The Game Often Feels Like it is Punishing Us

[Erwith]

There's been something that's really been bugging me about this game. I'm a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series, and have completed every mainline game except XI, XV, and XVI, plus many of the sequels. I enjoy the story and so part of the reason I played XIV is for the story (which is why I still buy expansions even though each expansion is basically a carbon copy of the one before it).

But so often, despite the fact that I'm paying a monthly sub, it feels like this game punishes me for playing it. I won't go into a full list of gripes, but a few examples:

With the recent relic grind about filling aetherwells, you have to do an alliance raid roulette, in which Crystal Tower raids (the ones that come up most often) are worth the least amount of points. That would make sense if you got to choose which raid you want to do, but it's a random roulette where you have no choice which raid to run.

The game is *way* too heavily dependent on RNG, which means when I fail, it is rarely my fault. As a result, there is literally nothing I can do to improve my performance to do it next time, and there is no sense of accomplishment if I manage to pull it off. It's just a sense of "finally, the game allowed me to do it". This happened to me recently while I was in cosmic exploration doing an EX+ mission. I was a miner, and I was using the ability which gives you an extra attempt at mining, and has a chance of activating Wise to the World for another extra attempt. I was doing a mission where I had to gather collectibles. I used to Hi-Cordials to try and get it, which means I was able to use that first ability eight times. All I needed was for Wise to the World to active once in order to get the gold rating, but I couldn't get it to activate even once, which means I was stuck with the silver rating (and I wanted to get it gold so I could have it as gold in my list). Literally the only reason I lost (it had a three-minute time limit or so) is because RNG wouldn't allow even one activation of Wise to the World.

The amount of useless junk we get adventuring increases exponentially with each expansion but our inventory never grows. And unlike FFXI (which I've played but didn't finish), if your inventory is full you lose any loot you would otherwise get. But not only that, the game will often stuff your inventory. I was running a dungeon with five open slots in my inventory, and without realizing it because silly me, I had to keep my attention on the action since I was tanking, the treasure chests in the dungeon gave me four materia and something else, thereby filling my inventory up. After defeating the boss, I would have received a TT card I didn't have, but I couldn't get it because my inventory was full, and my inventory was full because the game filled it up without asking me first. So I missed out on a needed collectible item (and it wasn't my first time, either).

I am getting really fed up with this game, to be perfectly frank.

[Jeeqbit]

With the recent relic grind about filling aetherwells, you have to do an alliance raid roulette, in which Crystal Tower raids (the ones that come up most often) are worth the least amount of points. That would make sense if you got to choose which raid you want to do, but it's a random roulette where you have no choice which raid to run.

It balances out because when you don't get CT, the higher level raids + bonus give you way more. I simply farmed the Alliance roulette 3 times when I started, to give me a head start, and I actually finished it first before all the others.

The game is *way* too heavily dependent on RNG, which means when I fail, it is rarely my fault.

There are only certain areas of the game I could agree with this on. It taking me 3 tries to get a Blue Mage spell or TT card is fine. It taking several tries to spawn an S rank is fine. Fishing not always being a success is fine. Extreme mounts rarely dropping is fine due to the pity system, although there's little point in the delay in it selling for totems. RNG on crafting is fine in many cases because gear or abilities can turn it into a 100% chance.

However, dungeon or alliance loot can be annoying.

the treasure chests in the dungeon gave me four materia and something else, thereby filling my inventory up.

I really wish SE would let us disable dungeon loot so we automatically pass unless it's an unobtained minion, TT card or orchestrion, because otherwise I just don't care for it. Dungeon loot is only useful for MSQ-only players, if that.

[Erwith]

It balances out because when you don't get CT, the higher level raids + bonus give you way more. I simply farmed the Alliance roulette 3 times when I started, to give me a head start, and I actually finished it first before all the others.
There are only certain areas of the game I could agree with this on. It taking me 3 tries to get a Blue Mage spell or TT card is fine. It taking several tries to spawn an S rank is fine. Fishing not always being a success is fine. Extreme mounts rarely dropping is fine due to the pity system, although there's little point in the delay in it selling for totems. RNG on crafting is fine in many cases because gear or abilities can turn it into a 100% chance.

However, dungeon or alliance loot can be annoying.
I really wish SE would let us disable dungeon loot so we automatically pass unless it's an unobtained minion, TT card or orchestrion, because otherwise I just don't care for it. Dungeon loot is only useful for MSQ-only players, if that.

The loot system I think really needs to be re-designed. I hate the system as it is now. In eight runs of San d'Oria, I've only been able to get one tattered sheet music, despite us only competing against eight people now instead of all 24. My success rate is pretty much the same, so I might as well be competing against 24 people. That pretty much negates any incentive I could possibly have for running it more than once because I don't even need any of the gear.

Also, I hate legendary fishing. I put this example in my OP but it was too long so I had to take it out. I have level 100 HQ crafted, pentamelded gear. I should not be failing to catch level 50 fish (and it shouldn't take weeks sometimes for it to show up at all).

I'm not necessarily saying all RNG is bad, as there is something to be said for a bit of luck. But just *how* dependent many of the elements of FFXIV are on it makes the game a slog to play through at times and makes it just not a fun experience. This is a game. I should be enjoying my time playing it. And losing missions should not come down to just having plain bad RNG.

I do agree with having an option to disable dungeon loot. And having to fight a boss repeatedly for a reward isn't the worst thing in the world, because you're at least playing the game. I actually really enjoy TT, the game. And I enjoy collecting. I wish they would have alternate ways of getting these cards, such as playing an NPC for them. I'm okay with it taking a while for a rare TT card to drop because I like the game and I enjoy playing it, so playing it repeatedly for a reward is not as soul-crushing as some of the other content.

[VeyaAkemi]

They used to have a NPC that you could play against to guarantee Alliance Raid cards, but I think after Stormblood, they stopped adding them altogether, I much prefer the old method, even if this NPC was always added late in the X.5 patch.

I am also a huge proponent of personal loot, in literally any game, rather than the shared loot we have now, we already have personal loot systems in a limited form, in exactly BA, Bozja, and OC, but they seem uninterested in expanding this to the rest of the game.

[AmiableApkallu]

It balances out because when you don't get CT, the higher level raids + bonus give you way more. I simply farmed the Alliance roulette 3 times when I started, to give me a head start, and I actually finished it first before all the others.

Given how the daily roulette bonus works out, the Alliance Raid roulette is actually worth queuing for even without the daily bonus, repeatedly, because the bulk of the aether comes from the instance itself, not the bonus.

[Jeeqbit]

Also, I hate legendary fishing. I put this example in my OP but it was too long so I had to take it out. I have level 100 HQ crafted, pentamelded gear. I should not be failing to catch level 50 fish (and it shouldn't take weeks sometimes for it to show up at all).

I don't like the mooch behind mooch behind mooch thing because I haven't progressed the quests that need it yet. There are certainly fish that have too much competition so it's always the low level ones too.

I should be enjoying my time playing it. And losing missions should not come down to just having plain bad RNG.

Some aspects of this game just take after original MMO design, which used to be RNG heavy and far, far worse to the point you'd have to sacrifice eating and sleeping to play, nevermind working. The game has moved away from that but certain old game systems still have it, and I think it is especially baffling to people that are new to MMOs.

[BlisteringFrost]

It balances out because when you don't get CT, the higher level raids + bonus give you way more. I simply farmed the Alliance roulette 3 times when I started, to give me a head start, and I actually finished it first before all the others.
There are only certain areas of the game I could agree with this on. It taking me 3 tries to get a Blue Mage spell or TT card is fine. It taking several tries to spawn an S rank is fine. Fishing not always being a success is fine. Extreme mounts rarely dropping is fine due to the pity system, although there's little point in the delay in it selling for totems. RNG on crafting is fine in many cases because gear or abilities can turn it into a 100% chance.

However, dungeon or alliance loot can be annoying.
I really wish SE would let us disable dungeon loot so we automatically pass unless it's an unobtained minion, TT card or orchestrion, because otherwise I just don't care for it. Dungeon loot is only useful for MSQ-only players, if that.

Company Seals.

[Wyssahtyn]

if you only have five inventory slots, the problem is between the keyboard and the chair

[Valence]

I do agree with that aetherwell alliance roulette problem. That the base duty would give proportionally less aetherwell only makes sense, else people would just farm this one above all the other ones. However, for the daily roulette where you cannot choose what you get, getting CT is punishment because the daily aetherwell bonus also scales accordingly to the duty's length, which is bad. While the base duty aetherwell reward should adjust to the duty's length, no qualm about that, making the daily bonus also do is a crummy move that just feels bad.

On RNG, and I'm saying this as a huge fan of RNG systems (may be a deformation from my TTRPG enjoyment), RNG will feel good when you get rewarded for making the most of it and using it well as a player. It will however feel very bad when getting a certain % of rng successes becomes required to complete something, which is the problem in your CE examples: the player will feel bad because even though they made all the correct choices, the rng didn't net them enough successes to pass the minimum threshold for victory. In short, what I'd call positive RNG is RNG that generates choices rewarding the player with an added bonus or generating positive feedback loops, and negative RNG is just gamba RNG.

For instance with your MNR/BTN example, it's so barebones that it's as you said, it's gamba. When it comes to expert recipes it's a little better because the system is designed to generate choices that allow you to surpass what a normal recipe would allow with normal progress/quality if you play it smart with what you get, but the problem is still that the final threshold to get gold with notably the EX+ variants is too high and therefore results in you NEEDING to get a certain amount of good, meta RNG on specific moves to reach the mark, which is essentially again, gamba. To make it better they'd need to redesign their thresholds (and some of their material expert states and what they give when used right) so that they're higher than what you could get with a normal recipe, but not so that they're so high that even doing the right choices with the rng you get still makes you unable to reach the mark.

[AmiableApkallu]

I do agree with that aetherwell alliance roulette problem. That the base duty would give proportionally less aetherwell only makes sense, else people would just farm this one above all the other ones. However, for the daily roulette where you cannot choose what you get, getting CT is punishment because the daily aetherwell bonus also scales accordingly to the duty's length, which is bad. While the base duty aetherwell reward should adjust to the duty's length, no qualm about that, making the daily bonus also do is a crummy move that just feels bad.

The part in bold is incorrect.

Let us review some data:

• The base aether for each instance is a fixed amount.
• The daily bonus for each roulette is a fixed amount, regardless of what instance you get.
• The base aether seems to be about 25-30 per minute on the instance timer.
• The daily bonus for each roulette is set so that you can generally expect 700-800 aether total.

On the downside, the Alliance Raid roulette suffers from a problem where its duties are of wildly varying lengths. On the upside, because the daily bonus is always as low as it is, it is the roulette most worth spamming even without the bonus.

If anything, the problem is that all of the other roulettes disproportionally rely on their daily bonus for aetherwell progress.