What do you like and dislike most in FFXIV?

[zcrash970]

It just requires actually training players, rather than lowering difficulty by chopping content at the knees.

And that's the thing. In SE attempts to make this game so accessible to anybody of any player skill, they made it so the game hold your hand until you get ex primals. That's why so many think raiding is impossible because there is such a major difficulty gap between dungeons and raiding. They tried so hard to make the game accessible that the game has no depth and everything can be taken by face value.

At some point in time, Yoshi-P started to believe accessible means easy and straightforward....

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Like

• Combat: Despite action combat being vogue at the moment, I prefer the simplicity of tab targeting and the dance of mechanics. Fights feel fluid and engaging.
• Story: I mostly stayed away from MMOs due to their lack of story and sense of world building outside mundane fetch quests. Although far from perfect, FFXIV does a solid job offering what few MMOs do.
• Crafting: I adore crafting. Stress inducing though it may be. The fact this patch cycle allowed for newer crafters to "catch up" had me thrilled.
• Atmosphere: FFXIV is rich with subtle attentions to detail you rarely see. World enemies feel like they belong wherever they are and cities feel busy.

Dislike

• Difficulty: Or lack thereof. While I appreciate the devs focus on the infamous "broader audience". Content lacks a degree of risk. New dungeons simply "exist" as they certainly serve no threat. Healers should not be able to pop Regen on their assigned tank then DPS thereafter nor should tanks be capable of pulling the entire room. Now I certainly do not expect Savage. But there ought to be some middle ground here.
• A.I variance: Continuing from above. Trash mobs need something beyond easily dodgable AoEs. None ever feel remotely threating. Short of that, then some form of "elite" mob should roam around. No matter the method, enemies need something unique.
• Expert Roulette: Why limit us to two dungeons per patch cycle? Toss those dungeons into the 60 roulette and have another be random content; from dungeons to trials.
• Sprintbonding: Considering we essentially throw away gear each patch. This really ought to be easier to increase and/or provide better rewards.

[Noshpan]

Like: Fem Roes & Male Miqos

Dislike: How much it can be a PITA to purchase Crysta, especially if you have a new card. >_> Seriously. It's 2016 and this is still an issue. And the netcoding.

[Brannigan]

Like: Music, art, some encounters (especially 2nd coil)

Dislike: Gear. We only have 6 relevant stats and two of them (Parry and Piety) only affect a couple of classes. Part of this is also how stats don't affect gameplay AT ALL. We need more on-crit effects, things that are helped by skillspeed, and determination needs to be revamped. We also need a few new stats to mix things up and more gear choices per tier.

[Jennika]

Like:

art style
characters/story
crafting
glamour*


dislike:

open world needs to be utilized more
gender and role-locked glamour
lack of midcore content
every even patch obsoletes the rest of the game at "endgame"
lack of interesting stats and variety in general in the battle system and gear

[NolLacnala]

Dislike:
- Small butts

^^^
This? This. Fixit fixit fixit.
vvvv

[KitingGenbu]

^^^
This? This. Fixit fixit fixit.
vvvv

Dont fem au ra butts look like the old ones? They definitely look better than the rest of the female butts for sure. Yoshida's excuse was how armor fits which was why he changed the shape yet he makes their butts look better than the rest....makes sense.

More on point

Likes:
Story (for the most part)
Most 2.X armor looked good
Coil fights were entertaining
Ability to change jobs in the open world (would've loved XI more if it has this)
2.0 BRD
Watching DRKs cry when they pop Blood Price and have a whm spam holy

Dislikes:
Ilvls
Cast-time physical DPS (MCH/BRD)
Lack of Job versatility
No true support role (Could've honestly made brd like Rift's brd if you had to have every class be able to do some degree of dps)
No true communication between the community and development team
Updating the cash shop at the same rate or faster than the actual game
Lack of gear stat variety
No test servers so they waste less time and money producing fail content like LoV and Diadem only to waste more time and money down the road to revamp them.

[RiceisNice]

Like:

-The overall presentation of fights, equipment and aesthetic appeal (to an extent).
-The Story and supplemental lore through side quests and dialogue.


Dislike:
-The design of throw-away content, and by extension, lack of focus in content direction
-Overselling and under-presenting of content (MCH, and other expansion features such as FC crafting),
-Direction of the aforementioned aesthetics in general. This would mean things like making every mount flying in some manner, the design of equipment like the PotD being glowsticks and the yokai glamour.
-The recycled battle system; whether it be FATEs, dungeons, PotD, Aquapolis or open world fights, all non-boss mobs can be defined as something that either does a weaponskill/.5 second spell for slight damage, or telegraphed AoE. It starts to get tiring when you run into this for 2 years, which then goes into...
-Lack of middle difficulty. You either have bosses that become overgeared on release (EX dungeons) or soul-busting savage that requires a static commitment. Though this is mostly a problem for long-standing players. The very scarce content I ever find to be enjoyable anymore are the EX trials since they don't boil down to 10-15 minutes of generic trash mobs but don't require me to find a solid group and put off time to commit.

And I'm sorry I have to say this despite OP's disclaimer, but mostly because my forum account is going to go on lock soon due to ingame inactivity.

-The community. I've been mostly reading threads about how people dislike the content, people who like the content, and this is my take away. The former gets a lot more posts, but more than half the posts typically degrade into disagreements about how OP is wrong, telling them not to do the content. Compare it to the latter, it typically drops off the radar really fast and has much, much less posts in comparison, and they're generally all in agreement. Honestly it feels like a witch hunt the moment someone voices their opinion about how they dislike the content (within reason, but that's honestly the case for most of them), and they typically don't go out of their way to chastise someone for liking the content (again, within reason). Likewise with topics who have people voicing their dissatisfaction with the direction of the game and unsubbing; it's gotten bad to the point that someone felt the need to (inaccurately) point out that the OP was still playing the game, despite having an inactive account after that topic.

Honestly if mobs that weren't bosses were a bit more involved in every area, it'd address alot of my issues in regards to content like PotD, Aquapolis, and even Diadem. Likewise with expanding the horizon a bit when it comes to gameplay design (jobs and combat mechanic), not just design that utilizes the same gameplay (instanced zones and drops). A release of an expansion is the perfect time to do that, but areas like MCH, FC crafting, airships and red scrips feel very, very underutilized in making them truly standout and become something that remains a variable in each major patch.

[Worldofwarcraft]

I like the community
What I hate? The Community >.<

[Laerune]

I like how NPC who show up in other sidequests. remember your avatar, this makes the world feel alive. I dislike how the game is stuck in a status quo and I dislike how they keep bringing back the ATMA RNGHELL, even after alot of players complained about it.