Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Elcura]

I knew people who grinded their maats caps(had no help) long before leveling became a joke on FFXI only to last 2 weeks of XIV's grind before hitting their breaking points, if that doesn't tell you how much of a grindy pos this game is then I don't know what else to tell you.

Holy anecdotes batman!

[Archain]

I plodded through the shittiness while enjoying playing the economy and selling stuff that I made. Eventually I realized that a miracle patch that adds non-economy-related fun to the game is never going to come and I hit my breaking point. The game just plain sucks and can't be fixed.

Soloing is dull and mind-numbing. Partying is dull and mind-numbing because you will never, ever do anything but spam your highest sp per stamina attack/buff/cure. This could potentially be fixed. There's no thought or strategy involved with partying, just zerging. This cannot be fixed because the basic combat/skill system is too rudimentary to allow for choices and thought. It's not really a solo or a party game. It's a solo text-based crafting simulator in a world where the game economy is now broken beyond repair. Oh, and the act of crafting itself is dull, mind-numbing, choiceless, and thoughtless as well but since the economy is broken there's no point to crafting so it doesn't matter.

There are no quests, just 4 different WoW dailies copied and reused at every aetheryte. There is no real story and the game isn't immersive at all. If you can tell me that after a solid month of playing the game you still enjoy levequests there is something seriously wrong with you.

A new player taking up this game from about 2 weeks ago forward has no business EVER crafting or gathering. That part of the game is already permanently destroyed for new players. This cannot be fixed. Once the search feature is finally added (which is a good idea) people won't need to level crafting to repair their gear. They can easily throw things up to fix where people can find them. All crafted items not currently sold below mat costs will drop below mat costs due to real competition.

All that's left for new players is solo grinding and party grinding DoW/DoM. That sucks and stops being fun a few hours in. Unless PS3 players get their own servers that can't be transferred onto (doubtful) the game is never going to recover. We all expected much more from S-E and tried to kid ourselves into thinking that something magical would happen to make the game fun. It's not happening and the game is never going to be playable. It's clear now that there are a large number of JP players who are never going to quit, so the servers will survive for 5 years or so. It's always going to be a dead, no-fun-allowed grindfest though.

You explained this perfectly. This pretty much covers my fears about as well as anything I could have written.

My main issue is that the core game is just not fun.

I do not enjoy combat in XIV; I do not enjoy crafting in XIV. Even if the UI issues are addressed, the menus are cut down to eliminate extra screens (like why the FUCK do I have to place the repair item I'm using to repair my gear in yet another window), and certain other features are added I'm not sure that I can motivate myself to continue to play. It's free right now and I'm not really at all interested in logging in sometimes (if I can even get past the post-Square Enix logo blackout screen that I get when playing in windowed mode).

Aw hell...I'm getting FIRED UP!

The blue discomfort icon

I solo a leve the other day and I'm granted an awesome blue "discomfort" icon that serves as a partner to the yellow/red "damaged gear" icon. This shit did not go away after 5 hours of play and 4 logouts. How the hell do I get rid of it? How is it effecting me? What caused it? Who knows, the UI doesn't give you any frame of reference when it comes to this stuff. Stats do not update like they should when your status changes.

I've been told it's due to a gear change while you/your party is in combat. I was solo, so I'm guessing I swapped gear while fighting somehow. Well, the fight is over...will I have this icon until something resets me?

Stamina waits in combat

Why do certain actions wait until I have 150-175% or even 200% of the listed stamina requirement before they actually go off? What happens if I slip and accidentally hit the MP refresh ability (a 100% Stam requirement) on THM or CON? I can't cancel that shit, it just locks it in and cycles between blue and gray writing and I have to wait for that action to complete.

Ex. Hit Aegis Boon when slowed and at 25% of the stam requirement.

You are locked out from curing yourself, attacking, putting your shield up, or activating any sort of special ability. I'm sitting there looking at my character on the screen and waiting for this stupid fucking stamina bar to fill up so it can activate an ability I've queued up seconds ago. You get hit with a 350 DMG ability? Sorry can't cure until the stamina requirement for Aegis Boon is fulfilled.

Targeting AUTOCYCLE

You kill something that may have been in a group (like Footpads). One dies, but the targeting system goes wonky. It automatically targets and autocycles according to the direction you are facing; you can't lock in a target. You are prevented from curing yourself because you are unable to target yourself to start the cast. You are essentially fighting with the game to fit in an action while the target marker was active on what you were engaged with. I try to spam F11 and F12 to reset it and get it under control somewhat, but sometimes it is not effective.

Skillbar selections

You've hit this one before, right? You're on GLD and you swap to ARC to perform a leve under that job for Archer guidmarks. You go to update your skillbar with Multishot, Puncture, and any other abilities you want on there. You get the message that those abilities have been placed in their section on the bar, you go to bring it up, and the selections are not active. I've had to do some wierd shit, like finishing a leve on ARC with Thunder before because the damn bar would not update my skills coming from CON.

Active lock

Shit bro, that sucks. You're locked in a sort of weird combo of active and passive modes. You're just going to have to log out and reset it.

Sounds like that's what I've gotta do, let me just do it.

"You must be in Passive mode to log out"

WTF! Ragequit, ALT-F4, Task Manager, whatever....just terminate that fucking game because you aren't allowed to do it normally.

Then you're faced with the non responsive "black screen after Square-Enix logo" reset cycle that you needed to do maybe 3 to 27 times before you logged in initially. Do I really want to log back in?

DCs during leves or how to lose 200 Faction points quickly

Ever disconnected or had R0 during a leve before? I bet you even used Guardian's Favor, didn't you? Man, it's a good thing that stuff in this game doesn't take a long time to recharge.

You didn't make a trip all the way out here on foot just to do that leve, did you?

[Katlan]

Spoiler: show

Will it pick up though? I'm not entirely sure what people dislike about it because I haven't kept up with the flaming very well. Content and stuff will definitely pick up, but hating over that seems like an obviously bad idea to me for a new game. Complaints that the world is just 3 big (but empty feeling) areas seem related to this. As content comes out, people will go to more areas, and do more stuff in various places. At any rate, the areas we have we're going to be stuck with. Any chance of multiple new areas that are smaller but more characterful are probably waiting on an expansion - if SE decided to change its design - so no short term changes in sight there.

The basic way the combat system works, things are designed, gil is monstrously dumped into the game, and such seems much less likely to change though, if that's what people aren't having fun with. The UI will get some changes, but I'll be really surprised if they're anything massive - I'm not expecting a new design for a released game, and I don't think anyone should. Maybe we can use F8 to target enemies when that comes out (which would still be a huge improvement), but I bet the basics stay more or less fixed. I'd be fairly surprised with myself if they even changed spells to make it more intuitive (being able to cure people while looking away at a 60 degree angle would be nice, but I'll be surprised if that gets put in now). We'll get ward search.... maybe even an AH. Both of which would help out. But is the lack of that really what's breaking the game for anyone on it's own? Not that the lack is helping, but will the game suddenly become worth playing when that changes if you feel it isn't now?

Are the complaints about xping? It not being casual enough, when they said they wanted it to be playable that way? I think that might be partly a misunderstanding... I mean, you /can/ play it by yourself - in ffxi (for a long time at least) several jobs really couldn't take on em/tough type mobs on their own own at all. Or not in any sort of efficient manner. Here you definitely can do that with no problem (although the xp will be terrible), and you can do your solo leves for more. Partying here is much easier to set up for casual players too - just get almost any combination of 10 people and go hit stuff, constantly rotating whoever in for whoever. It doesn't work well now because people aren't using the search for w/e reason, but once they start partying will be really easy to set up. And I'm sure they will start (because said xp from soloing even match mobs isn't great).

Or are the complaints the opposite? That these bigger parties are dull, and individuals don't play enough of a role? Whether the parties here are too casual or not casual enough, I think they're (more or less) set up as intended. I'm not sure there'll be any huge changes coming there.

I mean, I just don't see what people are "waiting" for. Not criticizing anyone - I've stuck around myself, and am having a reasonably good time still when I'm on, but I don't get all of this.

This x100 also.

The core game is flawed and it can't be fixed unless they give the game a combat make over. The system sounded great on paper, but they diverged so much from the original idea that they tarnished their own game (remember when casters were supposed to be only AoE)... that, and having no auto atk I think hurts the game more then it helps. While no auto atk servers a purpose, it doesn't allow you any rest to combat. You still have to spam that 1 (or w/e) key every time you atk anything. And, if anything, it's worse then in other mmo's because you can't kill lowbie stuff w/ an auto atk.. you still have to spam keys. And the fact everything in the game is basically considered a "ws" removes the game from the depth of combat or the buildup that other games have.

In SE's attempts to be new and revolutionary, they ended up taking a step back from everything on the market. While beseiged was a great idea and fun, I don't think anybody liked the way it evaluated your play in terms of xp rewards. But yet they adopted that system and made a game around it. I can't speak for others, but when I kill mobs or do activities in game I like to see progress towards the end result. Doing leves, killing mobs, and getting 0 skill because of RNG is more aggrivating then fun.

Also, since I feel the need to address it. Implementing a gear decay system needs to be handled very delicately. But SE just slapped on random numbers to each piece of gear and gave everyone a shitty decay system. I should not need to look at 4123632313/99989788906278 and do the math myself to figure out what durability I'm at. There needs to be a % figure. They can keep those outrageous numbers, but add a % figure so ppl don't need to do the math for everything. And since the game is so crafting dependent, they made stuff wear so fast that even if you enjoy combat, you have to repair your shit every few hrs, or every hr at times. That's not balanced.

[Ksandra]

random complaint thread is for random complaints.

[miokomioko]

My "F" key responds maybe half the time when trying to exit "Active Mode" immediately after a kill.

[drwaffles]

The thing I hate most about the game is that it takes an inordinately long time to do pretty much anything, which stems mostly from the absolutely appalling UI. Seriously, how on earth the UI of a brand new game can be a hundred times worse than its 8-year-old predecessor's is completely beyond me. The fact that the game will most likely be kept alive by its hardcore-verging-on-masochist JP base is also beyond me, and I hope it's not the case - I'd much rather they just abandoned the whole project and either focused on XI or began development of a true sequel to it that sticks closely to its design, because God knows you can't trust SE to come up with new ideas that actually work. I don't think anything can fix this game - as others have said, its flaws are too many and too deep-seated.

[Vuitton]

The thing I hate about this game is the lack of shit to do.

[The Q]

All of my gladiator skills have, so far, had the same damn animation.

Red Lotus: Spin around slash
Phalanx: Spin around slash
Circle Slash: You guessed it
The one between Circle and Howling Vortex: Spinnan gaems
Howling Vortex: I'm a pretty ballerina!

[Cooleko]

The thing I hate about this game is the lack of shit to do.

+1, If there was more to do than lvl it would be more appealing to log in.

[bruiser]

+1, If there was more to do than lvl it would be more appealing to log in.

Although true, I don't see why people never applied this same logic to FFXI (pre-endgame). I mean when you were levelling your first job, what else was there to do? Except that it was even worse, because you couldn't even level whenever you wanted, you had to wait 3 hours for a party invite.

[Katlan]

^ Random complaint thread, not random defense thread... How many times does ksandra have to say it?
But related; grinding is fine when combat is fun, XIVs combat is not this

[bruiser]

^ Random complaint thread, not random defense thread... How many times does ksandra have to say it?
But related; grinding is fine when combat is fun, XIVs combat is not this

It's a good thing I was agreeing with the person I quoted then, and not defending FFXIV.

[Zounder]

Random complaints about aspects of the game that, if still present after the big updates, will make me stop playing:

Random SP gains: There is nothing more frustrating in this game than spending two minutes to kill a tough mob in a large, cooperative party and getting 0 SP. There is no reason to have random gains, every other MMO in existence has gotten this right. There absolutely nothing positive about random SP gains.

SP gains per action: This sounds great in theory, but all it does is promote party play to simply be "spam your highest SP gaining action," as somebody else pointed out. See, unlike a lot of others, I very much enjoy the XIV battle and party system. I love the fact that big parties are not only viable but encouraged, because it results in being able to find/make parties easily, and hop in and out of parties with ease. I love the strategy/flow of combat, but I digress, since this is, after all the complaint thread. The problem comes from SP gains coming from actions, and all of the battle strategy goes out the window. Nobody is going to like a super-efficient tank because healers won't get as much SP. DDs may not be as effective as they would otherwise be because they are optimizing their SP gains. For example, I am an Archer, and I find I get better SP from spamming light shot without Raging Strike/Hawk's Eye/Ferocity/etc. because for every action I use that isn't light shot, I'm missing a chance at SP. The battle system in an MMO should reward players for taking down enemies the most efficient way possible, which is not the way it is right now.

I'm confident the UI issues, lack of things to do and some other things bugging me will be resolved in the update and as the game progresses. But the two things I listed above are dealbreakers for me. And, sadly, I don't see either of them being adjusted.

Before this game came out, I feared that I would have had the same complaints I did for XI, but it turns out it's completely different things. And that's what makes it the most frustrating.

[Lucavi]

All of my gladiator skills have, so far, had the same damn animation.

Red Lotus: Spin around slash
Phalanx: Spin around slash
Circle Slash: You guessed it
The one between Circle and Howling Vortex: Spinnan gaems
Howling Vortex: I'm a pretty ballerina!

Hey, could be worse; they could have put in fast blade and its 50 incarnations in this game as well.

[The Q]

Hey, could be worse; they could have put in fast blade and its 50 incarnations in this game as well.

True enough. At least each spinny attack has a different colored flash at the end. Though I would probably preferred fast blade's animation since it fires off quickly. I actually was HOPING to see it show up.

[Cooleko]

Although true, I don't see why people never applied this same logic to FFXI (pre-endgame). I mean when you were levelling your first job, what else was there to do? Except that it was even worse, because you couldn't even level whenever you wanted, you had to wait 3 hours for a party invite.

I joined 11 the summer of 05, and I absolutely loved beating goblin faces in, I had a blast! I get on 14 once a week/two weeks and play a lvl or two with my wife, it just isnt as fun.... yet

Conj20 THM10 GLaD12 and I think I am sticking with GLaD as it makes me happier atm.

I'll repeat what is voiced 100x over though, wish I could split my rank points with my party... it is no fun getting 400 then hearing your duo only hit 0-200.

[goodr]

Freaking leve that bug out in one of many ways.

Freaking leve mobs that are supposed to come in pairs, but are spawned in packs of four (annoying if the pair would have been a good fight).

Freaking leve map overlays that are in the incorrect area.

[Sephiroth]

Let's not forget the teleport to camp bug where the last player to collect the leve reward and teleport will be left there.

[Dantrag]

People don't even want to play the game when it's still free from a monthly fee.

This, I have several friends that have just completely stopped playing. I haven't been on in about 5 days, before that it was 4 days and before that it was at least a week. I just down care anymore and have 0 desire to play. Game is in such fail mode right now it's pathetic. Hell, I played SWG longer than I even have the remote desire to play this game :/

[MakinBaconNeked]

Complaint #1:
Doing r20 battleleves on THM (currently 18 but started soloing at 14) and I get 0-55 exp per mob... ok this kinda makes sense because I am physical level 38. Did a couple r1 and r5 carpenter leves last night (CRP5) and I got 1800 exp per synth ... wtf?!?!

Complaint #2:
For battle and gathering leves you can start doing them, with some decent success, about 6ish ranks below the leve rank (example, r20 battleleve you can start and complete [solo] at r14 with 1 star difficulty) for local leves, it's almost not even worth attempting until you are above the rank and then you still have a good chance to fail. Consistency, {Can I have it?}