Wishlist for 8.0

[Shurrikhan]

Oh, boy, this will be a long list... will edit in as I go.

Handling

• The game no longer increases animation times by one's roundtrip ping. (The ping's delay is subtracted from the refreshed animation lock.)
• One may now choose whether modifying keys automatically intercept existing inputs (e.g., whether Shift will cancel movement via W if something is bound to Shift-W) or retain the earlier input until it is re-input (releasing W and pressing again when Shift is already held will be a Shift-W, but hitting Shift with W already down will stay a W).
• Though still verifying item counts with the server before allowing for changes, client-side prediction is now used for inventory display and most other similarly affected menus.

New Player Experience

• New and tailored Adventure Guide. This tries to expose to new players more of what content would otherwise be missed and makes players less reliant on the Lodestone / Patch Notes just to discover where the hell to start the new content added in the day's patch.
  
  
• Players may now toggle on the "All-Rounder" option, causing half of would-be experience gains and all Bonus Experience consumption to instead become "Bonus Experience", until having reached the Bonus Experience cap. This cap far exceeds that of "Rested Experience" alone.
  
  
• Certain quests, such as those granting access to basic features (mount, materia, Halls of Novice, etc.) now extend the quest maximum and have a special type and can be accessed from the Adventure Guide.
• Most basic features (mount, materia, Halls of Novice) no longer dependent on MSQ progress and instead grant the quest automatically upon reaching the requisite level, and even grant an automatic and free teleport to the requisite area).
  
• Better breakdowns of the basic systems via a Deeper Tips display. This would allow you to select a UI element, such as a tooltip, expanding it and allowing you to toggle through all of its parts to get a further explanation of each bit, such as what the heck "potency" is and how its value is calculated, periodic tick rates and how their damage is affected (i.e., that it's snapshotted), the difference between abilities, skills, and spells, etc., etc.
  
  
• Better in-game guides in general, with a more multi-threaded and cross-reference-capable format.
  
  
• Revamped, revitalized, and much harder Guildhests with more substantial rewards.
  
  
• After leveling up if having acquired a new trait or action, when next out of both combat and a DUTY (or FATE), these will appear via a card-like UI element that quickly explains the skill's tooltip and, via video clip and text both, briefly outlines the skill's typical usage. Some of these skills are revisited and guide cards updated when augmented or newly able to be leveraged or capitalized upon by some new skill or trait. These mini-guides can be viewed from the Actions and Traits Menu.
• Skills not yet added to your hotbar will now be highlighted in your Actions and Traits menu. For this, you may designate which hotbars are to be checked and whether macros and Action Stacks should be checked as well. (By default, they are.)
  
  
• A new in-game Patch Notes feature has been added, with categories, a "Relevant to Me" toggle, and a snap-to search. For instance, if a skill's potency was changed, mousing or tabbing over that entry in the notes will highlight that skill on your bar and clicking on the entry will open up your Actions and Trait menu, automatically pan over skill to open its tooltip, and highlight the changed portion(s) with a second partial tooltip below that notes what the highlighted portion(s) used to be.
  Clicking on an entry that changed items will, if you possess the item change, go straight to it in your inventory and likewise show what changed about it. A crafting recipe, your craft log (even if you haven't actually unlocked that craft, using a temporary entry therein). Etc., etc. Entries without a specific target of change will include text and, in most cases, video, describing the change.
  
  
• The Halls of Novice now offers new "Proving Ground" challenges and "Evaluators' Lab". The first gives common enough (if a bit... "future/proofing" or training for salvaging potential mistakes) PvE-esque or PvP-esque situations at ramping difficulty. The latter is an instance that allows you to set up striking dummies (attackable or healable) or certain scenarios as you see fit and then provides an exact breakdown of your outputs over time and provides advice (similar to ffxivanalysis).
  
• Players may now level-sync upward with/towards friends, allowing them to do certain forms of content largely independent of story progress even if it's above their level, for proportionate experience (e.g., if it would give a level 71 20% of a level, it will give them, a level 52, 20% of their level). By default, All-Rounder is turned on for this. (See Gamuts and Guide Cards for how this can be eased.)

Systems De-Obfuscation

• Stats now show their effects (% crit chance, %crit damage, % power increase, % physical mitigation, % magic mitigation, % recast speed decrease, GCD speed, [GCD speed under maintainable hastening effects], [MP per tick], etc.).
• All hidden modifiers are now reflected in the affected skills' potencies, rounded to the nearest 5 (for periodics) or 10 (for direct effect) potency {+ the negligible impact of autos no longer being affected}. Tanks' hidden ~30% potency debuff and traits like Increased Action Damage or Maim and Mend (which could previously make a 600p tank skill weaker in itself than a healers' 340p skill and vastly complicated healing power per primary stat, with up to a 40% gap between 400p of healing and 400p of damage even without any categorical buffs to either) have been replaced by the former, say, "600p" attack now stating its actual resultant 420p potency, a "340p" healer attack stating it's actual resultant 440p, Stormbite showing its actual 120p direct and 30p over time instead of 100p direct and 25p over time, etc., etc.

User Interface

• As much as possible, "You cannot <X> while <Y>" issues have been removed.
• As much as possible, de-layer NPC/vendor/retainer menus. If I talk to an endgame tome-gear vendor, I should simply be able to hit Tab to go between tiers, toggle 1 through 7 to select among Fending, Maiming, Striking, Scouting, Aiming, Casting, Healing, and hit Q and E to snap to a new header in the gear listings (e.g., Armor, Accessories, Items), Z to toggle between currently usable (and not yet possessed) items, X to filter that down to just those of my current job, etc. (See Gamuts section below for more.)
  
  
• Doors and portals now default to "Yes" on selection, and players may now toggle other such default behaviors.
• Grids now have the option also of a continuously scrolling 3-, 5- or 7-row view wherein the DPad only actually moves the position up or down (instead scrolling the rows down or up past the central row) upon reaching either edge. Small numbers are given on the edge to show position and a tiny gap notes which "bag #" or the like you'd normally be in if instead using a paged/tabbed format.
  
  In this format, the tab-change buttons can be set to simply jump up or down X number of rows at once or can redivide the total space into as many tabs as would be needed to carry all your things, X rows at a time and will jump to the middle of that next/previous "tab".

Glamours and Such

• Appearance Collection added. Yes, like WoW's. Bonding an item now flags a bimodal hidden achievement, from which time onward all of your characters will have access to the given appearance.
• Glamours are now applied to your jobs' Soul Crystal, not the pieces of gear themselves, and therefore remain regardless of new item acquisitions. Even classes now carry Profession Marks, which take up the same function as jobs' Soul Crystals and are found from the same section.
• On application of this change, the appearances of each job's and DoL's/DoH's outfit presently being worn will be saved their Soul Crystal. Option given via Patch Notes pane to purge this from the job crystal, causing it to instead inherit their worn gear's data (a la an empty slot in a Glamour Plate).
• NOTE: Accordingly, items need no longer hold appearance data; any appearances beyond the default are stored solely on the Soul Crystals and Profession Marks.

Stat Choice and Materia Revamped

• Tenacity and Piety changed to "Tertiary Stats", which are now tabled separately from "Secondary Stats".
• Tenacity no longer increases damage dealt. Piety renamed to Vigor and now also increases HP per tick.
• New tertiary stat, Mobility, added. It increases movement speed, reduces the cooldown of Sprint, and allows Sprint to overcharge, allowing for a partial charge at proportionate duration (e.g., 2 seconds at 20% overcharge).
• Tenacity is found most but not only among tank gear, Vigor among healer gear, and Mobility among DPS gear.
  
  
• Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into Speed.
• Direct Hit removed, replaced by Determination, Crit, or Speed.
  
  
• Materia has been mostly removed in terms of item usage, replaced by a currency-like system of essence (Red, Yellow, and Blue, which can each be used on any two among Speed/Craftsmanship/Gathering [purple], Critical Hit/Control/Perception [orange], and Determination/CP/GP [green]). Anything which would generate Spiritbond now generates this Essence.
  
  
• Materia may still be generated in various "grades", but these are merely used to move some amount of Essence from one person to another for the latter to absorb; they are no longer placed directly into items.
• Players may now "Absorb All" materia in their possession, with the amount of total Essence generated shown to them to recombine into the highest grade possible each.
• Essence is now spent on Soul Crystals and Profession Marks (the class equivalent), not on gear, and therefore does not need to be replaced with each gear upgrade.
• The maximum amount of Secondary Stat and Tertiary Stat each that a Soul Crystal (or Profession Mark) may contain is determined by the highest item level of gear the job may equip (a check eased by the inventory changes seen below).
• To spend Essence, just click on the Junction action (which automatically replaced the Meld Materia action) via its button or via context menu on your Soul Crystal / Profession Mark. From there, you can spend what Essence you like on whatever stats you like (Red for Crit or Speed, for instance), regardless of what stats are already present on your gear.
• NOTE: This means that items no longer need to hold Materia data, either.
  
  
• To slightly better balance Speed against other stats, it no longer has a weaker impact than Determination on periodic damage (instead being identical), and it now increases auto-attack speed. More tuning TBD.
  
  
• The % generated from each point of stat has been increased by about 20%, allowing for a noticeably greater overall impact from stat choice.

_______________________________

• P.S. This is just one approach to handling Materia. Whatever the case, the item bloat it causes needs, imo, to be cut way the hell down. There is no reason to have 156 items and counting (increased by 26 per expansion) of Materia that ultimately only do 13 things (and that's being likely too kind to Direct Hit).
  
  For instance, we could instead easily cut down Materia to just a max of 3 pieces equippable across all gear, with each Materia actually being unique, like Phoenix Materia, Dawnflare Materia, Savagery Blade Materia, Fleetfoot Materia, Siren's Materia, etc. To give a quick mock-up, let's say they're broken into types basically similarly to their appearance in per FF7... but maybe slightly simplified into generally Offensive (Red), Defensive (Blue), Supportive (Yellow), with occasional use of secondary colors between (Green for defensive-supportive, Purple for offensive-defensive / counter-attacking / general power, Orange for offensive-supportive). These don't each need to necessarily be equippable to every slot, but there should be some 3-7 options each.
  
  For example...
  
  Savagery Materia (Red) might give an oGCD that buffs your next attack's damage if used on Head or reduces your next attack's recast time by X% to a max of Y seconds if equipped on Hands, a short-lived general buff if equipped on Chest, and cause your movement skills to increase your damage if used on Legs, and your skills to blink-strike up to some range and deal bonus potency in doing so, recharged over time, if used on Feet, and grant a new Savage Strike akin to a Lost/Phantom Action if used on your weapon.
  
  Phoenix (Orange) would on Head augment the likes of Riddle of Fire, Presence of Mind, Manification, etc., causing it to grant you the Aspect of the Phoenix, dealing bonus fire damage and healing, with a chance therein to re-raise yourself based on remaining AotP duration upon death, on Weapon would summon an actual Phoenix as a discrete cooldown, on Chest would grant additional healing over time that can extend your max health by the given amount, up to X%, on Hands would cause your attacks and heals to apply a short HoT for which any number of applications could overlap (displayed as 'stacks', but fading individually), on Feet would grant an ability allowing you to cycle burning your own health for an alternate-Sprint and wake of healing and increasing your own healing while still.
  
  Fleetfoot (Green, Supportive/Defensive) -- Usable on Feet, Legs, Chest. On Feet, it grants a second charge of Sprint and reduces Sprint's recharge time to 40s. On Legs, it increases movement speed by 15%. On Chest, it generates a conditional 'barrier' over time; AoEs that would otherwise hit for less than this amount instead make you appear to dodge out of it (to the nearest safe position) and back, automatically dodging that damage, and would-be fatal.

Inventory Changes and Similar De-bloating

• Virtually all item-based currencies are now stored as Key Items or Currencies instead, consuming no inventory space.
• All items are now dyable by default. They differ only in default color and that of their small non-dyable features, such as which metals are used between dyable parts.
• Items that are identical except insofar as their dyes are now the same item. For instance, a Vanguard Bolero of Scouting/Aiming/Striking would now just be a Vanguard Bolero (although it may show one or the other of Dexterity or Strength will be blanked out), and a Riversbreath Jacket of Fending/Maiming would just be a Riversguard Jacket (although with 1171 Defense for Tanks and only and 820p for Dragoon/Reaper, the other being written in small, greyed-out and slash-out font). Items changed in this way bypass "unique" restrictions and will be highlighted on patch day, with a snap-to list available via the Patch Notes.
• A new icon has been added for each among Fending, Maiming, Striking, Scouting, Aiming, Casting, and Healing, optionally in role color. By default, these now sit at the top-right corner of Equipment, in place of the "Usable by" section. Weapons instead include the icon for the class or job (superseding class, once possessed) itself.
  
  
• Inventory size has been increased to 300, with temporary allowance during the first month of log-in after the patch for 200 more (10 more than the current total), but the Armor Chest has been removed. All will be warned that overflow capacity will be moved to your mailbox two months after logging in; you will have until then to shrink it down. Given that leveling items have been roughly halved in count, materia de-itemized, glamours no longer require hoarding items, currency items no longer take up space, etc., that should not at all be difficult.
• The inventory is now categorized and filterable, with the default categories of Equipment, Consumables, Ingredients, and Miscellaneous, but hugely customizable beyond them (e.g., into Weapons, Armor, Accessories, Usable Ingredients, Other Ingredients, Currency Items, Miscellaneous, etc., or even Head, Chest, Hands, Legs, Feet... Leatherworking, Tailoring, etc.), and available Tags such as "Favorites", "At level", "Near level", "Marked", "Wares", "Can Craft From Now", etc., and sort orders therein. This helps to keep down load times for inventory without having to necessarily break up the items of a given type in one's chest from those that have overflowed outside of them, removes the need to retain data on the order of one's inventory slots, and greatly helps with the other new features below:
• Clicking on the given equipment slot will show your relevant replacements, from highest item level to lowest, with a slot of "best next available soon [after leveling up]" before if not yet at level cap and near to something better than the best you can currently equip. These selectors, too, can now use continuous scrolling options from a set maximum display (5 by default).
• Item search added atop one's inventory. Putting it even part of a word (with new allowance for wildcard fillers, etc.) will show all items thus describable and highlight the categories into which you could find more of them, with intensity varying slightly based on number therein relative to other categories.

Balancing For Content Longevity

• The maximum item level for most content has been reduced to whatever that content drops (e.g., a dungeon requiring 690 and dropping 705 would have an ilvl cap of 705, not 730), but rewards have been increased to keep the required time per week to max out tomes, etc., roughly equal.
• Tome-generation efficiency more tightly balanced across most content. Hunts no longer have a huge lead, and variance is pushed via weeklies and systems like Wonderous Tails, which can now be started automatically through the Adventure Guide.
• Runs per your selected Variants (Min Item Level, Explorer Mode, etc.) may now be queued for directly via the Duty Finder and simultaneously with regular runs, if one so desires, via a second checkbox added to each content listing. This checkbox defaults to "Minimum Item Level + No Echo".
• Minimum Item Level Runs have increased drop chances based on the stat power lost compared to one's current gear (given the ilvl ceiling without Min Ilvl on). For instance, a 24% loss in expected power per the stats lost would mean a 25% increase in experience, currency, and drop rates (2 guaranteed drops --> 50% chance of a third drop; 4% drop rate mount --> 5% drop rate).
• <Work in Progress>

Other World Content Changes

• All skills which can currently target only party members may now also target allies.
  
• All AoE heals are now effectively split "smart heals", with effect reduced after 4 allies' affected. When in a party with non-party wounded allies nearby that would otherwise reduce the effect to party, the party is prioritized by default. Raid-buffs do likewise, affect a maximum of 8 allies (prioritizing party members, then those nearest), and now have greater effect when applied only to 4 or fewer allies (helping to future-proof balance for light party difficult content).
  
  
• HUD change: There is now a Friendly List added that can be consolidated into or remain separate from the Party List. Though it may be hidden, by default, this is used when sharing Enmity with another player or partaking in the same duty or FATE, and persists through your death (loss of Enmity) until the engaged enemies or all engaged friendlies are dead. By default, this uses only a simple name (or F. Last_Name), job icon, and only highly filtered status effects and extends laterally.

• These temporary display bars fade out over time (by default, over up to 30 seconds without further interaction, hastened by distance to as little as 5 seconds or until the target has exceeded 60 yalms away.)
  
• Another option will include a pointed background around the name, indicating where the nameplate of the indicated player is in relation to your camera. This UI can also replace the default raid UI, with all customizations mentioned below.
  
• Yet another option allows these bars to be hidden except when the nameplate of the given player is not on screen, at which point it will "clamp" to this friendly bar near their position. The bar may be given depth (height between bars of players further ahead of you vs. behind you) to better hint at the position of the players to whom the bars (and/or nameplates) belong.

• The main idea here is to allow players to feel more connected even without the hassle of specifically being part of a party.
  
  
• FATEs now scale more closely with the total stat-strength of players present and objectives remaining with the rate of objective completion (rather than the number of players present at the previous FATE on its completion), and they apportion their rewards both to the portion of objectives completed and the absolute amount of contribution provided as split among contributors.
  
• FATEs may also now "fortify" their remaining progress, such as by a boss summoning additional adds or healing itself, in order to give latecomers more of a chance to participate. (Naturally, this also in turn increases the maximum reward players who've been around longer can acquire.)

Other HUD Changes -- Macros, Stacks, and Gamuts

• Status Effect cap increased by 30.
• Status Effects displayed are now filterable by tag, by sort order up to a given cap, or even by "weight". This can be set separately for self, allies, and enemies. For example, you might have only vulnerability debuffs and CC show from other players, keeping all status effects otherwise to yourself on enemies, while including also others' barriers, %DRs, and HoTs for allies. Etc., etc.
• Allies and target may now contain up to 3 status effect bars (allowing you to layer different types of information at different positions, if you so wish), while your own status effects may now hold up to 7 different bars, with effects divided up or even duplicated across them as you see fit through the above tags, weights, and/or caps.
  
  
• The raised button overlay on skills may now be replaced with faintly darkened edges or a completely square form.
• Consolidated combos now have the option to show subtly (but noticeably enough, via overlay around the button) what skill they comboed from.
• Larger, centered skill cooldown counters now available by default (and basically all things SimpleTweaks, because of course).
  
• The Target of Target may now be moved separately, and the Target healthbar length may now be adjusted.
• Players may now merge their Focus Target and Main Target, somewhat, allowing the two to automatically swap places when swapping from a non-Focus target to the Focus Target. You may also choose to apportion the bar lengths and icon sizes between each according to which is the present main target atop or instead of swapping their places (when FT also = MT, it takes up 67% of the total width, while when the non-FT is the MT, it takes up 67% of total width).
  
  
• Macros have been mostly unneutered. Macros may now include conditions for range and combo progress, and ALL actions are now queueable, including the first actuatable action of any macro. Yes, that includes even ground-targeting actions.
• A new, more accessibility-friendly version of macros, called Action Stacks, have been added. These act as handy and highly customizable means of player-customization. By default, most actions which lack any reason every to be used separately or out of order are now part of an Action Stack (e.g., Refulgent Arrow over Burst Shot, if the first were unchanged) that is included by default within the Action and Traits pane but not placed by default on one's hotbar.
• Entire hotbar layouts, complete with their action stacks in cohesive fashion, may also be more easily put together under the name Gamuts. These may even include skills not yet acquired and fall-backs for more intuitive / comfortable use when synced down. Some defaults are included on each class/job.
• Yes, there are also Gamuts even for NPC/vendor/retainer controls, with accordingly modified UI!
  
  
  
• A "minimalist" setting has been added, affecting certain hotbars at a time or even an entire HUD Layout. This displays one's skills and their cooldowns only when they are on cooldown, essentially replacing the hotbar with a sort of expandable and centerable/justifiable debuff list (for each skill on cooldown) that still uses the normal skill icons and countdowns. Additional display settings are available for this, and custom sort orders can be given based on duration or specific index counts (this before that, according to what number you set for it.) Yes, Gamuts are available for this as well.
  
  
• New "Action First, Target Second" target selection control option added: One may now activate an action, queued up to one's full GCD time earlier (and queueable even during a prior animation), and then select from among a dynamically highlighted set of characters. Once done, an icon of the spell to be cast on the target ally will appear above their head.
  This is especially useful for controllers, for which target selection can be done simply with a joystick tilt. (Note: a joystick HUD can optionally be included to show the position of relevant targets [marked by party number, in role colors] and show how joystick tilt would affect target selection.) This option snapshots range slightly earlier, if to the user's advantage.
• Players now have the toggleable option to allow targets to be changed mid-cast [until the queuing period / at any time / if the original target dies or exit's range]. *This may behave differently in PvP.*
• Casts may now be held at max cast time if their input is [never released / repressed more than .5s before would-be release and then not released / is held for more than .25 seconds and over the would-be release time / <option off completely>]. This allows for holding heals for a strong hit, long-cast attacks for the appearance of adds, etc.
  
  
• <Work in progress: status effect cap increase and status effect filters/consolidation, and greater allowance for optional consolidation, with some healer/tank QoL to aid with the increases to required sustain and, indirectly, to APM via target selection, etc., such as being able to make better use of focus targeting. Mostly future-proofing for changes below.>

Broader Gameplay Changes/Additions

• <Work in Progress: Changes towards "Job Distinction > Role Templates" atop deeper role experiences via more reasons to bank DPS capacity and target and burst deliberately, to make a more active effort of thwarting enemy offenses as a tank, and drastically increased healing requirements and healer agency/flavor, both.>

Combo System Revisions

• <Work in Progress: Essentially, one may now choose between Open Combos and Consolidated Combos. They each present fairly different ways to play each job.
  
  Combos as they were, though, are dead. No longer does any job have essentially only one ST melee choice for 90% of its GCDs with the remaining 6 of 7 such buttons acting only as traps.
  
  Consolidated Combos would actually feature a slightly greater number of abilities but fewer buttons, using geometric progressions -- i.e., 3 choices at each combo step. This can come in a number of different loops:
  
  Dragoon, for instance, would simply progress up to 4 steps, mix-and-matchable, with a button each for your "Thrust", "Drive", and "Surge" actions: True Thrust / Impulse Drive / Doom Spike -> Vorpal Thrust (Lance Barrage) / Disembowel (Spiral Blow) / Sonic Thrust -> Full Thrust (Heaven's Thrust) / Chaos Thrust (Chaotic Sprint) / Coerthan Torment -> Fang and Claw / Wheeling Thrust / Wyrmfall -> (Any of the previous options not taken earlier or Drakesbane via the previous action used). This is by far the simplest layout.
  
  Dark Knight now has 4 openers, 2 of which can be used from range at damage loss and 2 of which have split damage with a diminishing bonus for additional enemies struck. Each represents a different Aspect/Sacrifice, of Blood/Life, of Steel/Strength, of Magic/Spirit, or of Void/Soul. You may use "combos", therefore of 2 to 5 steps by hastening or delaying reuse the same button as your opener. By doing so, you leave yourself increasingly vulnerable but for proportionately greater reward on your finisher.
  
  Monk now changes between Beast Chakra (Serpent, Raptor, Coeurl) and Stance (Fire/Fire Lotus, Wind/Windborn, Earth/Adamantine) based on actions, with each weaponskill shifting your stance and granting a certain Chakra. For instance, Dragon Kick would enter you into the Fire Lotus Stance grant Serpent Chakra. (One may select their starting stance while out of combat, and spending a GCD on Meditation [a separate key] will allow you to again set your stance and grant yourself a brief accordant buff.) The more types Beast Chakra you have before a reapplication of an existing Beast Chakra, the more powerful the general damage of that skill, while the nearer a repetition of the same Beast Chakra, the more enhanced its aspected bonus effects. Fire, Wind, and Earth, meanwhile, build up Determination, Speed and Mobility, and Vigor and Tenacity (plus the ability to generate AP from damage against yourself that you've nullified), their effects scaling with MP which in turn scales with how varied your skills are and your total effective potency output. Monk has 4 actions available at each moment, meant to chain fluidly together into various potential loops. Think a Rubik's Cube of abilities, with the faces intermixed this way and that according to your last ability. Feels daunting, but you can still wing most things as long as you don't need a particular action at a particular GCD. Timing that, too, though, gives it an absurdly high skill ceiling.
  
  Samurai no longer has Haste and Damage buffs, per se, but instead starts with Haste that must be kept up through certain actions while increased Damage now lies opposite, requiring skill choices opposite what Haste would most want and even occasionally holding the GCD briefly for alignment in order to maximize the damage of a particular action. It in turn has three actions for maximized ST damage (melee ST), hit count (AoE), or range, starting from Hakaze, Fuga, and Enpi, while retaining access to each category from each step but maximizing options within a given category after commiting to its first skill. As before, the ST chain resolves after three steps, the AoE after 2 steps, and the ranged chain only amps itself rather than changing skills if left to itself.
  
  Hakaze leads to Furetsu (風裂, melee ST attack that leads to Gekko OR Kasha and gains positional from most recent buff), Rasenga (螺旋牙, an AoE with focus damage), and Yukikaze or Ageki (鴉撃, a ranged ST attack that does not require you to look at your enemy, deals bonus damage the longer the enemy is behind you between Hakaze and Ageki), depending on range.
  Fuga leads to Mangetsu (which now slows nearby enemies and can conditionally draw them in), Oka (which may lighten enemies and conditionally knock them back), and Yukikaze or Hijun (飛隼, Soaring Falcon, ranged linear AoE with diminishing damage per target struck) depending on range.
  Enpi leads to Gyofu (just an upgrade of Hakaze), Fuko (upgrade of Fuga), and Engaeshi (燕返, swallow's return, also striking enemies between the previous victim and you).
  Furetsu leads to Kasha, Gekko, and Hakumetsu (白滅, an empowered Yukikaze-equivalent that deals high burst damage instead of generating Kenki -- slightly less efficient overall).
  Engaeshi, Rasenga, Hijun, Oka, Mangetsu, and Yukikaze then returns to Hakaze, Fuga, Enpi.
  
  Open Combos are a slightly different take on the new kits remade firstly for consolidated combos. They feature independently usable abilities, with the old strict combos replaced with common sense synergies that are still decently reorganizable and a bit more seemingly freely controllable than on the consolidated combos. It's slightly, slightly better at discrete choices for conditional situations than Consolidated Combos. Skill changes are limited single-step augmentations, such as the likes of True Thrust turning into Raiden Thrust or Fell Cleave into Chaotic Thrust right now, and make clear what skill each of the new ones were formed from via an overlay over the affected skills. It's not exactly easier or harder than the Consolidated Combos, just fairly different in feel even while having near identical profile and features.

[PaulusHamsteru]

More grindy mounts and not just reskins, which, imo, are really disrespectful to the players who dedicate their time to getting them.

[Bryson]

Stormblood 2.0

[Aneshda]

— Better MSQ Story with believable Characters. Give us back the “Meanwhile in ...” Cutscenes.
— Different Apartment Styles, 1 Room — 2 Rooms or even 3 Rooms, with or without Balcony.
— Better Allied Society Quest Rewards: Every time we help a new Race / Group, we get 1 Minion, 1 Mount, 1 or 2 Music Rolls, 1 Triple Triad Card. Why not a Minion, the TT Card and maybe some typical House Decors like the Rugs from the Mamool Ja's. Those nice Red or Green ones or the large Blue Potted Plants? My big ass can sit only on 1 Mount at a time but my Apartment / FC House can showcase 100+ Items.
— Better System to Store all the Items we get through the Years. Paying 7 extra Retainers for extra Storage each Month is still a large amount of Money per Year. Give us at least 5 Retainers for free with 350 Slots each.
— More Glamour Plates + more Dye Slots + More Glamour Dresser Space. If SE can't create something new, then remove at least the Limit or raise it to 10000+
— Please for god's love … more Glamour that fits the aesthetic of the Game. We are Final Fantasy 14 with Limsa, Gridania. We are in a timeline where Peoples would wear discreet Gear, now and then some Cloth that reveals more skin. Tell me where does Astronaut / Space Gear, BDSM Gear and all the rest of this crazy Lack, Leather, Belt, Gym Cloth fits in? We have only 1 tiny Space for all that craziness … Solution 9. While we are at it. Stop to make Glamour for Men only. How many Dresses, Skirts we got the last Year? And how many Pants, Shoes for Men, deemed to be “Unisex” out of pure laziness. And of those Glamours how many had the same Trousers and Shoes Style? Like SE has made 1 pair of Trousers and Shoes, and it has to last forever, for all other lazy Designs they make.
— Better Job Quests, the last ones were so boring. All was the same. OHHHH GOSH someone stole an Artifact and now bring it back DD, Tank, Healer <<<----- insert one of them into the Quests.
— Change Free to Play from unending to a limited Time. No more Expansions for free. It should be not the Paying Players Duty to finance all those Free to Play Players. They demand the next 10 Levels + Shadowbringers for free now. If everyone has to Pay to Play, there would be more Money for more and better changes.
— Better Communication in the Live Letters. Most of the Players who watches them, speaks English and many other Languages but still you ignore us all. Can't cost a fortune to hire a Translator.
— Away from “Everything catered for Single Players" and back to playing together.
— Novice Network changes. No more Mentors using the Network for there private Communications. No more kicking, Sprouts or other Mentors out of the Network because they had a different view of something that 1 Mentor hated. Why not allow a Mentor to Mute a Sprout for a time like 30 Minutes or another Mentor for 1 Hour? That is a better solution as to kick everyone and their Grandma out of the Network.
— More options in the Character Creation, more faces, better Hair Colours, more Sliders (Breast, Butt, Belly, Muscle, Ears), more Eye, Nose, Lip, Mouth, Designs. And more Voice Designs. More tattoos on all Body Parts + Piercings and Scars from Face to Toe. Even some cricked or broken teeth would be sweet.
— Remove the FC Workshop from Houses and make them Permanent in the Grand Company Rooms. If you have no FC all will be like now, if you are in an FC, you will see the FC Workshop in your Room at the Grand Company. No more loosing all Airship / Submarine levels, cause you left the Game for a while and came back and your FC House is gone. No more personal FC Leader Submarines / Airships. Other Members should get a chance to use Submarines / Airships too. Make a Game out of it, like all Members who wants to participate can roll for each Submarine / Airship. The Winners can send them 1 time on a Mission and keep all the Loot. After that, the Game starts again. With some luck everyone gets a chance and not only the FC Leader.

[glitteringcosmos]

Just give me my boy's face back, SE. That's all I ask.

[Raikai]

Good list!

User Interface

I would like to add something to this, Shurrikhan:

CS3, please... please for the love of the Navigator, hire a GOOD game UX/UI professional. Especially somebody who knows how to:

a) Design good intuitive interfaces. I always say the worst example ever: gear vendor... Why they have so many different options leading to another tabbed menu? Can't it be just one big tab window? Let me put the Occult Crescent's vendor as an example: the amount of clicking you need to go through the Silver and Gold menus is insane. It should be just one menu for Gold and one for Silver and everything else is tabbed inside each. Or another thing, why the Gold Saucer's cosmetic items need to be separated through so many different menu options? I'd say it doesn't help in the slightest that the menus themselves have a bad responsivity.

b) Job action tooltips. Both writing and formatting them. I can't be the only baby NIN who had to google Ten Chi Jin's functionality because the tooltip is extremely confusing. The way they indent the paragraphs doesn't help either, you have to go back and forth several different actions to figure out how they're connected. It's just really bad for someone learning the game? I'm a veteran and recently started to level RPR again and... let's say that it took me a hot minute to understand that the 'Executioner' stuff is merely a cosmetic+potency upgrade. Why not use a more visual boxed layout rather than just a block of text?

I remember back in ShB when I was trying to learn SCH. Took me too long to realize that Fey Illumination didn't buff my oGCD abilities because on the tooltip it says 'Increases healing magic potency', except only spells are considered magic, not abilities... even though they look like a magic skill. Despite a note separating 'spell' from 'ability', there's nowhere in the tooltip or anywhere else in the game stating that only one of them is considered magic.

[HeyMcFly]

I just want the designers to finally finish adding the remaining hairstyles to Viera and hrothgar. Like, there is much more I want to see happen, but why has it taken 6+ years for them to add Y'shtola's hairstyle to Viera? It's still not there. But they'll add all of the free/ crappy looking hairstyles before any paid ones

Would I like better MSQ story? Yes. I want my WoL to feel connected to the Scions in the way it had back in SB and EW. I fell in LOVE with Thancred, and it felt like a real connection, as if the writers actually gave a crap, but in DT? You're basically... idk, just some schmuck.

[ComfyFrog]

Change the 'Log Out' option to 'Return to Character Select' to direct players to the character selection screen instead of the title screen.

Provide free or discounted aetheryte teleportation for sprouts.

Incorporate data center travel into aetheryte menus, expanding upon the existing world visit system.

Add a queue system for world visit when traveling to full worlds, simplifying visits to friends on crowded servers.

Eliminate gil rewards from submarine voyages to discourage players from creating dozens of alts and monopolizing housing wards, particularly on Dynamis.

Overhaul allied society quests to include diverse activities beyond the current three daily quests.

Adjust the duty finder to dynamically share the player pool from low-population servers (Dynamis) with higher-population data centers (Primal or Crystal) based on real-time player activity.

Expand the party finder to function across data centers.

Include a 'teleport to house' feature in chat waypoint markers menu to streamline coordination for social events without needing ward and plot details.

Add a setting to automatically dismiss minions when entering a player house.

Create specific areas in 8.0’s cities, towns, and zones tailored for roleplaying, free from nearby NPCs repeating the same dialogue lines.

Offer more options for FSR versions.

Divide armory chests into separate inventories for battle and profession jobs.

Allow duty finder to organize content by expansion rather than content type.

Implement a gentle aim assist snap for gamepad users on the map to simplify aetheryte selection.

Adjust the main scenario quest tracker in the top-left corner to reflect the visual style of the player’s current expansion.

[Daralii]

Good list!



I would like to add something to this, Shurrikhan:

CS3, please... please for the love of the Navigator, hire a GOOD game UX/UI professional. Especially somebody who knows how to:

a) Design good intuitive interfaces. I always say the worst example ever: gear vendor... Why they have so many different options leading to another tabbed menu? Can't it be just one big tab window? Let me put the Occult Crescent's vendor as an example: the amount of clicking you need to go through the Silver and Gold menus is insane. It should be just one menu for Gold and one for Silver and everything else is tabbed inside each. Or another thing, why the Gold Saucer's cosmetic items need to be separated through so many different menu options? I'd say it doesn't help in the slightest that the menus themselves have a bad responsivity.

b) Job action tooltips. Both writing and formatting them. I can't be the only baby NIN who had to google Ten Chi Jin's functionality because the tooltip is extremely confusing. The way they indent the paragraphs doesn't help either, you have to go back and forth several different actions to figure out how they're connected. It's just really bad for someone learning the game? I'm a veteran and recently started to level RPR again and... let's say that it took me a hot minute to understand that the 'Executioner' stuff is merely a cosmetic+potency upgrade. Why not use a more visual boxed layout rather than just a block of text?

I remember back in ShB when I was trying to learn SCH. Took me too long to realize that Fey Illumination didn't buff my oGCD abilities because on the tooltip it says 'Increases healing magic potency', except only spells are considered magic, not abilities... even though they look like a magic skill. Despite a note separating 'spell' from 'ability', there's nowhere in the tooltip or anywhere else in the game stating that only one of them is considered magic.

Even beyond design, the UI just doesn't function well technically. There are so many things that count as being occupied or performing an action that are just having menus open or opening menus, and the end result is so impressively clunky that I have to wonder if the backend was copied and pasted from XI and never revisited.

[Brandr]

I want a melee pet job, a caster pet job and a ranged dps pet job!!!

Also, I want a dot melee job, a dot caster job and a dot ranged dps job!!!

Moreover, I want every class design they took from us back in the game, as new jobs!