My take on what can be changed for FFXIV

[Kaliesto]

So before reading on, whatever I say here I'm fine if people disagree, but this is just my take on things on what can be done for FFXIV that I feel has been neglected or not have been taken into consideration over the years:
-

1) The World Zone Maps & its activities:

Now most of the monsters from my experience & including FATEs seem to really lack any meaningful difficulty balance. The Monsters you encounter can never truly put you on the knife's edge of defeat except for certain Boss FATEs that do require a party. Their mechanics also don't play much of a role as most are too slow to be considered a actual threat.

There is also a problem with how HUNTs operate as of late which I'll explain below for the fix.

The Fix:

What needs to be done here is simply all world zone monsters have sped up mechanics and/or have some mechanics auto-hit, so that their mechanics can actually have meaning rather than being seemingly worthless creature defense, the same applies for normal FATE monsters as well. Currently Boss FATEs are not that bad off, and I think only a few I've seen might need some adjustments.

Now what to do about the HUNTS in consideration to S Rank only? Most of them have completely lost their challenge over the years and even current S ranks since large groups of players can just lawnmower everything in sight. With the Introduction of how Bozja handled Boss Fates, what could be done that a window will pop up that allows a unlimited queue (24 players minimum required, much like a alliance raid) with a fixed level (so if the Hunt is lvl 50, you will be adjusted to lvl 50).

The reason for 24 players is to make sure there is at least a decent amount of players that can get into the S-rank hunt.

But wait? You said unlimited queue, and people just going to lawnmower the boss again.

Actually the trick is the more people who join into the Hunt FATE, the more it scales in HP, and other stats gradually, so there is no way of cheesing the fight. The Boss will always be at the most appropriate strength no matter how many players join. Also the more players that join the greater the reward by scale, so there is a bit of a incentive.

But what about the queue time? I want to say the window opens for 60 minutes until 24 players have filled the requirement and then the S-Rank Hunt Raid will begin within 5 minutes, and if no one joins the window at all or cannot fill in at least 24 players then the S-rank Boss despawns, but comes back in another hour or two until defeated. Alternatively I'm not against the idea of reducing 24 players to just 8 player minimum, this is more of a preventing a toxicity problem with culture of hunts considering how many people join in on the hunts (usually close to 100 or more from my experience).

2) The Boss Trials

When it comes to Story Bosses they all have lost all their beastly teeth, and this is more of a design decision of CBU3 rather than a actual flaw which I completely disagree with.

The Fix:

I believe at the minimum the final bosses of each storyline final trial needs to be revamped in terms of difficulty, as it stands most are pushovers though once upon a time that wasn't the case apparently (I wasn't there, but I read things were different back in Heavensward).

I believe enforced minimum ilvl for final boss trials, and incoming damage adjustment from final bosses is the most needed. Their mechanics are ok, and there is no need for a real change except maybe Endwalker Final Boss since

its 2nd phase was handled poorly (though cool as it is visually and musically), and considering it wrapped up a 10 year story I believe the final boss for it needs a bit more respect rather than just handing it all over to the Extreme Version which doesn't even have the cool 2nd phase.

The thing about RPGs is that most bosses are memorable based on overcoming a challenge, and that is where the fun is. Having your bosses be pushovers will not have them be memorable.

3) Crafting & The Tribal Quests related to it.

To be honest, this is very subjective, and these days people can just look online to find the right formula. There would have to be a very substantial and major change for crafting to be fun for those that want something out of it for those hardcore crafters.

So I'll be skipping over this

4) The Gold Saucer

There is a lot of good things about this place, and over the years we get a few more things added to it, but I think the Gold Saucer could have been more with each expansion like adding a new floor of the Gold Saucer with a slew of new mini-games would have been my way doing things.

Suggestion (not a fix):

If I were CBU3 I would look into Final Fantasy's Past, and see what minigames have yet to have a cameo into FFXIV, Final Fantasy VII's Gold Saucer has a lot of neat ideas that can be transferred over to FFXIV.

Examples for new minigames:
Snowboarding & Motorcycle game of FF VII with a FFXIV twist, and as a benefit whatever animations and models need be made for those two mini-games can be used for other future FFXIV projects, so CBU3 can get more mileage out of it rather than just being a one-off thing.

New areas of the gold saucer:
Also the Gold Saucer is lacking some new areas, like having a FFXIV version of Ghost Square from FF VII would be pretty neat, and also being able to access the ground level outside the Gold Saucer would be really cool since we have yet to see what the bottom of the gold saucer looks like (maybe the ground outside level would be the perfect spot for the Motorcycle mini-game).

5) 4-Man Dungeons

There is a lot of things I wish could be changed, but considering the late cycle of FFXIV I don't see some ideas I have in mind ever happening, so I'll keep things at a more realistic level on what can be done with the 4-man dungeons at this stage of FFXIV's lifecycle.

There is a good chunk of problems I have these dungeons from design, monsters, and mechanics.

The Fix -

First lets talk about the monsters (not the bosses), they don't serve much purpose other than getting in the way. Those creatures cannot ever push players to certain skill levels, and in turn makes them the most boring part of the dungeon. What needs to happen is giving them damage buff & have their mechanics sped up.

However

I kept the player's skill in mind, and not everyone is equal. So what really needs to happen is having a Hard Mode Version for every single dungeon released for those looking for something a bit more complex than what a normal mode dungeon can provide.

but wouldn't this drive up queue times because everyone is playing the hard mode version? Well at this stage most dungeons now have trusts, so there is no real need for players at this point. Trusts already made dungeons so easy to the point it might as well just be trust-only for normal dungeons, and hard mode is for the players exclusively that want to take things up a notch.

With Hard Mode also comes harder bosses that hit harder, and have faster mechanics as well and with maybe a bit more of something new if CBU3 feels creative.

Also have Hard Mode give more incentive in tomes, and other stuff.

6) Alliance Raids

This is a bit tricky as Alliance raids operate a little differently from 4-man, some alliance raids have lost their bite due to power creep or due to player complaints (Thunder God Cid if anyone remembers what happened).

The Fix:

I think the only real fix to this is having enforced minimum ilvl, and also adjust bosses to deal with the changes to Job Potency & skills, so they won't get down so easily.

7) Chocobo Racing:

I bet you all didn't expect this one, actually this was aspect of the game I found fun, but I think the way its implemented could be better.

Suggestion (not a fix):

Add Chocobo Races to world zone maps as another option, the chocobo has lost a lot of identity due to the numerous mounts we got we like to show off while traveling zones, but the Chocobo is our first mount friend and would be fun to show off more on the world zones. Basically import how chocobo racing works, and the only thing to add is to have monster damage immunity buff, so players don't have accidents with other players while racing in a world zone (and also to prevent cheating).

8) Relics

Very suggestive territory, but I think I know a way this could be implemented to satisfy most parties (I think respect to time was the problem some players were having back in Eureka & Bozja and feeling like they were being left behind eventually if they didn't have that kind of time to get all the relics, but that is just one factor to the overall problem I think).

The Fix (well more of a suggestion):

Relic First step -
Each Relic has a storyline & a boss to fight in existing content of FFXIV. Completing this gains you the relic.

Relic Second step -
Exploration Zone that follows different paths depending which relic you have, completing the storyline here gains you the 2nd step of that relic.

Relic third step -
Relic storyline Dungeon, each relic has its own personal solo short dungeon to complete and thus it will net you the third step of the relic.

Relic Raid Dungeon Final Step & reworks to older relic content

The final step should be a 24-man raid dungeon, but the difference here being it becomes part of the alliance Raid Roulette (along with Delubrum Reginae as to future proof this kind of content).

The dungeon only needs be run once for each relic you have to get the final step.

Also for Castrum Lacus Litore, The Dalriada, and the Baldesion Arsenal... I feel the only solution for this older content is if these were put into their own Roulette since these dungeons have a larger limit of how many players can join.

Also there should be a disclaimer for this roulette that this is for advanced players, and it requires certain tools to overcome some challenges (especially Baldesion Arsenal). So players should try to equip themselves of those tools before going in.

Also Exploration Zone Players have top priority while Roulette players go in last whenever the dungeon pops in the queue.

I would not call this a perfect solution, but it would solve some inactivity, and especially for those that want to complete older content.

9) Finally the Tomestones & gear associated with it

I feel at this point that the tomestone restriction no longer makes sense like it once did all those years ago, and I feel its time for a major change to be done with it

the fix (well partly a rant too):

In truth Tomestone gear is not what helps you get through Savage Content, its your skill and skill alone. It makes no sense to restrict how many tomes you can get within a week, the tomestone gear only helps you at a minimum (just enough push when its needed at the most crucial moments of a savage battle).

Also it makes no more sense to even restrict how much savage gear you can get within a week as well because the ultimate goal is doing the ultimate raids in which those raids take a lot longer and planning to do compared to savage, and having that savage gear much earlier can help a group of 8 reach that goal more easily rather than banging their heads against the wall week after week with savage raids just to get another piece of gear. To me this is a lot of artificial padding based on that players won't stick around for the long haul thus Square Enix losing subscriptions for awhile.

The truth is that is not honestly the case as players will just do other things as this game has expanded a lot since the olden days of savage and tomestone usage, I could go on a rant on the other aspects about Savage Raids but its not about that, but the tomestone & gear aspect of it.

one more thing to mention while its on my mind -

What happened with the rest of the Grand Company Ranks? Why has it been dead for so long? There so many ways I could think of that can make it more relatable with the later expansions rather than being stuck at Heavenward level of weirdness. Just putting it out there if anyone from CBU3 even talked about this for the past couple years.

[Renalt]

This is a well thought out post. I'd pin it if I could.

[Rithy255]

I believe whats most important that needs changing is the job design from shb to EW.
It should be "ideally" reverted to Shb in the sense that jobs shouldn't just only be about bursting in 120 windows, Healers and tanks both also need a lot to look at. I don't want another case of going back to old design so they shouldn't lean fully into how SHB felt, but they shouldn't hopefully double down on EW design either.

They also need to either separate old content at this point and allow people to start at 90 in DT, no one wants to go through ARR constantly.

But I do agree that theirs a lot of other issues and improvements i want to see mostly way more midcore content, I just feel like the Job design has gone down so much in recent times that improving that firstly would actually help my enjoyment of the game, I really dont feel motivated to play outside of running content with friends or doing casual activities.

[Shurrikhan]

A lot I'd like to comment on, but limited time, so I'll edit in more as I get a chance.

9) Finally the Tomestones & gear associated with it

I don't think there's an issue with limiting how much maximum stat increase one can get per week following a new season (Savage tier).

While yes, one is pretty well guaranteed to pass most Savage fights as long as they just do mechanics, I'm not convinced that's a good thing, let alone one we want to cement from here-out (or risk being told to degen farm 6k tomestones before stepping foot in Savage because, after all, this is the community that is willing to bar jobs just because they 3% less rDPS than the best-in-role). I would much rather that healing and dps checks actually were a bit more significant than just "If you met all the body checks, you'll win."

My only issue with it is that it forced seasonal specialization towards a single gear class despite that (A) a gear class can hold anywhere from 1 job (Scouting) to 4 jobs (Fending/Healing) and (B) being forced to specialize regardless of the time one is willing to spend in multi-jobbing largely contradicts the whole "all jobs on one character" appeal of the game.

That said, if capped tomestones purchases additionally unlocked that piece's whole slot to then be purchasable via uncapped tomes on/for your other jobs/gear classes (i.e., buy a Tomestone Chestpiece of Fending with weekly tomes and you can then buy the Healing, Casting, Maiming, Aiming, Striking, and Scouting chestpieces with uncapped tomes), I'd be fine with the capped tomestones as a system.

That said, I still wouldn't be a fan of their content loops. Expert Roulette and Hunts feel far too dominant in that regard. I'd much rather increase the weekly tomestone rewards of all else to reach nearer the reward-efficiency of Hunts and ExRoulette, and have excess weekly tomestones automatically convert into uncapped endgame tomestones (or even consolidate uncapped endgame tomestones with poetics and increase their combined cap to 9999 or so).

Finally, I'd like to see weekly cap instead be more like season's cumulative acquisition cap, extended week by week (until hitting 9999), rather than a true weekly cap. Let those joining the Savage tier late or who miss a week actually catch up.



In total:

• Weekly tomestone cap extends over the course of the season from 450 to eventually 9999 (at which point it uncaps, on week 23). Players can catch up whenever. May be better called "Seasonal tomestones" now.
• Weekly tome reward efficiency of other contents increased to near that of Expert Roulette and Hunts, and/or those two outliers tuned down slightly.
• Poetics and endgame uncapped tomestones combined into a single type with a cap of 9999.
• Seasonal tomestones (e.g., when already capped) convert automatically to uncapped tomestones.
  
  
• Weekly tomestone purchases unlock the item's type to be purchasable with uncapped tomes. Buying a seasonal tomestone weapon on one job allows you to buy it with uncapped tomes for all other jobs. Weapons now simply unlock after week 4 or 7, rather than requiring tokens from Normal Raids' highest floor.
• Savage acquisitions now allow you to pay an NPC with uncapped tomestones to reverse-engineer your acquired gear to make an item of the same slot for another job / gear class. (Basically same as above, but for Savage.)
  
  
• Lower ilvl ceilings on most content, to keep it from being quite such a joke.
• Greater tome rewards from and more immediate access to the likes Wandering Tails, perhaps through a new Adventuring Guide that combines that and weekly rotated/randomized Challenge Log entries, etc. The idea here is to vary the content we do as to reduce burn-out.
• Minimum Item Level now increases drop chance proportionately to the expected increase in time to clear due to the losses to throughput from ilvl lost to sync. E.g., if you would lose some 30% of your stats' throughput from being synced down, it would be expected for the clear to take 43% longer (1/(1-.3)).

[Kaliesto]

I believe whats most important that needs changing is the job design from shb to EW.
It should be "ideally" reverted to Shb in the sense that jobs shouldn't just only be about bursting in 120 windows, Healers and tanks both also need a lot to look at. I don't want another case of going back to old design so they shouldn't lean fully into how SHB felt, but they shouldn't hopefully double down on EW design either.

They also need to either separate old content at this point and allow people to start at 90 in DT, no one wants to go through ARR constantly.

But I do agree that theirs a lot of other issues and improvements i want to see mostly way more midcore content, I just feel like the Job design has gone down so much in recent times that improving that firstly would actually help my enjoyment of the game, I really dont feel motivated to play outside of running content with friends or doing casual activities.

I'm not too well versed in the number crunching and fun factor of the jobs, I know some people here have provided well thought out debates on it in the forums.

I have noticed though my damage numbers are at my highest whenever a boss battle starts, but then it peters out for the rest of the battle.

[Absimiliard]

I have noticed though my damage numbers are at my highest whenever a boss battle starts, but then it peters out for the rest of the battle.

That would be the two-minute meta at work. Your team goes in hot, dumps everything they've got, then spends the next two minutes slapping the boss with pool noodles. The average player won't properly manage their cooldowns and/or rotation, so the next burst window (if your target even lives long enough for you to see it) likely isn't going to be as robust as the first due to drift. There's also the matter of bosses being designed to choose violence especially hard during the period SE estimates your group's window will fall, which even further lowers your numbers.

The two-minute meta is one of very few things all corners of the community seem unified in their dislike of.

[Kaliesto]

That would be the two-minute meta at work. Your team goes in hot, dumps everything they've got, then spends the next two minutes slapping the boss with pool noodles. The average player won't properly manage their cooldowns and/or rotation, so the next burst window (if your target even lives long enough for you to see it) likely isn't going to be as robust as the first due to drift. There's also the matter of bosses being designed to choose violence especially hard during the period SE estimates your group's window will fall, which even further lowers your numbers.

The two-minute meta is one of very few things all corners of the community seem unified in their dislike of.

I've been trying to bring in food and strength potions lately into normal content, though it seems it doesn't matter much in alliance raids if I'm one of the few only doing it.

Just to deal with the pool noodling like you said.

[DrWho2010]

snip

While this is "nice", imo it's completely antithetical to the business model of a slow drip to keep people subbed as long as possible.
This would be good if the game went more towards a F2P model.

Part of the reason i think ppl don't like the 2 min meta is that it doesn't reward individual effort as much as previous expansion battle systems did. Therefore since it's a group effort, people are too selfish to see beyond this, esp. when paired/grouped with people not at the same skill level as they are.

Open world/zone activities - the whole backend would have to be redone to make it more like how Bozja/Zadnor zones worked. Those only worked like they do because they were controlled, population limited instances with specialized programming to deal with it. Does anyone not remember about how annoyed they were when SB launched and the Lochs was impossible to get into whenever Ixion first was a thing? Cuz that's what's gonna happen if they tried to do that in a regular open world zone.

As a whole I don't totally disagree with OP's post, but imo from what we've seen what the devs want to do vs this? There would have to be wayyyyyyyyyyyy more people hired and more money fuelled towards this in order for this to happen. Something I currently don't see happening.

[Turtledeluxe]

Making open world content more difficult is tricky because it isn't just about combat-- fates and mobs directly affect the player economy in a way. Making farming a longer or more difficult could make certain market board items prohibitively expensive. The current drop rates account for the fact that fates and mobs can be steamrolled.

Additionally people calling for open world to be more dangerous are speaking from level 90. Making mobs more difficult could negatively affect people who are doing the story for the first time.

Not saying it's impossible but there's lots to consider, probably more than I'm even considering here. I do agree with what others have said regarding the two minute meta and job changes. I don't personally play a lot of jobs but feedback I've heard has been largely negative and I've felt since Endwalker that it just makes combat feel too samey, and even restrictive.

[Shurrikhan]

While this is "nice", imo it's completely antithetical to the business model of a slow drip to keep people subbed as long as possible.

Why would it be "completely antithetical" to a slow-drip / time-gated model. That part hasn't changed. It simply allows for missed weekly caps to be caught up and reduces the punishment of multi-jobbing. To take advantage of either, players would have to play more, not less.

It has zero impact whatsoever on the speed at which one can hit BiS on their main.