What does FFXIV lack?

[TheDustyOne]

• Job variety and depth - I'll largely blame the 2m meta here for homogenizing jobs into 1m/2m bursts. Most jobs are built on 40, 60, and 120s timers for their rotations so as to keep it constantly aligned with the buff window. Previous expansions could let some jobs have 90s burst timers and rotations (old WAR and BRD), sustain damage profiles as opposed to burst profiles (old PLD and BLM). I wouldn't want to see raid buffs go entirely, but I do hate how rigid they end up making the job designs.
  Edit: to add to this, MP should be more prominent in job design, stats should be more meaningful, actual build variety to let people choose different ways to interact with the jobs. The idea of a Piety DRK (yes, Piety) playing differently from a Crit or Speed focused DRK is something that would be neat to see. Extremely difficult to balance, but I'd rather Square take the chance to offer some actual player expression here.
• Fight variability - Mix the script every now and then, toss in a mechanic that may not appear the next time you fight the boss, make mechanic X come out at the 4 minute mark instead of mechanic Y because RNG decided so. Some level of randomness and unpredictability helps makes fights more dynamic instead of a static script.

[Valence]

The sad thing is that "trash" in the sense of many-mob fights can make for interesting encounters, similar to any "council" fight but yet larger-scale, with even more freedom to break away the enemy's abilities or trigger their enrages, etc., in the order you please, and often without CC immunity cutting away that part of your party's kits (that is, if XIV even had them 1-2 skills per role).

They used to be interesting, ironically enough. Trash isn't anymore because it's encounter designed for older battle mechanics which have been 99% weeded out of the game at this point.

[Voidmage]

The battle content designers only care about bosses, to the point that the new criterion is removing the trash encounters entirely and will just be a boss rush. If they thought they could, they would probably replace every dungeon with a trial.

This is actually what annoys me the most.
The whole game has basically become a boss gauntlet. Raids as well haven't been true raids in along time and even the A-raids feel mostly like boss arena to boss arena in this game.
I would actually go further and say if they could they would remove dungeons themselves and only do raid encounters. It's kinda obvious that Savage is one of the only things the devs care about nowadays and put effort into.
Sometimes I wonder if some devs have ever played a Final Fantasy or MMO before actually.

Making interesting trash mobs is not even hard. One enemy that ignores the aggro table here, an npc that has to be healed while being attacked there. Even something like the last trash mob in Underkeep is at least something.
Pilgrims Traverse feels more like a dungeon than the actual dungeons imo.


What the game needs imo is:
More interesting jobs that allow skill expression again,
a more interesting Overworld in the style of the ARR zones,
more content that isn't just boss fights,
a story that doesn't shy away from dark themes again and having consequences for the main characters.

[Xieldras]

This is actually what annoys me the most.
The whole game has basically become a boss gauntlet. Raids as well haven't been true raids in along time and even the A-raids feel mostly like boss arena to boss arena in this game.
I would actually go further and say if they could they would remove dungeons themselves and only do raid encounters. It's kinda obvious that Savage is one of the only things the devs care about nowadays and put effort into.
Sometimes I wonder if some devs have ever played a Final Fantasy or MMO before actually.

Making interesting trash mobs is not even hard. One enemy that ignores the aggro table here, an npc that has to be healed while being attacked there. Even something like the last trash mob in Underkeep is at least something.
Pilgrims Traverse feels more like a dungeon than the actual dungeons imo.


What the game needs imo is:
More interesting jobs that allow skill expression again,
a more interesting Overworld in the style of the ARR zones,
more content that isn't just boss fights,
a story that doesn't shy away from dark themes again and having consequences for the main characters.

We have 2 mob control role actions that have little to no use. Stun and Interrupt are the only ones needed. Meanwhile as rdps I have options for Heavy and Bind that will never see play (we can throw Sleep in there since I've never seen it used personally).

Nothing else to add. I fully agree with the rest.

[Shurrikhan]

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

The last is quite the stretch. Many of those wanting harder normal stuff are those who specifically don't want to have to bother with PFs and never do Savage. Heck, normal content was harder / more involved nearer to the game's launch (or arguably even whenever before Shadowbringers), and not just before Savage started.

[Shurrikhan]

They used to be interesting, ironically enough. Trash isn't anymore because it's encounter designed for older battle mechanics which have been 99% weeded out of the game at this point.

Agreed, I think? but only if you mean general battle mechanics (typical vulnerabilities, mobs just not being outright immune to heavy/bind/pacify etc.) rather than anything specific to those trash in particular.

I've been playing since 1.x, and even as far back as ARR, the only thing allowing for interesting trash was hyper-optimizing among Enmity, compositional variance across earlier levels* (especially, say, levels 30 to 40), party DoTs, and sequenced oGCD stuns, scarcely anything to do with the trash itself (all of which remain unchanged). Even by the time Doomspike could be acquired, most was negligible outside of tank-less runs.

* This included things like mass-DoTing, a BLM AoE Sleep (which didn't break from anything other than direct damage back then), and then nuking enemies one at a time in order so that neither heals, tank stance, nor any further uses of Sleep were necessary, for a gain in total kill-speed on fewer than 4 targets, or fewer than 5 if a member lacked AoE (say, DRG before level 40); having Bards kite the melee units in circles while tank dealt with the ranged mobs; using SCH as DPS for the Cleric Stance and greater Maim and Mend trait while a SMN healed and tanked through/via Titan and/or all party members kited melee enemies via Miasma 2; etc.

What few other things existed were almost solely to activate short casts (such as crocs' caudal swipe) to offer some extra indirect mitigation to the tank or just briefly holding an oGCD stun to use it on a mob instead when they'd attempt a special attack or, lacking any such opportunity, an AoE attack that'd otherwise deny safe access to uptime.

Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

The group I've seen most commonly requesting harder normal content over the last 12 years has consistently been those who want dungeons to "feel more like real dungeons" -- a return to the likes of pre-nerf Pharos Sirius and the relative difficulty of Coil rather than something wipe-proof or reliance upon DDR memorization. They're... almost the exact opposite of those who want everything to be a boss gauntlet, and I've yet to see any Savage raider demand that the likes of normal content (the only non-boss-rushes of which are literally dungeons and ARs anyways) be even more like boss gauntlets.

I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types

I wouldn't be surprised, either, but that's because all the ways we could mechanically leverage interest out of trash before via our kits have been removed. We no longer have AoE specialists, burst specialists, opportunities to kite, reasons to focus down certain mobs, etc., even outside of the disorganized churn that is OC FATEs, so why would anyone prefer what is absolutely barren gameplay over merely shallow gameplay?

[Tracewood]

A horde mode of some kind. Sadly, I stopped playing 1.0 before they let monsters in the main cities on repeat to experience it. I'm going to get crazy here, but one of the new main cities should have random attacks like how XI did Besieged and Campaign. If you lost, you have to rescue vital NPCs from captivity from the enemy stronghold. Said stronghold would be an open world dungeon, flying is disabled and enemies are tougher (like having B, A, S, SS Rank monsters). Only problem is this might be bad for low pop data centers, so they'd have to modify the strength of the stronghold depending on who's in the zone.

You know how Gold Saucer in FF7 had a battle arena? That would make for an interesting attraction on XIV's Gold Saucer. It's solo content like MSQ duties, but with good rewards. The BLU masked carnivale was such a solid idea that other combat jobs could benefit.

[Valence]

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

I really don't see what the people you describe, wanting to have harder baseline difficulty and removing trash and whatnot, have to do with people that don't like the MSQ and would like to skip it to access the parts of the game that interests them though. I mean maybe there is a venn diagram somewhere, but that's still a huge stretch as a comparison to make.

Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

Take the repeated cries for no walls in dungeons for example, what is that if not people wanting to boss rush even faster? Hell, there's only a handful of people that want the mobs to be dangerous themselves (I can only name me and Valence off the bat), but there's other people who don't want to deal with trash mobs AT ALL to the point that there's been very little mumbling about removing them from the new Variant that's coming up, or how people seemed howling mad about that one Savage tier that involved mobs and seemed relieved when things when back to normal for the rest. I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types, and I know people miss doing Duels from Bozja which were 1-on-1 boss fights too I believe.

Not to say people can't have their harder content/boss-only modes, it just gets a bit tiresome when some people (including the developers it seems) act like that's how the whole game should play, with little to no breathing room for variation whether its opponent type or challenge setting.

The reason a lot of people don't want to deal with trash mobs at all is because the devs have given up on trash in SHB and beyond where most party resource and scarcity mechanics, as well as aggro mechanics, got scrapped for good. Even in SB raids turned into just boss gauntlets. Is it such a wonder that a lot of players, especially the ones that never actually experienced what it was before, think trash gameplay is... trash, and want a focus on bosses, which is where the developers are actually putting in all of their efforts?

It's exactly like any service, if you want to get rid of it, just stop funding it until people complain and ask to get rid of it in favor of other things. It's a clear design direction. They do not know what to do with trash beyond the basic AoEs to dodge because that's what they made the game all about: dodging crap. If they increased the difficulty trash would become like what we have in higher floors of Orthos and Pilgrim (aka no telegraph AoEs that oneshot). So the difficulty has never been a solution. The solution has always been the re addition of actual engaging gameplay battle systems and mechanics to build something solid upon.

Agreed, I think? but only if you mean general battle mechanics (typical vulnerabilities, mobs just not being outright immune to heavy/bind/pacify etc.) rather than anything specific to those trash in particular.

I've been playing since 1.x, and even as far back as ARR, the only thing allowing for interesting trash was hyper-optimizing among Enmity, compositional variance across earlier levels* (especially, say, levels 30 to 40), party DoTs, and sequenced oGCD stuns, scarcely anything to do with the trash itself (all of which remain unchanged). Even by the time Doomspike could be acquired, most was negligible outside of tank-less runs.

* This included things like mass-DoTing, a BLM AoE Sleep (which didn't break from anything other than direct damage back then), and then nuking enemies one at a time in order so that neither heals, tank stance, nor any further uses of Sleep were necessary, for a gain in total kill-speed on fewer than 4 targets, or fewer than 5 if a member lacked AoE (say, DRG before level 40); having Bards kite the melee units in circles while tank dealt with the ranged mobs; using SCH as DPS for the Cleric Stance and greater Maim and Mend trait while a SMN healed and tanked through/via Titan and/or all party members kited melee enemies via Miasma 2; etc.

What few other things existed were almost solely to activate short casts (such as crocs' caudal swipe) to offer some extra indirect mitigation to the tank or just briefly holding an oGCD stun to use it on a mob instead when they'd attempt a special attack or, lacking any such opportunity, an AoE attack that'd otherwise deny safe access to uptime.

Vulnerabilities yes, but it also goes hand in hand with what they allow us to do with job crowd control abilities, that have been weeded out immensely for most classes beyond some role actions (stun, and rphys useless binds that get removed as soon as damage is done, lolwut). They still have some room left to design around this if the devs were even remotely creative, by bringing back ranged mobs for tanks to manage, perhaps even introduce AIs behind that try to stay at range, or to just have situations like Voidmage expose above with healer mobs (that would stop healing if they get attacked), some mobs with no aggro table, introducing some targeting priorities and mob triaging, etc. Although I do feel that the devs seem to think that even this is too hard for the baseline (as seen in deep dungeons as well, just check story floors, they're no different from regular dungeons). It's sad in a way because I do think you can still have all of those mechanics regardless of difficulty if they don't really wipe the party anyway.

But, we still have lost a lot of other mechanics, notably:
- Enmity management for tanks
- Mob positioning (hits in the back doing crits was removed in SB, ranged mobs and patrols stopped being a thing after ARR)
- General party resource management, because MP behaved differently which introduced different constraints on healers and a balance to reach between damage and healing, and this also meant running out of cooldowns and resources was more likely to happen if the DPS slacked off (no I'm not saying bring back running dry of MP/TP and be left with nothing to do type of gameplay though, not everything was perfect and nobody is saying it was)

I only started in HW so kiting mobs was really not a thing anymore unfortunately. At best we still had casters sleeping a mob in low level dungeons at times although it wasn't really mandatory to do and I suspect was a remnant of older days. Still, could help sprouts back then.

[Voidmage]

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

After EW, the dungeons being a bit harder was desperately needed and they are in a good spot right now.
One part of the problems is definitely an overfocus on Savage with the balancing bleeding into normal content too much, something I repeatedly say and will continue to say. It basically completely destroyed older content through the job design.
The other part of the problem though was the "free candy nature" of EW and people getting used to not having to put effort in, same as the relic weapons there, especially given that "hard" old dungeons already existed way before.

Like others said, it also wasn't the hardcore crowd that asked for harder dungeons (those don't care for them in the first place) but normal players who actually do not want to step into the harder raids.
Another person was YoshiP himself who straight up admitted that he almost fell asleep in a dungeon at one point.

The DT dungeons aren't hard, people just forgot that older dungeons also were able to kill you. The second boss of Halatali Hard was straight up harder then the first boss of Mistwake and they are basically the same monster.

[Kisshu]

A horde mode of some kind. Sadly, I stopped playing 1.0 before they let monsters in the main cities on repeat to experience it. I'm going to get crazy here, but one of the new main cities should have random attacks like how XI did Besieged and Campaign. If you lost, you have to rescue vital NPCs from captivity from the enemy stronghold. Said stronghold would be an open world dungeon, flying is disabled and enemies are tougher (like having B, A, S, SS Rank monsters). Only problem is this might be bad for low pop data centers, so they'd have to modify the strength of the stronghold depending on who's in the zone.

The number one reason that FFXIV would never have something like Besieged, is that the writers want to resolve all conflicts in each expansion, so there wouldn't be any enemies at the end.
ARR: We break the Garlean legion
HW: We stop the war and form an alliance with the dragons
SB: We push out the Garleans, and then later they are destroyed off-screen
SHB: We defeat most of the threatening Lightwardens so only small, unorganized pockets remains
EW: All over the place, but the crisis is solved and stopped
DT: We make friends with the Alexandrians

For something like Besieged to work, we would need an organized opponent that is allowed to remain in place after the expansion ends.
ToAU's story was never about the player solving Aht Urhgan's beastmen problems, so that conflict remained after the expansion moved on. In FFXIV we would have tried to befriend these enemies.

FFXIV would need to completely change how the story is handled for something like Besieged or Campaign to happen. And it sucks, those are events that could make the game feel more community focused, like with Cosmic Exploration upgrade fates.
But not even Bozja gives this feeling with, even though the conflict is allowed to be kept in place, since it's just fates that have no meaning on the world.