He felt like a monster of the week. He is in the dawntrail art flying toward the castle, and I kinda expected him to drop more auspice lore into the setting. Instead he shows up to get killed off and forgotten. I just felt like he was extremely badly done. I liked the boss fight, but I was kinda hoping that he would be more involved with the overall plot.

We get it—the game is getting stale.I thought it might be interesting to brainstorm ways to improve the game, just as an avid user giving feedback would. There are, of course, the usual critiques that have been discussed ad nauseam, like job design and content difficulty, so I won’t rehash those here. Instead, I’ll share my two cents, hoping this can serve as an ideation board where the community can throw in new ideas.

As an MMO Product
The purpose of an MMO lies in its social aspects—making people feel unique through gear, talent trees, race options, and RPG elements like gameplay, story, and lore. Focus on creating instances that highlight the MMO and RPG elements instead of just pushing out new features would be ideal.

MSQ
To save on voice acting and development costs, reduce cutscenes. Right now, there are way too many filler scenes.

• Stealth missions aren’t resonating; consider iterating on them or reducing their frequency.
• New quest types could be adapted from Golden Saucer activities, such as simple jumping quests (for accessibility, add an NPC that lets players pass after a few attempts) and shooting. Puzzle quests from single-player RPGs are also a largely untapped avenue.

Trust System
While the intent is to attract single-player gamers, these players are unlikely to become subscribers, as they’re usually drawn to solo experiences. The conversion rate might not justify the effort, and this approach dilutes the sociability element of an MMO. Instead, allocate minimal resources to this system and stretch its utility across multiple expansions, freeing up time for more time-critical features.

Island Sanctuary
The gameplay needs refining, but a simple fix would be to enhance the social aspects of Island Sanctuary:

• Allow anyone to visit [visit a random island], leave messages in a guestbook, and vote on the island’s design.
• Create a “Hall of Fame” that resets each patch cycle, where top islands are featured for other players to visit.
• Implement a calendar of in-game events (running on in-game time) with visiting NPCs who interact with the island, making it a more dynamic experience.

Expansion Cycles
Variety is key. Identify target players for each type of content:

• Alternate deep dungeon and criterion dungeon per expansion. Deep dungeon could benefit from shortening the floors to increase uptake, and adding rogue-lite-inspired difficulty boosts (e.g., time limits, increased monsters) with rewards tied to these boosts would enhance replayability.
• Alternate treasure maps with something simple, ideally an open-world content.
• Criterion dungeons could have difficulty tuned down to mid-core (alliance raid levels), with similar difficulty boosts added to keep challenges engaging. Criterion savage could be removed and adapted as a difficulty boost.
• Open-zone exploration content could be enriched by allowing players to choose stat increases or talent/trees as they level up, adding RPG depth. Experiment with mechanics like aggro, mana management, and status effects, offering players a richer RPG experience. since this feature is instance-limited.
• Alternate Beast Tribes and Collectibles per expansion since they target the same player group. Introduce open-zone content specifically for crafting and gathering, with progression elements (similar to crafting MMOs) instead of endless grinding like Ishgard.
• Alternate patches with Hildebrand content since it is divisive. Previously, there was backlash when Hildebrand was omitted, but this was likely due to a lack of other content.

This leaves development time to create unique and memorable features for each expansion [can be repeated every 2 expansions]. Beastmasters could be one of this expansion's core feature.

Relic Grind
Introduce the relic grind early in each expansion and experiment with new systems for it. For instance, you could expand on the current Grand Company system, making relic components buyable with company seals tied to Grand Company levels.

Grand Company
Consider PvP and PvE elements for Grand Companies with a scoring system that affects player rewards (such as the gacha lootboxes introduced previously). For PvP, tie it to Frontline matches; for PvE, integrate it with open-zone exploration, where actions add to company scores. To balance competition, offer score multipliers for underrepresented teams.

The final level should be reachable by only one player per cycle for added prestige.

Crafting/Gathering
Avoid grouping crafting and gathering jobs under the same quest types to enrich the storytelling. In some expansion, new crafting or gathering jobs could be introduced as an expansion's core feature. Introduce capstone skills every 20 levels to enhance their gameplay uniqueness since there are no balance to speak about.

Job and Level Design
There’s little left to add here that hasn’t already been discussed.

There's still more I would like to discuss - on fates and open-world content - but I hope this is a good start of a discussion.

Do you think its a possibility once they start running out of content to use?

FF8 Ultimecia's Castle, Greiver, Ultimecia, Krysta
FF9 Alexander/Bahamut in Alexandria ending in a fight with Trance Kuja and Garlond
FF10 Zanarkand, fighting Jecht, Yunalesca and Yevon/Yu Yevon

Since ff14 is the themepark ride, how much fun would it be to have themed fights from other titles, using the stories from those games to produce DSR styled alternate fights to re-tell the tales of past heroes and villians.

I'll try to keep this short. What makes SCH so unique is in its fairy. It serves as basically a tool that extends the range of your abilities that no other job in the game can do. Being able to heal your party from across the arena where you otherwise wouldn't be able to reach is a powerful tool. I like to think of it as a clone or totem that can chain your abilities and is what gives SCH the most job identity out of all the jobs

The issue is the game rarely offers challenges that allow for that niche to shine. This problem got even more exacerbated and indirectly nerfed SCH when they buffed every mitigation's range last expansion. Another issue is the current direction of SCH is going further away from its core design of a pet healer. Seraph is the last ability we got where it had interactions with the fairy, which was way back in Shadowbringers over 5 years ago. Everything we've gotten since then are just generic skills. Don't get me wrong, Expedient and Seraphism are both strong abilities but they're also very generic abilities that could've been slapped on any of the other 3 healers and it wouldn't feel out of place

There are so many ideas that Square could've leaned into with the whole pet healer thing and it's honestly a shame none of them got expanded on. An ability that lets your fairy cast the same skills as you to get 2 Succors or Indoms off much like how Curing Waltz works on DNC is such an obvious missed opportunity. In E8S during the add phase where your party gets split into 2 light parties, how cool would it have been if you were able to send your fairy to the other light party's platform? How about a gap closer to your fairy? The fairy gauge is also the worst existence in this game. Aetherpact itself is fine, but there's no need for it to be exclusively tied to a job gauge. The way you use Energy Drain to generate gauge doesn't interact with the purpose of Aetherpact whatsoever

At its core SCH (and you could say the same about SMN) has the potential to be the most unique job in the game. But they decided to play it safe and what we have now is just another generic and uninspired job. I'm sure you could say that about a lot of jobs but for healers specifically, since our rotation is just a single spammable button with a dot, there's no reason for why our healing kit is so boring

At the top of this I'd like to make a distinction about what I believe (a chucklefuck supreme) to be the base type of players that occupy an MMO:

• Casual players: focused on story content, easy to medium difficulty content, acquiring shiny objects, taking the game not so seriously. Typically ignores instrumental play beyond knowing the "best" thing in that current meta.

• Social Players: Players who are here for the people. Usually someone important to them is playing the game or this is where they prefer to socialize. Typically concerned with spending time with people first and content second.

• Roleplayers: People dicking around (and each other) by RPing as their characters and usually finding a group to play with. These people rarely leave the housing districts if this is their sole focus

• Raiders: End game focused players who typically want a challenge and have the BIS gear/ high end cosmetics to stand out as the best of the best. Typically loves instrumental play, focuses heavily on optimization.

• PVPers: This one's obvious, they play for the THRILL OF BATTLE! They want to challenge themselves against others but have similar motivations to raiders.

• Solo Stars: Players who focus on accomplishing things by themselves, typically choosing content intended for groups as the thing they want to accomplish. The Unsync WARs and Deep Dungeon nuts (I'm one of these btw)

Now there's lots of instances of overlap, obviously, some people are going between any number of these roles as they spend their time in game, but a lot of people would immediately highlight one type of playstyle as their main focus.

I'm also missing a few niches that don't immediately matter (Some people are just here to fish or gather or craft, others want to just take screenshots, etc) as they fold into one of these loose roles.

Now, Is this a game for casuals? The content release sure doesn't look that way. I don't even need to justify this statement, if you're not a raider then over the entirety of Dawntrail you'll be getting at most 2-3 months of content by 8.0, which is when it will also play the best and provide the least agonizing rewards.

There's no reason for you to be subbed unless you're also a roleplayer and/or a social player because the game will simply be in a better state for you in 2 years.

Is this a game for raiders? They certainly keep stuffing HC rollercoasters for them to do but it appears that 5% of player did the current tier of savage (I'm basing this on FFXIV collect which does suffer from some accuracy problems but it's still a pretty staggering number, moreso when only 1.4% cleared each savage ten times)

The problem being that while this small chunk of the audience is getting all this content it's also in pursuit of an endless farm to remain BIS, which burns them out over time when the challenge and rewards aren't inticing and ultimately are a lot of mix and match mechanics and ideas painted over with a bunch of shiny visuals and fantastic music.

I think it's inarguable to say the game is very stale at this moment, so there's more and more unhappy raiders with each patch as they are stuffed into another rollercoaster to chase after BIS and a shiny horse for the thirtieth time.

To me, a non-raider, it seems like fresh new challenges in new formats is what they'd want (and I think Chaotic is just a big savage fight and won't accomplish that, but we will see) As I'm not one, please comment and tell me what you'd feel excited to see as a Raider, I'd love to hear from you.

Considering said infinite grind it only seems smart to leave the game during a state like this and wait for things to improve, because remaining within it will induce further burnout.

Moving on, this game isn't for the PVP folks or they'd be getting more frequent updates to fine-tune their experience rather then leaving DRK to make Frontlines miserable for over a year and they'd be padding the PVP shop with a lot more then another pile of gear they were putting in the game already for NPCs.

Admittedly PVP seems to be getting another fresh coat of paint and I'm personally fairly positive on the experience when it comes CC, although Rival Wings continues to be barely given attention (I assume they'll be leaving one of its maps unavailable for yet another patch) and Front lines is fucking miserable 66% of the time, while the reward structure is severely overdue for more rewards.

As a PVP stan I am simply going to wait for them to fuck up the PVP for a few patches and come back in 7.5 assuming it's fixed by then.

Is this game for Solo Stars? This game does have quite a few of them, although I'd say deep dungeons are in desperate need of an overhaul and said players would need some fresh new content to dig into that isn't a copy-paste of a previous piece of content or old group content that is now soloable (although that is a good feature I quite like)

As a solo star who is perpetually fucked by my bad internet I'll keep my opinions to myself as they largely are me screaming about Canadian Internet companies.

Now, there needs to be a line drawn that any MMO can't survive focusing on any one group and needs to diversify or die(See leagues of dead PVP MMOs) and you can essentially treat tbe roleplayers and social players as being perpetually won over once they've settled down. They invest a lot of emotional energy into the game and won't be leaving unless something drama related happens, and even then they'll usually just find a new place to exist within the game.

So, who is this game being made for? What is the reasoning behind their balance and mechanical changes? I would say we can takeaway three things:

1. Failure states have been removed and skill expression has been made less a requirement to make it easier for casuals to become raiders and to perform adequately in all difficulties.

2. They really want to turn casual players into raiders.

3. They focus most of their time and budget on the Story and Rollercoasters.

I think it's simple to say they want to focus first and foremost on Raiders, followed by keeping Casuals around and turning them into Raiders.

The problem with this is twofold: Casuals don't want to become Raiders and raiders do not typically make up more then a sliver of a games playerbase. They do not care and the games incentives (temporary BIS and cosmetics) aren't going to cause them to change. At most they'll take a temporary step into raiding to acquire a specific reward then immediately abandon it, but this isn't likely.

Meanwhile these changes have been smoothing the game over in a way that a lot of raiders don't like while player agency has been thrown out the window for skill expression based on pattern recognition and instrumental practice (you D.D.R good you get the prize) so raiders have less and less to do besides dance the dance and win.

Whatever your opinions on the state of this game, it's not in a position in which it can survive doing this for another expansion. 8.0 has to shake things up to avoid the current negative opinions about the games becoming toxic and causing a much larger backlash then Dawntrail has created.

I really would rather this doesn't happen, but the only way it does is if Dawntrail loses them a bunch of money.

(I know, I know another ‘Materia Bad’ post) And I know the title says Material, phone autocorrect doesn’t like it

We all know the implementation of OCE DC was cocked up. They had a good formula for creating DCs when they made Crystal and then for some reason decided not to do it for Materia and Dynamis.

But is there any way it can be saved? The only things I can think of are:

• Implement cross-region PF and DF, with the wild ping problems that will produce

• move the OCE servers off Sydney and into somewhere like Singapore to entice SEA players to move

• give up and dismantle the DC and fold it back into JP or something (ha never going to happen they hate us too much)

My current gripe is fuelled by hours upon hours of waiting for m4s prog parties to not fill, and the almost two week wait I had to get an m3s fresh party during OCE prime times (6pm-11pm AEST/DT) despite the fact that the content is still current and new enough to have weekly lockouts.

Mom said it's my turn to post about the newest Live Letter.

The upcoming patch has a new Ultimate, it has multiple PvP adjustments to both jobs and maps, it has a brand-new form of combat with an unlocked reward system that allows us to actively gather raid-level gear with tokens that help to buy more including first-timer bonuses including standard fare of mount/minion/misc collectables. In addition, it also has:

• A new dungeon for roulettes where we may continue to see adjustments to the standard experience compared to EW's handling of dungeons and story content

• A nostalgic (for some) alliance raid setting that gives catchup gear every week and currency to exchange for upgrade catalysts for raid gear

• New dailies with beast tribes

• New weeklies in custom deliveries, the new AR, and a Stormblood EX for Faux Hollows

• New quests in three branches of side content separate from the MSQ

• A detailed and long-requested improvement to Hall of the Novice to actively encourage good habits and proper resolution of mechanics for newer players

• Adjustment of hit detection for PvP with a conscious effort to make it more action-esque and allow for blocking or avoiding attacks instead of guaranteeing to be hit once you see the animation

• PvE balance and job adjustments (yes, buffing everything instead of nerfing PCT is stupid)

• QoL changes to glamours and gpose with a direct comment on continued work to expanding the current data available to the player for glamours

• The introduction of the ability to be able to easily copy and transfer your HUD, hotbars, config settings, and macros across characters

• Further improvements on the graphical update along with another free Fantasia, weapon designs being added after a community contest, and an honorary mention for the ongoing intention of adjusting encounter design to be more engaging that will develop further in 7.2+

A decent amount of people seem to be complaining yet again, because it's r/ffxivdiscussion and that's what we do here (yes it is, don't pretend it isn't these days). Some say it's a lackluster patch, some say it's the same as always, some people want more significant changes to the fundamental basis of the gameflow. While I do think a lot of these changes don't quite go far enough, I recognize that they are putting in the effort to at least try and make some of these pain points less egregious. Whether or not it actually will remains to be seen.

For those of you expressing disappointment or disdain, let me ask: what effort on the devs' part - and what amount of content - would you need to see in order to consider a modern FFXIV patch a genuinely good and exciting patch? Be realistic, it's obviously not genuine to say "this is an x.1 patch and it needs to have the content of an xpac launch". Not talking about radical sweeping design changes, elements that work in other MMOs that function fundamentally different from this game, or changes that would lead the game down a path that triggers an unrealistically dramatic shift in design philosophy across the board, these things don't happen the way it is often demanded here. If you don't think it's good, that's great - surely you can back your stance up with constructive criticism and a tangible idea of how they may improve.

For everyone following the info drop from the live letter, whether your reception is positive, negative, or neutral: are the measures that the devs are taking ones that you feel are effective enough to address the pain points the community repeatedly criticizes? Do you feel they handle the relevant issues well, or do you think it's not enough? Are they foundationally flawed moves that cause further issues, and if so, what would be a superior approach? Would you be happy to see them take this new Chaotic reward structure and apply it to more content? What kind/how much content if you do, and how do you think it should be actualized to allow for a more satisfying gameplay experience moving forward into the rest of the expansion and 8.0? And above all, what areas would you like to see them focus on improving further in the patches to come?

The character tilt being added to the game caught me by surprise a little. My reaction at the time was that no one should ever want to turn on this feature and that anyone who uses this would need to start using Pixel Perfect. It makes me wonder how this even got approved because it just seems like a waste of time at best.

This makes me think of a friend's static whose Viper couldn't determine whether the fuse on his head was short or long on Brute Bomber because he couldn't see his head through the animations. This reminds me that they thought Phoinix was good to go live with red on red on red. To a lesser extent, it makes me wonder why they approved the shortened lines for Honey B. Lovely's Alarm Pheromones.

Hello everyone, I wanted to make this rant post for a while now because it's just stuff I've been thinking about alot lately and I just wanted to share my 2 cents. This post is by no means trying to enforce opinions on anyone and stuff, it's just what I personally think about FFXIV as a whole.

For starers, let me say I do (did?) have fun playing ffxiv (or rather, not playing it). I feel like I didn't really waste any money on it and that I SOMEWHAT got my money's worth (explained later). So I am not here to purely talk trash about the game, but I am here to explain my frustrations with it. Lets start;

1. SUBSCRIPTION - First and foremost, I genuienly believe FFXIV can in no way justify its subscription cost any longer. It's really absurd to me, that the new expansion, so Dawntrail, has LESS content than what you might see in any F2P game, and yet we had to both buy the expansion and pay for a monthly subscription. One of the two absolutely needs to go, and it should be the sub cost. "Its fine to unsub and go play another game" is such a cope and shitty response, it's absurd. Such a response is fine in a f2p game, OR A GAME THAT DOES NOT ACTIVELY PUNISH YOU FOR DOING SO (WoW, Runescape - the 2 sub based games that come my mind). In FFXIV, you will LOSE your house (in 45 days, what a timer, right), and if you don't claim your housing items after it gets demolished, you will lose those too. Make housing permament and I will gladly unsub for the next 8 months until I get new 2 weeks of worth content. But they are very well aware of that, so they won't do it, because even if it keeps me and only me subbed, they get extra money already.
2. CONTENT AS A WHOLE - Again, there's severe lack of content, and the one that comes out is either dead on arrival / one and done OR absurd content that requires months upon months to really finish, either actively grinding it (hunt achievements (which have been same for YEARS now, relics) or passive 30 minutes a week play (Island sanctuary), or Ultimate raids, that again is designed for people that are willing to invest all their energy to eventually clear it. That would've been fine, if there was at least *some* daily/weekly grinds designed on semi end game, but there is.... none. The only "casual" end game content we have right now is daily dungeon roulette, which at this point doesn't really reward anything, and I feel like I'm doing it out of pure boredom. Dawntrail has pretty much zero, ZERO, new content. Can you imagine if WoW expansion released in such a state? It would get buried from everyone everywhere in a matter of days. But FFXIV gets away with it, because nobody is allowed to critize such a *perfect* game. I also want to point out here, that 90% of current content is basically content that we have been doing for past couple of years, so really, nothing is new. And asking me "but have u done all ultimates?" "Do you have all relics?" "Did you do XYZ?". That is not content. That is OLD content. But thats okay, right? In early April at best we will get new field operations, which is mostly likely going to be another few hours a week grind. But hey, better keep that sub running, you are getting a day worth of content out of 31 days sub time. Did anyone play WoW during WoD/Shadowlands? How people were saying there's no content? Can you imagine if somebody said "Yeah but do you have all Argent Tournament mounts?". That person would've been bullied out of the room in a nanosecond. Justifying the lack of content purely because there is old content is not a valid response. I paid for Dawntrail, not for Endwalker but with a higher lvl cap, which brings me to....
3. LEVEL CAP - I feel like lvl 100 that I am at the moment is just a cosmetic thing for the most part. since again, majority of the time I don't get to actually play lvl 100, outside of Savage and a daily dungeon run. Roulettes sync me down to lvls where i have 3-4 buttons to press, and... that's it....
4. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY OF CONTENT - The little content we got that actually does feel fresh to an extend is Savage. I do like them, I really do. All other "content" that we got with Dawntrail is just reskinned old stuff that we have been doing for years. Treasure dungeons? Exact same. Hunting? Exact same. Gear progression? Exact same. Jobs as a whole? 1 new button, new visual effects, other than that, exact same. Honestly, free 2 play games without a sub release more content, faster, that a one time buy + sub FFXIV does. Warframe or Path of exile are f2p games that release more content on shorter timer. WoW is same, buy and sub, but it does release new content and does visible and meaningful changes with it, not just a reskin. For all the shit that WoW or Blizzard gets, at least they're trying *something*, and it's getting really old listening to people trashtalk about it when, quite frankly, is just superior to FFXIV in 90% of aspects. Only thing ffxiv does better, is the player interaction/RP, which comes down to the playerbase, rather than developers of said games.
5. MODS AND MARE - For some reason this is a controversial topic. People love to trash talk mod/mare users, and don't get me wrong, some of them deserve it. But believe me, Square Enix won't do jack shit about it because it keeps the subs running, and they're well aware of it. Dalamud plugins fix majority of QoL stuff that devs are quite frankly either incompetent or unwilling to do. And mare/mods gives people "content" that devs are too lazy to make themselves. Searching for mods and changing your character did personally give me enjoyment and content that I couldn't find in other games. So yeah, personally I think its fine and devs should pull the head out of their asses and just admit they tolerate modding because it unironically makes them money and fixes stuff they "cannot due to coding/other stuff" (ahem, hat compatibility for vieras/hroths, which was apparently incapable of being done, until a single person managed to do it from the comfort of their home, for free)

Honestly, FFXIV would've been perfectly fine if it was, and I'm not kidding, a complete free to play game. But right now, it simply cannot justify the sub cost, when it is a very much second monitor game, meaning you don't get anything to do, and you just keep it running in the background because you have friends in it, and you like the interaction with them.

I most likely missed alot of points I wanted to make, I'm still somewhat waking up, but I'm just bored so decided to write some stuff. And I just want to point out, telling me to go play WoW instead is not a valid response, and honestly, the only reason I will not is because it doesn't let me mod, and create my own stuff.

TL:DR; FFXIV cannot justify the sub cost purely due to lack of any sort of meaningful content, and YoshiP telling us to take a break is a shitty response and it's mind blowing to me it gets tolerated and thrown around like it's a genuine and valid response.

EDIT: Well, expected thing did happen :p Any criticism of this game will be met with severe backlash. I sincerely hope you all have alot of fun playing the game for the time being, but pls don't complain about lack of content when you have to wait months upon months just to get fed a days worth of content. Have fun you all o7

EDIT2-Final edit: I'm going to stop responding to anyone. You all have proven that any criticism of the game will be met with backlash and hit with the "just quit bro" "just take a break". I won't explain myself any further because I tried but it makes no difference. Keep on telling people to just quit until there won't be any people to tell that to anymore. I hope ffxiv strives for years to come, but this isn't it. So long

I don't see it as often anymore but when someone would complain about content droughts or bad patch cycles a common refrain I'd see is, "Well, have you done x achievement?" where x is something ridiculous that the average person probably wouldn't enjoy. It's a stupid response but it would be nice if you could open your achievements window and easily find something worthwhile to do. Achievements should be a way to extend a piece of content's longevity.

The problem is, most achievements in FFXIV fit into into these categories.

I don't have a problem with achievements just for playing the game as you normally would (it seems like FFXIV uses these as flags to track your progress anyway) but they don't really add anything. Ideally these would exist alongside achievements that make you go through the same content while fulfilling special conditions like solo deep dungeon clears or masked carnivale stages. This kind of achievement doesn't just add replayability, it's a new experience entirely.

Massive grinds and timegate achievements suck for obvious reasons, they're just there to bait subscriptions. I mean I can understand the appeal of some grinds but there's a line where it stops being a nice way to kill time. So many grinds in this game just overshoot that line by a mile. And timegates are simply garbage and unfair to new players. Imagine if a sprout wanted to catch up on all of the custom delivery titles while starting from scratch. They would need to stay subbed for the next 2.4 years straight. By the time they're done there will be at least 3 more clients to do. I would say that SE should delete them but it's probably not fair to anyone out there that actually did levequests for 7 years, if they exist.

I used to be driven by achievement hunting in the past but now when I look at the achievements I haven't earned yet all I see is various ways to inflict mental damage. I hope they decide to change their approach to making achievements but I rarely see others complain about this and instead achievement hunting seems to be more popular than ever for some reason.

I have been running trails and raids (not sav/ult/ex) almost everyday since DT release and I swear I have not seen 2 combusts on a boss ever. I use it constantly, but whenever I run with another AST they never use it. This is where my question comes in. Does it not stack and just re-ups mine? Do these AST’s just not use it because it’s been ruled useless? Do they not know about it? I’m just really curious about this and can’t find any info online anywhere.

TLDR Summary: Average unsubscribed Savage raider clears M1-4S in a little over 2.5 hours, with the help (read: carrying) of his above-average Savage raider friends; provides his commentary on the experience/difficulty/fun.

Note, to emphasize: this is not a flex, I am not good at this game, 'you' could have probably done this too. I'm just sharing something in case some people find it interesting.

This is a very long post, so I am putting my overall conclusion and thoughts first, followed by the (probably boring) details of what exactly we did + how exactly it went, pull by pull/fight by fight.

Overall Conclusion + Thoughts:

• Game's too easy! (/s)
• M4S DPS Check: Jokes aside, my #1 takeaway is that the dps tuning of M4S is outrageously low, arguably "unacceptably low". Since there is no midfight dps check, I was able to prog through the entire fight without doing any damage + focus entirely on mechanics. We reached Sunrise Sabbath on my 8th pull. The boss HP was at 52.5% at the transition (comparison: streamers' first clears typically had 46-48% HP), and was at 14.5% when we wiped during Sunrise (comparison: streamers had 5-7% at the same point). This is not a new conclusion, everyone has been saying the dps check for M4S was too low since it was cleared on Day 1, and having 7 players in BiS only makes that more obvious. But I thought it was still worth sharing that the situation is so extreme, and the DPS check is so low, that it is possible for a typical competent group to clear the fight with 1 of the 4 DPS players doing literally 0 damage.
• No door boss/no midfight DPS Check: I thought it was great that they finally went back to a non-door boss 4th floor fight. The hype factor from the transitions and final form bosses was lessened by having 4 back-to-back fights with door bosses. HOWEVER, I think M4S not having a midfight dps check contributes to it being too easy. Even people who are progging 'normally' rather than being carried by 7 friends can make their prog experience significantly easier by not hitting buttons during prog mechanics. It seems like fights like this should require hitting ~50% to reach P2, same as how it is with door bosses + with Ult phases, or similar.
• M4S Mechanics: Many of the mechanics in M4S are also too easy from a learning and execution perspective. There are mechanics which I have literally never failed, despite not being an average raider + somewhat slow learner. Yes, it is very important to acknowledge that progging alongside 7 people who are going to the right positions is much easier than progging alongside 7 headless chickens, especially with stuff like stack/spread mechanics. But even with that in mind, several of the mechanics in M4S are not particularly tight in terms of timing nor spacing, and several only have 2-3 variants instead of 4-6 variants to keep them simple. The fight also 'feels' a little empty or like it could be a little longer, even though I know it is basically the same length as E4S and E8S were.
• Overall M4S difficulty: each of the above decisions alone was fine. An easy DPS check on 4th floor is fine, buffing all jobs to match PCT is fine, having mechanics that are easy to learn+execute (for a 4th floor) without many variations is fine. But when you put them all together, the final result is something that does not live up to the difficulty level of previous 4th floors. Even if only comparing to E4S and P4S, M4S is several steps below. I also don't necessarily buy the argument that a first tier of an expansion should be significantly easier than the tiers from the previous expansion. Yes, the DPS check should be more lenient, because people don't have much time to learn updated rotations. But I do not agree that it makes sense to lower the bar in terms of mechanical difficulty. I know that not having a door boss makes it a bad idea to introduce new mechanic walls 10+ minutes into the fight, but I still feel like M4S isn't the ideal outcome either. The best way I can put it is this: the original plan was to clear M1-3S and just give me a feel for M4S without actually clearing it. But instead we were able to get me from fresh to cleared in under 50 minutes.
• Did I Learn The Fights, Though? Since we cleared M1S after 3 pulls + M2S after 4 pulls, I was not sure I could honestly say I "knew" the fights + could do them without friends carrying. After PF'ing on Tuesday + clearing in 2-3 pulls, I think it is fair to say I know them and can execute without callouts. I would also say that I feel pretty comfortable with M4S - its a harder fight, and I am sure I would cause deaths/wipes on Witch Hunt, but other than that everything was surprisingly simple to learn and execute, even after only 10 pulls. M3S is another story entirely, I think I would be a total trap if I went into a PF reclear without doing at least an hour of re-progging first.
• M1-3S Thoughts: I can only reiterate what everyone else has already said. M1S is a great first floor fight and does exactly what you'd hope for. M2S is mechanically too simple, but the heart stacks giving the boss healing and damage buff works so great that it basically makes up for the fight's shortcomings, hopefully they do more of the same in future. M3S is a great + fun fight (if you ignore the boss' frequent water breaks).
• How did the fights compare to previous tiers? M1S is clearly better than P1S. I'd also take it over P5S and P9S. M2S vs P2S is an interesting comparison, because I felt P2S was much harder/more fun to prog, but I could see M2S being much more fun to reclear/farm (P2S not having positionals + no real OT responsibilities was silly, it felt like an Ex Trial during reclears). I'd say M3S was overall better than P3S, but not as difficult - P3S wasn't great for difficulty varying significantly depending on if you got stack vs. spread. On the other hand, FoF + FoA were both really good iconic mechanics, which I feel M3S kinda lacks. I enjoyed M4S more than P4S, although I feel the 4th floor needs to be sufficiently difficult for Savage, and I do not feel that M4S ticks that box. (If we compare these to non-first tier fights, I liked E9S, P10S and E12S more, but I'd still say this was an exceptional tier).
• Fun: Important to acknowledge that the fights were all pretty good + lots of fun. If I re-subscribed for one month for 7.1, I'd be looking forward to reclears in a static environment + could even be tempted to give PF a shot otherwise. Overall the fight designs are an encouraging sign for what is to come in DT 7.X, other than them shying away from DPS checks. It has felt like a lingering massive overreaction from P8S.

Additional information purely for context/details below.

Background: I'm an unsusbcribed former player who watched the World First Race a few months ago + followed the discussions around the latest Savage tier since then. I was very curious about trying the fights, but didn't want to renege on my decision to stop playing FF14 on a regular basis. I realized I would eventually receive a 4 day free login offer, so I asked my former raiding FC/static/friends on EU if they would be up for trying to help me prog + clear M1-3S. They kindly agreed, and we picked last weekend to give it a shot.

Generally, in this game I would describe myself as an average/slow learner, it usually takes me time to learn new mechanics and recognize visual tells, especially the ones on the outsides of arenas. On the other hand, I remember boss ability names very easily, and I am pretty consistent on mechanics once I have learned what to look for.

Context/Raiding Experience/etc: I am a very average Savage raider. I started FF14 in ShB during the pandemic with no previous raiding experience. I cleared E12S on content + P4/8/12S on week 4. I didn't find doing Ultimates to be enjoyable, so I've only done UWU for the sake of being able to say I did one. (I love watching the World First Race, though)

The group had 8* people helping. 3 helpers are pentalegends, while the other 6 have done UCOB/UWU/TEA in various combinations. (*5 were there on both days. 2 only did Saturday + 2 only did Sunday.)

Preparation/Approach:

• I did not do a lot of preparation or studying. A few days before our Saturday session, I studied Hector's guides for M1-3S, took notes and sent them to the raid leader to confirm I had understood correctly. I also re-watched the guides briefly on the afternoon before we raided. After we cleared M3S and decided to continue on Sunday with M4S, I spent around 30-45 minutes watching the Hector guide + taking notes again.
• Caveat: I watched most of the World First Race on Twitch a few months ago, and watched the various content creators' discussion videos about the raid tier (Happy, Xeno, Arthars, Rinon, Frosty/Mogtalk, etc), so I was familiar with the fights and mechanics as a spectator. Watching the guides was a refresher to be able to execute alongside the callouts I'd be getting.
• For Reclears on Tuesday, I re-re-watched the guides and took fresh notes, because I was terrified about being a trap + ruining the parties.
• Tomes/gear: My subscription expired before the latest tomes came out, so I had no tome gear available. I bought the crafted gear I needed to be all 710+ ilevel, and also farmed 375 tomes to buy a tome ring. Full details below.

Gear:

• This is the gear I started M1S with (ilevel 710)
• M2S: same as above, with ilevel 730 raid necklace + ring added (ilevel 714ish?)
• M3S: same as above (still ilevel 714ish)
• M4S: same as above, with ilevel 730 raid pants added (ilevel 717ish?)
• Reclears: same as above, with ilevel 720 tome hat added (ilevel 718)

Stats:

• Saturday: started M1S at 7:20PM, finished at 9:13PM (= 1 hour, 53 minutes)
• Sunday: started M4S at 6:20PM, finished at 7:09PM (= 49 minutes). Total time: 2 hours and 45 minutes
• M1S: cleared on 3rd pull; parsed 2% with 1 death
• M2S: cleared on 4th pull; parsed 14% with 0 deaths
• M3S: cleared on 12th pull (should have cleared on 6th); parsed 1% with 3 deaths
• M4S: cleared on 10th pull; parsed 3% with 1 death
• M1-4S total pulls for the whole tier: 29. 17 wipes caused by me, 12 wipes caused by others
• Reclear M1S: cleared on 3rd pull with a single group; parsed 15% with 1 death
• Reclear M2S: cleared on 2nd pull with a single group, parsed 46% with 0 deaths
• Did not attempt M3-4S reclears due to time, tiredness, and not meeting the PF groups' ilevel 720+ minimums.

Full breakdown of my progression + mistakes:

M1S:

1. Wipe at 1m58s: caused by others (quad crossing bait miscommunication)
2. Wipe at 1m46: caused by me (quad crossing bait)
3. Cleared at 8m25s: I murdered someone during the post-Mouser quad crossing, and later ran off the platform with my Nailchipper marker. Parsed 2% with 1 death.

M2S:

1. Wipe at 7m40s: caused by me: I died during the first spread/stack mechanic, got hit by floating hearts during Beat 1, moved too slow with the 0H stack during Beat 2, and tried to take my Beat 3 tower before Defamations exploded. Could have cleared first pull, boss HP was at 15%
2. Wipe at 1m10s: caused by me (stacked instead of spread)
3. Wipe at 0m47s: caused by others (stacked instead of spread)
4. Cleared at 8m56s: only made 1 mistake, moved too slowly during Beat 3 + gave Boss one stack. Parsed 14% with 0 deaths.

M3S:

• First 3 pulls ended within 2 minutes. One wipe was mine (did not stack with my partner), the other 2 were from others getting walled
• 4th and 5th pull end between 5m02s and 5m21s. Both wipes were mine from failing Chain Deathmatch
• 6th pull ended at 8m12s. This could/should have been a clear, boss HP was at 20%. I had done all previous mechanics correctly, but failed Chain Deathmatch 2 due to forgetting to be hit by Murder Mist
• 7th/9th/10th pulls were wiped by others dying pre-Fusefield and not getting the needed debuffs
• 8th and 11th pulls were wiped by me failing Fusefield. The first time I mistook the D marker for the spark, so I failed to trigger my debuff. The second time I was told to trigger my debuff too early
• 12th pull was a clear at 10m27s. I died 3x during the clear: to Chain Deathmatch (facepalm), but also to 'Fuse or Foe' + 'Barb Barrage 2'. In my defense it was my first time seeing the latter two mechs. Parsed 1% with 3 deaths.

M4S:

• (Unlike M1-3S, I did not do my rotation at all during M4S prog, until we reached the end of the fight)
• First 3 pulls were wiped by me. Twice I failed the 1st mechanic (Bewitching Flight), once I failed the 2nd mechanic and killed others (Witch Hunt)
• The next 4 pulls were wiped during EE2, three times by others, once by me. I failed the above 2 mechanics in each of these pulls, but we limped through to EE2
• On our 8th pull, we wiped during Sunrise Sabbath at 12m20s, with the boss at 14.5% HP. This was without me (ranged phys) pressing any buttons at all.
• 9th pull was another EE2 wipe cauesd by someone else
• 10th pull was a clear at 12m05s. I only made one mistake, during Witch Hunt (took 2 baits), it did not kill anyone else. Parsed 3% with 1 (pre-2mins) death.

PF Reclears:

• I re-studied the M1S, M2S and M3S guides before attempting, because I was very nervous about trapping
• M1S done in 3 pulls with a single group. It was a big mess with a typical late tier party of strugglers. On the first pull I forgot to stack with my light party, I got knocked over the edge after Mouser1, and I missed bait on quad crossing + killed 2 others. But we made it to Raining Cats, which I know how to solve correctly + PF does not, so we wiped. Second pull we wiped after 30 seconds because I forgot the fight starts with clocks instead of raidwide lol. Third pull we cleared, I did not make any major mistakes, I died during Mouser2 (mostly due to bad party stack location). Parsed 14% with 1 death.
• M2S done in 2 pulls with a single group. The first pull was a big mess throughout, but ended with me wiping the group during Beat3, I did not check if I had short/long debuff timer. The second pull we cleared, I did not make any mistakes at all. Parsed 47% with 0 deaths.
• I could not try to do M3S + M4S. Reasons: I was very mentally tired, it was already getting late on Tuesday evening, and most PF parties are locked to ilevel 720+ so I could not join without asking for exceptions - and given my inexperience, I did not want to ask people to make exceptions for me. I was hoping to try to do 1 of these 2 fights on Wednesday morning, but my free login period ended overnight.

Other (non-Savage) Thoughts:

• 6 pulls and studying the Hector Guide twice is enough to get the Honey B Lovely song stuck in your head
• I absolutely love the Wicked Thunder song, I think its way better, but somehow its much less of an "earworm"?
• I really enjoy Frontline PVP, it gets old eventually but you miss it while unsubscribed
• The DT world zones are incredible. It really is a huge waste that the game does nothing with overworld zones. The music is fantastic too
• People mock the "GCBTW" meme, rightly so, but doing this is the kind of thing which is possible because the community is full of people who are kind and generous with their time, and very often keen to help. Thanks again to the 8 amigos who took time on their weekend to help me give this a shot, it was really fun.

Links:

• Saturday Log (Anonymous): https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:4gV9GQDFqytJM1nZ
• Sunday Log (Anonymous): https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:7g8LdQpPavnNbwKD
• M1S Reclear Log (Anonymous): https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:bTANxpYqJPgzm1a2
• M2S Reclear Log (Anonymous): https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:WtH3RV9aC2Drcq7w
• Gear I started M1S prog with: https://imgur.com/a/Qb4ZiBP

They said they're gonna have content for the next 10 years, which means 4 more expansions. We know for sure that the next jobs are gonna be Tank and Phys. Ranged, and if we follow the pattern they've adopted for the last few expansions accordingly, we're gonna end up with something like this:

• Fending and Aiming
• Healing and Striking
• Casting and Maiming
• Aiming and Scouting

That way we will have precisely 5 Tanks, 5 Healers, 5 Phys. Ranged, 5 Casters and 9 Melees (3 for each armor class). We'll probably gonna have a last limited job at some point too.

So what are your predictions/hopes? For me, it would be this:

• Fending: Mystic Knight, with scimitar and shield
• Maiming: Ravager, with dual axes (inspired on Viking from FF3)
• Striking: Duelist, with quarterstaff (inspired on Sonon from FF7R)
• Scouting: Corsair, with sword and gun
• Aiming: Ranger, with crossbow
• Casting: Geomancer, with dual bells
• Healing: Green Mage, with a Harry Potter wand
• Limited: Gambler, with throwing darts

Coming from a player in Post Shadowbringers. Almost every class at 90. Mostly run daily roulettes and mid core content.

My issue:

I feel that there are redundant cards. Like, why separate dps buffs for Ranged and Melee? Some cards I’d only use for the tank like the shield or damage mitigation. If you use up your whole hand all at once, Astro becomes underwhelming. I don’t care for the haste ability, it just turns Astro into a spammer.

My solution: Replace two abilities with card slots for a full hand of Five Cards for Astro.

Reduce the CD for Draw Cards to 45 seconds.

Merge Melee/Ranged dps buff into one card.

Abilities to be rid of or nerfed:

1. Celestial Opposition-it just seems trite.

2. Celestial Intersection- just turn it into a card.

3. Lightspeed- reduce it to one charge or remove it.

Cards to remove:

1. The regen card.

2. The shield card (or maybe keep it for earlier dungeon content.)

3. Merge DPS buff cards. (Same percent buff)

Card ideas:

1. Comet- Single Target DPS burst.

2. Pull- Literally a second Pull

3. Sun Dial- Persistent ground AOE that heals party members while enemies receive DOT. Both while standing in its AOE.

4. Celestial Intersection- unchanged.

5. Relativity- remove 5 (or 10?) seconds of all Ability cooldowns of target party member. Does not include weapon skills.

6. Double Play- the next card can be played a second time. (Buffs can’t be stacked. Sun Dial can be stacked. Also applies to Lord and Lady of Crowns).

Goal of rework:

With this expanded card list, I hope players Astrologian to be engaging and very dynamic without being too overwhelming in hard core content like Savage and Extremes. PVP wasn’t considered. I think it’s fine the way it is.

What are all of your thoughts on how Astrologian could change?

First of all, let me explain how I define "reward-oriented content" : whatever content that would get ignored past the first successful clear and only gets repeated because of its reward(s) is reward-oriented. It can very much be a good design : the MSQ is reward-oriented (the storytelling is an extremely important part not only of FFXIV, but also of most games) . It can be an acceptable design, with gear being tied to savage and such, in which case the game aknowledges your success, but then there usually are tools that prevent you from enjoying the content (= its reward) such as random rewards or a reward scarcity.

Now let me explain why it is an issue. The main flaw of reward-oriented content is rather obvious : they are short-lived and can end up like a chore. It's especially painful when success doesn't depend on you or when it is a time-sink (like "the Luckiest of Ladies/Lords" title) . Being short-lived, people soon consider them as outdated (once reward is acquired) or irrelevant (once a new similar content is released) .
Moreover, they usually aren't offering much replayability : most of the people who still clear old Extreme Trials for the mounts do so unsync'd and speed kill the enemy without much difficulty, if any. The "reward-oriented content" thus becomes a litteral piñata and calling it "content" is a bit of an exaggeration. Once the reward is secured in our hands, there is no point in clearing it again because clearing is not the actual point of such content ; this is why "rare" rewards can bait the player again (like current Extreme) but thankfully, such a toxic design is more of a WoW issue.

Long story short : reward-oriented content are short-lived and offer a poor (or even nonexistent) replayability.

As I said, it's not a bad thing per se : nevermind the cost, the MSQ is an absolute necessity in FFXIV (even if it can be criticised, people would still want an extensive one and not use the MSQ as an excuse for new landscapes). Nevertheless, there can't be only such kind of contents because they are expensive, and aren't entertaining nearly as long as the tremendous time they take to design & deliver. Take alliance raids for instance : the instance itself requires many months to build yet it can be first-cleared within an hour or two... It's a luxury treat, a gift we all are attached to, but there is a crystal clear and severe imbalance in terms of players/developpment teams's commitment !

The real reason I'm questioning this choice now more than ever before is not because it's a bad design... But because it's nearly the only one.

The MSQ, Extreme, Savage, Ultimates are obviously reward-oriented. But Variant and (Savage) Criterion too, Alliance raids too and most likely the Chaotic raids as well. Even Island Sanctuary is meaningless once all rewards have been ripped off the market there for most players. Orthos (Endwalker's deep dungeon) felt outdated within days, same for the Blue Mage content. Relic weapons used to be a content of its own but EW's ones felt like an MSQ addition, with weapons being sold like French bread around the Eiffel Tower !

Think about it : what content is NOT reward-oriented ? What content would you run on a regular basis even without rewards ?

Actually there are a few of them, PvP being the main one I can think of. But that's... A rather boneless meat as far as most players are concerned, some of which even tag in there for the rewards without actually doing much.

Here are my suggestions (from worst to best imho) :

- Make the world map actually useful outside the MSQ. Sounds very innovative right ? NO it's not, in fact even ARR seemed to try and go in this direction with FATEs ; we need them to feel creative, fresh again and more importantly, engaging. Take a moment to imagine what they could be, not just how they can be "better FATEs". For instance, there could be temporary instanced maps where FATEs happen to be meaningful so much so that the world would actually change into something very different, even if it means killing some / most NPCs there (being temporary and instanced outside the usual map, we'd still have access to the original ones). It could have a much slower pace with some way to track the next FATE and ensure they'd spawn when there is a peak of players.
At the very least, a much lazier option is to spawn Bozja-like FATEs (please don't time-gate stuff with a succession of tasteless FATEs ; it would make it a chore to attempt and a depressing experience if we'd failed) . We indeed have 2 such FATEs already, but their spawn is way too unreliable and they basically require a great number of players (which nullifies the difficulty) instead of being thought as small-party / solo content. Red October into Lyon's 1v1 is probably the best example I have in mind but there should be various level of difficulty, depending on the zone.

- I'm not sure how people would enjoy it, but I'd very much like to see a content that plays around empowering our skillset. It would have to be random (for replayability reasons) with checks and balance tools (to avoid both overpowered builds or underpowered ones) . By nature, it may very much look like a deep dungeon alternative but it easily could send us in procedurally-generated dungeons (since, at this point, they really are a brainless design) . At several stages, we'd need a kind of a boss but please, build it so it can have random abilities rather than do A or B things. Or keep DD's ones if you're not sure but not anything even simpler !

- Give us a content with actually random stuff, so much so that it would include mechanics added in later patches' contents. This way, the content would update itself with the most recent encounters. But more importantly, people would actually have to watch out the visual clues instead of relying on preemptive knowledge.
Ideally, this would include waves of enemy (but DON'T have a fight-long wave of enemy, please ! It never was a good idea and probably never will be) or they can be used in between actual battles to test out various things such as focusing 1 target, controlling our own damage, being able CC one or several targets, moving while dealing damage and so on.
At worst, it's easy to imagine an 8-man content where we'd be thrown in a random PvE instance for 1 or 2 mechanic ; it could actually work as a solo content as well but would require much more work (at least for us to know what the other NPCs are going to do) .

I'd have many more ideas such as offering haste-gear or tier sets only for the content they've been unlocked in, offering a "NG+" experience or having a random-role content, or a PvE contest among 2 teams where each team can affect the other one in real time, but they need far more work (especially in terms of balance or to ensure one's experience isn't ruined by someone else's mistake) .

What's your opinion ? What kind of content the drifts off the "reward-related" ones would you enjoy ?

My favorite job is Summoner. They made three major updates with it in DT: Necrotize, Searing Flash and Solar Bahamut. In my opinion, they're all very boring and lazy updates for a job that is already pretty lazy to play, and I believe there were better ways to make these changes more interesting. Here's what I wish they had been:

Necrotize: Instead of being just a damage/animation upgrade, it could've been a different spell, similar to Energy Drain, but only grants 1 Aetherflow and has 30s of cooldown instead of 60s. This alone makes the Summoner's rotation much more interesting. The bursts would be way busier, the resource management would be a little more complex, and you would even have an extra ogcd to use during an egi-summon.

Searing Flash: I just dislike the idea that every party wide buff now becomes a finisher, it pushes forward to the homogenization of jobs, which I'm against. What if Summoner had a new gauge which increases by 5 whenever you spend a lego, and once you had 100 (preciselly 120 seconds) you could use Searing Flash? In the end this is not much of a change, but at least it's more flavorful.

Solar Bahamut: Now this is an easy one. No one asked for another Bahamuth, literally anything else would be better. Could've been Odin, could've been Alexander, could've been Shiva, Ramuh and Leviathan during Phoenix phase, even Bahoenix would've been better (like a fusion between Bahamut and Phoenix).

Bonus: I always thought that Titan's gcds would make more sense if they had 1.5s of cast time instead of being instant.

With the new patch cycle is it still possible for the game to announce new expac summer next year and releasing in summer 2026? are you ready for the next chapter of wol life?

I am not asking if there's fewer people playing compared to the Dawntrail launch, I just mean lower than general maintenance. Just anecdotally I feel like queues are taking super long for every piece of content on Aether. I have got 10 retainers and over 150mil gil worth of items and every day I log on to 0 items sold.

I know people tend to take breaks between patches but it kind of feels like the population of the game fell off a rock after the dawntrail launch. Should they put some content in at an expansion launch that keeps people busy? I am an eternal achievement hunter so I am always on, but it gets frustrating not being able to find groups for anything.

https://youtu.be/uWXpIzl8fkg?t=373&si=8KnLlH0vAnsEzCle

Starts around 6:00, the piano theme. What's the name of the song?

A few hours ago i asked ppl of this subreddit about in game timeline and now i know that all events from the beginning of ARR took about 1 year. I really think they should do something like GW2 did: write current in game year for every major event. If we had a timeskip between EW and DT we could really see how our actions affected the world: fixed garlemald, aging characters, bigger changes in their personalities (thancred is older and not in a good shape after long rest period/ Alphinaud getting a biceps and becoming more simple person cuz he carried a lot of heavy stuff while restoring garlemald/ Estinien becoming famous fighter all across eorzea and Tural, etc.) SOMEONE ACTUALLY WILL KNOW ABOUT SAVIOR OF EORZEA and we will never see quest like "collect X bag of dog shit for this lonely farmer". What do you think about it?

Title. Literally like 5 different recruitment party finders on Crystal during prime time. Aether/Primal? Two pages worth of recruitments.

Would have transferred out by now if it wasn't for my FC being so dang nice

How much time have passed since ARR beginning? Twins are still 16 or so, nothing really changed in the world. We cant see outcome of our actions in a long term perspective at all

People on party finder literally quit after failing 3 or 4 times. It doesn't make any sense. I've just recently started to get into raiding, and actually managed to get an M1S clear, but trying to get a reclear is even more frustrating. People give up after 3 or 4 tries and it's really annoying. The FC I'm in is basically dead, and the discord they invited me to is also pretty much dead. Clearing M1S was probably the most fun I've ever had with this game outside of the story, and yet it's the most frustrating experiencing simultaneously. On the last attempt before everyone quit (it was literally like our 3rd attempt), we got to the Raining Cats, but failed it because some people were already dead, and the main tank died on the previous mechanic before the tank buster went off, which forced me to use my invuln early. After that, they all just up and left.

Why is the community like this? The content is designed to be difficult, so it seems a little unreasonable to expect everyone to get it on their first try, heck even their first couple of tries are basically a refresher into the mechanics. Are there any better resources than relying on party finder? It wasn't even that late in the night either, only around 7:00 PM EST (4:00 PM PST). I want to keep raiding because I find it fun, but this aspect of the player base is surprisingly disappointing (to me at least), especially considering how welcoming they are on practically everything else. I play on Aether - Adamantoise for those wondering.

Edit/Update: Thank you everyone for your advice. As frustrating as it was party jumping, I was able to get my reclear. It is as many of you said, patience and perseverance is the key.

Square Enix generally makes PVP job design decisions based around Crystalline Conflict, not Frontline. Also I enjoy CC and play it much more than Frontline so my opinions are heavily influenced by that. Also I've hit crystal rank on Aether multiple times if that matters to you.

Tanks:

Paladin: Cover needs to go, not because it's bad game design, but because its the most high elo skewed ability in the game. In high elo it often results in a free elixir for the covered player, in low elo the covered target doesn't even recognize that they're covered. The rest of Paladin's kit is fine though, maybe a new and more exciting LB?

Warrior: Warrior's current kit just isn't great in Crystalline Conflict. It doesn't do a ton of damage, it has health costs on onslaught/orogeny for some reason, and its healing is extremely unreliable. The job has very little value if opponents aren't standing on top of each other so you can get aoe stuns/healing. In high elo warriors often just get focused and exploded immediately after going in because their mit is so much worse than the other tanks. I wouldn't mind if the job got a complete rework.

Dark Knight: I know Dark Knight is public enemy #1 in Frontline, but I think it is perfectly designed for Crystalline Conflict. Spending HP to do damage, massive healing bursts, resetting gap closer on takedowns, all very fun and satisfying while fulfilling the job fantasy. I'd be surprised if salted earth survives the PVP update, but I hope the rest of the job's kit survives.

Gunbreaker: To be honest, the junction system just doesn't work. Going DPS junction is just troll, it makes you too squishy just to be a worse version of the melee DPS jobs. Healer junction is good on paper, but in practice isn't great, especially since the aoe of your continuation heals is only 15y. Tank junction is just by far the best. Nebula is the best mit in PVP. High uptime with extremely high damage reflect. The shields on your continuation hits are sizable, especially with the 20% healing bonus from your gap closer. The rest of the kit is fine, but the junction system needs to be scrapped because its just a noob bait at this point.

Healers:

White Mage: I think White Mage's current state is perfectly fine as a beginner PVP job. Strong aoe burst damage and heals with weak sustained damage as a tradeoff. Teaches new players how important burst damage is in securing kills. Wouldn't be surprised if they removed Miracle of Nature though, not because its unbalanced (10y range with a 45 second cooldown), but because its frustrating to play against.

Scholar: Scholar's current kit is fine for Crystalline Conflict imo. I think it fits a nice role as the defensive healer. Little to no burst damage, but strong defensive abilities. Not my cup of tea, but there aren't really any Scholar abilities in particular that I think are poorly designed.

Astrologian: No complaints from me on Astro's design. I think the double casts are very fun and give you lots of choices to make. Maybe they could lean a little more into the buffing capabilities of Astro outside of its burst?

Sage: My only complaint with Sage is Kardia. So much of Sage's value is dependent on having your Eukrasian Diagnosis shield on your Kardia target broken so you get a charge of Toxikon II. If you have your Kardia on someone else you have very little control over whether it breaks or not, so the optimal play is usually to just keep Kardia on yourself for the whole game, especially since Sage has such low max hp and you need to go into melee range to pop your Phlegmas. Other than that, I think the PVP kit fulfills the job fantasy quite well.

Magical Ranged DPS:

Black Mage: I have two complaints with Black Mage's current PVP kit. First, fire spells just aren't very useful. DoTs are already very weak in PVP because they don't really help secure kills, and they can usually just be shrugged off with recuperate heals, and on top of that Black Mage's DoT is only 3000 potency. You're better off just only using ice spells and constantly stunning your opponents. My second complaint is that for being the hard cast job, most of your casts are instacasts. Your burst is a 60s cooldown that gives you 7 insta casts, Paradox has a 15s cooldown, and Aetherial Manipulation has a 10s cooldown and gives you swiftcast. I feel like PvE summoner with all the insta casts.

Summoner: No complaints from me. Very simple yet satisfying kit which is exactly what Squeenix wants Summoner to be.

Red Mage: I think Red Mage's current kit is mostly fine. My only complaint is that the white shift/black shift system doesn't really work for Red Mage. RDM's role in PVP is to dash in, shred one person with your melee combo, and backflip out. With white shift, you just don't really do that much damage so you can't fulfill your role. The only RDM ability that's really better in white shift is Resolution since a silence is better than a bind. Why use the heal/shield version of your abilities when you can just kill your opponent so they can't hit you? Other than that, it'd be nice if Corps-a-corps gave you a short movement speed buff so you can stick to your opponent while using your melee combo, and it'd be nice if the game remembered whether you were in white shift/black shift instead of just reverting you back to white shift every time you respawn.

Pictomancer: I know they said they're not likely to change Picto/Viper in the upcoming update, but I have the same issue with Picto that I have with RDM. Why use the heal version of ability when you can just use the damage version and kill your opponent? Also same thing as with RDM, I wish the game would remember whether you were in subtractive palette or not instead of turning it off every time you die. Also just like in PvE it would be nice if your motif was already painted when you respawn.

Physical Ranged DPS:

Dancer: No complaints from me, I think Dancer is very fun in PVP and fulfills the job fantasy well. You're very mobile dashing around the battlefield, with the drawback that you're relatively short range.

Bard: No complaints from me here either. Fulfills the job fantasy well. Maybe a new and more exciting LB?

Machinist: No complaints on Machinist either! Only real issue with Machinist is the snapshot on LB damage not matching up with the animation, which they announced they're changing next patch. (Why do the PVP kits of the phys ranged fulfill the job fantasy so much better than the PVE kits???)

Melee DPS:

Dragoon: I'm a big fan of Dragoon's current state. Lots of jumps and spear stabbing to put out massive amounts of damage with the clear drawbacks of having zero CC and being vulnerable to anyone that you don't hit with your horrid roar. I don't think the job needs any changes, but I'm sure they'll try to fit Starcross into the kit.

Ninja: Burn this kit to the ground. I'm only kinda joking. I think Ninja LB is the most nerfed ability in PVP, it absolutely needs to be completely reworked. Even not considering its LB, Ninja is a balancing nightmare. It has a tool for every situation. Strong single target burst, good CC, extremely strong survivability, good range, and it even has aoe crystal control in the form of Doton if necessary. The job needs a complete rework imo.

Reaper: I think Reaper's current kit fulfills a valuable role in the game as the pest. Low damage, but good mobility, CC, and self mit. I'd be fine with them keeping Reaper's kit as is, but if they were to change it I'd like them to change Plentiful Harvest. Not a fan of a 60s cooldown basic ability.

Monk: I think half of Monk's current kit is great design, and half of it is not so great design. The 7 hit GCD combo is great, Riddle of Earth is awesome, and the Thunderclap spam is very fun. On the other hand, Enlightenment just doesn't work well with FFXIV's netcode, it feels impossible to know which way you're knocking them back unless they've been stunned for a second and you can line it up. Rising Phoenix doesn't really feel like its own ability, just a Kaiten for Phantom Rush. Lastly, WAY too much of Monk's power budget is in its Enlightenment + LB combo. 40k+ potency with 3 seconds of uncleansable CC. Almost guarantees a KO every time. I feel like Monk should be a more single target version of the pest that Reaper is, but because so much of its power is in its LB, it feels more like an assassin.

Samurai: Samurai is another job that I wouldn't mind being torn down and rebuilt from scratch. Samurai LB is extremely frustrating to play against. You can't use any aoe around Samurai while their LB is up or you just die. There is counterplay, but the counterplay is to just not... not attack around Samurai, which isn't very fun. I don't think the rest of Samurai's kit is particularly satisfying to use either. You just burn your Ogi's + Midare every 20 seconds and then dash around waiting for your cooldowns to come back up.

Viper: I think Viper is quite fun. I'm a big fan of their oGCDs reducing the cooldown of their LB so you're rewarded for constantly interacting with your opponent.

Regardless of what the changes end up being, I'm very excited for the update to shake things up and make the kits feel fresh again! What are you guys hoping to see in the PVP update?

I was thinking about a way to make use of the many currencies that keep overcapping our pockets. Stuff like Poetics, Grand Company Seals and PVP Currency. Here's what I came up with:

Poetics: Could be used to buy old dungeon gear. That would also solve the issue that farming glamour for old dungeons is a disheartening experience.

Grand Company Seals: Ideally they would keep updating Grand Companies every expansion so you always have something new to buy, but since they don't wanna do that, they could make it so you could have a single FC buff in exchange for seals, that way you could spend them everyday and they would always be worthy to farm.

Trophy Crystals: You should be able to buy old PVP cosmetics with those. I'm not talking about The Feast (though I wish we could obtain the Hellhound gear since we have the weapons), I'm talking about previous Series awards. I really dislike exclusive and unobtainable content, though the grind should still be respected, that's why those should be EXPENSIVE. Like, a single mount should cost 20k Trophy Crystals. Also can we delete Wolf Collars? Their only purpose is to make the currency more complicated.

Bicolor Gemstones: Well, I don't have a problem with this currency at all, I just wished that the Shared FATE system was all the way up to ARR, so newbies could farm those as well. There's no reason not to, and I feel like the open world would be much more alive in early levels if this was the case.

Old Crafters/Gatherers Scrips: I seriously have no idea what to do with those.

Achievment Certificates: Can we please have more stuff to buy? I feel like this is a very important currency to have, since achievment farming is one of the preferable endgame content choices. Just gives a mount that costs a lot of those, idk.

I've heard the the newest expansion isn't that great and that players have been leaving the game because of it.

So my question: Is the game worth jumping into and going through the story as a new player worth it based on the latest expansion?

I am a comeback player, and just thinking... as a Mac user ACT is not available for me at all, so as a PVE/Raid enthusiast how can I improve my damage output or skills without seeing my actual damage? How does It work on Ultimate and Savage raid endgame encounters? Am I just overthink it, or I will be f'ed with no meter?

I have at least 2,000,000 gil saved up to buy a house. I want to get a medium one as the small one is too small and I think the large one would be WAY too large. I’ve tried the buy low, sell high market board method but that’s only gotten me so far. Are there any other ways to earn gil quick?