Combat system is beyond saving.

[Rekh]

Those new aoe dots for healers will really improve that role.

[xivYuiM]

Don't forget the non-raiders with expendable income who buy clears so they can feel special without the effort.

If I see people AFK with a casual glam + ultimate weapon I just assume they paid for it. There is a strange trend where 20% of the time legend title players will be masters at savage raids and the other 80% are consistently the most clueless lot you have ever met and will wipe over and over while contributing the lowest damage in the party.

[Malthir]

If I see people AFK with a casual glam + ultimate weapon I just assume they paid for it. There is a strange trend where 20% of the time legend title players will be masters at savage raids and the other 80% are consistently the most clueless lot you have ever met and will wipe over and over while contributing the lowest damage in the party.

Used to be the same with mentors, whenever you saw the icon you just knew the person was going to be toxic and not know what they were talking about.

[Ephremjlm]

Meanwhile in Endwalker…

“Farther still existed a star without strife... ...where none remembered life's trials—or its joys. What its people had gained from ease, they lost to apathy.”

Prophetic, and ironic.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think it appeals to any kind of player

Summoner popularity and Lucky Bancho stats say otherwise...
"The number of active characters is approximately 1.18 million, an increase of 70,000 from the previous version (1.11 million)"
Not to mention all the people I talked to in and out of the game who are perfectly fine with the battle system now and prefer it, and who seem excited for Dawntrail.

its most likely an excuse so SE can spend the least time/money on it

It's not that. They have been perfectly open with us the whole time. They said in the latest live letters they are trying to make the rotations "comfortable" for their players. Going back to Stormblood they added the gauges because they felt tracking status effects was too complicated and the truth is that made many jobs amount to "gauge spending".

To be honest, what a lot of people viewed as job difficulty in the past was really just janky design, such as one ability being able to overwrite another if used too soon, which is increasingly being protected against. So I can see where SE is coming from when saying this.

We have to wait 3 years for an expansion that give us new copy/pasted jobs and add little beside new animations and a whole new "press every 2 mn" action.

But if the job is functionally different in any way, people will say "well it has X ability, why can't I have it?" For example, look at people celebrating White Mage getting a gap closer. Why are they celebrating that they have been homogenized? Look at people celebrating when Paladin got a gap closer, also homogenization. Look at people celebrating Divine Veil proccing automatically, Warrior not needing to spend gauge on a gap closer, Paladin's rotation being changed to be like GNB being celebrated. One job has less DPS than another, so it gets balanced in a patch. Homogenization gets celebrated when it specifically happens, but then in general it gets attacked. So what is SE supposed to do with that?

Homogenize, obviously.

It seems we can't ask for more because 'now that game has too many <jobs>'

Well that is probably also a factor. It's hard to really balance jobs when there are so many without simply making a lot of them the same as eachother.

While Sure, the "core" of the game would certainly require a lot training for new people, graphical assets can easily be hired or outsourced ; and fresh gameplay inputs could probably come from other teams or even the community via polls.

If you look at their recruitment, they are always recruiting in Japan. If you look at the credits, they grow every expansion. They have made blog posts about how they are training people. I even remember Soken making one about the people he was training - I think at the time we didn't know how important that was, because he was fighting something.

Even the MSQ which is supposed to be the main draw of the game is getting stale , if not story-wise, because most CS have no dynamism ; half of them are 3 people talking with another 3 in the background.

Well that is common in patches. We should see about the expansion.

the devs are busy whit FF16 and probably other projects.

I remember them saying the FF16 team was disbanded except for a very small team that remained to handle DLC, but most of the team wasn't needed anymore because all the major engine and gameplay and UI work was done years ago, it was just adding some more quests/battles for DLC.

Used to be the same with mentors, whenever you saw the icon you just knew the person was going to be toxic and not know what they were talking about.

Mentors are just veteran players. Veteran players in any MMORPG I've played are usually toxic, not deliberately, but because they know the most efficient way to do things and struggle to go back to doing it the "slow, clueless" way that new players do it. In any case, the mentors I meet in duties are usually good and I can rely on them to know things usually. Except trade mentors, because you never know when they are just sprouts.

[Ephremjlm]

Hmm, after reading these comments, seeing who voted what, I actually think the feedback was spot on. You gotta remember the ultra casuals aren't represented here.

I saw a comment that said OP cares WAY more than the commenter and that OP would be here way after the commenter. It's true. It's almost parasitic how it works really. Game is made great for targeted audience, game uses audience to draw new audience, game starts tailoring to make new audience larger, game starts to disregard old audience because they're smaller and most will stay anyways via sunken cost fallacy and general addiction, and the larger audience can now be utilize to grow even larger and the cycle continues. Only difference is that original audience will stay invested emotionally while the secondary or third audiences leave without care when bored.

THAT SAID, I wonder how things will be treated now. Telling your audience to play other games when you are a live service and your goal is to maximize profits for a massive corporation that is now bleeding and will likely not get the same Sony funding means that for the first time in a while, OG audience might have some leverage. Its also known that FFXIV didn't retain the large WOW audience like they thought they would. Couple that with Trusts now almost being 100% implemented for all MSQ, button bloat iabout to be fixed via button stacking (meaning more room for varied abilities), and we are kind of set up for the exact opposite thing that happened with FFXI where trusts mostly finished off combat and social cooperation, whereas for FFXIV they might be revived. Yoshi P mentioned regrets about combat, and during live letter he said that 2 months prior his team was already discussing making jobs more unique again for 8.0. To end this point on player feedback, we are getting ANOTHER limited job, open world zones are coming back due to popular demand and disappointment in EW, and to everyone's surprise a dedicated FFXI raid series. All of these scream a return back to MMO normalcy, as opposed to FF Habbo Hotel where fashion and housing is the focus.

I have no clue what the future holds, however if in 8.0 we don't see major changes I'd personally say its a wrap for me. BUT, I think people can have fun however they want to because who am I to tell them otherwise. Though, if you don't support something then voting with your wallet is the only way to see change. If you really love it then it's the right thing to do otherwise you're just enabling something you don't support. They are a company and they need to EARN your sub, EVERY month. Again SE is bleeding right now so they might be incentivized to listen.

[ReynTime]

Hmm, after reading these comments, seeing who voted what, I actually think the feedback was spot on. You gotta remember the ultra casuals aren't represented here.

I saw a comment that said OP cares WAY more than the commenter and that OP would be here way after the commenter. It's true. It's almost parasitic how it works really. Game is made great for targeted audience, game uses audience to draw new audience, game starts tailoring to make new audience larger, game starts to disregard old audience because they're smaller and most will stay anyways via sunken cost fallacy and general addiction, and the larger audience can now be utilize to grow even larger and the cycle continues. Only difference is that original audience will stay invested emotionally while the secondary or third audiences leave without care when bored.

THAT SAID, I wonder how things will be treated now. Telling your audience to play other games when you are a live service and your goal is to maximize profits for a massive corporation that is now bleeding and will likely not get the same Sony funding means that for the first time in a while, OG audience might have some leverage. Its also known that FFXIV didn't retain the large WOW audience like they thought they would. Couple that with Trusts now almost being 100% implemented for all MSQ, button bloat iabout to be fixed via button stacking (meaning more room for varied abilities), and we are kind of set up for the exact opposite thing that happened with FFXI where trusts mostly finished off combat and social cooperation, whereas for FFXIV they might be revived. Yoshi P mentioned regrets about combat, and during live letter he said that 2 months prior his team was already discussing making jobs more unique again for 8.0. To end this point on player feedback, we are getting ANOTHER limited job, open world zones are coming back due to popular demand and disappointment in EW, and to everyone's surprise a dedicated FFXI raid series. All of these scream a return back to MMO normalcy, as opposed to FF Habbo Hotel where fashion and housing is the focus.

I have no clue what the future holds, however if in 8.0 we don't see major changes I'd personally say its a wrap for me. BUT, I think people can have fun however they want to because who am I to tell them otherwise. Though, if you don't support something then voting with your wallet is the only way to see change. If you really love it then it's the right thing to do otherwise you're just enabling something you don't support. They are a company and they need to EARN your sub, EVERY month. Again SE is bleeding right now so they might be incentivized to listen.

Yoshida did say (not that he didn't go back on his words before) he felt making the MSQ content future-proof to let XIV be more appealing to players who want to experience the story solo was the priority for Endwalker and that moving forward he wanted to focus on co-op content again.

[Mistress_Irika]

Like a few have mentioned I've never started in HW. However, my adventure did started during the beginning of SB where I've actually attempted to try every single content before becoming a hardcore pvp player. Despite my only complaint being how everything was heavily DOT reliant SB was my best expansion for me. I just wanted to throw my 2 cents and thoughts on this.

Half of the playerbase hasn’t even experienced the actual final fantasy XIV combat system that had things like:

• Aggro management
• Cleric stance and Multiple tank stances (3.x WAR was the best job in the history of this game)
• TP (sprint not draining it was a good change)
• Dungeon packs actually being a threat
• Multiple viable builds for all jobs
• Power level being driven by skill rather than solely depending on your gear ilvl

The list goes on.

Aggro management wasn't that deep. I think it was personally removed since many hardly thought of it. Casually, DPS hardly managed their aggros or did anything to keep it down. I noticed this. So why keep it if everyone sees tanks being the sole responsibility?

I've never experience cleric stance. Tank stance only made me realize how truly busted 4.0 WAR was. The personality between the 3 tanks did existed. I think DRK had some sort of crisis then?

I've never found any value with TP sadly.

Definitely will disagree on the multiple builds. There were probably multiple party comps that could be created then, but definitely not multiple builds. When I called myself tinkering with red mage while having 0 raid knowledge I thought of throwing materia on in order to increase the physical damage. I didn't do it because of how the class was design. After doing a quest with Tataru I really tried looking for ways to get a small boost on my physics for SMN using materia. I was upset that the spell was useless after lv 50 which prompted me to learning SCH despite being scared to use a healer for roulettes. I do wish I had that power to control my own stats when leveling.

I'll agree to a degree...I remember when a WAR pulled all mobs before the second boss while racing to Zenos. I was a new healer not up to par gear wise. I ran out of mana, and I've pretty much used up all of my resources. WAR couldn't hold the aggro. I panicked. Somehow, the party survived. Everyone 25% hp while the tank was less than 5%. I have yet to see a ton of skill expression after SB dealing with that scenario.



I would like to add something extra. I quit learning how to heal, because I believe that the reward system was removed from them. Looking back now I'm pretty convinced that it was never there for raiders to begin with. Casually though, yes. If you were struggling as a healer you had more defenses. If you were doing well on the other hand you got to do more damage. Mismia II. Aero III. I'm not sure what was the reasoning behind healers losing out on damage come ShB. If healers were given a few more damage abilities than what they have now maybe I will come back and continue learning the role. Truthfully though, the system needs retuning come 8.0 when the individually of classes is focused on, because as of right now I feel as though I'm being told how I'm supposed to play the class through design. I would like to be able to have multiple playstyles instead of being shown that this is the only way that I can play. It's not just like this with the healers and tanks. It's like this with majority of, if not all, classes.

[Acelyn]

Yoshida did say (not that he didn't go back on his words before) he felt making the MSQ content future-proof to let XIV be more appealing to players who want to experience the story solo was the priority for Endwalker and that moving forward he wanted to focus on co-op content again.

You really cant blame the combat system for this games woes, and it doesnt have many "woes" to begin with, the game has never been difficult, i dont know what OP is talking about with builds, the builds are the jobs themselves, a war cant do non war things, a rdm cant be anything other than a redmage, you cant "gear up" a sam to be tanky or anything of the sort.

the game is massive and brings players in because its welcoming and easy to pick up and if someone wants to play harder they can join that annoying group of players too, for everyone that says the game is losing money remember that when dawntraail releases that half of the game will be free to play(trail or whatever but its f2p) which means its probably doing just fine cashflow wise

the devteam and yoshiP already spotted the mistake they made and that was the content released in endwalker, compared to old expacs it was lacking which led directly to players having nothing to do and complaining, if they can just keep people busy in 7.0 theyre golden again.

[Somnolence]

This could be said about any place online where people go to discuss something opinion related. Reddit, 4chan, twitter, discord, etc. Especially places like reddit or discord where opinions are heavily moderated they are all bound to become 'echo chambers'. Not to mention that no matter the platform a discussion is taking place on, you will inherently only see people posting who are more passionate about whatever the subject is than most of the people involved. It's not necessarily that the 95% of people who ignore the forums "all disagree" with the opinions being shared, but they just don't care enough to share. In the case of this game I would bet that most of them probably don't care about the combat system AT ALL.

Well it is a fact that 90% complaints and whine about specific FFXIV topics is located in these forums. Specifically I am in quite a few community discords for this game hence lax moderation so people saying whatever they want (and raiding related ones even have some toxicity to spice it up) and mostly its just people enjoying the game and having fun.

Specifically the opinion about the tanks I replied to was the first time I ever saw such statement. Well even bald streamer is not complaining so tanks should be in good enough spot

Does game has issues with combat? Sure, but they all are caused by SE being deadly afraid to take risks and trying to target everyone simultaneously so there is no chance of anything changing while its is profitable.