Things I personally want to see in the game:

[SarahWoof]

Mostly little quality of life features that actually astound me aren't more streamlined or fixed yet. But also some bigger projects I'd love to see! A lot of this will also be on my thoughts after not playing WoW for 15 years and coming back to it with the War Within. There are definitely areas in which both games could still learn a lot from each other. But anyways, here's stuff I want to see:

1. A repair all option.

Not a "repair what's in your inventory". Not a "repair what you're wearing". Just "repair everything". Or! Just get rid of repairs entirely. The cost of doing so is so trivial that idk if it's worth keeping at all. But SE, if you need to keep this, please just let it be quick.

2. Make ride pillion a single click.

WoW does this. You just click a on a friends mount and you hop in. I know 14 is obsessed with submenus but streamlining this would be nice!

3. Expand MSQ roulette.

In my ideal world when a player first goes through the game. Every new trial and new dungeon, for just the first time you play through and complete it, would require you to go in at min ilvl. Give players as close to a "played at launch" experience as they can get. And as such when queuing for MSQ roulette, you aren't just helping them through Castrum and Prae, but the entire game!

4. Lower synced max ilvl for some past content.

In relation to the above ilvl adjustments for some fights should definitely happen. I can't imagine it's very fun for new players to get all this build up for Ifrit or something and then for the boss to die in less than a couple of minutes.

5. Alternatives to FATES

Sometimes queues are long and you need more to do on the overworld instead of just fate grinding or beast tribe quests. World Quests from WoW offer a lot of variance for little effort and are consistent options to do in every zone (i.e. you don't need to wait for them to pop ala a FATE). They've really done a good job of making the world feel alive and active.

Maybe I would care less about this if beast tribe quests were more interesting and more involved. They feel especially lazy in Dawntrail where sometimes all you are doing is running to an NPC to talk with them before you're done.

But I think where world quests in WoW succeed is that you have the option to see all of the ones you can do and pick and choose depending on which you'd like to do and the time you'd like to invest in them. That way you can have both easy options and harder ones and let players decide which they'd rather do.

[SarahWoof]

6. Include more overworld secrets.

Not everything needs to be related to the MSQ. Sometimes I want to go behind the waterfall and find a secret area just for the sake of it. Sometimes I just want to explore! Eureka honestly satisfied this a lot in some ways but I\\'d love to see it expanded upon.

Imagine a crack in cliff side behind a waterfall. You can fly up there on your mount and barely see a pathway but can\\'t land. But more importantly, you see a jumping puzzle leading up to the crack starting far down below.

14 already has the island jumping puzzle event in Costa del Sol. But I want something equivalent in (honestly if it was up to me) every zone haha.

7. More Kugane towers...

I know I just mentioned jumping puzzles in the overworld but like. I also want ones that are massive. I want a jumping puzzle that dwarfs Kugane... I also personally think when you get to the top you should be rewarded with more than just a sightseeing log. I\\'d love to see an optional mini-aetheryte at the top of all of them if possible.

But also how cool would it be if we had leaderboard races to the top and weekly events? You queue up like you would with a GATE in Gold Saucer and race to the top. You win and maybe you get some tombstones or other rewards you can do weekly. But it also keeps track of who is the fastest on the server! Maybe you also get a title you can use that is only active while you hold first place and changes if you lose it. "Kugane\\'s Fastest" to "Kugane\\'s Runner-up"...

[SarahWoof]

8. More mini-games!

14 honestly has a lot of mini-games already but they seem very poorly utilized. This game has a bad problem of building out something and then never using it again.

Like there is an entire FPS shoot the balloon mini game in the Gold Saucer where you ride on a roller coaster and try to get a high score. The only other place I've seen this has been in beast tribe quests where you shoot three incredibly slow moving targets.

Likewise I can't believe we got that entire Fall Guys event only for it to be a seasonal thing. This is the kind of content that should always be in the game. If Fall Guys doesn't want you doing it more make your own and make it even better!

Minor Dawntrail spoilers ahead:
There is a moment in dawntrail where you need to outfit a <redacted> with weapons and then defend it. All of this is unfortunately handled in just a cutscene. It just feels like such a wasted opportunity.

I want to jump on the gun (just use the FPS system from gold saucer you already have!) and shoot down targets while needing to fend off a boarding party!

In another instance once again in Dawntrail there is like... The perfect setup... For a cooking mama mini game. And it honestly hurts my soul that we didn't get it. Not only because, going back to world quests, this could have been a consistent cute event to do at that location weekly.

I don't want this to be a complain about Dawntrail thread but there is just so many instances where we could have had cute little quests with actual gameplay that just became cutscenes instead.

9. More solo duties!

I love solo duties. I think they are actually one of the things 14 gets really right. We just need significantly more of them. 14 can make interesting encounters en masse, Bozja showed they could do it! Just give me a lot more to do (and then let me replay these duties)

I've heard some people did not care for Endwalkers 'In from the Cold" solo duty because it was too long and too difficult and like... It really feels like SE listened to this group in Dawntrail and I hate it. If anything that solo duty needed to be longer and end with a fight where we control the scions against <redacted>.

[SarahWoof]

10. Spectator mode

The biggest hurdle for getting new players to try harder content is that they are worried they'll mess it up and cost other players time and energy.

The Fall Guys event had a neat concept where you can turn into a "ghost" and run around and spectate other players progress without the fear of getting hit by obstacles or mechanics.

While I don't think this should be available for current content (at least a patch cycle should pass before it opens up) I think it would be amazing to be able to queue as a spectator to view people's runs of savage and ultimate content and be able to watch how mechanics work and what you should be doing in your role via other players actually doing it.

Likewise if you're a streamer doing a solo duty or something, wouldn't it be cool if your chat could run around watching you do it in game?

This all seems harder to implement but I think completely doable with current 14 stuff that's been shown off.

11. Remake Chocobo Racing.

Largely there are aspects of Chocobo Racing I really like. I'm one of those weirdos that grinded out my near perfect stat Chocobo. But the rewards suck and not enough people ever really play to make it interesting.

Do away with the stat system entirely. Focus more on dodging obstacles and mechanics while running. Have more variance for power ups and how to use them. Dashing forward to a group to hit them with a bramble patch is a favorite of mine haha

But probably most importantly, let players do a race while queued for other things.

If I was personally in charge of Chocobo Racing I would move them to the overworld map. Imagine a track in an ARR zone like the Sangoli Desert where people out in the overworld could sit and watch the race taking place!

People could zone into it just like they do for a GATE or one of those Bozja critical engagements and then mount up and go.

And like... Why limit it to Chocobos? Let's go full Wacky Races and let everyone use any mount in the game they currently have.

Rewards should also include more than just MGP. Give us some barding. Give us some tombstones. Heck, give us some EXP for the job we're using.

[SarahWoof]

12. PVP

I love the Frontline roulette. Give me Crystalline Conflict roulettes? Or at least a log achievement where if I do five of them a week I get some EXP.

Also give me an even more casual Crystalline Conflict. I want to go in with a single friend and play together.

I also think being able to change your class at the start like you can with frontlines would be a lot of fun?

I know SE is worried about balance but like... So many people never play this that I feel like encouraging more play is the bigger priority.

Rival Wings also deserves some love

13. Mentor Roulette

I desperately want essentially an "Expert Trials/Raids" only roulette. But I'll take mentor Roulette being better.

Just like... Give this significantly better rewards based on what you actually queue for. Unique mounts, minions, barding, much better exp or tombstones, etc etc.

14. Synced emotes

First off. It is a travesty that we have not had a political wine & dine ballroom event in 14 yet. In some future expansion I want to be essentially be an ambassador to like Mercydia or something and need to go to this very formal event that ends with me dancing with that expansions villain without realizing they're the villain yet. Or maybe I do! But it's politics! I need it...

Anyways like.. imagine you do a dance and then someone who also has that dance clicks to "Sync emote" and they are dancing with you side by side. Or... In more unique circumstances, they have an entirely different animation where you lead and they dance with you. It would be very cute...

15. Chat bubbles

Yoshi P has claimed he wanted to do this but my addition to this is we get something similar to duty portraits with it.

Players get a small personal avatar portrait (that they or other players can turn off) that can also be assigned as a default or as different emotions.

So like for rp you could do /angry "text" and your chat bubbles would have a small angry portrait that you customize in addition to your text.

[SarahWoof]

16. Delve equivalents

One of the best things in WoWs latest expansion The War Within for me has been delves.

Very similar in concept to variant dungeons or deep dungeons in 14 but imo handled much better.

Yoshi P has stated in interviews he'd be open to experimenting with more unique dungeon structures and delves are essentially a mini-dungeon with a boss at the end.

What makes delves cool is that you can do them solo or with one friend or with a full group. But also that you can increase the difficulty based on your current gear and skills.

A 14 equivalent would be basically imagine if you could pick to start a deep dungeon on floor 9, 59, or 99. Where floor 9 would be considered tier 1 and floor 79 would be considered tier 7 and so on.

What also makes Delves neat is that you access them out in the world proper. You actually have to go to the delve and enter it from that location, encouraging players to go out and actually be in the zones in the overworld. And that they are all thematic to the locations they're set in.

Dawntrails battle design and dungeons have honestly been pretty on point for me. And while I personally would love for them to get even more complex and difficult, I think this kind of adjustable difficulty dungeon is a great way to handle this.

Especially when Delves in WoW also give great weekly rewards.

17. Dungeon design variance

I actually do not mind 14s dungeon design too much honestly. I know a lot of people have problems with the two packs, stop, two pack, boss, repeat 3 times schtick the design team has settled on. But like I don't think that adding more mobs to fight or giving bigger areas to run through fixes this. I actually vastly prefer how 14 does dungeons and bosses over WoW still.

That said! One of my fondest 14 memories is still doing ARRs Wanderers palace back when you could pull the entire dungeon into the boss arena and use aquaveil (used to be a knock back) to push them out just as the boss started to cheese the entire dungeon.

And I know 14 devs hated this... But it really was very fun. And I do miss when we had content that allowed it's playerbase to experiment and optimize more.

[SarahWoof]

18. Hard wipe boss mechanics.

In a similar vein to the above. One of my favorite encounters in ARR and still to this day was Titan Hard mode.

Back in the day when Titan did landslide and you were hit by it and fell off the stage. That was it. You could not be raised and stayed dead.

I know why SE removed mechanics like this. In WoW raids there are limited battle rezzes and as such if you die early in a fight you might miss the entire fight because people are saving those rezzes for a healer or tank. And honestly it kinda sucks.

What made Titan Hard so well designed is that it also had a mid-fight fps check where you had to take out Titans heart. And when current this was a pretty strict check. As such you basically needed the whole team alive to hit it. So if someone got landslided that was basically a party wipe and you started over. This encouraged everyone to learn that mechanic very well and then stay alive for the full fight!

This was a hard wall to pass for some players but honestly it was a shared experience that brought the community together. Everyone got past this and felt good because it was hard to do so. 14 really needs more of that today.

Honestly a compromise imo would be that any player that gets knocked off by landslide becomes gaoled instead. This gaol would then become a bomb that could wipe the party if it went off, encouraging everyone to focus on an additionally hard mechanic they wouldn't normally need to do to compensate for the mistake.

In WoWs recent raid there is a very cute katamari damacy kind of encounter where you need to roll around the arena until your ball is big enough to take out a bomb.

If one bomb goes off it does massive raidwides but more importantly also gives everyone a debuff. If a second bomb goes off before this debuff expires, everyone wipes.

14 also needs more of this. We shouldn't be able to just ignore mechanics because our HP is high. Trust your players to actually do things.

[SarahWoof]

19. More provoke more esuna

I'm of the opinion that tank swaps are in fact easy and should not be limited to just extreme and savage content.

A good way to make them easier tho is to have a marker above a tanks head that basically indicates to the other tank that they should provoke.

Likewise I'm of the opinion that healers need way more to do. And I want to be casting esuna and dealing with raidwide damage much more than I currently have to. I honestly miss scholars aoe esuna and wish we got something like that but for cleansing debuffs that happen much more often.

20. More directional and positional moves.

Playing a Preservation Evoker in the War Within in WoW is a lot of fun. You send our orbs you actually have to aim to coat as much of your raid as you can.

You have a conal breath heal and attack.

It feels all very positional and interesting from a healing perspective.

I main Sage in 14 and I love it (especially our new aoe DoT) but certainly I wish every class had a bit more uniqueness and character in this game.

Picture this.

You activate Pneuma and your player model is locked. You've committed to the move similar to as you would for like a Limit Break.

During that interim before the attack goes off, moving your character wouldn't move your character it instead moves your line aoe which you can see and aim. This is very similar to how Preservation Evoker breath attacks work btw!

And then pew pew much bigger heals and damage to compensate for needing to aim and the risk of stalling yourself.

Also like... I played a lot of FF11 as well and positionals with sneak attack and lining up with the tank were just cool. And I miss that degree of group coordination!

Anyways I've ranted for awhile and am curious if anyone else likes any of these or not.

[Enkidoh]

You can get around the posting limitation by posting a paragraph, then going back and editing it (it saves on having to waste your daily post count).

A few of your suggestions have some explanations of SE's thinking of how they are or why they won't add/change things:

Repairs - this is a relic from version 1.0 where it was originally meant to foster the inclusion of Disciples of the Hand in the Armoury System, the idea players would level crafting classes so as to repair their own gear (or pay a friend who has to do so), not surprisingly, this did not work out in practice (yes they've always had NPC repariers as well, but in 1.0 they were specifically set to never fully repair your gear to full so as to further force players to repair their own gear). Needless to say, it was neutuered in ARR and has kind of been retained as a way of retaining some sense of penality for failing content (your gear susbtantially degrades if you get KO'd after all, essentially FFXIV's equivelant to FFXI's hated 'EXP loss from death'). I agree it's rather pointless now, but it's not usually something that really needs to be worried about unless you're dying repeatedly.

More non-FATE open world content - there is stuff to actually do out in the open world besides FATEs, but most players (especially the long term ones who have been here since ARR's launch or even earlier), have already long completed it/gotten the rewards, and thus lost interest in it. For starters, there's the Hunt (Rank A weekly Hunts and the S/SS rank ones that are highly sought after), the Treasure Hunt that many players still do (which can further give benefits if you happen to get the Treasure Dungeon entry appear); the Sightseeing Log (the original ARR one being particiularly tricky as the vistas don't have a visual indicator on the map, and require specific times of day/weather/emotes to gain), old Battlefield levequests (especially the Grand Company ones) that if you've neglected them, can be a good time waster on the world map... there is still plenty to do. Long term players though will generally have already long done all this and so hence don't regard as worthwhile (except the Hunt and Treasure Dungeons).

Chocobo Racing - this is directly based on FFVII's incarnation of it, but alas it's use in an online environment means it's at the mercy of network ping, meaning lag can completely wreck any attempt to make the chocobo follow your directions. This is also why there is the use of stats, as they dictate not only things like how fast your chocobo can go, how much it run without being tired, and how likely it is to follow your directions. This is a fundamental part of it so I don't see SE removing it.

[hydralus]

Jesus Christ.