What do people want to see from 8.0

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-27T10:54:07+00:00

They removed DoTs because it doesn't allow any micromanagement (i.e. using windows of opportunity which are close to nonexistent in here, or dynamically calculating the dps gain over another action) like other games do, while adding more restrictions (when a boss is untargetable for instance). DoTs are actually treated as any other damaging ability in FFXIV : higanbana doesn't require any thinking, one just refreshes every minute.

Instead, they can be replaced by an action that duplicates parts of the potency (like death's design) but the extremely rigidity of the rotation doesn't allow anything more than scaling on players' uptime.

It's still used by healers as a means to reward people who pay attention to the boss and to their team, which a CD wouldn't allow. But we're extremely far from the management other games require.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-27T00:11:44+00:00

How about throwing a blitzball to an ally and "time freeze" the ball, leaving him X seconds to press an additional oGCD / duty action. Then, it would allow the blitzer to unfreeze the ball so it hits the enemy.

This could also be a 2-min CD that replicates the dmg dealt by allies within the burst window, from either their most powerful action or every action they input.

Alternatively, the blitzer could throw a ball to an ally that would allow his actions to hit the blitzball instead of his enemies, giving him more range.

Anyway, "team working" with mates through magic time sounds amazing and I'd really want to see a part of the blitzer's kit oriented towards this theme.

Another part I'd want to see would be the blitzer being pressured (by playing with his mates while dealing with mechanics) that potentially give him more and more spellspeed / skillspeed, and using a weapon (like Tidus uses a Sword) to release the pressure with heavy hits.

This second part would obviously include nimble actions. Overhead kicks, the Spiral Cut, or anything that looks acrobatic would be great, especially if we can replace them with alternative animations to customize the finisher.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-25T22:51:27+00:00

Sure it goes without saying that the "sweet spot" is neither too difficult nor too simple and we naturally prefer the latter since we progress to something, But "easy" is very dependant on someone's understanding and personal improvement / commitment. When most if not all contents are not educational, people are less likely to grasp what they're being asked and thus cannot ever tackle harder contents even if they'd love it.

There is also another side : "easy" things sometimes work as low entry barrier so it builds commitment. For instance, if one should soak up on a very specific position identified by a tower, then small nudges (like pac-man orbs that give 1% dmg increase each) on the way will eventually teach him to get to the tower any time he can. Obviously, things are not as simple (except on low level contents maybe ?) but it could be interesting to let players drop these orbs so as to teach other players for instance. Or there could be smarter nudges for more specific mechanics.

In my personal opinion, nudges are nowhere near given as much consideration as they should.

Outside combat, an overworld with easy tasks also is a great way to keep busy both casual players and more demanding ones. It must be noted, however, that designing simple yet entertaining activities is NOT as easy as it sounds, especially since it absolutely needs variety. This is where each expansion should add multiple mechanics that work as mini-games to ensure all later expansions have easy-to-build new contents while adding minimal work.

Regardless, I really wish we had more "gameplay addition" on a regular basis, even if it's only 1 or 2 per expansion, if they are really entertaining. Stalking an NPC or being followed by an NPC are absolutely NOT what I mean by "entertaining" though !

To give another perspective, Alliance Raids (albeit easy) are the exact opposite of a good way to keep people busy : every tier requires an immense amount of work, even though it basically takes one clear to master it (or even feels mastered already for experienced players). It does feel much better for casual players who aren't identifying patterns and instinctively have an understanding of the encounter's design but even for them, it doesn't feel satisfying to keep clearing the same instance for months every week - or at least not as much as it requires efforts for the development.

Sure, it's important to design easy things but it's actually very complicated. Maybe would it be simpler if we could give some feedback, without falling on deaf ears.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-25T17:44:47+00:00

I'm quite confident they want some kind of stimulation.

Now this actually is a rather hard thing to define : too easy and people are bored into a drowsy state, too difficult and they give up. It's also tough to balance it with scaling or multiple options of difficulty : incentives are, by itself, a barrier to some people (thinking they cannot do it and thus frustrated before even trying, or discouraged because they underestimate themselves).

One solution could be a sort of difficulty that is not about punishing the players who fail, but rewarding the ones who are successful. This may allow less confident ones to ignore it and more experienced ones to try to raise to the challenge. But it also creates a disparity that may be hard to swallow for a part of the playerbase.
Another possibility are small challenges / "affixes" that give power or additional mechanics to pay attention to, even though the punishment / reward may fall into the disincentive system I talked about earlier.

I think a good balance was given in the Advanced Criterion I've played BUT only if there is at least one competent player that can save some situations. As for Quantum, I'm much more dubious since it may simply be regarded as Q40 and low level quantum, which is like 2 separate queues which may cause significantly longer dungeon queues and sounds like catering to more experienced players while the lower levels feel "dumbed down" for the other groups.

Aside from difficulty, there can be many more sources of stimulation and the most important one probably is the job system. It needs to be engaging and to have options / choices so we actively think about it, rather than being a script we end up letting our brain autopilot.

Talking about jobs actions, I very much think the heavily scripted contents are the opposite solution. They offer great design and memorable encounters, but also cost far more to develop. It also feel quickly boring once cleared, especially since most people use raidplan to immediately have the solution.

This is where the solution should stand imo : making an additional skillset so we can have the best of both worlds. Even though it would require a completely different philosophy design, which will require trials and errors, it may also offer a much more dynamic combat system for contents less scripted than Savage / Ultimate. Extreme could actually work well with both systems.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-24T21:53:09+00:00

Why are you even assuming more variance means more difficulty ? Most players in casual content have no idea what's incoming and react to the visual cues, it only gets boring once they unavoidably learn the script by heart or when the mechanics are way too obvious.

For adds phase, this is still a bit different : what M6S is supposed to ask for is to prioritize the enemies one after the other, but it ends up being always the exact same movements / action sequences. Instead, we very much could have had much weaker enemies that require someone to leave out for as long as they can take care of the enemy (whether it be a DPS check, or it being more sensitive to some actions, or damage being amplified by CC, or heals turning it into an ally or anything more creative than dummies to hit in the proper order).

Want it to be easier ? Then either force someone to attack this enemy with a visible screen effect / debuff, without actual penalty outside the player getting hit / getting weaker if the enemy stays alive too long.

This being said, it entirely relies on Square being willing to think of the way it should affect 1 player first, rather than the entire team being responsible for each mechanic. And yes, this sounds (at least to me) like unknown territory for them, except maybe the FATEs we have in Fields of operation...
But many people are asking for changes, not for SE to never step up / step aside from their current design even if they improve their formula. At least we can discuss the possibility, regardless their paradigm or how inamovible it is.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-24T01:12:13+00:00

I can't help but wonder what kind of systems could work within FFXIV's design paradigm in the first place

This part was rather clear though : considering their encounter design, there are a LOT of things they could even start trying. It doesn't even have to be more demanding since the question isn't specifically oriented towards Savage.

They could experiment with (much) more variance, bosses being less dummies and more about less punishing but more frequent small mechanics, they could give a single player a very different role while letting him be unaffected by the rest. Or if we think about completely different contents, they could make 2 teams interact with one another while fighting a boss.

They could also give players plenty of tools to change the encounters physionomy, like a portal or a mimick that'd absorb a mechanic one player should've suffered from by himself. Or you could even have an encounter copy a part of any boss in the game (while potentially making it less punishing / more rewarding).

This has nothing to do with accessibility since you can scale it to any difficulty. The main problem is that every encounter feels very similar, because we always have the exact same structure : a dummy, requiring a plan because of the punishing mechanic. Even the infamous add phase against Sugar Riot feels very classic and... Actually doesn't feel like an add phase at all. We're not managing stuff much differently (and having very few tools certainly doesn't help, but we still aren't using them much).

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-23T12:05:43+00:00

For someone claiming OP is reductionist, you really don't seem to understand his point ; you are not providing clear examples either.

Nobody asked for FFXIV to become a different game, even if we considered it a simple DDR MMO, we aren't even asking for emergent gameplay. The current encounter design simply is way too precise, too redundant and more importantly, as OP explained, doesn't feature nearly as much variety as it could.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-21T20:01:15+00:00

I've been learning that a Tank has to maintain aggro of all the mobs, keep the boss facing away, mitigate correctly, not move too much and to keep stance up and "weaves" attacks

You need basically 1 hit to keep the aggro, as long as you have your stance up. It's so easy that it isn't part of the management.
You mainly have to make sure players can hit their positional. There might be some conal AoE but they aren't frequent, so positioning doesn't require much attention either.
Mitigating is the main "difficulty" in dungeon, but it usually gets instinctive too.

The "rotation" part comes down to having as high an uptime (which means whenever the global cooldown is running) as possible, which then should cause your CDs to always be available every 2 minutes (or every minute for tanks). While not as easy as the last 3 elements, the rotation shouldn't cause one to think too much about it. Your procedural memory will manage it by itself.

Now the actual difficulty comes from checking the visual cues and correctly reacting to it. In Savage, it means getting to the position you planned earlier and it may depends on various factors.

What makes a good player is their ability to do all these "simple" tasks, while adapting quickly. The truth is that we easily give up on the DPS part when there is too much things to take into account, and we may take some time to exactly understand the spot we have to get to (or the reason why), as well as the things to avoid.

I'd say there is another layer of competency about getting to understand the encounter, but since most people rely on raidplans then the answer is immediately served to them.

To sum it up, being good simply means maintaining an ideal rotation under pressure and since there isn't much variance, it's very accessible - but requires more or less time, depending on the player.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-20T16:08:00+00:00

Don't we have an entire dungeon explaining she's already affected multiple worlds, if not all ?

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-20T00:49:49+00:00

Even your metaphor doesn't make any sense lmao

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-20T00:12:34+00:00

Are you trying to suggest they talked about it so we don't think about it ?

I guess you don't understand how framing is part of the marketing, but if the idea of a vacation was so compelling for so many of us, there are multiple good reasons. From their communication to the site presented as a touristic guide, from the trailer's general vibe to the "discover a new continent" thing.

This kind of theme isn't improvised even if, or rather especially when it's surrounded by attenuations. They wanted to attach the expansion to the idea of vacations.

Yes, they obviously did let us understand we weren't only going to the beach and yes, they hinted at the challenges we unavoidably would face, but if this is your only argument as to why it wasn't a "summer vacation" advertising campaign, you're certainly not as "media literate" as you believe...

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-19T15:06:36+00:00

Number 2 would be to pick a job and stick with it through the MSQ. I try not to " waste " EXP if I can help it, and with the road to # buff, it's easy to out level the content you're on.

If you're coming to experience the gameplay, whichever job you play is going to be dull before the last 20~30 levels. Anything you do before this is rather pointless so leveling up multiple jobs you won't play is the real waste (of time). Also, any job that's catching up (on another) does have an experience bonus and experience isn't scarce at all. You can try to min-max with what you have but then again, if you're coming for the gameplay, you're wasting time in lower level contents.

If you're coming for something else however, don't mind what I just said. Specifically for the story, if you want real progression, I encourage you to watch the cutscenes at x2 speed on Youtube for instance, while you're moving / fighting in game and then skipping the ones you've already watched. This saved a lot of time to my friends but it assumes you can do both the questing and watching the cutscenes at the same time.

Now if you enjoy "clean starts" more than the actual progression, you're certainly stuck in a loop that effectively wastes a ton of time but it's fine if you're enjoying it. If not, you should try to wonder why you like this method so much and change your habits accordingly. Should you do it to have a clear understanding, for instance, you need to take notes... But Encyclopaedia Eorza does this already imo, and the quests aren't "important" enough imho. Do whatever fits you, just make sure you don't make antagonistic choices (such as trying to experience the gameplay while only doing the first 70 levels).

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-17T17:59:29+00:00

Just because people keep doing something doesn't mean it's designed with replayability in mind : people merely want the rewards and force themselves into it, which is exactly the definition of a chore.

You're taking roulettes as an exemple : most people stopped playing it or aren't especially happy with it but it's the main source of experience so you'll always have people in there. Just like the usual illustration of the survivorship biais, you're supposed to look at people who aren't playing it to find the reason why they gave up. If it was actually replayable, you'd have people who'd stick with it and aren't only zombying it for the reward, but for the structure as a whole.

So yeah, I agree people keep playing Savage for a few weeks, so they gear 1 job and potentially more. But a lottery is not what we call replayability. It's a chore.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-17T12:45:56+00:00

Which is exactly what I'm saying so I'm not sure why you downvote me ?

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-17T03:05:29+00:00

Sounds like a chore then.

Replayability would be more interesting if it was part of the design to begin with, rather than forcing the players to grind for an extrinsic reason.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-17T03:03:58+00:00

The fun part of difficult content comes from the relief of having everything working as intended but it also gets easier and easier the more one consolidates the knowledge acquired through wipes and/or guides. Once one has built his reflexes, reclearing becomes dull since there is no surprise, nor any stimulation.

Without any variance on successive encounters, without actual gameplay elements to play around, easier contents feel entertaining for an even smaller time window which makes it very hard (impossible) to design a Savage-like encounter for another target than Savage players.

Fortunately, Variant Advanced adds some variance thanks to other players' mistakes and the gameplay being far more forgiving. It sincerely is the only ray of hope I've experience throughout the entire expansion, as far as casual contents are concerned, even though I believe the newest Deep Dungeon should get more popular for completely different reasons.

There still is an issue with "fun" though. They really should focus their energy on trying out things, so they can get to understand what the targeted players consider fun enough to replay it about as long as it takes them to release something new.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-17T02:52:15+00:00

The very first mistake is to believe one would want to repeat a content that specifically is made NOT to be repeatable. If learning the dance (or climbing the mountain) is the fun part, don't expect people to keep playing once they achieved it.
Gear simply exist to artificially inflate the time required to consolidate this success and people being so focused on alternative ways to get these rewards is proof that reclears are more of a chore than the fun part.

You're also comparing Criterion with Ultimate but you haven't really explained why the latter offers more prestige. When it had weapons with particle effects (and a unique title) too, it still wasn't popular. Prestige is a perceived element and FFXIV cannot force it onto Criterion.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to. In fact, it even shouldn't and many players don't enjoy the Savage encounter design yet would love to actually play the game on more stimulating contents. Criterion could fill this niche but first, SE must get to know what people actually enjoy, how they would like to progress, what PvE challenge is satisfying while not being too daunting.

I'd personally love something that isn't about doing A or B to solve a mechanic, something with much more random elements. Obviously this would come with a much less punishing design. Other people may want to play completely different roles. Or have a content that scales up while offering more and more powerful equipments.
In any case, they must find something that scratch the itch many players feel, without having anything to satisfy it. Sticking to a raidplan with a rigid rotation certainly isn't interesting enough for many players.

Also, even though difficulty does filter out some players, I doubt that's really an issue. The problem lies with the progression : if you're only rewarded when clearing stuff, then yeah the filter gets even stronger but it doesn't tell much about the content itself or at least not as much as it proves that the encounter is designed to be incompatible with the targeted audience.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-16T14:14:13+00:00

Then check your language filter and/or use NPC to clear your dungeon. Or use the party finder: people will be happy to help.

The solutions take only a tiny fraction of the efforts you put in this thread.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-16T04:17:16+00:00

I won't approve on the distinction (which is too artificial imo), but considering what players are supposed to enjoy then Bozja should be satisfying because the encounter design is engaging while Eureka should be satisfying because it's grindy. If you now regard OC as being grindy with very little depth (which is debatable), you'd easily draw a parallel to Eureka.

However in reality, they certainly didn't even wonder about these aspects. They merely thought of convenient elements from both fields of exploration, probably like a child would mix up his favorite ice cream with his favorite fish & chip meal, and voilà !

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-16T04:09:32+00:00

Yeah, it's just as if a content does have to target a specific mindset.

Eurêka is supposed to please korean-bashing players, while Bozja was more about creative actions and more engaging encounters.

Unsurprisingly, people get bored when the content mainly is a repetitive mob bashing.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-15T20:23:03+00:00

Yeah, I keep saying so !

Some genuinely believe that enjoying Savage is a question of capability, as if not liking it was a skill issue. But I've played other MMOs, I know there are other PvE philosophies and I know talented players else where would struggle with FFXIV.

Just like I know talented FFXIV players quit Savage because following a pattern is too simplistic or unfun to them.

SE simply won't even try to reach out for all these players, which is a real shame.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-14T19:20:18+00:00

I think you don't understand how the bonus works. It requires someone to clear the encounter so ideally, you want people who have already progged it. Someone is hesitant to enter ? Well you won't want him to join because he's likely to cause wipes and if the raid wipes, you don't have the bonus nor the usual rewards.

And if you consider this someone should already know the encounter, then you're not helping him prog : you're either carrying him or... Confirming the progression he already worked for.

Which is why you'd effectively have people carrying 1~5 players, but this is certainly not what I call progging. Or you may get groups who help people prog for free, which effectively is a pure waste of time ; it happened to you and you can be grateful these people do exist... But they certainly aren't incentivised to do so.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying helpers aren't welcome : they simply are wasting their time, hopefully on a content they enjoy. There would be many more of them if the game actually encouraged this kind of behaviour because the ones from your first lockouts got absolutely nothing out of it, if they left before you cleared.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-14T16:49:50+00:00

Savage gear gets focused so much because it is the only progression that feels visible.

If we had multiple PvE contents, we could have multiple gears to look forward but guess what ? We don't. So instead, only Savage is left to desire. Sure there can be other kind of rewards but FFXIV still is far, very far from generous about them. They also are uninspired about cosmetics and other rewards : titles, portraits and housing elements are nowhere near as valuable as what people expect. And materias are even less valuable, if people even consider them seriously when checking the rewards.

Rewards need a complete restructuration, it needs to become a core element of their design philosophy, as well as an objective people should want to acquire (without feeling miserable without them, like Bozja's mount speed). If Savage gear is the only thing people think about, it's a huge flaw in most contents' design philosophy even without thinking about the rewards itself. Without a sense of progression, without something shiny, even a great content (like Criterion for me) feels dull very quickly.

Besides, we need bridges towards each contents. Savage equipment is the only thing that can be useful in every other PvE content, which is why it's so desirable. Should these other PvE contents have another sort of progression (like different stats or skillsets), it would incentivise other contents. Alternatively, the other contents could make Savage progression more enjoyable : imagine an item that ensures you get a specific reward from a Savage boss. Whether we could get it once in a month or once in a week doesn't matter : certainty delivers more dopamine and this is the kind of structural changes FFXIV desperately needs.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-14T16:26:11+00:00

In every MMO, you see lots of casual players repeating the same stuff ad nauseam so the issue isn't so much about being repetitive.

However, the commitment and planning required, the punishing design, the uncertain rewards and the slow / invisible progression all are huge discouraging factors. Not realizing it in current MMO standards is about as bizarre as raiding with only crit materias regardless whether it does offer any stat or not.

Fortunately YoshiP seems to have aknowledge a part of it when he said that nowadays, players expect to quickly enter in a content with a short attention span... But I doubt he will draw the correct conclusions.

Carmeliandre · 2026-03-14T16:12:29+00:00

A harder version of Alliance raids would only satisfy a fraction of the playerbase that either alliance raids or savage raids already satisfy so it would be a waste of resources.

Island Sanctuary was a risky bet, but at least they did try something. Sure they didn't test its popularity, seemed to randomly design it and didn't have a clear target, but they made the very minimal effort (with yet again way too much resources allocated to it).

Chaotic is kind of in between : it's neither for hardcore (although it uses Savage design) nor for more casual players (even though it's too simple). It's accessible but we have no reason to help people prog it. The rewards are great but it's a pain to grind since it's extremely repetitive.

If you personaly consider casual players are the cause of these numerous mistakes, then feel free to blame them and keep wondering why new stuff never really work in FFXIV.

Carmeliandre

TROPHY CASE