The main problems of FFXIV

[Sapien3]

Hi people, we all love FFXIV and I wanted to make a thread where we all list the main problems of the game and maybe a possible solution that doesn't sound too far fetched.

The goal of this thread is to be objective and point out big flaws so that SE can start prioritizing them.

For me they are:
- Lack of cross-data center party finder or being able to acces so many features (firmament, island sanctuary, timed nodes, acess to retainer, etc.). This inconveniences everyone that plays the game that is not on the main raiding datacenter of its region.

- Glamour system. The system overall is dated and makes no sense. Instead of using glamour prisms (Which are an irrelevant material since its so easy to get) and having to store actual gear in the dresser/armoire, save the items the player has seen as a matrix and let us glam freely from a menu inside towns etc. The limit to 20 plates also makes no sense. Have plates be client sided so we can have as many as we want.

- The gearing system. Gearing is split into too many versions for the time it takes. Having 5 DPS different gears is absurd, specially since each piece takes at least 1 week to get. Grinding for gear for another job is extremely unfun. There's 2 ways to solve this: 1. Gear should be split into Tank, DPS and Healer if you want to keep the same timegating system as we have now; 2. Remove loot penalties and/or weekly reward limits after you clear the tier. People raid with 1 maybe 2 jobs and dont log on for the tier ever again after getting BiS. By removing loot penalties you entice helpers and playing as new jobs, giving more life to the raiding scene.

- Being unable to raid in 2 or more groups. I for one have a static going on since endwalker and some of my IRL friends want to raid with me to try out savage, I can't join them because either I make my static lose gear or I make the new group lose gear (which they will kick me for). Make it so if you have cleared the fight once in the week and before you cleared the tier you don't get any more loot but you don't make people lose out on loot, you know like alliance raids.

- Alliance raid gear being locked to 1 per week. Why do you even lock gear that is not BiS to 1 time per week? By doing this you make the general player way less interested in running it imo.

-The friends list. The lack of reliable sorting methods is crazy, make drop down groups where you can sort your friends in whatever way you want them to. Also not being able to see which friends are online from other servers from the get go is a meme.

These are the main problems for me in XIV, please feel free to list more of them below so SE can think about it!

[Boblawblah]

I wanted to make a thread where we all list the main problems of the game

[Exmo]

What a novel idea for a thread. I wonder if it will catch on

[Jeeqbit]

There isn't one problem with the game. There are lots. The longer that goes on, the more problems accumulate. If we are to generalize:

- Lack of cross-DC PF is obviously an issue.

- Lack of QoL and passionate improvements to old patch systems, that you see in a lot of other MMOs.

- Lack of depth to systems in order to keep them simple for casual players, which makes everything boring. Job design and power progression is one example. Island Sanctuary is too rigid, underdeveloped and casualized to be Stardew Valley, Sim City, The Sims or a themepark sim.

- Lack of replayability in systems design. This is partly a consequence of casualization and lack of system depth, but partly due to just not developing things with a view for them to provide a different experience each time like PvP does.

- Saying things are impossible to solve, such as network data limits and database limits. Nothing is impossible. Where there is a will, there is a way. I can think of easy solutions to these issues, and frankly, every other MMORPG has solved them.

- Overhauling the housing system that holds the game back, to separate houses from plots so you can have a house with no plot.

[BlisteringFrost]

Naoki Yoshida.

[Kahnha]

Our community is kinda sick people split themselves into tribes and attack one another for their differences that's not healthy for a well off game.

furthermore the same community is in a constant state of not being happy there is no answer for it if people themselves are in a poor state.

the Dev team is a bit too prideful they claim that they need only jp speaking people to join in developing a game that is enjoyed internationally,
there is no way they think that starting the game from boring level 1 and that 200+ hr grind with not so many voiced CS
to play with people that have cleared the game is a good idea. I can't even recommend the game to my friends lol

be it the repressed and hostile community or the out of touch dev team I can only hope that one day the game gets a private server made maybe I'll go to that instead.
against hope though I hope that the game and the people can get better. xD

[CaptainLagbeard]

The main problem I'd imagine with making a cross DC PF is the NA and Japan servers... They have 4 DCs, which are all essentially separate server machines, and they don't have your characters data just stored on all the DCs, that data being sent over is part of the DC travel.

In order to sync up with all the DCs, you would effectively have to go through the process of traveling to every DC, including any wait times and slowdown caused by multiple people doing it, and to ensure the data is properly up to date, it'd need to be done once per login to ensure it's all up to date.

On Europe with just 2 DCs it would be less of an issue, and Oceania can't even travel... NA and Japan with their 4 DCs, would take considerably longer.

[Aidorouge]

My "main" problems with Final Fantasy 14 is having barely anything to do and nobody really else to do it with, because casual content is lacking and Dynamis is still dead almost three years later.

For a theme park MMO, the lines are awfully short, even on the rides that are still working.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

My "main" problems with Final Fantasy 14 is having barely anything to do and nobody really else to do it with, because casual content is lacking and Dynamis is still dead almost three years later.

For a theme park MMO, the lines are awfully short, even on the rides that are still working.

^^This. I think it goes it bit further at least for me. It's not there's barely anything to do, it's there's barely anything I want to do, because it's either the same thing but different paint or a short life cycle before u do the same shite all over again. If you get something that's brand new you burn yourself out on it, as it's the most exciting thing you've had in months. I'm just waiting for November (paid up till then) then letting my house auto demolish and transferring leadership of FC to my friend and just paying for content for a month when new content is released.

[Supersnow845]

I think if I had to sum up 14’s issues in one singular point it’s that DT’s relatively high content density but low attach rate and negative opinion shows that just releasing more content isn’t going to fix the issue; something is fundamentally wrong that means even content that should have high interactions rates doesn’t; I’d posit this core problem is the fact that the jobs aren’t engaging

Let’s take the easiest example of OC. OC has the problem where forked tower breaks the content loop of OC but I’m going to put that to the side for the moment. Even if we were to ignore forked tower OC still has a lot of content. The +1 grind isn’t short, there are alot of glams there with high requirements and some good titles. But most don’t want to spend a lot of time in OC: why? Because the job you use to do react with the content is bad.

Every piece of content is hampered by the fact that the fact that at their core the jobs aren’t fun. Square is currently tackling a side effect of this. Because of the binary nature of the jobs (either you spreadlo and survive or don’t and die or otherwise the raidwide was never a danger anyway) content can only be incredibly easy or annoyingly difficult. Attempting to put in a pseudo difficulty slider with quantum attempts to resolve this problem but I don’t think it will really work; because the binary nature of the jobs means that there is a proverbial tipping point where the pass fail nature of the jobs expresses itself