ChannelRaznoff: MMO players treating their games like a job instead of a fun way to kill time is what ruined the genre. It's all about optimizing every little detail to save as much time as possible....... in a genre that's defined by wasting time with endless grinds.

This is why dungeons are a hallway simulator instead of expansive areas to explore. It's why all of the classes are homogenized and brain-dead easy to play at a base level. It's why the leveling experience is no longer a journey but an after thought. Older MMO players yearn for the olden days, but they're shouting right along side everyone else the moment it takes a second longer to do a dungeon run. What made those early MMOs so special was the journey. It felt like a long adventure you went on with friends. Now it's "I need to get to cap asap so I can get my bis starting raid gear so I can clear the raid the day it releases, then raid log for the next month or two till bis so I can spend the next few months complaining in the official forums about the lack of content." I've completely given up on the genre at this point. I'd rather play a single player game that I can relax and enjoy.

Sorry for the rant. I'll take my old ass back outside to yell at clouds now.

jamesrusselleriii8284: 1. Azem's crystal needs to shatter as was warned when we first got it

2. The WoL needs to be depowered in some way like Midgardsomnr did to us.

3. Wuk Lamat needs to go back to her home planet, pronto.

4. Fire Hiroi, Kate, and Sena.

lens_hunter: ARR and post ARR is totally fine. If you compare it to HW, yeah it's worse but that doesn't make it straight up bad.

1337penguinman: Instead of the stuff with the 13th they should have used the 6.x patches to start introducing the story of Tural. Since they didn't need to close out the EW story with the first 3, they had an opportunity to spend that 2 years building up to Dawntrail, and put the Zero arc as the trial series it was obviously meant to be. They didn't even have to reveal Femhroth's until 6.4 or 6.5 if they didn't want to. Build a story around a Mamool Ja expedition to Eorzea perhaps with Zoraal Ja leading it. Maybe they were here trying to find out what happened to the group from Wanderer's Palace. Hell, rework that dungeon and there's one of your 6.x MSQ dungeons right there. Build up the threat of Zoraal Ja so he's less of a "why should I care" villain. Build him up as the heir apparent and a dangerous bad guy so when Wuk approaches us we have a reason to care that she gets chosen.

OuchXXI: I wouldn't be opposed to Dawntrail being reduced to a bad dream the warrior of light had. You wake up in Old Sharlayan lying under a tree with G'raha sitting by your side and Krile standing before you, clearing her throat to get your attention. The next scene you are telling them all about the crazy dream you had over lunch at The Last Stand, where G'raha will be stuffing his face causing both the wol and Krile to have a laugh and then they roll the credits for the xpack.

FELLED113: i think the scions need to go... get a bunch of new faces in there and build from there. wuk lamat's char can be saved and bakool jaja can redeem himself for the crimes he commited and otis can easily come back

kisack9303: I cant believe after one incredibly mid expansion (DT) people are wanting FF to end. They would not have survived wows numerous bad expansions lmao

206Zelda: DT rushed us so fast through Tural, side-characters and even Alexandria that there was no real time to connect to any of it. That, and most of our journey was centered almost entirely on one character with no real deviation or commitment to supporting characters that we brought with us, and everything your WoL has said and done so far before that greatly contrasts what you were scripted to say and do in this expansion; I'd never felt so stunned and disconnected. I literally sat back once we completed the Rite of Succession and said "I don't care about any of this" after the emotional trip I had from ARR all the way through EW. Why did they have to RUSH everything, and why did they have to do Krile and Erenville so dirty? None of it was satisfactory; it wasn't even mid at best.

chillincarnate5200: i have a theory on the backstory of gulool ja ja and zoraal ja: what if they tried to stop the blessed siblings tradition, but in their efforts, the head of reason got killed and they were forced to retreat?

AruLily: they're treating mmos like gacha games, smth to login inot fast and get out

Draginhikari: It's also just the fact that ARR was an unusual situation. A fresh start to an MMO system is not something with that type of turn around on it. Most vanillia state MMO usually take sometimes as much as five years of development time to create fresh. Part of the reason ARR is what it is was because they had to revamp the entire game in like half that time and there were a lot of system issues created by that situation that the Dev team is STILL trying to work their way out of as a result of that reduced development time. So unless they were already working on said new MMO during Shadowbringers, burning the current game to the ground is not likely an option anyway because there would be no replacement as of right now..

Miguel85NYC: Realm reborn was great, the open world felt alive and dangerous. I died a few times when leveling.. now it's easy af

bojangler9685: Its not a hot take. FFXIV was at its peak of being a mmorpg during 2.x/ARR... also all the content you still do today started in arr and if not had more job ideneity, more important game design in the open world, there was more dungeons, raids....... and was downsized ever since.

Daniel-gh9fv: My hot take is that Endwalker is the second worst expansion under Storm blood :)))

PWYTC: end the game

ugxsan: I feel like they could’ve done something very interesting with the concept of an expac where we aren’t the main character but wow they really did not do that at all. You’re right, we’re more a weapon than a character and the story is just weirdly opposed to using said weapon.

This could’ve been a story of us trying to learn to ease off and let others take the lead again but we just grabbed a bucket of popcorn and took the backseat for like 95% of the story.

darkwulf2k: The fact that the worlds first raid grp always have at least one person max crafter and one gatherer so they can have the crafted set for day 1, makes the crafted gear worth while. they also have had quests like the crystarium set for cool, really good crafting tools, they also had the HW stuff. I mean you eventually replace the crafted gear for the raid tiers, but its there. I agree there could be more done for it, but they have def could do a bit more. I hope another Ish rest comes round.

I loved the neir raids at launch, i dont mind getting the first two in roulette, but if i get Tower of Para i drop because it feels like such a slog.

I personally liked Dawntrail. I get that the pacing is slow, and that they over exposed Wuk Lamat. I did like her, but i know not everyone does, and that is fine. Maybe my standards arent as high as others, but I did enjoy the DT story overall. There is a char I enjoyed who was a side char, whose full name eludes me atm, but Wuk A. is what i remember. He reminded me of the character from Fruits basket, the spa lady. I agree it could of been better, but I still enjoyed DT despite the flaws. shrug

marcvsaurelius7570: The thing about the warrior of lights power is that it’s really not as big a deal as we think. Is the warrior of light very strong? Yes. But remember, every, SINGLE, trial and raid fight we did with 7 other people, canonically. We fought endsinger with 7 other people plus the scions and zenos. We fought Emet with 7 other people and the scions. The only real 1v1 we’ve had across the entire series has been with Zenos in endwalker. We are uber powerful, but we are not this unkillable god. Hell even in the arcadion raid story brute bomber actively calls out the fact you needed to 8v1 him to win. WoL is NOT unstoppable. All you need to do is take away azem’s crystal and suddenly we’re at a significant disadvantage. Not to mention they could simply make the echo less and less powerful the longer Hydaelen is dead. The power thing is a non issue.

rodimus580: Should be an option like buying the BOND thing that is a couple of battles and an ending cinematic for your character you can buy..like 3 choices a bad ending or a "to be continued or a happy ending.. " if you just want to stop playing, doesn't mean you have to end the account but.. just leave it on that story telling note..

DarkDyllon: I kinda agree that FF14 had to go out on an high note with Endwalker.

the end was good, it ended a 10 year story, our story should've been done, the Scions "soft" disband as well, maybe use the 6.x patch story as some filler (which it was anyway) to setup the true ending to FF14 with a message from Yoshida stating that FF14 will go into maintenance mode (forgot the name, where it's maintained, but not actively developed for anymore) and then also announce that the next MMO is already in production with an estimated release date, they could even make it a time skip to where our characters die a peaceful death, happy with our lives as we did everything we wanted to do and in the next MMO, we can be reincarnated, we're the "WoL" again, reincarnated from the previous WoL, everyone this time however, remembers our exploits and then we can gradually build up a new legacy, with new threats, new characters etc, maybe have some Scions there that are now old, like Y'shtola who guides us and sees in us what they saw in their former friend the old "WoL"

The amount of times i've heard Yoshida say "we can't do because of limitations" I remember when they were so proud of themselves that they found a workaround for .... umbrella's, yes, umbrella's.

Also storywise, we are a massive powerhouse that can basically solo most threats save a few exceptions, for example we couldn't solo the Endsinger, but once Zenos showed up we could since we could actually catch up to her finally.

But Spleen? we should've easily be able to solo her at this point, I think we need another power reset, the Scions are still fine since they're rarely really involved at the end, like at the end of SB (expac msq, not patch) they're not present when we fight Shinryu.

SHB when we fight Emet, they're incapacitated and we fight Emet ourselves.

EW we press the oh shit button and forcefully eject the Scions to safety and face her ourselves.

DT, Spleen ejects the rest and we fight her ourselves (just for furry Naruto to come swooping in and steal the kill)

we need a power reset, kinda what Midgardsomr did earlier when he locked our crystals away and for all intents and purposes, we were regular "humans" again, sure we were still the MC and extremely strong, but that showed that our body is just strong, massively amplified by the blessing of light, not that Hydalean is gone, we should get a power reset, maybe another "the crystals lose their potency" or something, but we are basically the "oh shit" button now, something bad happens? we're called on since we can most likely solo any threat in front of us.

jg2096: What is the item you crafted cleared an ultimate or savage 10 times or 20 times respectively allowed you to get the tome for that ultimate weapon

DeadRomanceArt: I like crafting. From all the MMO's I've played I've never played a game where everything you can get from a raid can also be made with your own skilled hands. The names of the loot you make are a nice touch but I think that how it already goes.

vagrant2863: One difference between starting over (presumably as a new character) and continuing is one of de-escalation of the stakes. It's hard to write a story where a character is essentially a walking WMD. Given a construction metaphor regarding foundational issues, it's usually more difficult to repair a foundation when there's already a building on top of it. Whereas an empty lot could have a much stronger foundation put in without having to worry about damaging what's already on top of it. That's a big IF though as it assumes they are capable of making a good foundation (which I think they are capable).

At least for my point of view though, Dawntrail reception is only a symptom of the larger challenge of having something operate in perpetuity. Even if Dawntrail was unambiguously the best thing ever it would ultimately only be delaying where FFIV's ending would be.

Many MMOs have come and gone throughout the years. Some greater and some lesser. For all of the original FFIV's faults its ending cemented its legend. So in much the same way I hope that FFIV gets another cool ending.

But of course having the modern game return to form would be nice too.

bigal696: one minor you said you wished crafted gear had the char who crafted on it , it does ! there is already a big bad they have been hinting at since arr then again in the panda raids and i think when we do face that big bad we there should be some kind of option of failure where your char dies and becomes powerless or defeats them ascends , also i personally loved coils , the story there got me hooked was the highlight of arr for me!!

mareofstature: All this talk of a reset or burning it down, reminds of a thought process I once had when I played with the idea of us playing as another reflection character like Ardbert. Now there are several reasons why this would be a bad idea and the build up just isnt there. So dont take this as a serious idea. My thought process on this was simple if ardbert was a reflection of the WoL then there should be other WoLs in the other reflections as well. So the story would follow one of these other characters and we wouldn't know we are playing as this other character till either midway through the expansion or at the end. It was fun idea at the time but obviously looooots of problems can arise both in story telling and the mechanics of the game.

Jan 28 2025

Buy FFXIV GIL