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

[MageBlack]

Reward structure, uninspiring gear stats, iLev treadmill, Job customizability. These are all kinda interconnected and have led to disengagement among the Veteran players. Let me elaborate.

Reward structure:
This drives your content and is the very heart of why people play games in the first place. Whether the reward is narrative (BCoB), Exp (regular dungeons), Gear, Mounts, Achievements, Fun Gameplay, or Materials for Crafting, these are the reasons we do content. For someone at level cap there are really only two of those that stay relevant; Fun gameplay or Acheivments. Even so all this fades rather rapidly when it comes down to doing the one new piece of it over and over and over again.
-Narrative was taken out of the harder content and put in the normal modes so everyone can experience it, once experienced there is no need to really revisit.
-EXP is pointless once you are at cap, nowhere left to progress to until an expansion.
-Gear is only a motivator if you like the look of it since iLev is automatically outclassed by the next patch and you only need top of the line stats if you are in it for,
-Gameplay/achievements but once you get the achievement that motivator is gone and after a week of grinding the same instance gameplay becomes more of a chore than something to enjoy (OMG!!! Hells lid AGAIN?!??!?).
-Mounts are a one shot reward too, once attained you cant sell extras or trade them for anything.

Uninspiring Gear Stats/iLev Treadmill:
The only thing you get gear for is to raise that one main stat and the two sub stats that actually do anything for your role. It is usually calculated in the iLev so you are always looking at the highest iLev for what gear you need. There is no reason to actually use an older piece of gear for anything stat related. There is no gear with set bonuses (except the crappy GC gear), no bonus effect (like fire does extra damage, or stealth lasts 3 seconds longer, Haste, etc). Since its just the iLev we are looking for and the majority of content you dont need cutting edge gear, why put yourself through all the stress of raiding when you can wait till the next patch and then go in to the last patches content that is now made easier because of natural iLev progression. Its constantly going up so there is a small margin of gear that hits the sweet spot of being relevant and thats only for a short time.

Job customizability:
Yes, its nice to see a NIN or WHM or WAR in your party and automatically know what you are getting but there is no way to improve upon that Job's utility. If you are a WAR that typically off-tanks you arent able to improve on the DPS aspect of your job in any meaningful way. There is no useful skill selection (the Role skills are really sad), no Traits you can tinker and tweak to take away from one aspect of your role and enhance another aspect, and no gear that you can lust after that will help give you that edge beyond that iLev. Even Materia is just a small extension of the iLev.

What could help:
- Skill trees. Give us some way to enhance parts of our gameplay that will work better with our playstyle. Sure some people might gimp themselves or someone will come up with "the best and only" setup that should be used but at least we have the ability personalize our preferred role. What would be really cool is to have "Advanced Jobs" where its like the Arcanist\Summoner\Scholar and that would changed based on how our skill tree was tweaked so I could keep playing my preferred job but have the versatility to shift to another role if the need was there. (yes, I know they regret that splitting of the role but it was a really good idea they should revisit. MRD\WAR\VIK would be fun!)

- Subjob. Instead of skill trees, if thats too much, why not give us a proper subjob system. So many Final Fantasies have this in some form or another and they are a great way to customize your character, for better or worse. I remember FFT I had Knight/Ninja so I could have great skills but also dual wield. Was it the best? Dunno, but it was fun! I think with the ability to take from a limited pool of skills/traits from your subjob you can have a lot of interesting combinations like a WHM/BLM where you take the fire and ice skills so you can really do good dps in a fight or go WHM/SCH so you have the added healing bonus traits. I realize the balancing become much more difficult but you will have a much more engaged playerbase as a result.

- Interesting gear bonus. Something like the Haste Belt in FFXI where you get this belt and you are reluctant to get another one even though they are a much lower level than the rest of your gear but give you a great extra boost. Give me some kind of stat that reduces the cast time of a specific spell or adds a reset to an instant weapon skill if another skill crits or something that would make me want to keep using older gear or look at someone and go "wtf is that? I need to find that and farm it!"

- Gear that stays relevant. Do something along the lines of giving us the entire relic questline and its ultimate form at the start of an expansion. That way, if someone is so inclined, they can grind out this extremely good weapon that will stay with them throughout the whole expansion. Make it crazy time consuming to get so you have to be really determined to get it but if you did it would be one heck of an accomplishment.

- Materia. Why not use Materia in the same capacity it was used in FFVII where it adds skills and abilities, have linked slots to further enhance things, and get us hunting for that rare piece to give us the edge we are looking for. A lot of that stale stat treadmill could be addressed with interesting Materia, you dont even need to make special gear, just give us some crazy rare materia we will hunt for to adjust it ourselves.

- Make more stuff sellable on the Market boards. I think if we could sell more of this stuff on the Market boards then we would have more of a reason to revisit content and go for that same reward even after we have gotten it for ourselves. Really, once we get the thing we wanted from the content there is no motivation to go back to it again. Unless you want to help a friend but that only goes so far.

To wrap this all up I do want to say this new Rathalos fight has been a hell of a lot of fun. it breaks the "tank 'n spank" hum drum we have all been conditioned to expect. People have to keep moving, watch for physical tells, heal them-damn-selves, and actually be present, mentally, for the fight. The content itself could be really crappy and not something we are interested in but if the reward is worth it people will put of with a lot more than you would think. I dont care much for the Chocobo racing but I got a 9th generation choco just because I wanted the mask. There are things about dungeon design and content design I could delve into but for me, at its core, the rewards are what really needs to change. If I can get the exact same reward handed to me if i'm patient that i can get if it put in a ton of effort right away, why would I bother to put myself through that frustration then watch the patient guy walk up to the counter a few months later and pick it up hassle free. It cheapens the experience.

Sorry for such a rambling rant, I hope I wasnt too scattered with my thoughts and that some of this made sense. I don't expect SE to act on anything I have said and I also still like the game for what it is, all I'm saying is here are some things I feel are missed opportunities that could take this game to the next level. Sometimes its just nice to vent and get your thoughts out. Thank you for listening.

[Claviusnex]

Along with some of the already posted stuff the shrinking world and story lines. The earlier lands felt large and spread out. To some degree with HW and larger degree with SB the lands are small enough you can see from one end to the other even without flight. Heck even Eureka Anemos feels larger with the twists and turns. I get the feeling SE has determined the main story line costs too much and have decided to go cheap with cut and paste stuff like Eureka and deep dungeons.

[Jellybums]

I would like the armory chest to work fine without me having to leave at least a slot in every tab empty just so I could switch classes. I mean what would be the point of that? That's 11 AC slots that you can't really use.

[hynaku]

One thing that's wrong with the game. They don't take in account for all lag and disconnects ones get all the time.

[SenorPatty]

-lore that sometimes impedes convenience
-Repetitive formula
-Game's engine continues to reveal how outdated it gets year by year and cascades really badly into the game. For almost every little thing that should be in a world renowned mmorpg (more customization options, better storage values, etc), it can't be done
-Cash Shop shows no signs of being flexible. Its not the prices that get me as much as the lack of options. Can't buy separate pieces. No account wide options. The cart was finally added, which is a nice touch.
-The distinct impression that jpn playerbase is given far more attention than other regions. I'm not just talking about who they choose to hear first. I'm also talking about interactions between GMs and/or other staff that go beyond responding to support queries. (Like just having fun popping into the game and chatting it up with players).

There are some other things but they're not significant enough (for me) to put up as it changes depending on my mood. But for the above, that's what I really don't feel good about.

[NessaWyvern]

-The distinct impression that jpn playerbase is given far more attention than other regions. I'm not just talking about who they choose to hear first. I'm also talking about interactions between GMs and/or other staff that go beyond responding to support queries. (Like just having fun popping into the game and chatting it up with players).

I heard they visited tonberry once and didn't like it. Too many english speaking players there, who trolled the GM :P

[Ryskim]

· I don’t like classes starting at level 50 or 60. They should be leveled from level 1 as all other classes. Summoners will never learn how to operate a scholar because they are leveling it without playing the class, for example. Leveling up to 70 is a long trip. I find more fun in the trip rather than the goal.

· as other user previously said, they are sticking to a formula tha was made 5 years ago. After all this time:
- classes can not use more than one type of weapon
- there is no elemental system (fire, wind, holy, earth, dark, thunder, water, ice, unaspected) making the game way too simple, especially for mages (BLM)
- no skill combos
- No support role
- world doesn’t feel dangerous as in FFXI

As per classes:
- completely remove jobs, make them all classes (and all starting at level 1)
- turn Arcanist into a necromancer or any other debuffer class (Oracle?)
- completely separate scholar from summoner
- make rogue/thief a real thing with “steal” and high survivality (“flee”)
- give us a beastmaster, a blue mage, a geomancer and a dancer

As per the game
- open world group leveling and PvP, this game needs to be heavily uninstanced
- a more dangerous world
- notorious monsters with great items (watch out for bots)

If you’re going to say “this is not XI” save it for yourself. Im not looking for XI in XIV. The point of this post is simple: Yoshida MUST take some chances amd risks and stop sticking to “the formula” that much.

[HyoMinPark]

RE: Summoner & Scholar

Honestly, the developers need to fully separate the two, and I’m hoping they do this in 5.0. However, don’t expect one to have a base class, as they have repeatedly said that they are moving away from the class system (and a lot of 1.0 systems in general; the elemental system fell into this). I’m speculating that SMN will evolve naturally from ACN, and that SCH will be a level 30 job one can accept/continue as similar to DRK/AST/MCH in Heavensward.

[MomomiMomi]

Okay, I'm going to try to keep this short because I could go on about how horrible the materia system is, especially for crafters.

It's honestly one of the worst systems in the game. They could maybe revamp this into being something fun, but instead it's just RNG that costs you time and/or gil.

You know what? Forget it. I'm just going to sum it up with this.

This is how I feel every time I'm melding to be able to craft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8fNpYHxUI8


Why? Just why? Why would you make your players suffer like this?

[Kaonis]

Okay, I'm going to try to keep this short because I could go on about how horrible the materia system is, especially for crafters.

It's honestly one of the worst systems in the game. They could maybe revamp this into being something fun, but instead it's just RNG that costs you time and/or gil.

You know what? Forget it. I'm just going to sum it up with this.

This is how I feel every time I'm melding to be able to craft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8fNpYHxUI8


Why? Just why? Why would you make your players suffer like this?

The whole overmelding nonsense is pretty much the main reason I gave up on being a serious crafter/gatherer. I did it once way back in 2.1 and after then decided to never inflict that pain on myself again.