Hopefully constructive criticism regarding the current state of FFXIV

[Xapapetsu]

I'm making this forum for the devs and hopefully the health of FFXIV moving forward. I've taken my own opinions as well as opinions I've heard from the community to put this together.

1.) I personally enjoy the slightly more difficult dungeon content. The problem is I don't enjoy the dungeon format. After years of playing FFXIV the standard format of the dungeons have become bland, I unfortunately don't know how you could adjust the dungeons to make them more enjoyable. Maybe people could give more constructive feedback on this subject.

2.) The story can correlate with the enjoyment players have in post content. I think we can all agree the vast majority of the playerbase didn't enjoy dawntrails story. I'm not here to bash it, it's out it's done, there's no changing it. In the future it's extremely important that the story resonates with the playerbase.

3.) There are a lot of complaints about the lack of content, I somewhat agree, but I'll take a different approach to it. In endwalker we weren't given an expansion zone or relic grind and I believe that exasperated the issue. The expansion zone is releasing on par with previous expansions eureka was 4.25 and bosja was 5.35 but I believe in the future it needs to be released at launch to keep the casual playerbase happy.

4.) Job homogenation, the jobs of ffxiv feel very similar to each other, in some cases that's a good thing in other ways it's bad. It's good in terms of balance, lining up raid buffs, and playing efficiently, but it's bad because it makes jobs feel boring over time. My suggestion would be to take notes from WOW, I fully understand it's a nightmare to balance and the playerbase will attack you for balancing issues, but I believe it could be very healthy for the game as well as good for the immersion and role playing aspects of the game.

5 Party Finder, party finder is a great tool for end game content and I appreciate it, but it has it's own set of issues. I won't speak on the community based issues only things that could be improved on your end. I like running savage and ultimate content, but my home data center is primal, I can't efficiently run ultimate content on primal because there are not enough players running ultimates on primal, I have to travel to aether every time I want to get a party together in a decent amount of time. If you allowed region based cross data center play, I think that would solve many of the issues we're running into when it comes to getting parties put together. I don't know the impact it would have on roulettes though.

Lastly, I don't say these things because I want to tear the devs down. I say these things because I care about the health of this game and want to see it improve.

[Jeeqbit]

I unfortunately don't know how you could adjust the dungeons to make them more enjoyable.

By not adhering to the format of a fixed number of bosses and trash. They could incorporate mechanics such as:

• Hopping on a mount and chasing someone.
• Falling in the sky like in Byakko.
• Using the G-Warrior or Magitek Armor or similar ideas.
• Melee DPS pilots a mount the whole party is on (like the raft in Dawntrail's first dungeon), while the ranged jobs attack from a distance and the tank tries to defend them.
• The fight with cannons in Stone Vigil HM.
• A dungeon that works similar to how Steps of Faith used to.
• Much of a mess as it is, the tentacle fight in Hullbreaker Isle is different and you have 2 routes to pick.
• Having interrupts on random trash mobs (they did this well in Shadowbringers dungeons and hunts as well as criterion). You can still make some pulls easier by interrupting these right.

we can all agree the vast majority of the playerbase didn't enjoy dawntrails story. I'm not here to bash it, it's out it's done, there's no changing it. In the future it's extremely important that the story resonates with the playerbase.

I think they get that by now, so it's not a particularly constructive statement.

Job homogenation, the jobs of ffxiv feel very similar to each other

People have asked for homogenization and then complained when it's happened. Remember "DRK should have a heal"? Or "PLD should have a gap closer"? and so on. These changes were made as requested, and now it's "homogenization".

They are going to address it in 8.0 anyway. Whether it will be to people's wishes, I don't know, so I'm not saying people should get be all excited for it or something. But they will likely be finding an alternative to leveling beyond 100, which could include skill trees or a similar concept, which may allow for a better system - we'll see.

I have to travel to aether every time I want to get a party together in a decent amount of time

They are aware of the issue but they said it would take time to implement (and it will because it's complicated on the backend) plus they would need to test it extensively.

Lastly, I don't say these things because I want to tear the devs down. I say these things because I care about the health of this game

Thanks for saying it more politely than most other forums users.

[Router]

I unfortunately don't know how you could adjust the dungeons to make them more enjoyable. Maybe people could give more constructive feedback on this subject.

Either make trash pulls interesting or remove them entirely. Dungeons are not enjoyable because there's a ton of nothing between bosses; XIV trash is a bunch of training dummies to AoE down that almost never do anything except auto attack. Origenics turtle is a great example of what NOT to do

[BigCheez]

I agree with pretty much everything you said.

As for dungeons, I think adding more interesting mechanics to trash mobs again would help a lot. The frustrating things is that we know that the devs can create interesting dungeons, they just stopped for some reason. Saint Mocianne's Arboretum (Hard) is a good example of dungeon design IMO. The trash mobs have abilities that can be interrupted. Some of the trash mobs have unique abilities, i.e. the ones that cast an AOE that turns everything hit by it into a korpokkur. Players should avoid this but dragging mobs into it means they'll be transformed and do very little damage to the tank. There are the mud covered mobs near the end that you can drag into the water to transform them into different monsters.

Undoing the job homogenisation would increase replay value by allowing us to experience content in a way that feels somewhat fresh by changing jobs, instead of just being a different flavour of 123. I think making tanking and healing more involved would also make playing different roles more varied.

[TaleraRistain]

The frustrating things is that we know that the devs can create interesting dungeons, they just stopped for some reason.

They stopped because the community complained every time they were presented with a dungeon that slowed down their breakneck speedrun for even a second. So no more interesting side rooms or mobs with unique abilities because that makes roulettes take 0.00000001% longer. And that's just unacceptable.

It's why you see people bail when they get Aurum Vale or Pharos Sirius or the like in DF. I had a Stone Vigil Hard the other day where just one dps remained when I joined in progress as a healer.

Really a lesson in being careful what you ask for.

[VeyaAkemi]

I had a Stone Vigil Hard the other day where just one dps remained when I joined in progress as a healer.

I don't think I had a roulette of Stone Vigil Hard that didn't have at least one person bailing in a long time, people act like Cuca Fera is this incredibly insurmountable boss when it is really easy to handle if you are even trying to get the mechanics around it, and you can "cheese"(it feels wrong to call it cheese because it's still effort but it opens so much room for mistake on that fight it becomes difficult to wipe) it really easily by having the Healer run around instead of staying at a cannon, as you can heal the knights and let the fight last as long as you need it to, the last boss being a fully telegraphed avoidable boss that ignores enmity is also very unique, and I saw arguments start to break out in that dungeon because they thought the Tank was messing up all of sudden, which I have on occasion been able to defuse by explaining how the boss actually works.

It's a very unique dungeon with design that should be praised but even now I see people failing to handle it.

[syldon]

Either make trash pulls interesting or remove them entirely. Dungeons are not enjoyable because there's a ton of nothing between bosses; XIV trash is a bunch of training dummies to AoE down that almost never do anything except auto attack. Origenics turtle is a great example of what NOT to do

I am new back to FFxiv. I haven't even started the last expansion yet. I am looking back in the direction of FF because of the shabby practises Blizzard are adopting to push token sales. This aside...

The worst Dungeon Wow ever made was Trial of the Crusader in WOTLK. There was no trash. Bosses just appeared for you one by one. I knew of no one who liked it. Trash sets the tone for the dungeon. It reminds people of the mechanics as you approach the boss. Getting the amount of trash before the boss is the key, or at least make them interesting. Hunt mechanics are always a twist to make people feel good when they find a spy or such like (court of stars - wow). Giving players other than the tank a role to play is always a decent call imho. Make it a race or wipe scenario and that makes people feel good when they get it right. IE: the faster some one does a job the less hp the boss has, or he has lower output.

[Voryn]

The problem with dungeons is that they all have to be doable in roulettes. There are so many of them and it needs to be such that if you’re a first timer, and you queue up in Duty Finder and get three people that haven’t done that dungeon in a year and who haven’t played their respective jobs in a month, then your run still needs to be perfectly smooth anyway or else people will complain and disband.

And if the devs don’t want people to disband during levelling roulette, this makes a problem where tank and healer can’t be hard to play when doing the trash pulls. Imagine how many parties would disband if both your tank and healer needed to be good at the game in order to complete a dungeon. The devs have chosen “smoothness” at the expense of making dungeons less interesting to players who are familiar enough with how to play the game.

I’d really like if they could at least have more like Vanguard, with aoes during the trash pulls and having bosses that are a little harder than usual dungeon bosses.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't think I had a roulette of Stone Vigil Hard that didn't have at least one person bailing in a long time, people act like Cuca Fera is this incredibly insurmountable boss when it is really easy to handle if you are even trying to get the mechanics around it, and you can "cheese"(it feels wrong to call it cheese because it's still effort but it opens so much room for mistake on that fight it becomes difficult to wipe) it really easily by having the Healer run around instead of staying at a cannon, as you can heal the knights and let the fight last as long as you need it to, the last boss being a fully telegraphed avoidable boss that ignores enmity is also very unique, and I saw arguments start to break out in that dungeon because they thought the Tank was messing up all of sudden, which I have on occasion been able to defuse by explaining how the boss actually works.

It's a very unique dungeon with design that should be praised but even now I see people failing to handle it.

Don't even need to cheese it. Cuca Fera's an incredibly easy fight if everyone stays on the cannons, kills the adds that attack other cannons and the NPCs, and interrupts the roomwide while dropping dps on boss as necessary. But people drop like flies in Dzemael too because they don't want to stay in the purple and be safe. I enjoy getting these dungeons in roulettes, but unfortunately they're few and far between these days.

[LilaIronman]

They stopped because the community complained every time they were presented with a dungeon that slowed down their breakneck speedrun for even a second. So no more interesting side rooms or mobs with unique abilities because that makes roulettes take 0.00000001% longer. And that's just unacceptable.

It's why you see people bail when they get Aurum Vale or Pharos Sirius or the like in DF. I had a Stone Vigil Hard the other day where just one dps remained when I joined in progress as a healer.

Really a lesson in being careful what you ask for.

Tbf the dungeons you are describing are nowhere near a good dungeon design.. all those are just kinda bad because of the missing ability variety and randomness from mobs. Stone Vigil Hard, rarely anyone knows how to kill the second boss and more times than not in DF, people do not care to listen/read chat if you explain something.