Please Make this the Best MMO

[Rohen]

Please bare with me as I never post anything anywhere online.

I started playing MMOs back when EverQuest was still a thing. I've also invested heavily in WoW before it went Pandaish. I've tried almost every single other MMO out there but they have zero personality. I then started playing FFXIV ARR during beta and have kept coming back every expansion.

These games when I first started to play them were magic, an unexplored virtual world, the immersion with the exploration and the consequences of going down a dungeon unprepared with whatever party you wanted and with ZERO loading (one seamless experience), the choices that you were free to make, it all had meaning.

FFXIV ARR on the other hand, gives you almost no choice in anything, and thus has never had that magic. Perhaps it doesn't want to and perhaps it will never go down that path of the classical MMO which I and a couple of other unique souls crave, but I guess that's something that unfortunately we'll have to live with.

So at least let's just get some things right with the current system. The immersion breaking ability to switch out classes in an instant, even though this is part of the FF classical way of having and managing your class, is incredibly immersion breaking, or the quick teleportation that just always has me asking myself, "just sneak in and place a teleportation thingy and teleport into the enemies' base and presto", or the incredibly ridiculous way the characters are always skating around with their little animation lock, or the way in which all classes are 100% exactly the same and offer no variation, no uniqueness, minus the cosmetics, or the fact that not a single ability in the game makes you feel powerful nor special.

I keep coming back to FFXIV ARR, and I really want this game to shine, because quite frankly, not only am I an MMO fan, but a FF fan as well.

So with that out of the way here is a list of things I would really hope they get worked on sometime in the future.

[Rohen]

Please fix the unresponsive movement

• Now I play FFXIV ARR on both a powerful PC with an incredibly good internet connection and the PS5 Pro, and previously on the PS4 normal and Pro. The game has always had a sort of "lag" when characters are running around on screen.

• This is even more obvious during PvP, all characters look so weird when they're running around because it's almost as if the servers are trying to keep up with the user inputs, perhaps because of several layers of processing to know where the player actually is. Also, when dodging those red circle on the ground you just never know if you dodged it in time because it just doesn't feel responsive. WoW feels incredibly responsive and quick. If you are out of the red in WoW, you are 100% sure you are out of it, but in FFIXV, if you are out of red you could still get hit because to the server you actually was not.

Please fix the skating

• When you are performing an action with a cast time and have to move, the body is in an animation lock during movement. It looks really bad, very immersion breaking, and I cannot believe they've never improved on this.

• I know this can be fixed because the ninja "almost" got it right. When casting mudra when standing still, there is one animation. But when casting mudra during movement, there is no animation happening and it looks more natural... that is until you cast the actual mudra and are once again doing the standing still animation while you are still moving.

Please give characters abilities that are actually fun make a difference during combat

• The vast majority of classes in the game don't have fun abilities to use, OR the fun abilities they do have are very limited in use either because it's locked behind a long cool down or a limited number of uses. Why?

• Example, the ninja's teleportation, why just two? It's very fun to teleport around in smoke, why are you limiting that? The black mage's "sliding" ability, only works with the ley line active! While on the Black Mage, the ley lanes just give the black mage a faster cast time, and that is not at all fun.

• Another example, the black mage just casts fire, thunder, ice, and have ONE crowd control ability, sleep, that is never used... for anything! It could potentially be really fun for crowd controlling pulls, giving the black mage a more unique roll but nope. The deep dungeon has an item that turns everything into a frog... why doesn't the black mage have this?

• The red mage's uniqueness, the melee attacks, are few and far in between and always the same! The dragoon's jumping ability, few and far in between. Every character can only dash/charge twice... WHY. Give us crowd control, remove unnecessary cool downs and ability restrictions, let our characters feel more powerful. Why does the warrior of light feel so weak!

[Rohen]

Please avoid punishing players for playing lower level content

• As it stands playing a lvl 20ish dungeon as max level, for example, is punishing, highly unrewarding, because the abilities are removed. There has to be a better way to handle this that doesn't involve punishing the max level player.

Please fix PvP

• Changing and decreasing ability count for PvP was really the wrong move. What is the in game explanation behind it?

• Crazy skating movement, weird animation locks, and the movement lagging, going back to the first and second point. If that's fixed I would think that PvP is drastically improved.

Please make travel in the world meaningful

• The current travel system in the game is teleportation to an "atheryte". However in most FF games travel occurred using an airship, a boat, a vehicle. It seems like it would have been a bit more authentic to the game if travel actually happened using a vehicle around the world to "landing zones" but whatever, the atheryte is the decision they made and it's too late to change it.

• It would be unrealistic to suggest it, but I have to put it out there regardless. In the future I would recommend replacing this "atheryte" system and replacing it with airships and landing zones around the world. It can still be an instant click of a button, but it would be more immersive.

Just a final thing that annoys me
Being a FF7 fan I had to buy the bike mount. It looks great! And to my amazement it flies. What in the world were the devs thinking, why can this bike fly? At the very least give it some wings or something. I mean come on... it's as if FFXIV ARR is trying very hard to break my immersion constantly.

Why else would I play an MMORPG, if not to be immersed in a role with a massive amount of online players from around the globe.

[Kaurhz]

• As it stands playing a lvl 20ish dungeon as max level, for example, is punishing, highly unrewarding, because the abilities are removed. There has to be a better way to handle this that doesn't involve punishing the max level player.

Unless I'm misinterpreting but isn't this the whole purpose of the "Limited Leveling Roulette" setting that you can find within the Duty Finder Settings?

If it isn't then I can't help but think that they should expand upon this further. It would be nice, but I don't want it to come at the expense of having higher leveled players potentially ruining the experience, both learning and in general for newer players when they are utilizing their full toolkit as a Level 80/90 in a significantly lower level dungeon.

[Rohen]

If it isn't then I can't help but think that they should expand upon this further. It would be nice, but I don't want it to come at the expense of having higher leveled players potentially ruining the experience, both learning and in general for newer players when they are utilizing their full toolkit as a Level 80/90 in a significantly lower level dungeon.

Didn't even know this was there but I think it's different from what I'm suggesting.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Things like unresponsiveness in pvp are likely linked to it being a dated game not built from the ground up for large pvp entanglements- unfortunately that also likely means this is something they can't fix even if they wanted to. It's also something you get in basically all pvp mmos- these types of massive games just can't handle pvp well, so sieges in GW2/ESO/BDO, or 40v80 raids entering BRM in classic WoW are always going to have massive lag issues. Maybe one day an mmo will figure this one out, but it's clearly not going to be FFXIV a game where pvp is a side activity not a focus.

As for travel in the world- the teleports are not only fully explained by a very integral part of the storyline, they almost go into far too much detail on several occasions- but the aetheryte teleportation is a very big part of the primals storylines and the ascian storylines, and there's even some parts about the imperial one where they get into it. So teleportation is not only immersive- it would actually be extremely lore breaking if they took it away now. Having air ships show up everywhere and able to take us everywhere (including spots a ship can't get to, or certain places where they wouldn't be able to fly over due to story reasons) would actually be extremely unimmersive- there are some boats/airships in the game, in spots that they can make sense.

As for abilities that make a difference- you even noted they're there, but they have CDs. That's part of a good ability- using it sparingly or when needed. The abilities that are in are what fits the content- take CC for example.

Adding more to CC simply wouldn't be effective- CC is generally something that you're going to use in an mmo for pvp (which is a side activity, though since they have their own ability lists they could easily add CC specific to pvp, I think that'd be great since it wouldn't clutter our already full hotbars even more in pve), world content (but most content is easy to handle with your chocobo, and things that aren't like hunts wouldn't be CC'able), or challenge dungeons.

The game's abilities are tailored to what higher end content would require- which is going to be largely raid bosses, who are immune to CC. For them to add CC, they'd have to add trash mobs to raids that are controllable and need to be to avoid their effects (healing, buffing other mobs, or just high damage)- which also slows down trash clearing which would change the dynamic of raids. Or, they'd have to add smaller content where CC is needed- normally that's dungeons, but as is nobody would CC in dungeons since trash is just all gathered up for aoe. You would need something akin to a 'savage' dungeon difficulty where trash is brutal to make CC a thing.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Please avoid punishing players for playing lower level content

• As it stands playing a lvl 20ish dungeon as max level, for example, is punishing, highly unrewarding, because the abilities are removed. There has to be a better way to handle this that doesn't involve punishing the max level player.

It doesn't punish the high level character- the roulette is specifically meant to retain the challenge of that content if you were at that level with gear that you could have obtained during that xpac- it'll still be easier than it was at launch due to both nerfs and of course the fact that you're basically in the highest level gear at that level... but it's as close as they can get. That's the point of the roulettes and syncing down, to not give people advantages. You also get aptly rewarded for it.

If you want to do a level 20 dungeon at max level with your abilities, you can still do it unsynced- so the very thing you're asking for is already in the game. It's the best of both worlds since it gives players that want content that's always relevant and somewhat of a comparable challenge still have that, and players like you who don't want to be punished for being high level and lose all your abilities and power can also still do unsynced.

[Izar_Chillen]

It doesn't punish the high level character- the roulette is specifically meant to retain the challenge of that content if you were at that level with gear that you could have obtained during that xpac- it'll still be easier than it was at launch due to both nerfs and of course the fact that you're basically in the highest level gear at that level... but it's as close as they can get. That's the point of the roulettes and syncing down, to not give people advantages. You also get aptly rewarded for it.

If you want to do a level 20 dungeon at max level with your abilities, you can still do it unsynced- so the very thing you're asking for is already in the game. It's the best of both worlds since it gives players that want content that's always relevant and somewhat of a comparable challenge still have that, and players like you who don't want to be punished for being high level and lose all your abilities and power can also still do unsynced.

Indeed. In a scenario with all abilities with sync down , If a warrior tank at 80 synced down to 15-50 dungeons could run rampant pulling everything and self healing with NF and and 80 WHM could assize, holy everything along with the tank, leaving say the two lowbies in dps doing nothing and being left behind.

It would change the way new player experience the game. All dungeons for MSQ would be zerg fests as 60+ doing roulette's would all just go for it aoeing , self healing , insta this , insta that , all defenses up etc.

Then you would get scenarios where a fresh tank player is left stood around confused as the high lvl healer , and dps who are there to do their dailies would go do the dungeon in a rush , or worse we would see rises in new players, at level for the content , being kicked because they will slow these impatient high lvls down.

[Fhaerron]

Indeed. In a scenario with all abilities with sync down , If a warrior tank at 80 synced down to 15-50 dungeons could run rampant pulling everything and self healing with NF and and 80 WHM could assize, holy everything along with the tank, leaving say the two lowbies in dps doing nothing and being left behind.

It would change the way new player experience the game. All dungeons for MSQ would be zerg fests as 60+ doing roulette's would all just go for it aoeing , self healing , insta this , insta that , all defenses up etc.

Then you would get scenarios where a fresh tank player is left stood around confused as the high lvl healer , and dps who are there to do their dailies would go do the dungeon in a rush , or worse we would see rises in new players, at level for the content , being kicked because they will slow these impatient high lvls down.

I mean, I already do wall to wall pulls anyway so ...

[Dragonblanco]

Being a FF7 fan I had to buy the bike mount. It looks great! And to my amazement it flies. What in the world were the devs thinking, why can this bike fly? At the very least give it some wings or something. I mean come on... it's as if FFXIV ARR is trying very hard to break my immersion constantly.

Umm, because the bike didn't fly in FF7. They always honor/respect all the lore of things that come before. When you want to fly, you do like they did in FF7, use another form of transportation like a chocobo or an airship. If you want world immersion and to have something for FF7 memories, then go ahead and immerse yourself in it...