What do you like and dislike most in FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

Like the weighty animations, the engine (apart from when it causes immense flickering when passing by leaves, planks, anything with a lot of lines), the ultimately rather fast paced combat, the leniency for cast-tail movement, and that healers and tanks can both do significant DPS dependent on their coordination with each other and the raid's present pace).

Not a fan of the oversights (Skill/Spell Speed, Diadem, original PotD), rapid content obsoletion, lack of core innovation, how animations rarely do what they look like they should do (see single-target Spinning Slash), how the fast pace is really just a product of every job being identically GCD-locked with a backing arsenal of oGCDs, the singularity of optimal rotations, or the shortage of cross-role responsibilities (especially for DPS party members) or versatility.

[Not saying I want every roll to be able to heal or tank, but they should have a way of getting around or restoring damage, whether that be by kiting, killing, swapping off, or whatever else. No one should 99% of the time be concerned only with their parse, or in addition only to minimizing their own raid-damage taken). I'd like to see more abnormal compositions, more alternate ways of approaching a given problem or encounter. And yet we're mired instead in CC immunities, etc.]

[Chalbee]

...shortage of cross-role responsibilities (especially for DPS party members) or versatility.

[Not saying I want every roll to be able to heal or tank, but they should have a way of getting around or restoring damage, whether that be by kiting, killing, swapping off, or whatever else. No one should 99% of the time be concerned only with their parse, or in addition only to minimizing their own raid-damage taken). I'd like to see more abnormal compositions, more alternate ways of approaching a given problem or encounter. And yet we're mired instead in CC immunities, etc.]

I like the way you think. I play Summoner and right now the most exciting/creative thing I get to do is raise someone if we're struggling, and I've actually been scolded by the Tank(s)/other DPS for doing it a few times! Sure, when the healer raises someone, everyone is grateful, but if I do it I'm "playing my class wrong" and "forcing everyone to read my stupid raise macro"...

[Shurrikhan]

I like the way you think. I play Summoner and right now the most exciting/creative thing I get to do is raise someone if we're struggling, and I've actually been scolded by the Tank(s)/other DPS for doing it a few times! Sure, when the healer raises someone, everyone is grateful, but if I do it I'm "playing my class wrong" and "forcing everyone to read my stupid raise macro"...

I'm fine with the idea that if someone can do something more efficiently, they should be the one's doing it. I like optimization. What I dislike flawed assumption, for instance that massive healer threat, lethargy, disease, and a ton of DPS can't kill something more safely than having a tank on it. I like the tips and tricks. I like timing things up. I like the untelegraphed hits, and the little ways a tank might tell you with no chat and no strat warning that Wicked Wheel is about to go off. I like to have to watch the field, my allies, my enemies. I like knowing a fight inside and out, but no never so far that I'm not still thinking about things, adjusting.

When leveling I honestly loved it when my tanks or healers would up and leave at the start of dungeons, especially those before the MND/INT split. After a brief sigh of disappointment, we finally had to actually think about how we were going to pull it all off, build up methods, and then adapt them on the fly. ...Eventually it'd get to where 3 SMNs and a THM/BLM (Sleepga, focus target, and Bane, a.k.a. Banega) was just undeniably faster than bringing a tank or healer to Stone Vigil and everything was down pat, but in the meantime things were actually interesting.

For now I tend to get more enjoyment, or at least feel like there's more interaction or adaptation, even in a FFXIII 50+ Mission than in any 4-man boss fights. I like XIV's combat, a lot, I just feel like it could be a lot more, and that the narrowness of means of accomplishing the outputs or changes we associate with different roles is one of the factors most holding it back.

[Amariel34]

I love almost everything about this game. The things I dislike are level-gating the MSQ (I'm looking at YOU 40-50 range!), the horrible RNG on crafting*, and not being able to send mail to my alts on the same server. Yes I KNOW I don't NEED alts in this game. But I want them and I like them. So ;P.


*By this I also mean how you can get to 1000/2000 in quality but you are only at like 20% chance of HQ. That should be 50%!! >:[

[FinaSel]

Love:
1.) Game looks beautiful in my opinion, for an MMO. Love the scenery. The water, the sky, the clouds, the facial expressions, most clothing designs.
2.) Enough variety in character design and glamour to make each character feel unique.
3.) The story is interesting and most characters are likeable.
4.) Some quests follow an interesting story of their own, and can change the way NPCs talk to you in future.
5.) Contents Finder system is useful to find groups quickly.
6.) Crafting is fun, but... (see below)
7.) I am never bored. There is always something to do.


Do not love:
1.) Crafting is not challenging / rewarding enough. The only satisfaction from it is making my own gear or glamour gear.
2.) A ton of new crafting abilities were added, but there is no reason to use any of them.
3.) It's too easy to level everything. It's very easy to become a jack of all trades (yet master of none) quickly. Due to this, a lot of people have jobs at 60, but are all / almost all undergeared and unskilled. Leveling (including crafting / gathering) should be made more challenging.
4.) Most dungeons are just too easy. And the ones which are not have strange "requirements" to join. (See number 5)
5.) Why am I expected to have a ton of Accuracy as a White Mage to join Alexander Savage? Should I really need to replace all my materia with Tier 5 Accuracy to do this raid?
6.) Content is nerfed too quickly. As soon as you are finished making a great effort to complete something, in the next patch a week or two later, it is made very very easy. Now everyone can do the same thing in a couple of days, even though it took you a couple of weeks. It's a little sad.
7.) The is simply of lack of "wonder" and "amazement" in this game. I cannot put my finger on it. I remember FFXI (not my first MMO) and when I walked around Windurst and left into Sarutabaruta...rode the ship to Selbina and explored the caverns and avoided mobs and partied in the dunes, I was always struck with a sense of awe. Awe and apprehension of mobs and being killed. I vividly remember my first trek to Jeuno.
My first time running to my group in Kazham, avoiding those mobs too.
I remember the BGM, the atmosphere, and enemies...so vividly.

But if you asked me to remember my first time leaving Gridania and how I felt, I wouldn't be able to tell you.
The BGM of the city states? The surrounding areas? Can't recall it.
My first time walking somewhere, avoiding the mobs? Maybe it has never even happened.

I know this game is not FFXI, and I don't want it to be FFXI. But is is missing a sense of wonder and...just something.

[Rinuko]

Love:
Do not love:
1.) Crafting is not challenging / rewarding enough. The only satisfaction from it is making my own gear or glamour gear.
2.) A ton of new crafting abilities were added, but there is no reason to use any of them.

I know this game is not FFXI, and I don't want it to be FFXI. But is is missing a sense of wonder and...just something.

I dunno what level you are for crafting (i.e endgame 3 star crafter) but crafting can be challenging if you want it to be, depending on what rotation you like to use.
As for rewarding, do you hate being self sufficient and make your own shit (glamor, gear, gil)?

[Ash_]

Like:
- Lore, the world, the characters, the art.
- Character models look believable, like you could reach out and touch them.. and hug them.. and other things..
- 2.0 side quests were great for Greg alone.
- Houses look nice.
- Rogue quest line is best quest line.
- Silver chests that blow up Bards standing 100 feet away from heals.
- Can get by solo without dedicated teams.
- Void Ark questline/story + Ozma.

Dislike:
- 3.0 side quests so far have been really disappointing. They're too short, and the 3.0 Hildebrand quests lack that certain something that made the 2.0's story line great.
- Housing items that blow up on removal.
- Silver chests blowing up heals.
- The NIN quests were terrible. All the way into 3.0.
- No Oceanic server... how hard would it have been to host an official english server in Japan? Unlike the situation with the EU datacenter being hosted in the U.S., a eng server in Japan would've worked for us ANZ players.
- Being on a JP server is isolating at times.. still haven't done Coil, was hoping the raid finder would include it.
- Crafting specialisation remains useless and unused.
- Can't use house designs from other wards, i.e. Use a mist house design in lavender beds. It would add some much needed variety. And if people could use other ward designs maybe the Goblet would get more than 2 residents.
- Need more thief/rogue like character designs, less NIN.

[Enkidoh]

Love:

1) This game is pretty much everything I was looking for in a FF MMO - it fixed the faults that doomed 1.0 before it was even born and has improvements and content I always wanted in FFXI. Maybe I'm the target audience for this game but I love pretty much everything in it.
2) Story - the narrative is going in many interesting directions that are leaving me reevaluating my character's own history and her place in the world, and most importantly, I actually feel like my character truly is influencing the world rather than being a passive observer along for the ride like she was in FFXI.
3) Music - oh my goddess, I loved Uematsu's 1.0 OST but Soken.... has composed an amazing soundtrack with some utterly wonderful tracks, despite the occasional early misstep (mostly due to Soken's willingness to experiment and think 'outside the box'). The OST albums are well worth investing in as a result, the music is that good.
4) Gear designs - specifically, pretty dresses! Yes, my character is a knight, but sometimes she has to be reminded she is a girl and thus dresses accordingly. :3 It's true, glamour is the true endgame!
5) Weddings - I always wanted same-sex marriage in FFXI (my bf also played a girl) and alas had to settle for a non-binding role-play wedding - so you can imagine how overjoyed and excited we both were when Yoshi made weddings same-sex here in FFXIV. ^^
6) Mounts - self explanatory, who can resist tromping around in FFVI Magitek Armour (to the sound of Terra's Theme from FFVI to boot?)
7) Housing - although it can definitely be improved, being able to have a company house for our family was a wonderful feeling - the fact we even managed to get a house in the first place is something I am so thankful for.
8) It's full of references, injokes and sometimes subtle, sometimes blatantly obvious, fanservice tips-of-the-hat to every FF game that came before it, making it rather like FFIX (that was also one big FF fanservice romp too), like the aforementioned magitek armour. :3

Dislikes

1) More a meta thing but the main thing I dislike about this game is not the game itself, moreso a certain part of the community who constantly put down the game, it's development team and even other players simply because either the game isn't like FFXI or isn't specifically tailored just for the tiny proportion of hardcore endgame-focused players, or simply because the game is... shock horror.. popular! Face it everyone! This game will never be FFXI-2 HD, that style of game is obsolete for a reason, why the likes of broken game design like Absolute Virtue and exp loss on death have passed us by. Not that constructive criticism is bad of course, it's how it's said - too many people seem to articulate their issues with the game as personal attacks against the development team. Which saddens me greatly.
2) Minor little oversights and restrictions in certain functions of gameplay which more add up to a hill of beans than actual problems (such as the weather system being.... clock based and not truly random/based on a RNG).
3) The tendency to erode and tinker with the Armoury System simply to appeal to a certain portion of the player base (to try and make it more like FFXI's Job System, which it is not nor will ever be). The Armoury System is fundamentally sound and not a bad system, it is a different system. Players need to adjust to it, not expect the system to be adjusted to them. In a perfect world the 'Extra Jobs' would be given base classes to bring them in line with the other classes and Jobs (such as Musketeer for MCH, Ravager for DRK and Mystic for AST, and separate SCH from ACN and give it to a new class, like Mediator?), and bring back consistency to the Armoury System. Because personally I think it is becoming too messy and confusing now the way it is, it just needs to be refined and developed.
4) Main scenario duties should not be tailored to endgame-focused players - keep tough mechanics and high ilevel requirements for raids and stuff - again the endgame community tail is wagging the development dog which goes completely against the development team's ideology of trying to make FFXIV accessible and enjoyable to everyone regardless of playstyle or level of competency - it should not be for just a the hardcore 'elite'. Personally I think there should be two versions of a story duty made available with each story quest patch - a 'normal' mode version for those who just want to get past the story, and a 'hard mode' for the elite who want to be challenged by it. That way everyone is happy.
5) A more personal complaint but there were certain things that 1.0 did well that were completely scrapped in the changeover to ARR which I miss - the Path Companions especially (I also miss the Path of the Twelve itself period, I think it was a far more interesting organization than what the Scions were in ARR - Minfilia particularly was more reserved and thoughtful and Tataru was not the brainless airhead she is post Calamity). Then there is how the Echo was portrayed, the levequest 'factions' like Azeyma's Shields, the old GUI art style/ability icon art and font... all things I miss. But it's mostly the Path Companions I miss and would love to have back.

Other than that, I love FFXIV ARR so much and have the utmost respect for Yoshi and his development team. Yes, call me a 'white knight'... I'm a PLD after all! It goes with the territory!

[zcrash970]

Dislikes
4) Main scenario duties should not be tailored to endgame-focused players - keep tough mechanics and high ilevel requirements for raids and stuff - again the endgame community tail is wagging the development dog which goes completely against the development team's ideology of trying to make FFXIV accessible and enjoyable to everyone regardless of playstyle or level of competency - it should not be for just a the hardcore 'elite'. Personally I think there should be two versions of a story duty made available with each story quest patch - a 'normal' mode version for those who just want to get past the story, and a 'hard mode' for the elite who want to be challenged by it. That way everyone is happy.

I generally do not complain about other players' skill but REALLY!? The MSQ is tailored to endgame players skill levels and have tough mechanics!? What stacking for aoes, killing adds, or and taking weak tank busters is considered hard content now? The only this that was remotely challenging in the story was Steps of Fates when it released.
I would understand if you said not all main story related content needs to be lvl60 but you question the difficulty? This is one of the easiest combat mmos on the market these days. Literally, most of the mechanics in MSQ battles are rarely a threat. The only time I feel like you can really wipe on is failed dps checks on the adds on a primal on the ultimate (i.e. not killing Titan's heart in time) and to fail those checks your group either stop DPSing or multiple people somehow died before it spawned.

I realize i sound like a jerk and I will sound like an even bigger one when i say this but people like you that makes this game's combat feel stagnant at times and the game in general. This game hasn't really evolved at all. We still have the same basic stats, Alex is just coil 2.0, dungeons still have the same progression, and still the same gear progression. While we have gotten new types of content, they all revolve around killing monsters and that's it. That kind of content is getting extremely stale. There are thousands of different quest objects in the world of MMORPGs but I believe SE believes that FFXIV playerbase can't handle it. They probably believe that we can't handle a more complex combat or crafting system. They probably believe that we can't handle multiple stats and builds within this game. It's sad that most of the ps4 players I know are more interested in Neverwinter at the moment because it doesn't hold their hands.
This game has so much potential but it's playerbase is severely holding this game back