What does FFXIV lack?

[Rithy255]

For me job design is what it lacks, they got good raids terrible job design.

which hurts casual content such as dungeons as it lacks the good raid design ect.

[AlliciaCapulet]

This is an MMO. The social experience is supposed to be a core part of it. Right now, most activities can be done without any real interaction with others, or even without being in a FC. You can solo almost everything, and even Savage can be cleared through Party Finder without any long-term social ties.

I really believe the Free Company system needs a major overhaul. It should allow members from different Worlds and even different Data Centers. FC buffs could be made more meaningful. Casual and midcore players should be encouraged to group up more often instead of being able to experience everything in isolation. Aside from submersibles, FC systems haven’t really evolved since Heavensward. It feels abandoned, as if guilds are no longer an important pillar of the game.

Other issues:

- The open world feels empty. There’s little sense of exploration or danger. Monsters are neatly grouped in small packs in their designated areas, and traveling never feels risky. Compare that to older MMOs where exploring could lead to hidden caves, underground areas, or unexpected threats. There’s very little of that here.

- Older cities (ARR/HW) are still divided into multiple zones because of past PS3 limitations. That hardware era is long gone. It would be great to see unified city maps that feel more alive and seamless.

- Jobs lack customization. We used to have cross-class skills (even if imperfect) and the ability to allocate stats manually. FFXIV has no real skill trees or meaningful job variation. Materia gives the illusion of choice, but stat caps limit that freedom heavily.

- Jobs also lack identity compared to earlier expansions. Many roles now feel mechanically similar, especially in how they approach damage rotations and mitigation.

- Healers should feel necessary again. If a bad healer causes a wipe in a dungeon, that’s normal in an MMO. Tanks shouldn’t be able to solo everything “just in case.” Group content should require cooperation.

- Mitigation is good design, but the need for healing should feel impactful. Dungeons, trials, and raids should reinforce the idea that “I can’t do this alone.” Every role should matter. Right now, tanks feel overly focused on DPS, and healers often feel underutilized.

- Side quests need better writing. After saving the universe, being asked to trim an alpaca’s fur feels disconnected and trivial.

[ReynTime]

There is a lot I could list. But that would be a waste of time. Nobody with any power will read and forward anything here. So I'll just list one.

-A good netcode and network provider for connections outside of Japan

[Grizzlpaw]

On the last bit about Healers feeling unecessary. You feel this most in dungeons.

We desperately need hard mode dungeons. Actual hard mode dungeons. With mobs that make you think twice about wall to wall pulling, bosses that actually hurt outside of tank busters, and bonus mechanics that put unavoidable spread damage on the party. The design of tanks is that they have very good burst sustain cooldowns, but rely on healers to pick up the slack once they've burned through them.

That doesn't work when bosses are designed to only deal burst damage that conveniently lines up with a tank's sustain CDs. Even in low level dungeons where tanks don't have their sustain tools yet, it's kinda laughable how non-threatening everything is outside of big pulls. Why is it that I can burn all of my mits on trash and not feel even slightly stressed about the upcoming boss fight? You can chug through for so long with just your 123 sustain.

Healers will never feel important in dungeons so long as SE is afraid to make dungeons hard enough to fail.

[PercibelTheren]

Besides what has already been mentioned, I feel like the game desperately needs activities that newbies and veterans can do together. Yeah, yeah, I know you can run old content but I think it would be much better if there was something that's at least somewhat relevant to both crowds. Deep dungeons are nice but newbies only have access to Palace at first and not everyone is into that type of content. Maybe something that would configure to a selected level when it comes to enemy HP and attack? Over and over I see new players joining and logging in less and less because while our FC does our best to support them, they just can't do a whole lot of content with us endgame players.

As a quality of life thing, I really, really wish we could queue up for roulettes with multiple roles. I just want to get them done, I don't care which role I need to play. Most of the time, anyway. RIFT had that functionality years ago, it's not impossible.

[CidHeiral]

1. Jobs that are fun and complex.

2. Reasons to communicate and cooperate with other players.

3. Playable race variety.

[Valence]

Feeling like a RPG

[BreyVoreas93]

Open world content that’s meaningful and replay-able and the need to actually feel like an MMO again…trust has caused this game to go towards a solo experience…it’s an MMO, start acting like it again. If you want to play a solo game, go pickup a FF main installment…

-Open world Content
-FC Enhancements & Content
-Real Community Events
-Stop supporting Trust in dungeons.
-More content like Quantum/Criterion
-Stop gatekeeping content like Forked/COD Chaotic.
-Make Jobs fun and semi challenging again and not a complete joke to play.
-Most importantly - road maps need to come back and shorter patch cycles…seeing as how we are in fact paying customers.

[Alice_Rivers]

It'd be nice if the dev team actually put some effort into the maps. They're all very pretty, yes, but they're all devoid of life, there's no reason to explore, very little storytelling outside of text boxes and nothing ever develops. Imagine if we arrived in Tural immediately after a storm and people were assessing damage, just walking up and down, taking notes. Then later in 7.0 we see workers and materials arriving, in the patches work happening and come 7.5 the main routes are reopened and shops get new items from across the continent. Sure it's a lot of work and people in different sections of MSQ would be on different maps but patch MSQ is short enough to trivialise that issue and it would make the places we visit feel more like actual places with actual people and actual government. They could even use the fate system to have players escort convoys and/or help build things.

Equally fanciful, healers that aren't tanks.

[Catwho]

It'd be nice if the dev team actually put some effort into the maps. They're all very pretty, yes, but they're all devoid of life, there's no reason to explore, very little storytelling outside of text boxes and nothing ever develops. Imagine if we arrived in Tural immediately after a storm and people were assessing damage, just walking up and down, taking notes. Then later in 7.0 we see workers and materials arriving, in the patches work happening and come 7.5 the main routes are reopened and shops get new items from across the continent. Sure it's a lot of work and people in different sections of MSQ would be on different maps but patch MSQ is short enough to trivialise that issue and it would make the places we visit feel more like actual places with actual people and actual government. They could even use the fate system to have players escort convoys and/or help build things.

Equally fanciful, healers that aren't tanks.

This is what I think is missing:

1. Time continuity outside of a major patch zone
2. Continued reasons to visit certain NPCs even after their expansion is gone.

I haven't seen Hien in like 3-4 years, because he hasn't been involved in anything. Nor Yugiri, for that matter. They are our friends! And I can't even drop by for a cup of tea and ask how they survived the end of the world.