Ok, lets do it, WHAT is wrong with this game?

[Solarra]

A few things that have struck me:

The social aspect is undervalued

- eg. Anemos unexpectedly brought people together. We co-operated in there and helped each other, people enjoyed the social aspect. Pagos has trashed this mode of play in favour of a competitive grind that makes people unwilling to help others at best, to being downright hostile at worst.

- Free Companies seem forgotten. There is very little advantage in being in an active FC. There is no content for FCs besides crafting which has limited participation and not many rewards (house skins on the retainer loot list means they can be picked up at a fraction of the cost of making them, if you are prepared to wait).
The storage in the chest is pitiful and the organisation of the ranks frequently leads to 'theft' or griefing.

- Housing is arranged in wards but there is nothing in the game to promote interaction between players or to give the wards any individual identity or neighbourhood feeling.


Content has no longevity - I see this as a problem because it cuts down on things to do in content lulls. In WoW I spent a lot of time running old dungeons and raids for mounts, minions or glam.

- An achievement system that encouraged you to go back and do challenges would help, but then you'd need to add in rewards for this. At present most of the achievement rewards are things I've already got.

- rewards from old content frequently appear on the retainer loot list or in content like PotD or HoH meaning that I've no incentive to go back to the original content.


Existing Resources are underused

- There is very little openworld content and too many things are instanced for my taste. Everything feels tucked into it's own little box. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if we weren't so cut off when instanced, no tells, not able to see who logs on in the fc etc.

- I was excited when they said there would be a gather/craft component to the raid in SB but instead of being able to revisit the instance and maybe hunt for items to craft into something, it was just make or buy this item off the Market Board and turn it in once. Considering how long the unlock was for the Lighthouse that was a huge disappointment.

[Zephanoa]

I had started on a long list of things to bring to the table and after a while I just stopped because of how extensive the list was but I will give a summary.


1. Raid content lacks substance. I concur with others that the raids are just trials.
2. Gear progression isn't creative and is mostly vertical.
3. DPS checks are cheap mechanics. Especially in a game in which you don't have any way to have an in-game gauge.
4. Where is 3rd party extensions? At least allow us to make our own tools for which you have decided against placing development time in.
5. The companion app is just.. bad. We have a calendar that we can't access in game to get excited about. Right now the app has a 2.1 rating compared to WOW's 4.0. Micro-transactions are steep and chat functions limited.

6. Duty recorder was a great idea... except we haven't seen or heard anything new about it and its too limited to be useful to people to use as a tool to learn with.
7. Allowing gear to be dyed because it is augmented has always been a sore spot. It is recycling at it's finest though. Oh and recycling old gear to give as new gear so that people can finally use them for glamour on the job they want. Just allow everyone to glamour whatever especially if you are only going to release it later to do that very thing.

8. The removal of the additional dungeon has made expert roulette very monotonous.

9. HoH didn't provide enough substance to want me to do it. The mount I can live without, the story isn't really gripping, and because I am already leveled in all of my jobs its sort of moot. Oh and the weapon will last all of one month before the next patch.
10. Relic weapon progression is a substantial grind for a short gain to only be relevant for roughly a month.

11. Pagos was a step backwards. NMs spawn less, there is a hardcore grind with little incentive to hit the grind. People hardly talk because it is that much of a -dedicated- grind.
12. Where is the expansion on FCs? There should be lots more functions built in for what FCs can do.
13. Odd-numbered patches feel increasingly more empty.



There are hosts of other problems but it just feels like what we have to look forward to these days are A) Unfinished B) Recycled or C) Off the mark. That's not to say that there isn't a lot to love about the game but its becoming increasingly frustrating. Especially when you realize every next odd numbered patch you find yourself logging in less and less than the last odd numbered patch.

[almae]

The housing system.

There is too many items, and you cant avoid getting them.

Crafters need items that you can only get from gardening, and you cant do it unless you have a house.

I didn't like Eureka, still working on it.. I hope they get rid of that system in the future.

[hynaku]

What's wrong with game is Yoshi is over it and won't listen to player base.

[Deceptus]

The fact that in my humble opinion:

The developers base decisions on what they want to happen not what players might want to happen.

The developers have rested on their laurels and player goodwill since 2.0

Determined FFXIV to be a cash cow and do minimal innovation (it seems like anything they try to innovate on they screw up). It really does feel like the game is on autopilot right now.

Which in turn has caused the game to stagnate.

[splinter1545]

My two biggest gripes with the game is it's pointless repetition and lack of any difficulty in anything outside Savage and Ultimate.

I've been playing the game since Phase 3 of the 2.0 beta, and the game has been the same exact thing every patch and expansion. Even the MSQ feels like it's being rehashed somewhat, as a lot of the "twists" they throw at us can be speculated because it's either predictable, or they build it up in the most obvious way possible that it'd be better if they just straight up tell us the plot at that point. I don't mind if the MSQ goes on the same path, since it's one and done content, but they seriously can't keep the tome farms and weekly 24 mans going forever. I don't know what they can do, but they need to do something before the playerbase starts bleeding into other games.

As for the difficulty, this will be difficult because the game heavily leans to the casual playerbase, which is okay. But it seems that all the content that leans towards that spectrum of players are easy, faceroll content. They're sorta working on this with (the incredibly flawed) Eureka, but the actual bulk content that people do for end game progression is boring and just not engaging. I'm not asking for dungeons to be savage difficulty, but at least have some difficulty in them, same for normal trials and raids. I feel that slightly increasing the difficulty will also help close the gap for players that preform suboptimal in their roles, as the content at the moment doesn't discourage poor rotations to clear.

I have more issues with the game, but most people already mentioned them. I enjoy this game, or I wouldn't be playing it for 5 years. But I feel like it's really going downhill in terms of quality with this expansion.

[ko_]

My two biggest gripes with the game is it's pointless repetition and lack of any difficulty in anything outside Savage and Ultimate.

I've been playing the game since Phase 3 of the 2.0 beta, and the game has been the same exact thing every patch and expansion. Even the MSQ feels like it's being rehashed somewhat, as a lot of the "twists" they throw at us can be speculated because it's either predictable, or they build it up in the most obvious way possible that it'd be better if they just straight up tell us the plot at that point. I don't mind if the MSQ goes on the same path, since it's one and done content, but they seriously can't keep the tome farms and weekly 24 mans going forever. I don't know what they can do, but they need to do something before the playerbase starts bleeding into other games.

As for the difficulty, this will be difficult because the game heavily leans to the casual playerbase, which is okay. But it seems that all the content that leans towards that spectrum of players are easy, faceroll content. They're sorta working on this with (the incredibly flawed) Eureka, but the actual bulk content that people do for end game progression is boring and just not engaging. I'm not asking for dungeons to be savage difficulty, but at least have some difficulty in them, same for normal trials and raids. I feel that slightly increasing the difficulty will also help close the gap for players that preform suboptimal in their roles, as the content at the moment doesn't discourage poor rotations to clear.

I have more issues with the game, but most people already mentioned them. I enjoy this game, or I wouldn't be playing it for 5 years. But I feel like it's really going downhill in terms of quality with this expansion.

With how people complain about clearing things cause people can't play I don't think the game should be harder. Not when we have a thread over 1k posts plus complaining about people not being able to do said -easy- content. :C

[reivaxe]

1- The combat system in this game is sooo limited that I guess they feels they haven to make things "Harder" by either adding mobs or making big fights a game of 4-8 man jump rope. But that's not really true, you can make things harder and more interesting and rewarding with OUT just adding mobs or making mind bending jump rope fights.

2- Dngs have become a forced linear path. Gone are the days I could rush pass all the mobs to get to that boss fight and make the Dng run far shorter cause my group doesn't NEED the EXP from it and are only there for the rewards and drops or to face a boss we like. Nope, it's all "kill everything here before you can progress ... then repeat".

3- The relic system is getting boned non-stop and the world is empty. Like, I don't get it. Why send people who want the casual best weapon to an instanced land where they are supposed to mindlessly grind? Then, why make that even HARDER to do in the following step? Why not take this big ass world you've built and fill it up with the meaty BIG EVENT, layed setup kinda fates and hunts that encourage people to share information and have THAT be the progress for the casual players? Instead we have everyone either sitting in their instanced housing area or in a city or in the relic instance when not doing dngs or trails or raids.

[MPNZ]

Mostly, endless atma farming

[van_arn]

My two biggest gripes with the game is it's pointless repetition and lack of any difficulty in anything outside Savage and Ultimate.

I've been playing the game since Phase 3 of the 2.0 beta, and the game has been the same exact thing every patch and expansion. Even the MSQ feels like it's being rehashed somewhat, as a lot of the "twists" they throw at us can be speculated because it's either predictable, or they build it up in the most obvious way possible that it'd be better if they just straight up tell us the plot at that point. I don't mind if the MSQ goes on the same path, since it's one and done content, but they seriously can't keep the tome farms and weekly 24 mans going forever. I don't know what they can do, but they need to do something before the playerbase starts bleeding into other games.

As for the difficulty, this will be difficult because the game heavily leans to the casual playerbase, which is okay. But it seems that all the content that leans towards that spectrum of players are easy, faceroll content. They're sorta working on this with (the incredibly flawed) Eureka, but the actual bulk content that people do for end game progression is boring and just not engaging. I'm not asking for dungeons to be savage difficulty, but at least have some difficulty in them, same for normal trials and raids. I feel that slightly increasing the difficulty will also help close the gap for players that preform suboptimal in their roles, as the content at the moment doesn't discourage poor rotations to clear.

I have more issues with the game, but most people already mentioned them. I enjoy this game, or I wouldn't be playing it for 5 years. But I feel like it's really going downhill in terms of quality with this expansion.

I'd say the normal mode trials in Stormblood and beyond are solid difficulty-wise, but the playerbase is so out of shape at this point in the game it can barely handle them.

SE's reflexive action is to just make this stuff easier, but in reality the stuff before it needs to be brought up in difficulty so players are prepared to take on, say, the menagerie before they're required to do it for their storyline.

The game does a terrible job of teaching players how to play it these days.