The state of the Game

[RoyLucaria]

Part 1:

I know, i get it. This topic is everywhere and it does get annoying.
But sadly I do believe we need to talk about this. We all know the game is not in the best of states right now and we need the developers, and even more so Square Enix to understand
And yeah, this is gonna be a long one. And yes Spoilers might happen.

Now I want to preface this by saying I have been playing since 2.1/2.2
So yeah I have been around for a long time. Seen how the game changed over the years and always loved playing it. I played it when streamers and content creators really did not care about the game. And Queues for any kind of content especially as DPS was at least 20 minutes because we were just way fewer people. ( EU player )

So talking about Patches. How about we start this off by comparing 2.2 with 7.2

For starters lets take a look about the time it took to release 2,2 and 7.2 compared to 2.1 and 7.1

2.1 released on 17 December 2013 - 2.2 released on 27 March 2014 Exactly 100 Days.
7.1 released on 12 November 2024 - 7.2 released on 25 March 2025 Exactly 133 Days.

Now lets compare how much content we got.
2.2 :New Content
Main Story: Through the Maelstrom (19 quests, later reduced to 14 in patch 5.3)
Side Story: Hildibrand, Agent of Enquiry Chapter 2 (4 quests)
Dungeons: *The Lost City of Amdapor, *Halatali (Hard), *Brayflox's Longstop (Hard)
Trials: *The Whorleater (Hard), *The Whorleater (Extreme), *Thornmarch (Extreme), *Battle on the Big Bridge
Raid Series: *The Second Coil of Bahamut
Beast Tribe Quests and Reputation: Sahagin and Kobolds
Zodiac Weapons third and fourth part added
**Cast Glamour: Allows the player to transform the appearance of his or her gear to match that of other gear, with some restrictions.
Housing: Gardening added
Retainer Ventures added
*Duty Roulette: Expert and *Duty Roulette: Trials added
Challenge Log added
Big Fishing added
The visual appearance of the Goblet residential area has been redesigned.


7,2 New Content
Patch 7.2
Main Story: Seekers of Eternity (8 quests)
Raid Series: *AAC Cruiserweight Tier,
Savage will release one week after normal
Side Story: Additional Cornservant Quest: When Death Comes to Dinner
Dungeon: *The Underkeep
Trials: *Recollection, *Recollection (Extreme)
Faux Hollows: *Hells' Kier (Unreal)
Notice how much shorter the list is? And please understand this comparison is just 2.2 vs 7.2
Everything that came after is not included. So Occult Crescent in 7.25 is not part of this.
Neither is the fact that 2.2 added ps4 support and another relic step during its cycle cause they did not do it at release.
Relics also started right away in 2.0 that's why 2.2 is already 3rd and 4th step ( and later 5th even) Meanwhile Dawntrail relic only starts in 7.25

[RoyLucaria]

Part 2:
What I am trying to highlight is the simple fact we used to get way more content simply faster as well. Dungeons also had unique mechanics back in the day. Sure some were essentially just re-using some assets but Halatali and Halatali (Hard) still felt like 2 different dungeons despite using the same Graphical Flair.

On the topic of Dungeons. I am bored by em. Dungeons are just not fun anymore. They always follow the exact same pattern nowadays. If you truly strip em down to the most basic function. They are a single long corridor with always the same set of enemies. You start the Dungeon, You pull 2 groups of enemies that's the same mob with a 3rd set that's either a stronger single monster or a group of 6-7 weaker monsters, and then you hit a wall. When all Monsters are dead the wall disappears. You repeat the same pattern of Monsters till you hit the next wall and then a Boss with a single unique Mechanic appears. Now repeat that 2 more times and you have run the whole dungeon. Even AI can Design those dungeons now. You just add in 2-3 bends where you go around a curve, maybe an elevator or include an Auto-scroll part but they never shy away from this pattern.
Graphically all Dungeons look different but game-play wise they are Virtually the same.
ARR Dungeons used to be more unique. Had split paths. Had some things you had to do as you were running along, which could give extra loot. Be it Puzzles, Pulling mobs on Switches. You just had stuff to do. You also needed to kill Mobs to get EXP. Now all the EXP has been pushed into the Boss so that people who want to level don't loose out on EXP when the group just wanted to Rush, which with the new Dungeon Design isn't even possible anymore. All the ARR Dungeons had to be made more simple so trust could run em. A design choice I really hate to this day. They wanted to cash in on the few people who did not want to play FF14 cause it was an MMO. An MMO is not a Single-player game though and never will. People who want a single player game have different standards. This was a waste of resources that could have easily been used to work on more important stuff. Heck even Yoshida himself stated that he falls asleep in em. It cant get much worse than when its own game director is bored of stuff in his game.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 3:
Another problem the game has is the empty and boring overworlds.
Sure you see em if you do the story and cant fly just yet, but once you are through with that there is barely any reason to ever stay on the ground. Hunts, Fates a couple of settlements that don't matter.
Mobs that ignore you mostly unless like zones from final level quests. It just doesn't matter. They are boring. I still know ARR zones inside out cause we didn't have flying back then. It was also interesting to see how NPC changed dialogues after stuff happened. The Maps were smaller and felt more alive. As if people were actually living there and not just in the 2-3 Settlements that have an Aetheryte nearby. I think the 6 Big Maps per expansion is also a relic of the past that needs an overhaul. Now I am not saying they should completely abandon the Big Maps. But combine em with smaller ones. Maybe don't release all maps at the start of an expansion. We also don't need Only big or only small maps. Mix it up. Make some bigger, make some smaller. Make em feel alive. Having some zones be empty and wide is okay if it fits visually. While smaller settlements in more cramped areas are also fine. I would also welcome it if some zones would be no flying again ( the smaller maps). Have NPCs react to worldly happenings. Let us discover secrets again like Alpha roaming the world. This is not just a problem FF14 has. FF16 also suffers from this so this is very much a CBU3 problem.


Yet another big problem this game has, and this is sadly barely talked about because most long time players do not care that much. The new player experience sucks.
On-boarding of new players is sadly something a lot of MMO struggle with.
And I know many of you probably have never tried it. But Low level Game-play aka everything lvl 50 and under absolutely sucks. Dragoon only gets his first AOE attack at lvl 40.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 4:
Only at lvl 26 does Dragoon get his 3rd hit in a combo. The second combo stays at that akward 1-2 til lvl 50 where he finally learns Chaos Thrust. There are a whooping 5 Dungeons which all play exactly the same where you rotation is pretty much True Thrust – Vorpal Thrust and every 30 seconds True Thrust – Disembowel and if you feel spicy you can pop Lifesurge every 40 seconds. Which is just a guaranteed crit. This is not fun and engaging game-play. It is boring.
And even if we take that out. We still have a massive bloat of everything. From unlocking basic stuff where you have to google how and find entries that are over 5 years old and even old players don't remember. ( like unlocking materia, glamour, dying stuff, treasure hunting) To shit like pray return to the waking sands. Sure we got the tickets. But the Mobile version did one better. Certain quests now just teleport you to where you need to be. Or they spawn in a Chocobo for you that brings you to your destination after feeding it in a mini-game. There are solutions and mobile proves a lot can be improved. But yeah at the end of the day, the game also needs to be fun for beginners. I understand when long time players get annoyed when they spawn into below lvl 50 dutys. They played em thousands of time, they are boring. People are sick and tired of helping new players just to see em quit at around lvl 40 cause the game just doesnt get any fun. The story drags on, the pacing is weird and yeah. My question here is, do the developers play their own game anymore? Or did they ever try playing as a new Player? I did, its not fun.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 5:
On the matter of old content. We have lots that has been abandoned over the years. Many old systems that could need an overhaul. Friend-list takes ages to load, as does the market board. You open it to fast and it just tells you to try again. Free Company's also haven't gotten an update in years. They barely even matter anymore. EXP is gained in insane numbers so the Free Company exp boost doesn't matter. You either have super large Free Company's with 100+ people or Free Company's that are less than 20 peops which are just friend groups. All Free Company related content has also been abandoned. Free Company Gardens don't matter anymore. Airships and Submarines are also just there to occasionally give out new housing designs and some other meaningless stuff. A lot of people run 1 person Free Companys just so they have more crafting options with the workshop and Gardens. Chocobo Companion also has had max level 20 for ages now. And to get it even past 10 you need the onions from Garden. Housing in total is a mess. No one likes the system. They could easily push it to an instanced unique area, after all they did the same thing with Island Sanctuary but they just refuse. Just delete all housing wards at this point and rather make different scenes for where private and free company housing could be. Barely anyone cares about their neighbors. I am actually spending a lot of time at my Free Company and Private House yet almost never see anyone. It is just not important. Grand Company has also been abandoned. It made sense when we didn't get an update in Shadowbringer as that expansion barely took place in Eorzea. Endwalker could have updated it again but we got nothing. We even had content build into it where we worked together with the Grand Companies to fight against some monsters in the role quests. Yet nothing.
Getting married in the game in the game also sucks. Its an overly complicated system that takes a while to do and its still the same old cut-scene and area from when it was introduced. The only update they ever did was add some colors and change the rewards slightly at some point. They had a great option to introduce something new in Shadowbringer with Titanias castle. Would have been a great location. Yet nothing. Its just a trial location. Treasure Hunting also follows the same formula for ages. Sure its fun doing it for a while. But just Doors or Wheel of Fortune with the same kinds of mobs since Shadowbringer is also getting boring. Everything just follows its formula to the death now and its getting stale. Has been for a while. Fates are another thing that existed for ages now and it too has never received an update. FF14 Mobile also made some changes too it. But that's a topic I will come back to later.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 6:
Now to get back to the topic of Hunts and Fates.
We only get new A and S rank Hunts once per expansion and usually at x.2 they are already so weak that they get insanely boring. Why cant we drop new ones during an expansion? Doesn't have to be at every patch but like 7.2 and 7.4 would be good times. Especially if we consider having more and smaller maps again they would have chances to fill those with high difficulty as they could drop some new maps for when the story needs em in later patches. The same with the big Special fates. We only get 2 per expansion and tons of people already clear em during x.0
Just do something with em.
Hunts are also weird longtime content cause I honestly believe the devs way overshot here. Hunting 2000 S-Ranks just to get a mount takes way to long. Even 500 would be many. People can easily miss em. Even more so if they don't use Hunting Discords. The 3000 A ranks are not even the problem cause we have way more A ranks than we have S ranks. The curve just doesn't make sense. If you truly want this some people spend at least half a year only scouring Hunting Discords just so they don't miss any S ranks. That is also just bad game design.... The Bi-colored gemstone hunts where you need over 3000 fates to get black wings or the Sugar glider mount also fall into this. That is not a grind thats just mindless repetition. Thus not many people even attempt to do it.
And I think that is sad.

Another topic would be Seasonal Events.
I fully get and understand that the developers intend for them to be accessible for all players.
But we use the same Lay-outs, Fireworks and snow animations in Limsa/Gridania and Uldah for years.... The towns also dont change anymore as most of the story happens in other places now.
We are tired of those. Dont the other towns have their own celebrations? Why cant they get fancy stuff? Why cant we do some events for everyone and extra stuff for long time players?
I also think the writing on these has suffered a lot... 2 or 3 years ago I thought an Intern wrote the story... It might have also been AI. It was that bad. Please be creative again. Make some new fests. Let other places celebrate things as well. For example an in game fest in Shadowbringers area celebrating the night would be dope. They dont have to mimic real life Celebrations and they don't have to be yearly. But please do something for em and with them. All seasonal event rewards end up in cash-shop later for cheap anyway so even if new players miss em they can get the stuff later.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 8:
The WoL was there and was still important but many other characters also had their time in the light. Dawntrail compared to that was : We need to push Wuk-Lamat. Even the scions who were for another candidate soon changed their tune and were pushing Wuk-Lamat. Only Estenien didn't cause he was the only char who was written true to himself. He wanted to fight, if there was nothing to fight for, he went away. Everyone else just felt like a caricature of themselves. We don't have the scions of the seventh dawn. We just have “The Scion” and its a hive-mind. I also miss the time when FF14 Storytelling wasn't so direct and so much in the face. A Gaming world is most fun if we can discover things. Talk to NPC to get more lore. But we don't get that anymore. FF14 has become afraid to let people discover the world. They need to make sure every player has exactly the same experience. We don't need to think. We don't need to come to our own conclusion. Its all spelled out and if not, we sure have Alphinaud or someone else have a 10 minute monologue saying everything we need to know. The way they tell the story also makes it super predictable when duty s will happen. It happens always at the same time in the story and I think this leaves the developers inflexible so that they have to stretch certain segments and fill em with useless bloat. They also pretty much removed all Solo duty's from the game. It is just the same boring Quest Design of go from NPC a to NPC B to NPC c. Talk 3 random NPC or find 3 Random things where you have to wait for 2 seconds. Maybe write a word or line in a text field. Go back to final NPC and Quest done. Now you have 10 minute more cutscene and bloated dialogue where if you are lucky its voiced. The WoL being a useless observer in all of it. If you are lucky you see a Purple ring and get to fight 1-3 Mobs. They really need to find ways to make it way more interesting and stop following their own formula so strictly.
But that's enough of story and pacing. We will never all agree on it. And as I said before, I like the ideas and concepts they have. I just don't like how they execute em and drop plot-lines left and right to start new ones.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 9:
What else is there? The technical aspect of the game. A Realm Reborn released 2013.
We are still getting excuses how they cant do things and are held back by the Spaghetti code that was 1.0. The simple answer is, I am tired of hearing about that. Its been over 10 years. It is something that should have been resolved years ago. Graphic update, Duty Support with Trusts all way less important. Why do we have so many complicated systems for Storage? Every shitty F2P MMO lets you buy additional Storage space. FF14 only increased it when they removed Belts.
And then made it more complex by adding it behind other things like Retainers and Chocobo Saddlebag. Or in Armoires that can only be accessed from certain locations. Just simplify it all for heavens sake. Glamour is also a disaster of a system. Just make a system where when we unlock something it gets noted down and we can always just click on it and make it look like that item. There are so many solutions in other games already. It is also criminal how frail some systems are like the friend-list or the market board. One click too fast and it cant load anything.
The net-code is a disaster as well. FF14 Mobile runs so much better its insane. And yes I get it that game was build up with new tech. But FF14 should honestly have had a Dev-team that worked behind the scenes outside of the patch cycle to fix all these problems on an isolated server and only after serious testing have put it on the live servers. Yes that costs money, yes that takes time. But it could have been done. Square Enix is not a broke or small company. Still using the excuse that the game is old and they cant help it does not fly anymore. Fix your game. The sooner you do, the less problems you have in the future. Other option is to make the decision to stop supporting FF14 and working on FF14-2. Build it from the ground up. Remove all the problems we have in the game now. Maybe include actual 360 hit detection ( getting sniped out of the sky when you fly over a zone and under you outside the loading zone was an S rank AOE will always be funny... but come on....) Could also lead to many new battle ideas. But the game desperately needs updating. Many Systems just need a full overhaul.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 10:
Cant even attend a wedding when your from another Home world hence why people need to make Alts for that. The friend-list is also an even bigger disaster if you consider friends from other Home worlds as well... I know its scary to work on those systems cause they could break everything. But ignoring em wont make it better. People who also dont live right next to a data-center also have trouble with snapshot and getting hit by attacks they swear they weren't in. Mobile also fixed those issues. And yes I will always compare FF14 with FF14 Mobile now. They themselves opened that box. Lets us not forget that Mobile apparently has cut out many Dungeons. Changed some things around like making Mount available at lvl 7. Teleporting you to NPC who you need to talk with after a quest or spawning in a mount that carries you to em. You can also teleport to all City Aetherytes from anywhere without needing to go to one if you are in the area. FF14 Mobile had tons of QoL changes and I can just say go to FF14 Mobile Reddit cause someone there made a huge list of changes between the 2 versions. It is worth a read and I am not even a fan of Reddit.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 11:
Another big Issue I have is difficulty and how split the community is. Sometimes I feel like there's only Casuals and Hardcore players and no in-between. The natural progression of a game is to slowly increase the difficulty. A game should expect its player to be familiar with its mechanics. With his Options. FF14 somehow seemed to have missed that memo. We are 5 Expansions deep and here we are still arguing with people in Dungeons who only use half their move-set. Completely ignore that they have mitigation, self heals or even Tank Stance. And if you say something your toxic and “you don't pay my sub” Why should I as a player not expect that someone with 5 expansions worth of content can play his class in a decent manner? And no I don't wanna hear excuses like oh maybe the person has a handicap or something that makes him play worse. I do not expect em to play on Savage or Ultimate Raider levels of precision. But a basic understanding of their Jobs should be there. Also for the love of god pls make the change that people at lvl 30 are forced to always wear their Job stone. I don't wanna queu into a dungeon and have someone run around as Gladiator or Rogue because they forgot to equip their Job stone. But yeah the devs definitely need to make new ways of bringing beginners and casuals closer to extreme and savage level. Again FF14 Mobile lets you run dungeons in a “Hard version” where mobs do not highlight their AoE attacks anymore just as they do in higher levels of deep dungeons or savage raids. Gotta learn to read attack names. The games tutorial and explanations also need an overhaul. Often stuff only gets explained after you unlock it....