're asking for then is for the potencies of every single ability to be scaled and balanced per dungeon per job per level combination, which is a massive amount of work, because you can't just give the jobs their skills, you have to rework all the potencies to account for the damage buffs, extra mitigations, and extra ogcd heals thrown out by higher level abilities.
It's not possible to do this on a per player per job basis basis and have it be any type of managable. It would most likely take multiple times more effort than reworking the dungeons each entirely.
A synced tank having more mits is entirely the problem, that adds the expectation that now having a sprout on certain roles makes the run objectively worse. No high level heals means it takes longer, no extra mits means it takes longer, not having the dps abilities means pulls have to be smaller.
I have seen and experienced what the community will do whenever their efficient farm and duty completion is on the line, they would absolutely abuse it to hell and back which is why they shouldn't get it, besides the fact that it's entirely impossible to balance and account for the combinations.
A level 20 conjurer vs a level 30 conjurer vs a white mage at 30/40/50/60/70/80/90 all play differently with different tools so they would all have to have different scaling per dungeon to match the people naturally at whatever level the dungeon is run at.

It works now and does what it needs to by giving a simple even playing field for everyone. No need to poke around and make it 10x more complicated when you're only going to be in duty for 5-10 minutes.

[Kuroka]

At some point this needs to be addressed. We're approaching the fifth expansion and level 100. Having an absolute slog of a combat system for upwards of 70-80% of the leveling experience will make it that much harder to attract new players, especially in a 10+ year old game.

Its so true.. so many skils could get "light" versions with less dps/stacks - or just no buffs/debuffs till later, less range... some jobs are almost broken on low level while some others are fine...

...then theres stuff like DK having his gabcloser 50-60ish while all other tanks gotta wait more lol

[angienessyo]

Level sync removing actions is a necessary evil.
The community of this game chases the path of least resistance, so getting a sprout with fewer spells is going to mean you go slower in all content. Really wouldn't want to see sprouts kicked so people can do their roulettes faster.
This is the community that would harass sprouts into skipping cutscenes in praetorium or just flat out speedrun it at the detriment of them, because they just wanted to clear asap.

They could at least look at how some jobs feel at lower levels. Some of the melee don't even get an AOE until either 40 or 38, which feels extremely bad. (poor dragoon). NIN could also benefit from getting huton and armor crush much earlier. I don't think any of these changes would make certain melee jobs too OP or harder to understand, they would just make them a bit more fun at lower levels.