I know I’m a few months late to the party. I just returned in November from a two-year hiatus, and after a random conversation with someone while FATE farming, I discovered something truly baffling: The geniuses at Square Enix actually brought back the Atma grind.

If this is the direction they are taking, then by every metric, I firmly believe Square Enix wants their game to fail. I cannot wrap my head around this design philosophy. Why would you take an incredibly unpopular system—one that is hated to this day—and reintroduce it as the core of a new expansion's content?

The "Z" Title is Rare for a Reason
There’s a reason you don’t see everyone rocking the "Z" title or carrying Zodiac Brave weapons. They are some of the rarest glams in the game because nobody wants to do the work. Outside of an exceptionally rare few who enjoy slamming their heads against a wall for the most monotonous, poorly designed grind in Final Fantasy XIV history, the community has always loathed Atma.

I have respect for the "mad lads" who do it, but I’m in complete awe that Yoshi-P and the devs thought this was the "right mind" for the game in 2026.

The Regression: From Bozja to This?
How do we go from Shadowbringers, which gave us amazing content like Bozja and Zadnor, back to 2.0-era mechanics? Bozja has a purpose even today. You can gain experience, level alternate jobs, and engage in a unique ecosystem.
Occult Crescent has zero purpose once you finish your glam weapon. After 7.5 and the launch of 8.0, it will be a almost a ghost town because the leveling system is restricted only to that zone. Why create content that has no viability outside of the current expansion? It’s a massive, uninspired waste of resources.

The "Shadowlands" of FFXIV
There is plenty of criticism regarding the story and voice acting this expansion, but from a purely design perspective, this is the FFXIV equivalent of WoW’s Shadowlands. If you’re in denial, go play Shadowlands for a week. You’ll see exactly why that expansion failed Blizzard, and how Dawntrail is following that same path of bad design. Square Enix needs to wake up and remember what made them popular. They had the largest player count in history by giving us content that worked during Shadowbringers for a reason!

So SE, stop wasting our time with archaic systems and dead-on-arrival zones. I welcome anyone to compare the player counts who still do Bozja/Zadnor versus this new content in when 8.0 drops. The results won't be pretty.