I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[Kaliesto]

I look through the forums and everyday we got players here with some interesting and cool ideas (and not so great ideas) that could help break this game out of its rut.

However

I'm not sure if Naoki Yoshida understands what he is doing to his own MMORPG:

1. The Jobs feeling meaningless, more like copy and paste that reach the same conclusion which some forum goers have stated many times over. I think FFXI was the complete opposite of this if I'm not mistaken?

2. Lack of Custom Building for your jobs, I think the Job Diversity would help if there were passive abilities built into these jobs and other particular substats like elemental alignments (meaning a new materia system that have elemental sockets, so one could make a Fire Warrior or Ice Dark Knight). These are just a few ideas, I'm sure you guys got better ideas than I do (also I'm aware that elemental materia was a thing back then, but I think it can still work in a different way). Also have monsters be weak against certain classes like Avians weak against MCH/BRD.

3. Most of the normal monsters feel really meaningless, and their mechanics don't matter much. Maybe given its a relic from a time when MMOs were in a very different gameplay environment, but at this point most players have evolved, and so should the monsters in every corner of this game. Speeding up the mechanics would fix this problem pretty quick and might actually make dungeon monsters feel a lot more fun rather than something to be dreaded. I know Yoshi thinks these dungeons are fun, but in reality most people find it a chore because none of the monsters pose any real threat in most 4-man and alliance raids. I was so happy that one day when Thunder God Cid proved to be a real challenge and then he got nerfed (I just don't understand why that needed to happen).

4. There was some personal debate between me and a dear old friend who loved crafting if Crafting actually devolved after Stormblood (he left FFXIV when Crafting got very nerfed), I want your all opinions on this as I was not around during his ARR-HW era.

5. The Blue Gear every time its introduced also feels meaningless and its a waste of developer time to design all these clothes and gear only for it to be inferior to the Green Crafted Gear. It should be the other way around since Blue Gear seems like it was suppose to be a bit more special considering all the effort the Devs go into designing these things. Green Gear should be the first step, and then the Blue Gear being the 2nd step, and then finally Purple Gear.

6. Lack of Side Quest Diversity, now don't get me wrong the stories contained are interesting at times, but the gameplay involved in these is incredibly minimal and not very engaging and this seems like its been this way since ARR. I'm kind of surprised it kept continuing like this for so long. There were a few moments though that broke the trend, but then it goes back to what it always did.

7. FATEs, I don't think I need to say much how some people feel about FATEs for years on these forums. I think Bozja FATEs and Duels was incredibly a good step in the right direction and I wished Endwalker had followed through on this, but instead it was more of a copy and paste situation again. This ties in with number 3 above, I feel if the monsters were re-worked then FATEs could be a bit more fun to do and also FATEs need more diversity in terms of gameplay rather than always being the same situation, and these different situations are very few in each expansion.

8) The Remaining Grand Company Ranks that we will never get, I don't know where they're taking this, but it feels like a dead project that maybe someone on their development team gave up on. I think next time if someone gets a chance to ask Yoshi a question about this please do.

9) Empty Zones from a lore perspective, a lot of the landscape feels like it could tell a story, but in the end its just names slapped here and there all over a zone. The Lochs from Stormblood come to mind as it seems like half its zone areas on the map never ended up being used for anything. There is definitely a lack of local lore that maybe players could read or find out about, but instead its just a lot of empty void. Was Yoshi trying to make us come to our conclusions for some of these things?

10) PVP gradually losing its maps, Dead PVP Modes, and lack of PVP variety:

PVP should be one of those things that should be a good filler between major expansions, but all there is left is Frontlines and Crystal Conflict (before that being the Feast). The problem is Rival Wings which in my opinion offered more diverse gameplay, but instead players like myself is getting pigeon holed to play Frontlines for eternity and honestly don't find this fun at all after a certain point because that is all players want to do, I feel the Developers unintentionally dumbed down PVP because of how simple Frontlines is (and thus people want a quicker reward and also because of the achievements, mounts, and gear being more regulated to FL and while RW only has two mounts and a few achievements).

Now long time ago there were other Front Line Maps with different objectives, but these got removed for various reasons. To me this seem like a bad move when players could use more variety, and not having it taken away later. Same case for that one Rival Wings map that has been locked for years all because there was a balancing issue they never fixed for so long. Also removing the Feast Maps doesn't make much sense, why delete variety?

Finally PVP should not be boiling down to CC, FL, and RW. They had years to expand on this, and there is a lot of fun PVP modes they had not tried yet that other MMORPGs do. Better yet make something that is very original that no other MMORPG has yet to try (to our knowledge).
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There is so many things Yoshi's team has excelled at with this MMORPG, but there is just as many glaring weak spots that either he is intentionally ignoring and is aware of or he is not aware of how some players actually feel about this game, the curation of questions seems to be a bit of a major problem from what I understand.

[Adeacia]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

[Kaliesto]

Job custom building would be meaningless. People will just figure out the optimal build and everyone will just use that. I'm pretty sure that's literally the reason this kind of thing doesn't exist in the game.

Not if its done right, there is plenty monster variety in every dungeon that you could make it where anything can be used and not be lopsided to just one way. I've seen and read this point many times, but there a lot of ways to negate that possibility mostly for normal content.

Extreme, savage, and ultimate content on the other hand yes I can see how that would be a issue, either those substats is disabled in those or the bosses have timed weakness windows so for instance lets do Chaos:

Chaos weakness becomes Water if he uses Fire, Chaos weakness becomes lightning during the Water phase and so on and so on.

Chaos weakness against a variety of weaponry depends on what he is doing during that phase to unleash your skill windows for max damage (let you use your imagination on that).

So Having these sub-stats and passive skills would not really be pigeon holed to just one thing so there is no possibility of players being ****s by locking out other jobs.


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I really think we need to stop thinking in a way that players will just try to keep pigeon holing a battle system, and there is so many ways we can stop that from happening if we brainstormed enough on it to come up with something that could work out.

[Saraide]

3. Most of the normal monsters feel really meaningless, and their mechanics don't matter much. Maybe given its a relic from a time when MMOs were in a very different gameplay environment, but at this point most players have evolved, and so should the monsters in every corner of this game. Speeding up the mechanics would fix this problem pretty quick and might actually make dungeon monsters feel a lot more fun rather than something to be dreaded. I know Yoshi thinks these dungeons are fun, but in reality most people find it a chore because none of the monsters pose any real threat in most 4-man and alliance raids. I was so happy that one day when Thunder God Cid proved to be a real challenge and then he got nerfed (I just don't understand why that needed to happen).

I'm gonna respond to the point I feel most strongly about. Criterion has given us dungeon mobs that are actuall threatening (I often joked how the tree mob at the start hits harder then the P7s tree). And still to me those parts were by far the least interesting bits of the dungeon. A combat system like ff14 shines with boss encounters, I'm fine with trash mobs being trash mobs that die quickly because it gives me quicker access to the parts of dungeons I find more fun.

[Tint]

4. There was some personal debate between me and a dear old friend who loved crafting if Crafting actually devolved after Stormblood (he left FFXIV when Crafting got very nerfed), I want your all opinions on this as I was not around during his ARR-HW era.

Yes the crafting got easier. But what made it difficult back then was mostly RNG and losing your materials to bad RNG is no fun. Also having to level all the crafting jobs to get the cross class skills was annoying. But in the end we have to level them all anyway...

The problem I see is that the market for crafted items crashed. Mounts and minions, RNG drops from content, stuff like that gets more expensive due to inflation while buffood, gear and other stuff you can craft is actually cheaper than it was in the HW era. But this is not only because of the easier and more accessible crafting, but because of course: the Bots.

Who wants to spent hours crafting, invest in expensive gear and melds only to compete with market board bots which sell botted gear for a handfull Gil? Way too much effort for basically no reward.

[Kolaina]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

[Xelanar]

1. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel all jobs play the same. They are all based around a 2 minute burst window, but I cannot agree on a Samurai playing or feeling the same as a Monk or a Dragoon. Dancer, Bard and Machinist also feel quite different to me. The same goes for magic DPS. I believe tanks suffer most from this issue. And healers too, but only their DPS related stuff. So I do see problems in those two roles, but even then, in my opinion they still feel different enough.

2. Custom building sadly is an ideal that will never really exist in a game where performance is measurable in numbers. There will always be a best build for a specific situation. I'd rather they removed the little customization there is(materia), because "use xy skill speed/spell speed or your rotation is busted" does not add any fun in my eyes. Now if you're talking about stuff like... alternative skill animations or colors? Or even entire alternative skillsets that function the same, but look different? THAT I would be into.

3. Outdoor monsters are HP sponges existing for specific side quests or to prevent the world from feeling empty. I too wish they would be mechanically more challenging and engaging, but I guess their focus has never been to be dangerous. They are supposed to make the world feel more alive. And it shows xD.

4. They might have gone overboard by redesigning crafting jobs THIS much. The HW system did have flaws though. i.E requiring you to level up ALL crafting jobs, because they had cross-class skills gated behind specific jobs that were basically mandatory.

5. Those blue gear options are necessary, because not everyone wants to buy crafted gear from the market board or craft it themselves. Also not everyone wishes to pentameld. Blue gear from normal raids is supposed to be an alternative, and it does this quite well. It also offers its glamour for those who do not do savage. Unless it's only the coloring you are refering to? Because that IS kind of weirdly color-coded in the crafting section. The issue being that NQ Crafted gear is inferior to the raid gear equivalent, so the color is actually correct. But the HQ version is better / equal, so it makes no sense. I believe rarity color cannot be different between NQ and HQ. Maybe that's why they went with color-coding it like that.

6. Side quests are... uhm... yeah. They exist xD. Some of them are pretty good. But most of them are filler or meant to show daily life issues. They make sense the way they are. They're just not very engaging.

7. FATEs. Well... yeah. They are blunt and every expansion I hate myself for grinding through every single zone, because I want full access to all the FATE vendors -.-.

8. I honestly don't mind they quit this part of the game. I never liked it. Squadrons are fine for what they are, but I'm glad they are not opting to gate content behind those - which they would have to, if new ranks were introduced.

9. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I like it when games have stuff just because it makes sense for it to be there. Not everything has to have a purpose. Because if it did, zones could start feeling like unnatural, stale ubisoft open worlds, where verything exists for the sole purpose of being interactible by the player in some form. But I DO wish there were incentives to visit some zones more often, or to explore them more thoroughly.

10. I don't pvp, so I have no opinion on that section >.<.


All in all - I do see wasted potential and areas the game could improve upon. But bottom line I still like the game and what it offers, and I do not feel like it's being neglected or treated poorly. I can see a lot of effort and attention to detail going into it, and I appreciate it.

[Sicno]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

Well of course you're gonna find the bench-warmer crowd who doesn't play the game and just AFKs all day long not playing any content is still there, duh. That's... exactly the point. That's the audience the game is catering to now, the audience who doesn't want to play an actual game and just uses it as a glorified chatroom. Of course THEY will still be there.

[Shinkuno]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

And thats the only thing being crowded, the moment you leave the three main cities (or lets be honest, its gridania + limsa, uldah is dead too) its an empty wasteland.

[Saraide]

Well of course you're gonna find the bench-warmer crowd who doesn't play the game and just AFKs all day long not playing any content is still there, duh. That's... exactly the point. That's the audience the game is catering to now, the audience who doesn't want to play an actual game and just uses it as a glorified chatroom. Of course THEY will still be there.

If steam chart numbers are to be believed that's not exactly working out for SE.