Pet Peeves/Feedback from a new player

[Commoner]

Hi all,

Just some of my thoughts/feedback on some of the more annoying parts of FFXIV. I've only played a week or so, but these are some of my "top x pet peeves" thus far (meant constructively). My most annoying at the top:

1. Inventory Management; endlessly moving things from retainer, to inventory, to sale, to ... where was that ... oh, now I have to search for it ... it was in the retainer and now I have to go to a summoning point, which takes away from the task I was just trying to do ....; stopping me from doing what I want to do to move items around .... recipe for quitting; the isearch is helpful, though, it is necessary; the splitting items like the armoury is helpful, though it would almost have to be applied to all types (ingredients, reagents, food, stone, etc.) to help solve the problem
2. At night (in game) it gets really dark; too dark; you have to turn up the contrast, brightness/contrast, etc, still, often, you can't see where you're going... literally ; just give me a "maximum darkness setting" please
3. "Repair All"; It's not really a repair all; you have to Repair all "equipment", then Repair All for main, then Repair All for .... and after you've done repairing all with Dark Matter, you have to do the same thing, again, at the vendor for the ones you can't repair ; annoying, not fun, ruins the game; please give a "repair everything I have anywhere" button
4. Out-levelling content; I think the "Road to 60" and other exp buffs to catch new players up-to-speed are good, though, I would say this also comes at a cost; specifically, the worst for me is not being able to access content; for example, I'm level 50+ for several jobs, like gathering, though I can't access the "above level 50" areas until I finish the Goliath "Main Scenario Quests" ... talk about endless, and by the time you're halfway through, you just want to the MSQ done, or do something else ... like play another game .... this can become a particular issue in crafting/gathering in that you can't get your materials, so essentially all jobs slow to a crawl above 50 until you finish the MSQ; I think there is a valid counter "just finish the MSQ", though that takes .... full days maybe weeks of endless monotony, just so I can start reusing my other jobs now; I'm not sure I have a suggestion for this, I'm just saying it's an emergent property of the game
5. You have to run to a Aethernet shard to teleport while in cities .... while in a city, I want to just teleport to a destination shard (like the Aethernet teleport); frankly the Smith/Armor Guilds need a shard
6. "Enter the {location}" defaults are set to "No"; I want to go in there, but I have to select Yes, then enter (on the keyboard) ... why annoy me with 100's of extra detracting, "move the focus from 'No' to 'Yes'" on the 1 out of 100 off chance that I don't want to go in?

Once again, all this meant as constructive, though certainly enough of the points annoy me to no end

[Rymm]

Welcome to the game! It's always nice to get new blood in the community. I hope your enjoyment of the game is enough to offset your annoyances. The game can obviously be benefited by some QoL improvements but is still a great game and has come a long way since 1.0 and even 2.0.

1. This one I honestly don't notice too much. When it comes to crafting, it's mostly about prep-work; I either just make sure I've already got what I need on me or I hunker down somewhere near a retainer bell/MB and work there. I don't know if I'm just used to the system or what, but I've never really had a problem with the inventory aside from item bloat. (Seriously, for an omni-crafter the two default retainers are just not nearly enough space.) My husband, on the other hand, played a lot of Guild Wars before coming to FF14 and complained long and loud about not being able to craft with mats that weren't in his personal inventory, so ymmv I guess.

2. Another one I've never noticed. It gets fairly dark for about 1 in-game hour (3ish minutes real time) at midnight and then the sky starts brightening up again to the point where most everything is visible, if a little shadowy. Is your monitor set darker normally? Or it could be a video card thing, maybe? That's getting more into the technical side of the game and is admittedly out of my expertise.

3. God yes, this one is super tedious. I've no idea why it's broken down like this but I've noticed that it is grouped the same way at the armoire and glamour chest, so there may be some 1.0 spaghetti code shenanigans at work here. An actual 'repair all' button would be nice.

4. The lvl 50 MSQ grind is infamous; I passed it long before Road to 60 was a thing but I can only imagine how it exacerbates the problem. I do have good news for you though! SE learned from their mistake on this one and post-ARR the MSQ is much more streamlined and their storytelling vastly improves. As long as you stick to it on your main job and don't do sidequests or grind dungeons/deep dungeons, the MSQ in HW and SB will give you just the right amount of xp to keep your level on par with the content you have unlocked.

5. Not sure why this would be a thing. As someone who played a lot of MMOs in the past where you had to walk everywhere, the aether shards in the city already seem like a huge luxury to me so walking 20 feet to the nearest one doesn't phase me. It would admittedly be nice to mount up in the cities but with the number of people who think it's funny to block NPCs with huge mounts, well... "this is why we can't have nice things." And the aftcastle aethershard's placement has always seemed a little off to me too. But heck, we finally got one in Ul'dah next to the MBs, so maybe there is hope for SE changing that one around too!

6. I'm not even sure what you mean on this one, sorry. I just click yes with my mouse, or are you on a console? I've no idea what the UI is like there so I can't comment on this one.

[Commoner]

Welcome to the game! It's always nice to get new blood in the community. I hope your enjoyment of the game is enough to offset your annoyances. The game can obviously be benefited by some QoL improvements but is still a great game and has come a long way since 1.0 and even 2.0.

1. This one I honestly don't notice too much. When it comes to crafting, it's mostly about prep-work; I either just make sure I've already got what I need on me or I hunker down somewhere near a retainer bell/MB and work there. I don't know if I'm just used to the system or what, but I've never really had a problem with the inventory aside from item bloat. (Seriously, for an omni-crafter the two default retainers are just not nearly enough space.) My husband, on the other hand, played a lot of Guild Wars before coming to FF14 and complained long and loud about not being able to craft with mats that weren't in his personal inventory, so ymmv I guess.

2. ... Is your monitor set darker normally? Or it could be a video card thing, maybe?
...
5. Not sure why this would be a thing. As someone who played a lot of MMOs in the past where you had to walk everywhere, the aether shards in the city already seem like a huge luxury to me so walking 20 feet to the nearest one doesn't phase me. It would admittedly be nice to mount up in the cities but with the number of people who think it's funny to block NPCs with huge mounts, well... "this is why we can't have nice things." And the aftcastle aethershard's placement has always seemed a little off to me too. But heck, we finally got one in Ul'dah next to the MBs, so maybe there is hope for SE changing that one around too!

6. I'm not even sure what you mean on this one, sorry. I just click yes with my mouse, or are you on a console? I've no idea what the UI is like there so I can't comment on this one.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the response.

Definitely with a large, complex, immersive game, the large amount of good has side effects. I've crafted/gathered a bunch, and inventory issues are the worst. And there is no way I will pay for extra retainers, for what is essentially a broken inventory system (be it console limitations, or 1.0 spaghetti code the client doesn't really care); when they become too much of an issue it will be time to leave.

For #2, standard card; it's just too dark in some areas/times, or at least google turned up some others with the same complaint without good resolution.

For #5, speeds in cities are just too slow, particularly for areas without close teleports that need to be visited regularly; perma sprint might be helpful; game time is precious and limited, especially considering there is so much content, and everywhere tons of quests I have to pass by and will likely never do

For #6, try entering areas (like homes, etc) with your keyboard and the "Confirm" key (under the System keybinds). You always have to switch from "no" to "yes"

[Mahrze]

6. I'm not even sure what you mean on this one, sorry. I just click yes with my mouse, or are you on a console? I've no idea what the UI is like there so I can't comment on this one.

Confirmation text is by default set to "no". Seems they have a global rule of all at no or all at yes.

Understandable in confirmations for raises by literally you have to confirm doing everything.

[Commoner]

Confirmation text is by default set to "no". Seems they have a global rule of all at no or all at yes.

Understandable in confirmations for raises by literally you have to confirm doing everything.

Seems like it, though not in other places. For example, "Hand Over" items, uses the positive path; Often I can just hit confirm 3 times and it will hand over the items. Which is especially nice now, as I'm handing over an item to different characters 8 times.

[Rymm]

For #6, try entering areas (like homes, etc) with your keyboard and the "Confirm" key (under the System keybinds). You always have to switch from "no" to "yes"

Whoa, all these years playing the game and I never realized there were commands to interact with the environment via keyboard, lol. I always just used my mouse for movement and interaction (to use your example, right-click the house and then left-click yes) and keyboard for hotbars and ui shortcuts. Learn something new every day, I guess.

I can see how it would get tedious correcting that all the time if you use your keyboard for interactions. Maybe if SE added some option that you could set the default to the option of your choosing? I guess add that to the list of small QoL adjustments that would improve the game.

[Nixxe]

Welcome to the game! It's always nice to get new blood in the community. I hope your enjoyment of the game is enough to offset your annoyances. The game can obviously be benefited by some QoL improvements but is still a great game and has come a long way since 1.0 and even 2.0.

1. This one I honestly don't notice too much. When it comes to crafting, it's mostly about prep-work; I either just make sure I've already got what I need on me or I hunker down somewhere near a retainer bell/MB and work there. I don't know if I'm just used to the system or what, but I've never really had a problem with the inventory aside from item bloat. (Seriously, for an omni-crafter the two default retainers are just not nearly enough space.) My husband, on the other hand, played a lot of Guild Wars before coming to FF14 and complained long and loud about not being able to craft with mats that weren't in his personal inventory, so ymmv I guess.

This game's UI is generally pretty cumbersome, which might be fine, except it doesn't allow addons. There are a ton of areas of the game that require pretty pointless menu navigating simply because the system was designed in accordance with archaic norms and then never updated. Retainers are an especially egregious example of this, and the fact that you can't move items between retainers directly and have to close out of one, then go into another are just a lot of pointless busywork. It'd be much better if accessing any retainer's inventory opened up a shared interface where each retainer was its own tab and you could sort all of them simultaneously or select individual retainers to be excluded from sorting. It would also help immensely if there were more explicit categories for crafting reagents that the game recognized so that you could select certain retainers to prioritize storing those items. For instance, you might set your 8th retainer to several options, including ingots, lumber, and cloth, and then when you deposit a stack of cobalt ingots, it will go to that 8th retainer, even if your 1st retainer has an open slot.

Another issue is that you can't use your retainer without pulling all of your stuff off the market board while you do it, which is just obnoxious. I'm sure it's a limitation of the design, but it's one that really needs correcting. At a minimum, it shouldn't pull my stuff off the MB unless I open up the window for placing items on the MB.

[Skivvy]

[*]At night (in game) it gets really dark; too dark; you have to turn up the contrast, brightness/contrast, etc, still, often, you can't see where you're going... literally ; just give me a "maximum darkness setting" please

My buddy and I used to joke all the time about the game feels like it's almost always night time. And if it's not night, it's raining. Bonus points if it's night time AND raining.

But yeah, I agree. The night does feel a bit too dark to me as well. My monitors are fine, my settings are fine. It may just be a prefernce - my other MMOs don't bother me in this way.

[Stormfur]

I'm glad this game doesn't allow add-ons. If they ever did, they'd need to allow console players to have them too, which likely won't happen. I just don't want to have to install a bunch of third party stuff to do what SHOULD have been do-able in game.

Even parsers vs. non-parsers, if they'd tell us how we personally did, that would be a huge help...but I don't think they will. I'm not sure why.

[Skivvy]

I'm glad this game doesn't allow add-ons. If they ever did, they'd need to allow console players to have them too, which likely won't happen. I just don't want to have to install a bunch of third party stuff to do what SHOULD have been do-able in game.

Even parsers vs. non-parsers, if they'd tell us how we personally did, that would be a huge help...but I don't think they will. I'm not sure why.

Obviously the console players are a concern, but in my limited experience with games that allow add-ons, they were great. In a perfect world, the developer should be able to provide these features, but most times they don't. The gaming community is incredibly clever and can create some amazing things to make your experience more enjoyable.