State of the Realm

[Elissar]

When has this not been the case in FFXIV?

Exactly, V&C is an attempt to add variety. People are expecting something that only advanced AI can do: be better than the player on his own style. We are watching the genesis of this concept with GPT in Skyrim.
Anyway, it's weird to read something like that.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Overall i believe FFXIV is a good game, but I believe it personally has quite a few flaws and some head-scratching decisions made by the dev team that just don't make any sense to me. I probably can't list everything in this post, but here are some things that come to mind:

Crystalline Conflict (Casual) should be queueable with friends

-Keep rank solo queue if it means that much to the devs to keep the ranked system "integrity". Let the casual mode allow for players to queue in together without having to try to queue at the same time to get a game together.


Relic quests should not be X amount of tome turn-ins most/all the time

-We already have a tome weapon that comes with each savage tier. The relic should not fill a void that is already filled with tomes that are already used in plenty of other avenues


Savage BiS gearing needs a serious rework

-BiS gearing in Savage is the only system in the game (that i know of) that is built with 1 job per character in mind instead of all jobs per character (which FFXIV is advertised as the latter)
-Ultimates are the only true need for BiS currently, and we don't get an ultimate after each savage. There needs to be more content that needs this BiS (Savage and Criterion don't need the gear. It is just beneficial).
-Previous BiS savage gear being completely outclassed by the new crafted is bad game design. They won't change it because it would tank the crafting market, but using this tier as an example, previous savage should've been 640/645 and new crafted should've been 630 (new crafted gets you into min ilvl for p9s)


Boss design needs to be reworked

-Bosses shouldn't all be bigger hitboxes, wall bosses, or swivel bosses. Bosses shouldn't always teleport to the center. Boss positioning doesn't matter in normal content, and those responsibilities should be kept in hardcore content. Basically we need better role responsibility in fights again


2 minute meta needs to be reworked

-They've over-hemogonized the jobs and they still can't balance them properly. We are literally getting the worst of both worlds in terms of job design right now, so they've opted to decrease the dps checks considerably as a "temp fix" lol. Dawntrail needs a serious revamp


That is all i have from the top of my mind right now, but i'm sure there are other things .

[Renathras]

Eh, there's a lot good in FFXIV, and most of the complaints aren't new - they're things the game has been doing since AT LEAST SB, and in many cases, since HW or even ARR. People are finally just feeling they're getting stale, but in Human norms are...a bit prone to hyperbole. That is "The game's been doing the same thing for 10 years and it's worked pretty well, but is getting stale, how about mixing it up?" is less click-bait than "The game now sucks and is going to die if Dawntrail doesn't do a complete turnaround!"

...but the former of those two is more accurate. The gearing, patch content amount, content amount in general, encounter design, trend of Jobs over time; all of these have been going on since 4.0. Some since 3.0 or one of the 2.X patches.

THAT.
SAID:

What I said above is still accurate; it's gotten stale.

To their credit, the Devs are trying to mix things up, in fits and starts. The PvP actions, the whole PvP system for that matter, and Criterion Dungeons are all attempts to mix up and experiment with different things. They're doing it, of course, alongside the fits part - SGE being a near carbon-copy of SCH, dungeons still being hallways of 2x double packs + Box repeat x3, and a slower patch cadence that also dropped Exploration Content this expansion in favor of IS/Criterion, and poor reward structure for Criterion - but they are doing it.

As for what changes need to be made: Depends entirely on who you ask.

I've literally seen some people defend the 2 min meta, something that I had previously thought was universally hated.

.

But one of the Yoshi P interviews talked about changing up rotations, it sounded like he was saying DT will have the stuff we had here but also an Exploration Zone and something "new" that we've never done before, etc. I'm waiting to see what the next Fanfests and the Media Tour reveal, since that will set the tone, but I do think it's time to shake things up a bit, and it looks like we may get a bit of shake up, the question is just how much of one.

(Also: There should be nothing other than Ultimates that REQUIRES Savage gear. Though it does seem previous tier Savage gear should be the entry level for the next tier's Savage, with Crafted being a side-grade (same ilevel, different substats) for people to spot fill slots or gear an alt Job, as opposed to a total replacement. But that's just me.)

[JohncarterIx]

i get 2002 and 9002 30 to 40 times a day when im online and im so sick of it houseing is a joke o better luck next time = bs

[JohncarterIx]

i have a 100 wow charters and im gonna go pvp some hord at least there i wont get 9002 or 2002 i got all my charters in a hotel there i figure there all family so its time to bust them out . and do a lott of pvping im ranked there

[RitsukoSonoda]

Much of the casual content has suffered greatly in the claim of making the game "accessible". However it's done little more than systematically reduce the effected content into only requiring a few functioning braincells to complete. Duties are now basically a linear path in the same format. Sure some people complained about specific things in some of the older duties back in ARR and HW, however they at least felt different from each other which made spamming roulettes far less monotonous.

I feel the actual audience Yoshi-P has shifted to catering to are the gaming equivalent of "social drinkers". Social drinkers don't actually enjoy alcoholic beverages, they simply drink them at social events or with friends to maintain an image.

However the job design in the game on the other hand has had the most damage done to it in an attempt to cater to the elitist part of the raiding community resulting in homogenization of jobs and loss of identity to fill cookie cutter templates and more recently the whole 2 minute meta.

The Endwalker relic acquisition and upgrade process is atrocious and I find it ridiculous they're trying to call it an amazing success based on the number of weapons obtained and upgraded by players when it's essentially being facilitated by players going "oh, that type of tomestone is capped again, I'll go buy 3 more space rocks. If they wanted a more obtainable tomestone weapon they could have just deleted the raid token requirement from the existing ones. I personally enjoyed the Hildibrand quests, however I would not have tied the Manderville weapons to it and instead would have preferred something centered around Godbert possibly involving an exploratory zone of some kind of massive Manderville labyrinth hidden beneath the Gold Saucer that house Manderville had been using to store all manner of things over generations to uncover the secrets to create said weapons.

[Sjark]

I would love for them to revisit older parts of the game.

Chocobo
Bring it up to date, like removing outdated stats like accuracy, and give it more/better things to do.

An interesting overworld
The ARR overworld is really interesting, but the further down the expansion lines we go, the more empty the open world becomes. Side quests help a little, same with fate. But side quests you only do once, and fates are so easily stomped on because syncing is completely screwed up in this game (Bozja skirmishes melting like ice for example)
I think flying ruins a lot of the game, and that we gain it way too easily. I'm not saying it should be as difficult to unlock as it can be in MMOs like WoW, but just a little more.
Mindblowing to me that it took them until ShB, to realise that maybe they should give players the opportunity to gain mount speed increase earlier than AFTER completing MSQ.

After we got flying in ARR, I really wished they would add something to the areas we suddenly had access to. So many empty high up areas that just screams "we were not intended to be seen!"

An world that changes over time
With the moogle tribe, you help them rebuild... a square, rest of the zone is perpetually still in ruins. Wish that over a long time period, maybe sped up by helping them, you could see the moogles improve more in the zone.
Same with Ishgard, The Doman Enclave (what wasted potential) Garlemald, and for that matter, Gyr Abania! If nothing else, an airship landing in the Lochs. So that you can travel from New Gridania and to the Lochs with an airship.

Island Sanctuary
Making it a cooperative experience would be so much better.

Gearing should be more flexible and interesting
The substats are boring. Tenacity feels pointless, Piety is "take only as much as you need".
Speed is generally only a "take a little to reach a slightly better speed for comfort".
Beyond that it is mostly just a rule of "as much crit as possible, then DET/DH."

For a game about playing any job you want, they really hamstring you when it comes to raiding gear, to an honestly baffling point. Only one piece per week, and that even applies to alliance raid gear that is near pointless for anything other than catch-up and fashion. If you are unlucky, you could be spending months of clearing just to get 1 body/leg piece. That's insane, and a fast way to burnout.

Grand Company
Keep them relevant throughout the game. You keep feeding them items blessed by gods, yet the best they can trade you is a coat for level 50?
Beyond pvp, there should be more reasons to care about the GC.
Ishgard as a Grand Company should be possible.
-
I could probably go on, but yeah....

[Mayhemmer]

I would love for them to revisit older parts of the game.

An interesting overworld
The ARR overworld is really interesting, but the further down the expansion lines we go, the more empty the open world becomes. Side quests help a little, same with fate. But side quests you only do once, and fates are so easily stomped on because syncing is completely screwed up in this game (Bozja skirmishes melting like ice for example)
I think flying ruins a lot of the game, and that we gain it way too easily. I'm not saying it should be as difficult to unlock as it can be in MMOs like WoW, but just a little more.
Mindblowing to me that it took them until ShB, to realise that maybe they should give players the opportunity to gain mount speed increase earlier than AFTER completing MSQ.

After we got flying in ARR, I really wished they would add something to the areas we suddenly had access to. So many empty high up areas that just screams "we were not intended to be seen!"

More standalone overworld content (as in content that isn't tied to doing fates for ambiguous crystals required for some weapon/armor grind *hint frickin' hint, Square...*) are some of my most sought after additions. An example that came to mind recently...

It's been a long while since I played WoW, but one of the things I always really liked about it's world, at least the bits I explored, were these little chests you'd find every now and then, usually among some group of enemies and/or hidden away in some nook off the beaten path. I don't remember there being anything exceptionally novel in them, but to me they were always nice little distractions, and I'd like to see something like that in XIV.

Chests scattered around every zone, guarded by a group of enemies, and/or an elite enemy. Slaying all of them will grant you a key to the chest(s) they guard. They could contain a handful of zone-specific gathering materials, enemy drop materials, a bit of gil (or allagan coin pieces to vendor for gil), some shards/crystals, and like 5-10 poetics or something. You wouldn't always get all of these, but that could be the base spread. Make chests personal (player-specific) so you can't have your chest sniped by another player, have the guards on a mild respawn timer, just long enough to discourage camping one single chest location. Everyone in a party is granted access to chests, though maybe divvy the loot between each member so you're not just multiplying loot per member. Add some relevant achievements and weekly challenge log entries, and you've got yourself a new thing. It's not a big thing, but it's at least a thing in an otherwise empty overworld.

I just want the dev team to get creative, make overworlds interesting again. Do aaaanyythiiiing, please.

[Rithy255]

Here's my most wants for the game going forward. (Note that this isn't really realistic)

Class Design Revamp.
-One of the pressing issues that a lot of people talk about especially this expansion is how watered down the class design has become, I think moving away from the 2 Minute meta and making sure Classes have unique and different niches (Especially tank and healer) would help make Jobs feel more fresh and unique. I'd go into more detail but I'd likely post a giant thread on tank changes, for healers stuff such as slightly more DPS buttons, white mage having long cast times, Astros cards being interesting, Scholar and sage not playing the same ect.

Some Fight design "changes"
-For the most part fight designs are fine, I'd kind of like it if they experimented more with less pattern based attacks and have a bit more RNG in what attacks happen, just for bosses to be a bit more dynamic and less scripted. Obviously we have to have a certain degree of it being scripted. Also Make general DMG higher, Healers should need to heal a lot more, Utility from other jobs should obviously help healers but not be able to replace them, Another thing is to allow tanks to pull way more then just 2 mob packs and remove war's aoe healing aspect to make pulls more fun on tanks/healers.

Custom Role Actions
-Make Provoke and Arms length, any other "required" role action just apart of the jobs kit outright, add some job flavour to it like tank stances IG.
-You should be able to select from some abilities to "customize" actions such as selecting 1 of 3 Options as a defensive cooldown, instead of just having rampart.
-Allows for roles to "solo" a little more if you added something like "lost cure", obviously we would have to make sure it doesn't step on healers toes too much, but I think this could help make solo duties or open world content hit a bit harder and be more engaging

More "midcore" content, content that scales and gets rougher
-I honestly think we Need scaling content, This would be so good for people who are looking into getting to hard content but the Jump between Normal duties and EXT is just a bit too much.
-This might be pretty hard to implement but I think it would really help casual players bridge more easily into hardcore content, Instead of just making jobs easier which is kind of a counterproductive thing currently.

[Gameovers]

Mr.Happy's podcast :O