I'd love if FFXIV got better

[Karan_Vess]

TLDR; at the end.
This post is about things I don't like in the game, and I won't focus much on the parts that I do like. I understand this kind of post isn't well received here but hope dies last, right? I know it's a lot but please do try to read it all before replying.

I've been playing the game for over 10 years. Ever since the first open beta launched. I played 1.0 during its betas and when it launched and then quit because it was just bad.

I make this post not because I hate the game but because I love it and I want to keep loving it. But the way it's going, I'm getting the feeling that I'm falling out of love, and I don't want that. I talked with friends who do all sorts of content about my concerns and most of them echoed them.

Now, with this disclaimer out of the way, here goes:

The game was carried by the legacy of SE killing 1.0 and having the ARR phoenix rise from its ashes and the epic story of what came after right up to the conclusion we just recently got. But that part is now over and we're moving on.

With the game stripped of its biggest selling point because it hasn't had time yet to develop a new story and no new content coming for a year, there isn't much left to distract from the issues.
These issues being:

Glamour system is just bad.
There’s a billion items in the game and no matter how much you expand the glamour slots, there will never be enough space. Just make it a checklist. You get the gear once, you can always glamour it.

The map is disconnected.
One really cool thing about 1.0 was that you could walk from Limsa to Uldah without a single loading screen. It’s not a big deal gameplay wise but it was really cool, and I want it back.

Leveling is boring, fates suck
For anyone who wasn’t around at the start: Fates used to be the primary way to level in ARR because dungeon EXP was pretty bad. They fixed that and now the only purpose fates have is the gemstone system. The problem with leveling is that leveling isn’t fun. You don’t really notice it when you level your first job in a new expansion because it just happens while you do the story but for every job beyond that, you’re sort of forced to do dungeons if you want to level in a reasonable amount of time. And the problem with having to do dungeons is:

[Karan_Vess]

Dungeons induce narcolepsy
Every single dungeon is the same aside from visuals. 2 addpacks, wall, 2 addpacks, boss, repeat 2 more times. There is no variation in this. I legit can’t keep my eyes open sometimes because it’s so sleep inducing. I can count the amount of bosses on one hand where you have to do more than “do damage to the boss while not standing in the bad”. I would like dungeons to have a unique identity. Like, a dungeon where you have to free allies and the more you free, the more will help you in the bossfights. Or a dungeon where the tank kites the boss in a pattern while the dps build a path of traps and the healer has to dance to keep the adds away from the boss. ANYTHING that breaks the formula.

Bossfights in general are unimaginative
My main problem with bossfights is how every boss arena is a square or a circle and every mechanic is basically, “stand in the right spot at the right time”. I would like arenas to have unique features like Twintania’s arena used to have. Something like, there’s a hill in the arena and you have to make the boss destroy the barrier to the hill so your ranged can go to the hill and deal more damage. And then you can use some cannon on the hill to activate a trap that drops the boss into a hole where the melees can also deal higher damage and then the phase is over, and you have to unlock another hill and trap. I couldn’t care less whether this will make someone’s logs on fflogs get worse because they have to do a mechanic. Go hit a dummy and upload that.

Network delay between client and server
Has this happened to you? You and a party member have an aoe on you and you both run into the same direction but you’re slightly ahead, so you keep going in the hopes that your party members sees that they’re behind and change course. But they never do and you both die. Your party member insists that he was slightly ahead of you and was waiting for you to change course. I’m willing to bet that this has happened to 99,999% of the people reading this. This is because neither of you were ahead of each other and the server just didn’t send the updated position fast enough to your client.
This has nothing to do with ping or packet loss. It’s because the tick rate of the server is too low. This issue used to be even worse back in ARR when the tick rate was so bad that it was nearly impossible to do Titan Hard because the aoe puddles would only show up on the client side when the cast was half a millisecond from finishing. They increased the tick rate back then and they need to do it again now.

Housing decoration sucks and is relying on bugs
I want to like housing. I have an FC house and I constantly get pestered by members to finally decorate it. But it’s a huge pain to do it because I really don’t want to learn how to abuse the buggy placement system just to get something to look the way I want it. I’m not talking about 3rd party tools because you know why.

[Karan_Vess]

Jobs are too homogenized
I don’t think I have anything new to add here. Everything that needs to be said, someone else has already said better. At most I think there should be more distinction inside each role. Healers have Shield and Pure healing, DPS have selfish and not shellfish, Tanks have good and not so good. For example, I’d love it if they allowed dancers to decide whether they want to go full DPS or full support, same with Bards. Or just give everyone the option to choose.

Gear design
When the game first launched I was super impressed by the attention to detail the developers had with how helmets and hats had cutouts for Miqote and Elezen ears. In 1.0 The darklight gear even had tail armor. Now it feels like they don’t even care anymore. Many hats just completely remove the ears, some outfits even remove the tails. Even worse, shop outfits that you have to pay for do it too. Personally, I’d prefer to have the ears and tails clip through rather than completely removing the traits I picked the race for.
Then there’s casting outfits. Please… be more creative than just another robe…

The graphics are bad, and the graphics upgrade probably won’t be enough
This one is almost purely subjective and I’m hoping SE will change my mind with 7.0.

These are what I consider the main issues with the game in its current state.
Now just a couple things that I think would make great additions to the game.

Open world dungeons
They already do this sometimes with story instances. I’d like to expand this to group content. A (large) area of an open world map just gets turned into a dungeon. Let’s say Mor Dhona gets attacked and you have to hold off a couple of waves of enemies. Then you can go and take the fight to them, and the boss arena won’t even be a square or circle because it’s just an open area! And they wouldn’t even have to create a new dungeon from scratch! You could do all sorts of things here.

Exploration dungeons
Sort of like the criterion dungeons but better.
If you played 1.0 you may remember that dungeons were way larger and had branching paths. Take that and make them even bigger with even more boss and sub boss encounters. A single path would take around the same amount of time as the usual dungeons and give a comparable amount of loot and every path has loot unique to it. If you queue in through the duty finder, you pick the path like you do in criterion dungeons and then just do that. At the end of the path, you leave. If you queue in with a premade you can decide to go through the other paths for more (better) rewards. You can do one path for focused loot farming or do everything for bonus stuff.
These dungeons could also go into the roulettes so that there’s more variety.

[Karan_Vess]

Hunt rework
Currently most people do hunts in trains. A mob is found, a million people swarm it and it’s dead within seconds. They go on to the next mob and repeat.
Instead it should be sort of like a multistage event. If a hunt mob is found anyone nearby can join an instance where they’re put into a light party, and they fight a instance of the mob. Everyone around does that, and every win reduces the HP pool. The lower the main HP pool gets; the more mechanics get unlocked for repeated attempts. Once the main HP pool is depleted a timer starts. Once that timer is over the mob on the main open world gets targetable and the hunt finishes as usual. The more successful wins in the instances you were part of, the better your rewards.

Give summoners back their pets
‘Nuff said.

Job Customization
Allow small customization of how a job feels to play. Let’s take monk for example. You could decide whether Phantom rush just deals a ton more damage or after using phantom rush you get access to a special combo sort of like GNB’s continuation. It wouldn’t even have to make a difference in dps, just a difference in feel would be great.

Weapon choices for jobs
This is more wishful thinking but I really really want it. Give jobs access to more weapons. Like, Monks could use Staves to whack people with or Summoner could get a primal focus thingy that lets them transform into their summons for a short time. That kinda stuff.


Now, many of the things I listed have already been suggested many times. And every time the answer we got was “It’s too hard” or “it’s too expensive”. And I don’t buy either. The game makes millions and is more popular than ever. The game is good not because of SE but DESPITE of SE. Money isn’t an issue. Square Enix’s greed is.
I can’t remember who said it but there was a well-known developer that said that users are extremely good at finding issues but have trouble offering solutions because they don’t know the limitations of the system or capabilities of developers. So, if something is too difficult: Great, figure it out. There was an interview at one of the previous fanfests for endwalker (or shadowbringers, I don’t remember), where he was asked if the engine is holding back the game, and his answer was along the lines of “There is nothing in the engine that prevents us from doing what we want”.

There is no doubt in my mind that the developers are passionate about the game that they’re making, and I wish SE would just let them loose once in a while. Personally, I think the biggest issue the game has is that SE has become allergic to taking risks and is placing predictable short term profit forecasts over maintaining long term goodwill. Technically I understand but once the goodwill is gone, I fear it could be too late to change course.

[Karan_Vess]

Overall, I still hope that I’m overreacting due to the content drought ahead of us and that tomorrows Fanfest will just invalidate everything I wrote here. But if that’s not the case, I don’t want to just sit by and say “See, I told you so!” at the end when the game slowly dies. I know the game will continue for a long time and I will play through 7.0 and all its patches but beyond that depends entirely on whether they can improve the issues I stated to an acceptable degree.

Ok, those are my thoughts. I hope I don’t come across as too pessimistic, I still really like the game.

There are some aspects that I didn’t talk about, like PVP or crafting and gathering or Ultimates. That is not because I don’t care about them, it’s because I don’t engage enough with them that I think I can provide an informed opinion about them. So I’d like to ask you if you could post your insight in those areas. Of course, that goes for all the other parts I did talk about, too.

TLDR;
Please improve:
Glamour
Overworld
Leveling
Dungeons
Bossfights
Network responsiveness
Housing decoration
Job uniqueness
Gear design
Graphics
Please add:
Open world dungeons
Exploration dungeons
Hunt rework
Job customization
Alternative weapons

Thank you for reading.

[chaotix69]

I agree with everything you have said. I also believe they should implement a crowd control system inside of dungeons so that the add packs actually have meaning. Adds should also drop BoE items, albeit at a rare rate. As much as everyone likes to say WoW is this awful game, it has some incredible aspects to it that I believe could be implemented into this game as well.

The reason that this will likely never happen is because the community downplays all of these issues. Take your housing example for instance. Having to rely on a bug when decorating is ridiculous. However, people treat it as though the bug is the solution, rather than the problem.

Several players agree with your stances here. Several. Unfortunately for you and everyone else that wants these things fixed, they don't come to the forums, they just simply quit playing. The ones you will mainly find here are those that will discredit any gripe or complaint you have about the game. Its the crowd that is chronically online, therefore they are the loudest and most seen because of that. Also keep in mind that it was the player base, through years of complaints, that has molded the game into what it is now.

Plus after 10 years, I think it's natural for the game to experience a decline. WoW had the same thing happen before they finally turned it around, although its current state is still subjective. Lastly, I don't think we even need new jobs. New races sure, but an entire rework of each job would be way better in my opinion.

[PetThisMiqo]

I would love it if people stopped looking for made up issues to complain about. Many of the issues you have mentioned are in fact not issues at all. The game is fine. Your list of problems with the game is enormous and that tells me that if you truly believe them to be problems then this is not the game for you.

[Turtledeluxe]

I would love it if people stopped looking for made up issues to complain about. Many of the issues you have mentioned are in fact not issues at all. The game is fine. Your list of problems with the game is enormous and that tells me that if you truly believe them to be problems then this is not the game for you.

The reason that this will likely never happen is because the community downplays all of these issues. Take your housing example for instance. Having to rely on a bug when decorating is ridiculous. However, people treat it as though the bug is the solution, rather than the problem.

The ones you will mainly find here are those that will discredit any gripe or complaint you have about the game. Its the crowd that is chronically online, therefore they are the loudest and most seen because of that. Also keep in mind that it was the player base, through years of complaints, that has molded the game into what it is now.

Just leaving this here.

[Wilford111]

Bruh you already posted this at least twice on Reddit. Calm down. Your opinions aren't any more important than anyone else's.

[Azlith]

Agreed with everything you said. I would add that they need to also fix the delay on ability effect activation. Every veteran of the game knows and is used to the fact that abilities don't activate their effects right when they are used but rather about a halfish second afterwards, maybe even longer. This is something that needs to change. I have personally talked with quite a few people who have tried the game out and all of them mention this issue as the biggest reason as to why they quite the game. It just feels really bad when you press a button like invuln, addle, sacred soil, interrupt etc and their effects don't activate right away. Oh and this is something that exsists in the game by design, it is not there because of the games bad tick rate.

I agree with everything you have said. I also believe they should implement a crowd control system inside of dungeons so that the add packs actually have meaning. Adds should also drop BoE items, albeit at a rare rate. As much as everyone likes to say WoW is this awful game, it has some incredible aspects to it that I believe could be implemented into this game as well.

The reason that this will likely never happen is because the community downplays all of these issues. Take your housing example for instance. Having to rely on a bug when decorating is ridiculous. However, people treat it as though the bug is the solution, rather than the problem.

Several players agree with your stances here. Several. Unfortunately for you and everyone else that wants these things fixed, they don't come to the forums, they just simply quit playing. The ones you will mainly find here are those that will discredit any gripe or complaint you have about the game. Its the crowd that is chronically online, therefore they are the loudest and most seen because of that. Also keep in mind that it was the player base, through years of complaints, that has molded the game into what it is now.

Plus after 10 years, I think it's natural for the game to experience a decline. WoW had the same thing happen before they finally turned it around, although its current state is still subjective. Lastly, I don't think we even need new jobs. New races sure, but an entire rework of each job would be way better in my opinion.

I agree with your take on the community, specifically those that come to these forums. It seems like most of the people here oppose any kind of criticism that people may have for the game no matter how valid that criticism may be.

I would love it if people stopped looking for made up issues to complain about. Many of the issues you have mentioned are in fact not issues at all. The game is fine. Your list of problems with the game is enormous and that tells me that if you truly believe them to be problems then this is not the game for you.

None of the issues mentioned are "made up". Just because you don't think of these things as issues doesn't mean that they aren't real.