Use code “JOLSN” to receive $5 off for your first #Sakuraco box through my link: https://team.sakura.co/jolsn or your first #TokyoTreat box through my link: https://team.tokyotreat.com/jolsn – The December box shown here has already passed, but you can get the January box! – In this video, I’ll go over some changes to Final Fantasy XIV that I’d love to see in the coming years. Some of them are simple fixes, while others could alter the way we engage with the game a lot. What are your most-needed changes to the game?
00:00 Intro
00:50 Story
02:29 Gearing
03:40 Sponsor
05:17 Midcore Content
06:35 Revisiting Savage Raids
07:30 Relic Weapon
08:34 Job Design
09:15 Playstyle Customization
10:00 Input Delay
11:00 User Interface
11:53 Open World Content
12:46 Crystalline Conflict
13:32 Outro
source
I think there will never be easier MSQ dungeons in FFXIV because many players have a very low frustration tolerance. It also makes sense not to frustrate players if I want their money 😛
I would really like a real open world, but I think that will never happen since FFXIV is supposed to run on consoles. The PS5 is by no means weak, but it still limits what is possible compared to PCs.
As someone who finally got all jobs along with crafters to max level in December, I vouch for the tomestone cap change sooo much. I found so many new jobs through leveling that I'd love to main, but gearing them with the weekly 450 cap just doesn't work. Honestly looking forward to 7.0 for maybe & hopefully some of these QoL changes 👌🏻🥹
The lack of open world content really just makes the game feel like playing Monster Hunter World or Phantasy Star Online.
Also we haven't got a new hub city where people can even mount up in since Stormblood. So people that even farm mounts have no where to sorta 'flex' the mount.
Another thing about the friendslist is that if you remove or blacklist someone from your list and they have you added, they will still see you as a friend and now where you are.
And seeing new cash shop items being added when the game is lacking content feels like a slap in the face. Blue mage didnt get a new reward like a mount this time, but the cash shop got several new and unique mounts.
Regarding customization – I played FF14 for a good while, but near the end of Heavensward, I wandered off and couldn't bring myself to come back. Why? The rotation. There was no real flexibility in how I did things. I had to hit the same sequence of buttons over and over and over, while occasionally moving. Even using jumps was done on a timer. It got really dull for me.
I'd honestly rather have extreme skills with huge cooldowns over a precise static infinite rotation that's universal to everything. At least then I'd have to think about when to use things, and which things to use, and look for openings. And what I'd really prefer is the ability to tailor my setup to my tastes, so that I could have flexibility. When a looped macro could handle your skills, there's not actually much to playing it.
i think keeping the twins and G'raha with the WoL and ditching the other scions for a while would be a good idea.
also. no new token system or new gearing option is going to be present without the obvious problem you glossed over.
high end raiders will use the system not to get alt jobs up, but to gear their main job up faster.
Relic weapons yea this is also the first time they did something like that right? And for me it was okay because i dont have that much time playing. And idk but i disagree with many points
I got an idea for what to call Time Walking savages if they wouldn't be considered unreal since Unreals are Extremes.
Timewalked Savages can be PRIMAL >:D
i feel like adding skill trees/stat customization sounds like a good idea on paper but would fail in practice.
You'd have all these options and different ways of play, just to be told by the balance and other players to "pick this specific skill tree path, and only this path otherwise you're bringing down your party by not picking the most optimized paths" so everyone would just pick the same "meta" options anyway, rendering the fact you have choices a waste of development time.
This could also lead to bullying, where someone picks a skill path to make a job easier for whatever reason (pure preference or accessibility for example) and other players look down on or belittle them for such choices. We already see this in game with some players being quite mean over somethings as innocuous as unorthodox HUD layouts and hotbar setups, i would be shocked if this didn't carry over into stat or skill path choices.
There's also the slippery slope of players just outright banning a job from raid groups because its not optimal enough. The reason the jobs are so streamlined is so that you can do savage as any job you want to. Mess too much with the balance and we'll have another same scenario like when no one was letting any tank play PLD in savage cos it was just in a shit spot compared to other tank jobs, leading a lot of PLD mains to just have to…skip a part of the game they enjoy. Not everyone levels every job, so finding out your fave job isnt allowed in most raid groups just because its not "meta" enough kinda sucks.
If SE did add this kind of customization, HOW its implemented would be crucial and i'm just not sure devs would risk it given how much could go wrong with changes like that.
I think relic weapons should have different objectives like going back to EW/SHB dungeons/trials and such, i dont expect much from final steps
Also i would love to see easier ways to get alt job gears
yes i agree the UI for gear purchasing is so bad
They've intentionally avoided trees and skill points because the dust usually settles on one or two builds being best, which ends up being an illusion of choice. Just like the cross class skills before, where you were required to get them for raiding, when originally it was meant to be incentive for leveling other jobs.
Specifically for Dawntrail, I'd like our choices to have a bigger influence on the story. Firstly, it's still an MMO, we need to be on the same page after the MSQ for it to continue, so it can't be too big of a change based on our decisions. But the devs already said something about conflicts between the Scions in Dawntrail. So if there are multiple groups, let me decide which one I want to side with. This can then result in content being done with the player's choice instead of forcing a default group on the player.
Other than that, we're seeing button bloat for some jobs. There are more buttons than a console player can have on controller, so that's something they need to address. Paladin is a contender for that. Console players can have 32 buttons easily, PLD has 34. That's without limit break and potions. Possible solutions are to combine actions into a single button such as the Confiteor -> Lv 90 Blade of […] combo actions. Those are already one button. We need more of that or actions need to be removed. Especially because there will likely be some new actions on our way to level 100.
I really think what they should for tomestone gear is simply have an unlock system per slot for armor and accessories with current tomes, and then be able to buy all roles with last patch tomes. Weapons can stay as is so at least there is some extra cost to gearing an alt, which I think is valid.
I feel a lot of times people just want the game to be some MMO they came from but with FFXIVs playerbase which with the requested changes would turn then players away from the game.
I think adding fates into dungeons trails and raids could be fun as hell just imagine doing a dungeon and you go to the last boss of like brayflox longstop and then another dragon drops in and you have to kill both of them while handling both of their mechanics or something and if you manage to finish this before the fate expires youll get like 2x more exp at the end of the dungeon plus some more rewards or whatever. Or imagine doing dun scathe and then you get to diablos hallow and out of nowhere he just summons two upper rung voidwoken which will bind to each other when they are together going invincible and sharing health so all the tanks in the allience have to seperate them and each allience has to focus on their boss while doing all the additional mechanics. It could add more falvour in the game and challange as well as that surpise that is missing with so much feeling samey and getting boring after doing it hundreds of times.
The UI and other systems in this game can feel shockingly amateurish, especially given the game's success in Shadowbringers. While it's rare for people to dive into multiple games with a clear-eyed, even-keeled view, those who can are rewarded with interesting perspectives on what various games can learn from each other. If WoW can copy GW2's flying, maybe FF14 can copy GW2's "glamour" system, and so on.
a big reason you cant queue with friends for CC i think is the lack of good communication systems in the game,
You have something like 15? buttons, (not sure now as i only played about 4 matches myself at launch) no voice chat, and no matchmaking beyond who queues first.
It would take, maybe 3 matches of getting destroyed by a 5 stack sitting in discord VC with an optimized team, while yours a random mix of anything and everything, before most people would never touch the mode again,
and the only other option is make it so groups can only queue against groups, which will shoot up queue times from 2 minutes to 20 minutes if other MOBA games are anything to go off of
The worst part about EW relic grind is that the content it could have been tied to is actually in the game and would most likely have stopped Orthos and the 'older' V&C dungeons already being dead content. Compared to the still daily active DR parties and I even see more light grind parties than people doing this expansions content.
So, after watching the vod, I have some things to note, but this will probably be long in my response to the video. Mostly an opinion for discussion, but take it as you will.
Story: This issue with the story came after 6.1. People were excited about this, but instead when we got into 6.2(Barbariccia Trial) it turned out to be Final Fantasy IV fan service. While acceptable to a degree, when people took it into scope after 6.4(Rubicante Trial), everyone was disappointed because of the fact that they not only streamlined what could've been a separate trial series with its own independent story, but also just threw it into the MSQ for no reason. Every expansion before that? The trials were always separate. ARR, HW, STB, SHB – Endwalker is the only thing deviating from the norm which worked. 6.5, while the music is enjoyable, it just left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to how cliche they kept being in trying to pay fan service to FFIV instead of just running XIV on its own with this new story.
Gearing: 1000% YES. Influencers have also been saying they want an increased tome cap because not only are we increasing the amount of jobs by 2(because we have a WHOPPING 17 jobs right now) they haven't moved the bar on that in a long time. While 450 is serviceable early on in the tier, I think that they should make it 900 a lot sooner than just after the X.5 patch that's before the next tier drops. If anything, they should drop that 900 increase by the next major patch so people can gear alts and such.
Midcore Content: This is where I am on the fence. While yes, 'Midcore Content' is what the game is lacking, we've got forms of it that have worked. Eureka and Bozja are our two examples because those two areas have varying difficulty(sans everything before Eureka Hydatos and Baldesion Arsenal), Bozja showing more of it in the form of its Duels. Believe it or not, Bozja kept us busy for a LONG time inbetween patches and I went there a lot. The amount of people who ran through it just to get the relic from casual to hardcore players was impressive. The other fact was that you could watch the Duels – something that is great on its own and can inspire people.
Still, defining Midcore Content is definitely something to be looked at as a community. SE missed the mark when they tried to create this with Criterion as well as Variant Dungeons, which were DOA in a week due to rewards that the end-game players complained about – and on top of that, Criterion was as hard as Savage in this vein for some fights. The current Criterion(Aloalo) requires you to be in BiS to even complete it due to the difficulty itself, so it doesn't even lend itself to the crowd that needs the upgrades most.
Revisiting Savage Raids: I think FFXIV already does this to an extent with MINE runs. We have the tools to make it happen, though running a whole event around MINE itself would be frustrating for people, namely newer players who have finished the story and aren't as skilled in regards to Savage – but, I do see the reward incentive in having people TRY Savage this way instead of writing the content off as too hard that a majority of players tend to do.
Relic Weapon: …this was probably the one that started the controversy in regards to FFXIV's Content and the direction it was going for the rest of Endwalker(and started the negative talk). When we got the first step, we thought it'd be alright – but when it was for the second step, something was wrong because it deviated FAR from the formula. Normally we have some story to accompany the relic as we progress it, and also are called back to old things to breathe life back into them like we've been doing for Crystal Tower for 900 years. The issue stems from the fact that all three steps(and I'm hoping to god they put a god damn wall on the 4th step) require Tomestones – making it a glorified Tomestone weapon. It's catch-up that I don't mind, but we already grind Tomestones for all gear at end-game. While we do that for some items, the methods are what matter – and Shadowbringers Relic actually did this right in holding the balance between people wanting to engage in Bozja and people not wanting to engage in the exploratory zones in general because of the bad taste of Eureka.
Job Design: Skill Trees are akin to WoW in this sense, so I don't think there's a need for FFXIV to go this route – at least not yet. What matters in the job design is as you mentioned: Skill Expression and their "moments". People preferred the way Shadowbringers was, in fact, aside from Healers going the way of the dodo. You have individual jobs that could express their skill by lining up their timers with everyone else in every 3m or 6m window. Making everything 2m got rid of that and made Crit Variance a major issue in regards to clearing a la P8S until they fixed it; it also made some jobs fall out pretty hard just because they didn't bring enough damage(PLD, WAR) to the table or simply were lacking at the time. I'm hoping Dawntrail gives us some of that magic back and they don't stick to this 2m Meta – because if they do, I'm not sure how much more I'll raid.
On 'Interactive Gear', you must mean Gear Sets that provided bonuses. While a good idea on paper, in actuality it can create a lot of problems both on the balancing side and also just with how a job may interact with a Gear Set. For example, you have a GNB that has Haste on his gear to make his rotation run faster – however, others that don't use this set are going slower and have Raid Buffs. This causes desync from the rest of the raid CD and ability-wise, and can cause issues with the job's contribution. The way XIV does gear is fine as far as I've seen, but they need more horizontal gear progression in a sense other than two sets at the highest iLv available.
Input Delay: I think it's something that they need to look at because they're still running on old Spaghetti netcode from 2.0 with their engine. Considering the Graphical Update, a Network update wouldn't be a bad thing as long as they can make sure that NTT can get their connections straight(because let's be honest, people have been annoyed more often than not by the Sacramento NTT node on NA for a while now). Still, if they want to keep the 0.5s delay, they should accomodate the job properly to compensate for it like you showed with MCH.
UI: A lot of the issues with UI seems to have been tied to SE taking forever to properly update them. Them adding timers to buffs was something they actually ripped from a modder who added that on Dalamud, only to get banned. They deliberately have been looking through those UI mods in particular to find useful ones, but it shows that their UI Team either has been woefully inefficient because Yoshida hasn't found that this information on the screen is something people look at, or simply hasn't been doing a good job. As for Vendors, more Vendor Screens like what we already have sorted in the current Poetics Vendors in the Main Cities would be a lot more coherent.
Open-World Content: The only thing the open world has going for it right now are FATEs, and only in Shadowbringers and Endwalker do these things matter. They had to artificially breathe life into the area for new players in Heavensward and Stormblood by tying the relic for Shadowbringers into their FATEs specifically – which shows the shortcomings of the FATE system. There've been a lot of ideas, namely with people either asking for open world PvP or things affecting various things in the area, but given the narrative-driven nature of the game it's quite limited in what can actually be done. If anything, I think they should introduce a new system in Dawntrail that has more interactivity in the Overworld – like Hunting for instance given the fact we're getting Viper as a new job, a Tural Hunter.
Crystaline Conflict: They probably do that to prevent player stacks from communicating effectively. When you have a whole stack of 5 on your team and the enemy is just randoms, games become extremely one-sided unless the other team is stacked. Watching PvPrimal in particular showed me a lot of the interesting things that pertained to competitive PvP in XIV, as well as just how hype a match can get when both sides are actually fighting efficiently at a high level. I would agree that Crystalline Conflict could fit in the Roulette, but there's a more important mode that needs to be shoved in there: Rival Wings. Rival Wings is the only PvP Mode that is obscure due to the player base abandoning it and all PvP activities(since we were actually able to chat before SE put their foot down) due to the balancing issues back in OLD Feast, namely Heavensward. However, with current PvP we have Rival Wings running strong only by community, so whatever schedule that Revival Wings does on its Discord server is typically what we go by. Having that mode added to the Roulette would breathe new life into it because it'd not only be another source for new players, but it'd actually make those titles and mounts more achievable once again.
Yeah having pre built parties dominate random solo players is what makes PvP fun.
On the point of skill trees, it's just like people optimizing fun out of the relic grind. People will experiment for like a week, find the best ones, and then it'll be back to just knowing your rotation again.
Let's take a step back and consider what you're really asking for when pleading for job specs.
You want the job design to be further diluted and sliced up between different specs. Then min-maxers will inevitably find the one which is objectively the best to play, rendering all other basically pointless.
If it's too similar. Why bother adding it? If it's different enough, why not make it a new job?
Astro sects was great for flavor, but absolute disaster for gameplay. balancing.
on job updates, i'd love to see bard removed from the game!
I ignore the negativity, enjoy the game and watch positive videos like this that can make the game even better. And because of that I'm having a great time.
8:00 – Honestly, this ONE patch having "Easy Relics" is totally fine because it did require the ENTIRE Hildebrandt storyline and not everyone plays them. Most (more) casual players put it off until they have nothing else to do MSQ-wise. So this requires them to run an entire MSQ to get the Relic.
Yes, if you are up to date, it takes no time and effort. Who cares if we have ONE "freebie"? Oh no! More players may have great iLevel gear and want to try harder content because they actually COULD DO IT!
Wait… isn't that what the game needed?
We’ve had the same character creation features since 2.0 and all were getting is a 10% graphical improvement in 7.0 what makes you think they will listen at this point.
I'm a pretty new player.
Long time player of The Elder Scrolls Online.
One of the first things I noticed about FFXIV is the lack of content in the open world area's,
I think square could learn a lot from ESO in that regard.
I mean, sure there are fates… But personally I stopped doing fates after ARR because they just never felt worthwhile, if they dropped gear or rare glam on occasion maybe that could help.
Personally I think FF could use some kind of public dungeon, or proper World Bosses, treasure chests or something of the sort for players to find and encourage exploration.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the game, infact maybe too much, I've only been playing a few months and I'm almost through shadowbringers already. (I have too much free time)
I just personally feel that the open world area's need something to make them feel more "Alive" for lack of a better word…
As a wow bet, skill trees and varied gear are a BAD idea. It just complicates things unnecessarily and then the player base just minmaxes the skill trees and gearsets. It’s the same thing we already have, just with more steps.
I'd like square Enix to actually invest their profit back into the game and not focus tested live service flop number 16
I think one of the main reasons they went with instanced worlds rather than seamless was the PS3 hardware limitation and internet connection. I think it's time to reconsider the seamless transitions, once more.
I think for more encouragement for existing in the world, offering the higher level tomes as rewards in Fates and Hunts could be cool. Even just like 10 per hunt/fate or scaling by rank would help give more options for gaining tomes for gear. It's baffled me that hunts aren't really a big thing unless people are hunt training S level hunts.
the job streamline problem has affected me so much that when Viper got announced and their skill is shown, I began to think "oh this is gonna be their 2 minute buff" "oh this is gonna be the OGCD". It's not fun when I realized i think that way
Input delay + bad internet for me just mean that it won't let me play RDM and MCH the way they should be played
I’d like to hear more Mount specific music. Basically any Mount from past FF games should have theme music that fits, like how the Magitek armor plays Terra’s theme. I was disappointed when I got the Blackjack and found out it didn’t play “Searching for Friends” from FFVI.
On that same note the mount music should never get quiet when slowing down or stopping, that gets annoying.
Lastly I’d like to have the Crystal Blue menu theme that looks like the old FF games apply to the dialog boxes. It’s easier on the eyes and captures that old FF feeling. I know it’s already an option for the menu interface, but I’d like it to be applied to the dialog boxes specifically, like how it shows when the Omicons talk.
You could still have stylized borders and text for certain instances, like when Voidsent speak. But for the main dialog option I’d like it in clear blue.
When it comes to the gap in player skill from casual to mid/hardcore –
(defining my terms: academically this is referred to in sociology as "free" play = casual, "instrumental" play = hardcore, with 'midcore' simply referring to the middle of the spectrum between those two extremes; an example of free play is children chasing each other around a field for no other reason than that it feels fun in the moment; examples of instrumental play would be sports teams, orchestras/choirs, & departments in a company)
– this ever-widening skill gap is self-inflicted & the source is from the top-down. It's a replicable simulation of behavior across not just MMOs, but video games in general.
There's no escaping the entropy & climate change of the game's life cycle: eventually, it will deteriorate & come to an end. One day. But what is accelerating that process is high end players not utilizing the MANY tools at their disposal to avoid noobs/casuals in their daily roulettes or other side projects.
There are:
▪️ Linkshells
▪️ Shout/Yell/etc channel chat
▪️ Party Finder organization
▪️ Free Company chat
▪️ Discord servers
▪️ Twitch communities
▪️ misc social media like Twitter & Reddit
to use to organize optimal/efficient/like-minded play for these casual➡️midcore➡️ hardcore pipelines.
A functioning example is hunt trains, which operate using primarily Linkshells, Discord pings, & especially Party Finder entries to spin up a MASSIVE amount of random strangers to efficiently perform the task of high-end hunting, 24hrs/day 7days/week 365days/year. They're going on right now this way.
It's, of course, totally fine & intended for, say, Mentors to go into random matchmaking queue & be there as a helpful guide. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the expectation from high-end players in random matchmaking for complete strangers from out of a hat to pull more than 1-3 packs at a time, the expectation to not purely/primarily heal instead of DPSing, and the expectation to use Savage-tier efficiency in DPS rotations…
Gearing, saying 'no thanks' to quips disguised as 'helpful advice', etc etc in specifically random matchmaking aka blind-queuing into Duty Finder. We've seen this melodrama on social media over and over and over for years now.
That's the source of the gap widening. High-end players are looking for low-end players to bully & exploit rather than simply cooperating with each other. Like say, having a "happy hour" period of time for their server where everyone posts or joins Party Finder listings to bust down their dailies & side content in a speedy and optimal fashion.
Like I said, hunt trains resolve this gap issue no problem, and have been doing things this way for years, now. It's the purpose of all these tools. Noobs/casuals will inherently use random matchmaking Duty Finder, and they're pretty easy to avoid as it's just that one lane verses the seven other lanes I mentioned up top in the bullets.
Simply put: let noobs/casuals cook, instead of pulling us out of the oven half-raw or burnt to a crisp & then wondering what the oven or kitchen is doing wrong. There are already egg timers, a plethora of choices of which ones you want to utilize, right there in the kitchen & there's even one built into the oven.
It's a self-inflicted wound, like a school having a bad grade curve & wondering what's wrong with the students or building itself when the problem very usually lies with the teachers and/or their curriculum.
The devs can't, and shouldn't, save us from ourselves. When they try to it just homogenizes the overall experience, which noobs/casuals won't mind nearly as much as midcores/hardcores.
Hence, the ever widening skill gap is self-inflicted & the simple solution is to let " bad " players play with other " bad " players while " good " players network with other " good " players.
This translates into not recruiting for the NBA by trolling around pick-up basketball matches in local parks. That's just making a bad time for both kinds of basketball players.
I played new world since launch and i can say that the Open World only exists in Brimstone sands and Elysian Wilds, anywhere else its just people that are late to farm for something or bots
So ye its very hard for SE to do something about that one, As for the Revisiting Savages, its a great idea, Both WoW and Destiny 2 do this one in a very good way for their respective playerbases
"Taking sides" in Dawntrail is going to be a lot more simple than some people are thinking. This is XIV we're talking about. It'll be more of a philosophical necessity for the Scions to choose a side. It'll definitely all just be one friendly competition more than anything, even if there are story moments where they're "fighting" each other, regardless of how "serious" the subject itself may be. That's not to say that they won't take their roles seriously; I'm sure that they will, just expect to be disappointed if you're expecting anything more than this. 🤣 Again, it's XIV. It is what it is and that's what it will be.
But anyway, yeah, I basically agree with everything in this video.
Midcore would be so much better if the gearing was a little faster. It's almost WoW-like, needing to be on top of the content on day-1 to keep up, and even then I'll likely only gear up one or two jobs by the end of a raid tier. I get that Savage is supposed to be the "fast" method, but that's skill dependent and I don't have the schedule to be part of a static.
It'd also be nice if the level sync was adjusted to only reduce your stats instead of your job levels, so you can use your full kit in old content. It really sucks to have a full kit I barely get to use since most of my time doing content is spent in roulettes that sync me down.
I tried WoW out a few months ago and one thing I really wish 14 had was specializations. I didn't get far into the content of WoW but from what I heard there are definitely player who will only play certain specs because it has xDPS or yRaid Buff, but it also makes one job turn into 3 or 4 unique jobs, some of which fall under entirely different role categories. Imagine a Paladin as a healer, or a tank Samurai. We could even have super unique things like DPS White Mage providing damage with white magic and supplemental healing effects or Machinist being a tank that diverts damage taken to a robot pet for mitigation. It could have working amazingly, but I honestly don't think the game could make sich a drastic change at this point. Maybe in the next FF MMO we can hope to see something with that kind of diversity.
THe recent liveletter did give a lot of "TM soon" QoL additions. But jutted it into like patch 7.x
1. Add a hotkey to toggle between turning the camera with rightclick+mouse (current) and just mouse movement (like in Minecraft).
2. Add a hotkey to cycle between allied NPCs during a duty or FATE.
3. Add aetherytes in Vesper Bay and Whitebrim Front.
4. Add Swiftbloom Pier to the Gridania Aethernet after riding the ferry once.
5. Add location hints for crafting recipes, including huntable materials like Aldgoat Skin.
6. Increase NPC sell values for high-quality craftables to make crafter-only roleplay at least somewhat financially viable
Some of the story beats we know about for Dawntrail already feel like a missed opportunity for me. I get why all the Scions are there but it didn't seem like they had to be. I think they could have found ways for the main cast to still be involved in the story without having all of them traveling to the New World with us. Namely, I don't like that Alphinaud, Alisaie and Y'shtola are there. They perfectly set them up to be doing other things somewhere else in the world and giving some real breathing room for new characters we're bound to interact with.