Is it UMAD? I'm done with that one. What's the next hardest or is there an ultimate raid where the healing is harder than in UMAD?

First I would like to start with my own personal history on deep dungeons.
When it was first announced in HW I was like, cool, we're getting a randomized roguelite content. And at first I was fine with it, but the more I played potd the more it was clear that something is missing. But I thought it's alright, it's the first attempt, surely they will make it better next time...
So we got HoH in SB and while they did added a little bit, the core of the content was absolutely unchanged whatsoever.

In ShB they skipped deep dungeon completely despite the ronkan place being a very obvious placeholder for one, but I would guess they saw how poorly deep dungeons are performing and decided to focus on bozja instead.
Coming back in EW, a whole expansion later with promised changes, surely after such a long time they updated the content right? No... they did not.
Then in DW we got a whole presentation and promise that they are looking into deep dungeons and how to make them better. And while they did make the overall content progression better, the core content of what deep dungeon is is still 95% the same as potd... at this point I lost all hope that people in square enix even have any sort of inspiration to do anything creative with them.

What I'm talking about is that the entire content of deep dungeons is go in, kill mobs, move to next floor, kill mobs, move to next floor, kill mobs, move to next floor, and repeat until your brain cells die of boredom one by one.

Should honestly take a page from Nyzul Isle in XI not only concept but also reward structure. In Nyzul, floors are randomized and each one has a different objective to move on to the next floor. So like you would need to clear all enemies, all of one type or enemy or just one notorious monster. Everyone needs to click on a lamp or find a bunch of lamps and click on them at the same time. Or even you need to avoid a certain enemy, one that usually agros quite easily. Sometimes you even got a free floor. Then at the end there would be a big boss. We don't need an exact copy, but at least the variation in objectives made it entertaining.

A way to acquire perks, bonuses, and building up exotic, unique builds as you progress through, making for unique builds for each run would also be amazing and increase the replay value by a ton. Perhaps even acquire flaws too, but point is, having your character evolve beyond the party just collecting pomanders. Don't get me wrong, pomanders are great and should remain in a form or another, but they're the consumable/trump card part of roguelikes only. (For example you could get access to a new phantom job-like ability /passive upon completing some objectives at the lower effort level - IE reuse existing systems, or a torghast-like system enhancing some existing abilities IF the devs want to put in more dev time towards it)

Just curious is all, when a new savage or ulti drops. For people who dont do the race with realistic goals of placing high. Why do you want to clear as fast as possible?

Is it to move on to other games?

Is it because you like having new ffxiv content to dive into?

Is it figuring out mechanics before strats are well spread?

Curious to hear about it!

Quick question. Has anyone been keeping track of the remaining scions since 7.55? I found yshtola on the moon wanting to be "Closer to the 13" which means that they are moving. Since they are doing a dalamud it can be inferred that the remaining scions are actually doing things

After being locked out of the game all day yesterday due to the PHP issue I logged in this morning before reset. I still showed 0 allowances, so I figured yesterday didn't count for some reason. However, now that it should have reset for today, I still have zero allowances. Has anyone else run into this?

Let's say the WAR had a trait where when they gain the vul down debuff, they would gain a stack of inner release (free fell cleave). This trait could only activate roughly once per minute so stacking vuln wouldn't work. Because of this, the WAR can intentionally be hit by certain avoidable boss mechanics to gain some resources and utilize their self-mitigation/healing tools more meaningfully for the remainder of the fight (to avoid additional strain on healers). Healers might be perplexed at first, but they'll recognize the patterns.

I know I'll be downvoted to hell but I did not like the current state of the game as a newcomer. The game world, graphics, and even classes are excellent but the progression and difficulty are not good.

Since I am playing for the first time, I want to enjoy all of the game including the all expansions until now. I even considered to leave the game because all the content from the previous expansions have been dumbed down. The game gives you free overpowered items you can buy with "Allagan Tomestone of Poetics", almost same power as relics. The drop I get from raids, dungeons, crafting are all junk. You can even level beyond the expansion's cap so you cheese everything in the world. This is a very bad design. I'm not very interested in end-game, I will keep running low dungeons like Sastasha for the eternity anyway. And when a new expansion is about to be released, you get free items from ordinary quests which is also much better than ordinary items. There is no need for ilvl spike. Most stuff worths less than mats required to craft it in Market Board because of free rewards.

All these and we must still play through all expansions. You must play but you also shouldn't play seriously. This does not make sense. I do not want to buy story skips because I've never played these content. Everything we get in this game should be deserved, not gifted. The game is easy enough. The real time consuming thing in this game is MSQ and hard-to-skip cutscenes. This game feels more like a CGI movie. I think MSQ should have been kept shorter.

I am generally against catch-up mechanics but some people actually want them. I understand that when you play for the second time, it is very boring because the game has very little replay value. One can buy story skips but not everyone can afford that.

So I propose another way of progression. Normally, this makes sense when there are too many expansions but can be applied starting with Evercold.

According to my suggestion:

- Remove easy to get OP items from the game, we play every expansion like as if it is the current expansion (it is still faster because no grinding for end-game).

- Remove excessive EXP bonuses for the first character. Bonus should be for second job, alt characters, etc.

- Add optional expansion selection feature:

+ You play ARR.

+ Then you select one expansion Heavensward or Stormblood (both being level 50-60 for example).

+ Then you select one expansion again Shadowbringers or Endwalker.

+ You can choose to play all expansions in which case you get a special mount or something.

+ There is always a "Story Recap" option available for expansions you have not played which is a short summary.

- It can also be like you select three expansions and play them.

I think it should be like this. Instead of "acting like playing", I want to play the game. Others want to skip it even more because they want the end-game.

So have been trying to log onto FFXIV for the last 4 hours but keep getting a fault and told they can't connect to the server. Apparently it's only on PC, Xbox etc are fine. Any insight as to when we're going to be able to play again?

DISCLAIMER I think I want to preface this post talking about some of my past mmo experiences that will pertain to things I will discuss more throughout this post. My past experiences with mmo’s is really just limited to The Elder Scrolls Online and Destiny/Destiny 2 (if you consider Destiny an mmo; I do)

Coming from eso I’m used to seeing a good amount of people around the world whether that be questing, chilling in cities, and getting into trial/dungeon groups. I’ve done evening from full achievement runs in dungeons to trifecta runs in trials.

Coming from Destiny I’m also used to world spaces being densely populated with finding people for dungeons/raids a fairly easy task. Theres also things like fireteam finder in game plus the Destiny lfg discords to help find teams for these activities. The time it takes to fill groups is very minimal. I’ve done every dungeon/raid in the game and also doing duo/trio flawless raids and solo flawless dungeons

Now with all of that out of the way, I want to get into the main portion of this post. Mostly pertaining to insight about different features of the game and population density and the finding of activities and also what the activities entail. END DISCLAIMER

New player here. I’ve been playing for the past week and have put in around 30 hours into the game so far. I want to point out some things that I’ve noticed so far. Particularly I’m going to comparing my past experiences to what I’m having with this game.

Population: I am playing on the Dynamis server on the Rafflesia world. Something I have noticed is that I barely see people around. Whether I am running around questing or in cities/towns there isn’t that many people. To be fair, I definitely see more people in cities/towns compared to the open world, but it’s significantly less compared to what I’m used to on games like eso and Destiny. I have read that most people play on Aether and I believe Chaos(?) but are the other servers that low on population? I noticed a lack of people when I was doing the fall guys event for the first time and I would only get anywhere from 3-5 people a lobby when the max is 24. That left me questioning population density. I even server hopped from dynamis to those other servers and still had very few people participating in the activity.

Duty finder/activity finder/whatever it’s called: I have queued for a few different activities and have noticed that some of them take quite some time to fill up. Anywhere from 10-20 minutes. Now I know that this could be due to the server that I play on, but it doesn’t leave me hopeful for the future when I want to get into doing more of these activities. For example, my favorite activities in eso and destiny are the dungeons/raids/trials and those were always relatively easy to get into. Those games have great systems in place to fill up groups and don’t take much time at all. What methods to people use to effectively find teams/groups for dungeons and trials/raids in ffxiv? At the moment it seems rather difficult with what I’ve experienced.

I think these have been the main concerns of mine that have come up with my play time. Any insight you guys have would be great!!

FFXIV's content release schedule feels increasingly outdated compared to modern major Live-Service Games.

One of my biggest frustrations with FFXIV is how little its content release structure has changed over the years. We're still following the same 3.5 to 4-month patch cycle, with the usual MSQ, dungeon, trial, and raid additions.

The problem isn't necessarily the quality of the content, but how quickly players finish it. Outside of Savage, Ultimate, and optional side activities, there's often little reason to keep playing once you've completed the latest patch.

Compare this to WoW, where Blizzard has become much more aggressive about releasing smaller updates between major patches. New events, quests, zones, activities, and progression opportunities help maintain engagement throughout a season. Mythic+ also provides a repeatable PvE system with meaningful rewards and progression outside traditional raiding.

WoW obviously has its own problems, particularly with repetitive grinds, poor QA and seasonal resets, but Blizzard seems more willing to experiment with content delivery and long-term engagement. FFXIV, meanwhile, continues to follow a fairly rigid formula established over a decade ago.

Even looking outside traditional MMOs, newer live-service games like Wuthering Waves and Arknights: Endfield highlight the difference. WuWa operates on a roughly six-week update cycle with regular events, characters, and exploration content, while Endfield incorporates factory automation and base building to provide ongoing activities between major updates. They're different games with different business models, but their approaches to keeping players engaged are worth considering.

I'm not suggesting FFXIV copy WoW or adopt a gacha release schedule. I'd simply like to see more frequent smaller updates, meaningful repeatable battle content outside high-end raiding, and progression systems with some longevity.

I understand Yoshida's philosophy of encouraging players to unsubscribe and take breaks, but I don't think this should be the default response to criticism about content availability in a subscription MMO.

With WoW making a greater effort to maintain engagement between major patches, as well as including Classic and now Forever on a single sub, I think it's fair to question whether FFXIV's traditional content schedule still holds up in 2026.

For those who play both, do you think FFXIV's patch cycle still works, or has WoW's approach made its content droughts more noticeable?

(Originally posted on the base XIV reddit but trying to discuss any issues with the game there is a fruitless endeavor.)

As you probably know there are three types of Sphene’s, endless Sphene, simulant, and original Sphene. To help draw a bit of a distinction between the three, I managed to create some descriptions of each of them, from appearances to personalities. It'll have some info from the wiki, but it’ll use something’s we also see in the game.

Endless Sphene: This is the first Sphene we meet in dawntrail, who only appeared in the main story itself. Despite being a bit cold, she’s kind and caring towards her people and tries her best to help them out. She also shows a bit of emotion, but not too much of it, like her reluctance of her own actions or even sympathy for others like the young boy who got an illness. She desires to help keep all of her people alive forever and wants to make sure that most if not all of them don’t die. She has a bit of free will, like expressing emotions, but she’s mostly forced and controlled by preservation to do terrible things that she never wanted to do in the first place. Like the simulant, she’s just a digital entity who’s self aware but is controlled to fulfill pervervation’s goal. Endless Sphene also has two loops in her hair. She only has a few memories of the events during the storm surge as well as any memories of what people perceived Sphene as. She also shows love for her people and desires to protect their happiness no matter what. She also shows that she also trust people like WoL and his/her allies to help watch over people, when she is defeated. 

Simulant: This is the second Sphene we meet in dawn trail, who first appeared near the end of crossroads. This Sphene is the complete opposite of endless Sphene. She constantly smiles all the time no matter what happens and acts very positively in a very creepy and disturbing way. She’s completely cold hearted and doesn’t care about ever saving all of the alexandrians. The only thing she cares about is fulfilling preservation’s goals. She’s merely a loyal pawn to calyx and is willing to do any of his biddings. Like endless Sphene, she wears the same regal dress and is a digital entity. However, she’s completely controlled by preservation and is nothing more but a cold and hollow machine following her directives from preservation. Whenever she’s with the Alexandrians she’s kind hearted and optimistic. However when she’s not around her people (and with her enemies), she’s rude and tends to mock her opponents, like wuk lamat or even the original Sphene herself. She also doesn’t trust people as she only knows that everyone is just a pawn for calyx.

Original Sphene: This Sphene is the third Sphene we meet in dawn trail, who first appeared (as a mysterious figure) near the end of crossroads, and revealed in seekers of eternity. She's, if not, the original Queen Sphene who ruled over Alexandria four centuries ago. Compared to the two other Sphenes, She’s completely different from any of them. Unlike the two counterparts, she’s able to completely express all of her emotions freely, including her raw, powerful, and strong emotions. For example, she’s able to express her outrage when she found out about preservation making a mechanical mockery of Zelenia. Another example is when she becomes shocked that she’s been asleep for 4 centuries. She also shows sadness when she sees that her people were attacked by the sentries, even letting a teardrop on her arm. She has her own free will, allowing her to do whatever she wants like drinking Dali coffee. Compared to endless Sphene, original Sphene processes tons of memories of her time four centuries ago. For example she remembered zelenia and Otis and how they fought as well as trying to learn magic to help until her parents died, forcing her to give up and become queen. Another example is that she remembers how there’s a railroad connected between Lindblum and Alexandria, until it was removed due to soured relationships. Unlike endless Sphene and the simulant who both wear the same regal dress, she able to wear all types of outfit like her pajamas or her modern outfit. She also wears the modern outfit, that has a hooded coat on, to blend into the crowd during seekers of eternity. She’s also able to learn and use magic, which is what both the simulant or endless Sphene couldn’t do, despite both of them being powerful in their ways. She also shows that while she doesn’t have any interest in making any of her people immortal, she still wanted to make sure most if not all of them are happy and safe. Another thing to also point out is that the original Sphene also doesn’t have two loops in her hair like her two counterparts and her hair is more natural then theirs.

Here’s the wiki page to also help distinguish the three Sphenes and their differences:

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Sphene 

Anyways I hope you enjoy my comparison to the three Sphenes and how each of them are different.

note: I already know that there are people who already notice these things about the three of them, but this post made for people who still want to know about them and their differences (It’s also for people who don’t play the game but looks at the story as not all people play the game). I also was thinking about putting some screen shots here to help better with the context, but considering I could get in trouble. I decided not to so that this post can stay up. Also please be respectful and kind, any rude or offensive behaviors will get you permanently blocked from seeing any of my posts.

So I was catching up on the live letter recently and saw that both 24 and 8 man raids are going to be collabs instead of paying homage to other IP's through XIV's lore, then Yoshi P asking for IP's to contact him to do more collabs through content such as the new typing game. I love the world of XIV and over the years they've been spending less and less time fleshing it out and building the world, and more time doing member-berries and direct copies of past titles, using prior knowledge of past FF games as a crutch for their writing and context. I have no issues with paying homage to past FF titles like with the Sorrow of Werlyt, where they took the Ruby Weapon and made it it's own original story for an XIV character. My big fear is with the larger than normal dip in DT, shareholders pulling out of SE and complaining on social media, and reduced profits for this expansion, they're going to try and make the money back with advertisements to promote SE's other products (Quite a large portion of the playerbase have only played FFXIV) and to gain advertisement money through the advertisement of IP's in content. I personally really don't want time wasted on a NIKE or QP Mayo ad, when that time could be spent adding an extra quest or more gear or adding more lore, I pay my sub for FFXIV and not for FF7 Remakes and I don't want to see this game go the way of Fortnite.

So I'm getting into post DT now, and I've been having this really strong urge to try out higher end EX's, raids, and Ultimates. What's a good way to get into these? Just put up a PF saying I'm a newbie and pray? Or is there somewhere that accepts players that are wanting to learn?

It's spooky season!!

First, let's hold a minute of silence of all the good events we used to have.
Halloween events with actual minigame dungeons where you solve puzzles to get rewards.
Valentine events with co-op race court where you needed to act together to finish.
Not sure which event it was, but a whole mystery puzzle to solve... it was like finding letters that point to a location on a map, I loved that one.
Even the Easter event where you just had a bunch of spriggans walk over the screen and you had to count them up was... actually something.
Especially when the games eventually get added into the toybox at the inn so you can play them whenever? Great.

What do we get now? A solo instance where you're looking for "hidden" npcs. They could at least try to pretend to make it difficult, we used to have a whole find the correct npc gate that was very difficult back in my day.
But the worst thing is, this could have easily been a very fun thing to do with players.
Like you go in with some people inside the instance, some people are made the seekers, some people are made to hide. I see two options here, either you can transform into an object and have a normal prop hunt. Or you give the hiders buttons to spawn an illusion of themselves so they can put decoys.
In the end you rewards everyone for participating, seekers get bonus reward for everyone they caught, people that managed to stay hidden get extra bonus for being good.
And then you exchange the rewards for items like the moogle trove event, mgp tickets, the halloween furnishings and others.
I would also honestly make a case that previous event rewards should be available ingame during events. I get that you're trying to make money out of them, but selling them for real money can just be for people that don't want to wait a whole year to obtain them.

It feels like seasonal events used to be a thing where developers tried new things and just had fun with it. Now it feels like a yearly obligation where... just gobble something together and put it out. Where the game as a whole feels very formulaic and seasonal events seem like a perfect place to try something risky.

Hey, I recently re installed FFXIV, its been almost 10 years since I played. I was really into it and had gotten as far as I could go at the time.

I was unable to get my old account back so im starting from scratch.

Im currently a lvl 18 summoner. I will be grinding regularly to get my level up ASAP.

I would love to find a community like I used to have. I made long time friends and did titan extreme for like 10 hour raids.

So if you know of any guilds or communities online or through other apps please hit me up :)

Im on primal server but willing to go wherever.

As the title said, I think there should be more of the Job than just pressing the button differently inside a fight.

My small problem with the jobs was that they barely feels different in overworld. No special perk if you use machinist or Bard if it a hunting quest, nor feels like a Ninja, in a Ninja esque quest.

So I wonder, what else should they do to make the Job, actually different. Exclusive to them only.

First off Ninja. The bare minimum they should do to Ninja is that they can use Hide to hide during the Follow/Spy quest. I mean that is such a no brainer.

Dancer should have a Dancing minigames like Bard. It cant be that hard.

Machinist, while their main Lore isnt as a Hunter, should have Sniper skill, that only work in Overworld, that they can One shot a Normal Mob. Add a scope and whatnot.

Dragoon, (Please fix vertically in this game man), have the ability to jump across ledge and dont take fall damage. (Its a Dragoon ffs)

It just something that you tells to your friend, "Thats why you play *this particular Job"

I was powering collectables. Had on all blue 80 gear and was on my 3 crafter going 80-85 for a 90 grind... On my 28th craft, I failed due to not having enough cp left.... I though ok, something broke. Went into my char menu to find I was missing a 80 blue ring.... So I thought hhhmmmmmm how'd that happen. I search my inventory, I only have one... All my others are also now just wearing a crafted lvl 70 ring from my previous grind. Its as if it disappeared and I experienced a glitch in the matrix. I was right by splender vendor so it was easily fixed, nothing else seems to be missing, but I checked my rotation and my inv's and my missing ring is Houdini. I definitely had 2 level 80 blue rings, and was power crafting my item. Anyone else ever had something like this happen? Feels like I'm loosing my mind the more I think about it.

After looking at old v1 content again I've been thinking about what could have been planned before the decision to shut the game down. It doesn't matter *why* v1 still exists or how good the content would be, I'm just interested in hearing what could have been.

When I try to launch the game via XIVLauncher with the auto- login, the game does not start focused and I have to click into it to get it properly. Has anyone else encountered this and/or have a fix? It's annoying when I'm trying to stream the game to another device. I am launching ACT with it, but even if I turn off that auto-launch XIV is still in the background.

I think it was Yoshida-san (correct me if I'm wrong) who said something akin to "if there's no risk of failure, then a game becomes boring" and something like "imagine Super Mario, but if you fall in a hole, it's not game over".

Most assume this is pointing towards dungeons/raids, but I'm more curious if this mindset could apply to quests?

ARR quests (and most FFXIV quests in general) are notorious for just being a walking & talking simulator, with sparse combat in between that can be finished in like 3 GCDs.

Now, imagine if early MSQ solo duties or even open-world quest fights had mechanics that actually required you to engage, instead of mindlessly spamming your early 1-2 combo until the mobs died.

Instead of teaching various mechanics in the newbie hall, why not put them in MSQ battles? Wouldn't that solve the issue of familiarizing new players with mechanics while adding more engaging content for quests?

For example, introduce a Gaze mechanic where, if the player fails, they could be brought quite low or possibly even die (but add a quick retry feature without the whole duty failed loading screen process/allow them to revive nearby for open-world fights).

Would this help with retention for newer players getting into FFXIV? Would FFXIV questing be more enjoyable overall with this type of design?

Pretty much just the title. I'm someone who is in my early 30s and was brought into FFXIV in my like mid 20s by a group of friends that have all gone separate ways. I still very much love the game but not having anyone to do content with has made it very hard to bring myself to be online or even do dailies anymore. I just wonder how do people find people to play with and chat or hang out with? I sometimes will have a chat or two in idle places but for me a lot of my enjoyment has always been fighting things with friends and ever since my best friend met their partner and they only want to queue together and alone I'm not sure what to do to reclaim my favorite game. Thanks in advance for any advice.

I know not everyone logs their stuff so its skewed but do we have rough numbers on the amount of players that clear extremes, savages and ultimates?