What’s your FFXIV Hot Take?

[Mars_Feroshia]

Right, actual hot take:
People are far too concerned with what "might" happen if jobs aren't closely balanced and leads to this wild fear that specifically your job wont be brought to content.

If jobs were actually unique and not the exact same dog wearing a different shirt, there would be a reason to diversify comps based on how you actually play and it would lead to a "bring the player, on this job". It's not bad if certain jobs just suck unless you're actually good at them, and there's nothing wrong with jobs that are easy to pick up and do well with less time investment.

This game is like 80% a social simulator and if you're playing with friends you've made/already had I highly doubt any job is going to be discriminated against or excluded, and if the devs see a job is highly excluded or has a really low play rate they can actually look at it and see whats going on, maybe undertuned, maybe doesnt scale well on crit but scales well on haste (skillspeed).

Job discrimination is a boogeyman that I dont think anyone has experienced on a real scale. If it was real exclusion/discrimination if you did DRK in dailies people would just leave and take the time out because its that bad, and you wouldnt see any DRK's completing any content. Thats actual exclusion

[Doki]

The game is only worth playing for about 2 weeks at the end of each expansion, and 2 weeks at new expansion release. No reason at all to sub outside of that.

[SamuraiMiqo]

- The 292 incident still haunts both the devs and community to this day.

- The job system and current role trinity are at odds with eachother and they need to revisit the way they handle roles.

What's the 292 incident??

My hot take is this:

1. The Hardcore Raider player base ends up getting angry and hating themselves for failing to clear or progress through certain fights and instead of taking time to ask themselves if they're needing to take time and step away or do anything else, they go and blame the casual player base for everything wrong in their life.

2. Please know I mean no offense with this one, but I feel FemRoth's were a waste of time and development. Female Hrothgar's creep me out. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just the design? Again, no offense is meant if you play as one, keep on doing so if you enjoy it.

3. Lalafel are awesome and the hatred towards them needs to stop.

[HammAndCheese]

3. Lalafel are awesome and the hatred towards them needs to stop.

I'll drink to that! HUZZAH!!

[DiaDeem]

People are far too concerned with what "might" happen if jobs aren't closely balanced and leads to this wild fear that specifically your job wont be brought to content.

For literal years, people have been complaining about every job being good at everything. I'd rather have unbalanced jobs that are better at different things rather than everything being optimal to run everything.

To add to your hot take: Unless someone's going for a World First clear or some kind of Parse Record, "optimal" jobs don't matter. Just play whatever you want. You'll clear stuff well enough.

[ddwarbird]

Zero is another Wak Lamat. Same Mary Sue level writing but she is tolerated I don't get why. She reeks of "fan-fiction self-insert" energy.

[ForsakenRoe]

Echoing the 'rather have interesting/unique Job design than perfect balance' sentiments, because perfect balance can never exist unless Jobs play 100% identically to one another. We lost a lot of 'uniqueness' over the years, and still ended up seeing some Jobs excluded even in Dawntrail, so we now have evidence that the 'forsake uniqueness for closer balance' path just doesn't work in practice

-a/-ra -> -aga/ga -> -aja/ja >>>> II, III, IV for spell naming conventions.
And I think Koji Fox simply had way too much nostalgia for the time he played the pre PS1 era games when going with that for the localization. This is the only Final Fantasy game where they go with the dated convention and even re-releases/remasters/remakes of the first six games just go with the japanese suffixes.

With how FF11 inspired the original version of this game was, I feel like they should have, in all regions, copied FF11's spell naming system. Numerals dictate the strength of the spell (Cure III is stronger than Cure II, for example), -Aga dictates that the spell is AOE. So, instead of High Fire needing to exist on BLM cos they ran out of numbers, they'd have Fire, Fire II (currently Fire3), Fire III (currently Fire4), Firaga, and Firaga II (High Fire). PCT and RDM, instead of 'VerAero II' or 'Fire II in Red', would have VerAeroga' and 'Firaga in Red'. Etc.

For WHM, you'd have Cure, Cure II (as currently), but instead of Cure III for the AOE one that is weaker than Cure II (causing confusion for some new players), it'd be called Curaga. There's a book in the Gubal Library that mentions 'Cure Iv' as a very powerful healing spell, and with the above, you'd be thinking 'wow, I've not even seen a Cure III, Cure IV must be crazy strong'

[DRKoftheAzure]

Endwalker story felt VERY rushed and it shows with how the main BBEG is just a bird with collective depression and anxiety, and the abominations that were SUPPOSED to be the BBEG from Emet-Selchs perspective just being relegated to role quests, and the ALL of the role quests for both Endwalker and Dawntrail should have been mandatory to progress AT ALL in their respective MSQ and have dungeons EXCLUSIVELY MADE with Role Quests in mind via Duty Support, but still have the option to play with other players if you don't feel like going through Duty Support.

[Aviatorhead]

Postin another
I like Wuk, Lyse and Zero. Lyse I didn't like on my first go through of storm blood but I've run that part of the story at least 4 times now, and every time I started liking her better. I can understand why people don't like them. But I do. I feel like they get a bit more flak than they otherwise would because they're women. (Obv not that thats the sole reason/eveyone who hates them is a secret sexist. Just smth ive seen.)

[ddwarbird]

Postin another
I like Wuk, Lyse and Zero. Lyse I didn't like on my first go through of storm blood but I've run that part of the story at least 4 times now, and every time I started liking her better. I can understand why people don't like them. But I do. I feel like they get a bit more flak than they otherwise would because they're women. (Obv not that thats the sole reason/eveyone who hates them is a secret sexist. Just smth ive seen.)

I think it is unfair to write off complaints about both characters as "sexist". I do not think that is the reason at all, there are many great female game characters who happen to be woman and it is not even coupled to the era or time as Lara Croft from the OG Tomb Raiders in the 90's was one of the biggest gaming characters ever. I think the problem with both Zero and Wak Lamat is how they are forced into the story in an obvious attempt to make people like them, or force them into some "iconic" status that they do not deserve. It is very easy to brush off legitimate writing criticisms of somebodies "OC" as *insert-ism* here because then you do not have to justify yourself as a writer. Both Wak Lamat and Zero are written in self-congratulatory ways and both do things that usurp the main character of the story (which FFXIV's marketing team has always made out was the player, I don't want to be the main character but the game frequently forces the player character into that role).

Male characters such as Alphinaud are ALSO written in the same way and I do not like him either but he does have SOME growth in the story. (Such as his massive mistake in Heavensward). Wak Lamat does not learn anything over the course of the story so its hard for the audience to relate to people who make the universe bend to them to make them seem in the right.