The Problem With FFXIV's Endwalker Expansion 

My biggest issue is, as you mentioned, that almost everything revolves around the 2-min burst window and if you get an unfortunate death you are basically screwed for the rest of the fight.

So glad to see more FF content creators talking about this, especially the job design and the raid mechanics. I don't agree to all your solutions but I'm happy to see more people speak up. Let's raise our pitchforks and make ourselves heard lol. Great video!

Endwalker's biggest struggle for me has been the lack of content to sink my free time into. I'm loved eureka and enjoyed bozja for how much there was to do. Eureka has rare drops that actually reward you by giving you an extra magicite slot or decent gil when sold. Bozja had duels, that rare hairstyle that sold very well, cluster farming, etc. Both eureka and bozja really make this game feel like an actual mmo. You get to see player's mounts and party up to do content. Everyone in the zone is there for a different reason and it just makes the whole game actually feel alive. I dont have anything like that in endwalker. Wasnt a huge fan of island sanctuary as it's an isolated activity that just feels like a blander version of something single player games do better. Without the social aspect I'd rather just not bother. I really hope they put resources into another exploration zone in 7.0 because it's really difficult to find things to do when I log in and just want to sink time into something engaging

People always made me feel like I was super picky or old when I brought up these topics. I’m not the best but I have had played a bunch of ffxi and wow over the years and of course jumping around. I love this game and I feel they got majority of what a father who doesn’t have a ton of time can play and get into however I’d like a more engaging combat. You hit some points close to home and I’m behind you all the way. Thank you

I really miss the old designs of the HW jobs. They really felt like something special with how unique their playstyles were. Same goes for Summoner and Scholar, they were a bit janky and poorly balanced which led to them being broken in some cases, but their uniqueness was the selling point. Also RE: Bozja, I only just completed Delubrum Reginae Savage a few months back. Bozja's boss fights are genuinely fun and feel like something I can go back to for the sake of it

I've been playing for 6 years and EW is the first expansion that really killed my motivation to login everyday and I think you nailed the point: EW has more content but the quality and longevity of that content is super weak

I feel that the shift to the 2 minute windows and simplifying jobs have really made the combat system stale. You tend to go into every fight with the same plan of action and after a while everything just feels the same. It's extended to every part from 4 man dungeons, 8 man trials and raids, and even the 32 man ARs. When everything starts to feel the same, interest and enjoyment start to become drained from your experience.

I'm gonna be honest, maybe not you guys but, you people crying in ff14 about the classes being too hard, etc This is the reason everything is getting dumbed down. For the longest, for example, people cried about summoner being to busy, it's to busy it's too hard, ect, and now the class is so damn easy I won't touch it. It used to be my main, my adhd ass really enjoyed keeping everything in check. It was a challenge and fun. Also, like I said before, not every class needs to be played by everybody. You need variety .

I just want to waste my time playing ff14 I love the game so much but i'm at the point where i'm just doing dailies on random jobs to feel something. PLEASE YOSHI LET ME PLAY YOUR GAME.

I started playing before HW, I miss jobs having identity and unique traits. But A LOT of people whined that 'it was too hard' and everyone ONLY cared about damage, so they said 'fine, if that's all you care about, that's all you get in jobs now' SOME changes were good (The MP change and removal of TP solved a lot of issues). Roles feel stale because outaide of the 2 minute burst, classes have 0 reason to interact with each other...remember when NIN was able to manipulate Enmity? Ranged used to restore resources? Tanks had 2 combos and stances? 1 for DPS and 1 for enmity? Party interaction and cooperation is severely lacking nowadays as the ONLY thing people CAN do is just the 2 minute burst buffs which isn't unique as it's something EVERY JOB can do.

In Heavensward, the problem was that certain jobs flat out did more than others. Each job was too unique, complex and so inevitably a meta formed. It was too early in the game's life cycle. Now three expansions later, there are more jobs and most can do roughly the same with one another. It is about time we go back to the old Heavensward rotations. I believe it is a good thing to have a 'base' template for jobs to work on, then expand from there. Could be copium but it would be really nice if they could.

Let me start with this: I do agree with a lot that you and the comments say. BUT: if we go back 2 expansions you will see those exact videos and comments and arguments the other way around. People cried why tanks have to be so different. DRK was so strong, PLD was looked down upon. Things like meta-groups existed BECAUSE their buff alignments was better. BRDs had some really hard time to get groups "back in the days". I studied game development myself and because of that I know how important player opinions are. And lets be real here, SE really does care about that and has listened to the players more than once. Lets take a look at the relic weapon system. Lets just go back to the 70 weapons - Eureka. People fucking hated Eureka "iT tAkEs WaY tO lOnG tO fInIsH tHe StEpS" also people were complaining about standing around in Eureka until Fates got spawned. Then came the 80 weapons - Bozja. And people fucking hated that too! Even though you had more than enough fates and events to keep you occupied in bozja for hours on end. But still the weapons took way to long to get completet and you were forced to do bozja, bla bla bla. Honestly? I kinda can understand why Yoshi P just said fuck it, this time we do a tome stone dump. See to it yourselfs, players! And now people are arguing and crying why they would do that?! lol What I'm trying to say is: most of the changes we got right now, are our own fucking fault. Because the masses were screaming and crying to have it changed in previous expansions. And now that we got it, it's shit again and we wanna go back. I do believe though, that a lot of people who want to go back to Heavensward times just want it out of nostalgia. Classes were so much less accessible. You had to level up all the classes for fucking cross-skills. Lets not even speak about Healer Stance. Sure it made the fight more challenging because you had to think about going dps and no heal, or heal and no dps for the duration of the cooldown. I definitely would NOT want that in the current savage or ultimate Fights. I do think healers could use like 1-2 more skills for a dps rotation. But tbh I am actually kinda fine with pressing my few dps buttons and keeping an eye on my teammates. Like, back to my first sentence - I do think we need some changes and I do understand were ya'll are coming from. Just find it funny, that players are like constantly unsatisfied with each and every change made by SE.

I miss Trick being 60 seconds, having a buff at the 1m mark gives a good pace to the fights

YoshiP: no damage meters Also yoshi P: reworks class cooldowns and rotations based on people that use damage meters and complain classes dont do alot of nDPS

Another big issue I honestly have with EW is it feels like we're largely still in ShB, just worse because of the shift to 2-minutes. Every expansion prior usually had some big shake up of the combat system in someway, and not like we've been playing one expansion for the past 4 years. Leveling in EW was probably the most boring across jobs I've experienced because of how many lazy traits and predictable abilities there were too (wow another AoE version of a single-target ability, amazing). I really fear that the devs have grown too comfortable with how things stand, and that this is just how things will be moving forward. EW will likely be my last XIV expansion if there's no hints or information dropped at Fanfest of the combat system and jobs getting changed up.

I'm very convinced the 2m burst change wasn't about making the game easier for players but instead easier to calculate an 8 man team's DPS for tighter DPS checks in Savage+. We then saw the consequences of this in Abyssos where the checks were made so tight some comps could not clear without perfect play.

To me it's got more to do with the reward structure of content they've been making, as well as the integration between different types of content. They could've easily made it so that the relic quest gave you the option to get the items needed from criterion/ variant dungeons (or older content that they could want people engaging more with, like the ivalice raids or something), increasing interest in engaging with that particular content. They could've done a new set of gear for criterion, or in the very least made the upgrade mats for the tomestone gear obtainable through that contents currency, since it appeals to mostly the same type of players that do High-end PvE content. It's extremely weird how disconnected they feel from the overall PvE sphere of the game, idk. and same goes for the other new additions they've made. it's not like they don't know how to properly do these things, they did it in shadowbringers and even in this expansion, with the pvp rewards.

"I don't think they're going to add another melee." [Insert Jameson laugh]

The gearing system really is the worst thing for me, it just doesn't fit the "you can play all jobs one character" philosophy of the game. It just pushes you into one role (or one Job even when you consider weapon)

Well my biggest problem with FF14 as a whole is that we can't share glamour between each jobs, that limits so many potential combinations.

They did my man SMN dirty on this expansion. SMN used to take more than a single braincell to play, now I press every button in the same order every time.

There's another gripe too that a lot of people don't give too much credit. The gear treadmill--and yeah you kinda touch on this. I know, I know, people have been complaining about gear for ages, but it's really reached a head in Endwalker. I took my first Savage tier all the way up to the last half of P4S, we were an opt-in FC group and honestly weren't too bad. We were actually ahead of the curve than most at two sessions a week. By the time we got to BiS area or anywhere close, it took so long because of a mixture of gear lockout timers, how one takes a loot hit taking a SINGULAR person who has already cleared nukes loot rates . . . we were just about BiS . . . RIGHT as the next tier was coming out. Their raiding scene in the most unintuitive, time wasting, grindy process that has no staying power. We were more organized than party finder. If party finder is WORSE in general, then some people will never BiS before that gear is already outdated. So the arguments the raiding scene has towards how to treat raiding just aren't valid anymore besides 'you don't have to do it'. Not having to do it doesn't mean the system should feel like crap, or that it takes so long you can never reasonably take it. You could be the best player in the best group, but if you only have an hour to play a week and not every session is a clear . . . you really don't need to be good at math to tell that that system is flawed. It's even WORSE now that everything Savage is delayed, so you have even LESS time to be BiS. BiS is something to work towards, but when you have NO TIME to enjoy it before you're outclassed and need to do it all over again, what is the point? Especially if you're not the most social person, or need to do party finder. I asked myself this question and stopped bothering before I managed to clear the Savage tier. I felt like I was wasting my time. Telling me 'you're tackling the content for the wrong reason' when it comes to gear and glam is not appropriate. That is the constant argument I get thrown my way, and it's so amazingly rude and disrespectful. I shouldn't be being shamed for having a goal to work towards. If I'm missing the 'social' point, that's what Limsa, randomly approaching people, and a slew of other places and ways are for. The whole process of tackling Savage is hell and punishes you for not being a social butterfly or having a goal in mind besides hanging out.

I was talking to a friend the other day and we both agreed that they could have link the relic weapon with the variant dungeon but having the material needed for the relic farmable in those dungeon instead of just a tomestone dump Not only that but they could have make it so that the dungeon gives more material if you follow Nanamo's suggestion at the beginning so their would have to be 3 quick farm strat and it would be less repetitive to do

The problem with ffxiv is that all jobs feel the same to play with different skills and effects.

They honestly played endwalker really safe which honestly caused a lot of the issues it had. It just fells like an extention to shadowbringers there was no huge changes. I hope they shake things up in 7.0; the gearing system and the cycle of content is getting old

I feel like there is always this same story of MMO´s. First it is created with high class identity, which, lets face it, comes with annoying stuff as well, but they are part of the identity. Then a game gets older, better, widely known and so the developers cater to a broader audience and simplify these things. In practice this means more players have an easier time getting into the classes and into their roles, but as you said, the identity of classes are lost and the difficulty lacks as well. Optimally, and idk how they could do that, they would need to make every class easy to play but hard to master, or give us more ways to play the game because of the combo system. Healers are too overpowered in their healing. They either need to give us damage rotations, or make healing way harder, because as of now, mechanics either oneshot you, or you just press 1 ogcd and the entire party is full.

Raid buff windows in general just really limit job design I think. There are a lot of fun concepts they just can't really use because it's too important to align with raid buffs, and it locks everyone into pretty set rotations with little variation. They can't really introduce any random chance mechanics outside of pretty superficial and unengaging ones like Dancer procs. They can't really do anything with stuff like resets or cooldown reductions either.

Hoping theyre doing Major changes on this regards correctly for 7.0 since its also marking a new beginning for the story arcs I'm pretty sure they will make changes, but if its the right one, that is the scary part most of the time, remembering what they was doing with Range DPS on HW expansion So yeah.. fingers crossed everyone and send a LOT of feedback to forum and during live letter

Just going off the thumbnail alone before I watch this, you think its boring, and yeah it kinda is. But the majority of the playerbase has no clue what burst windows are or even how to align those 120sec buff/bursts to start. The only time I EVER see raid buff/burst alignment is in Savage and Ultimates, again, a small % of the entire community.

Yoshi-P has gone on the books saying that the current trends in job design will continue into the next expansion. He's been wrong before, of course, but it still makes me nervous about the future of FFXIV. I basically only log in for PvP (which at least has good job design--WAR, DRK, PLD, and GNB all feel functionally different instead of copies of the same job, healers have more DPS buttons than healing buttons, etc) and raiding with my static. I want to feel excited about PvE again. Criterion was fresh and promising, but as you said, has awful retention. Island Sanctuary is neat, but I don't care for gathering/crafting content.. Hildebrand humor isn't my cup of tea, and the relic grind is non-existent. Revamping the MSQ with Trusts is cool, but I don't see myself replaying it any time soon. There's no trial questline, since it was folded into the current MSQ. I love deep dungeon, but this one feels like more of the same. All in all, there's so little for me personally to do and the act of doing it feels worse than it ever has. I think I'll always love FFXIV but I want more reasons to play it.

i agree that ffxiv has a myriad of gameplay problems, but i think they started WITH shadowbringers. stormblood was the peak of this game 100% in terms of gameplay and i noticed a big shift in shadowbringers when they started over simplifying jobs like machinist and all tanks and all healers. i was a healer/mch main and really enjoyed the complex and versatile rotations with mch but ill be real and say i preferred ast in shb because higher apm than just fishing for balance rr spire. dnc completely shat the balancing with phys ranged and ruined it since they felt the need to remove aoe trick attack from mch to shift it away from buffing which is why its in the sorry state its in now along with brd having reduced buffing to make way for dnc lmao. the homogenization of tanks, gutting of a rotation for healers, and dumbing down of jobs and mechanics have really put this game in the shitter for gameplay for me, and the funniest thing is the pvp changes are significantly better than anything theyve done this whole expansion. also the sad excuse for relic content still gets to me, and i assume its because people complain so much about actually playing the game, which is why bozja was so bad after first week and no one returned to it. Eureka will always be the best relic content

As a monk main, I miss my positionals. It kept me on my toes! I'm all for making the game casual for folks. But not at the cost of jobs. If you can't hack it don't play it.

Stormblood was the best content expansion besides story not being so well received, change my mind.

I agree with a lot of your points in this video. One thing I would like, despite many other players disagreeing, is actually a talent tree to pick abilities to augment your playstyle in a way that you enjoy. Would add a lot more thought to all the jobs and allow for more skill expression.

Honestly, EW was the expansion that made me soft-quit the game. I love the story, but I'm currently adding a month of sub after a patch, doing the MSQ and raids on normal, and then unsubbing until the next patch comes out. I'm really looking forward to the next expansion.

I think I mostly agree with this video, healers are probably in the worst state possible. Lots of healers I knew just don't bother playing the job because it's so boring. Unfortunately with the way things have been going I'm fully expecting 7.0 to make the combat simpler. I'm fully expecting them to just take out positional attacks for melee, they've been slowly removing them while giving us more ways to ignore them (things like dragon sight nulling them and monk losing all of them except for a few). Personally at this stage of the game it wouldn't really bother me if they took em out, it would just be nice if they gave us something else to chew on as well, but the battle team tend to just take things out without adding something in as a replacement. Even though Heavensward was my favorite when it comes to job design, I'm not delusional enough to think they will go back to it (hell they already stated they have 0 plans of going back to job design like that). I just don't see why they can't add just a little bit more depth to the jobs, all 3 types could use more love in that department. As well as addressing how boring it is when you aren't in your 1 minute (weak) or 2 minute (strong) burst phase. I dunno man, as much as I'd like to believe that maybe next expansion they'll do some dope changes to the combat, I'm not really holding my breath. Then again they do have the DMC combat director on the team now, maybe he's got some slick ideas for this game that they are planning on implementing ( I don't mean changing it to action based combat, I mean ideas for the current battle system). Either way I guess we'll just have to wait and see as the months lead up to the new expansion. This was a good video, thanks for making it.

When you mentioned about comparing content with Shadowbringers vs Endwalker is true in that it is shorter in EW based on longevity. But I think you have missed that there was something big that happened between these two releases that changed gaming in general. COVID. I remember that when they talked about the hype up to Endwalker that we saw release dates for patches were pushed later, that development slowed down and there were delays in content. You could also push the idea of the WoW rush to FFXIV played a small part to where they had to change things on the fly. I think that's why we didn't have a EW Bozja/Eureka and we kind of got ARR/HW relic weapon grind instead, why criterion dungeon content has a short span and why they focused more on bigger server stations, more worlds and DC than content at the time. You can even compare the seasonal events from ShB to EW and noticed that it's not as in depth as it was before. My thinking (and hope) is that they are treating EW as a step back in content longevity in order to focus more on delivering ShB results or better for the newest expansion. If that's the case, I'll take that boring content any day right now. I also hope Square gives Yoshi P more financial freedom to make sure they keep their biggest moneymaker delivering top tier results (which that I feel is wishful thinking).

I mainly play nin and mnk, if they made nin use striking gear that gear would need dex and str on it? or change nin to str based? When we already Ton's of str based jobs?

So, there is a Tank Job in FFXIV. It works like this: Damage-wise, it has a burst switch that must be used every 1 minute to do optimal damage. Outside the window, they just do their basic 1-2-3 or whatever and wait for that window; About tanking damage, it has a 120-sec-cd "big mitigation", 90-sec-cd "raid mitigation", 90-sec-cd "medium mitigation" and a short-cd, short-duration mitigation. Which tank am I talking about?

I don't think the issue is longevity though that is an issue. The issue is as much the variation of content released. All of Endwalker has been centered on the minority of Raiders and streamers. Much of the Job balancing has been to help make Ultimates easier to make and balance, or to cater to making things more streamlined. You have some really good points but I kind of think you are missing the forest for the trees. They need to focus less on "difficult" content and more on fun content. There are a lot of players who do not play the game to high end raid. They need to go back to providing things for those players and not trying to mimic other MMO types and make everything the same to make streamed content easier to make. I think this is especially true when the "High end players" won't even complete the content in the way it was intended.

Oversimplicity. Yes. The only problem with this game for me. Lack of job personality. I trust Yoshi-P for 8.0 all the same anyway, let's see

Just wanted to comment on a few of your observations. As it relates to class identity and tanks specifically, I understand the direction they have moved in and it doesn't really bother me. Unlike DPS, tanks have a responsibility that requires taking hits for a living that really taps into varying forms of defense to optimize. Protection vs. mitigation vs. recovery. If class identity between each tank becomes too varied or unique, you then have the potential of having tanks not viable for specific fights or content because of their identity. Could there be a solution? Absolutely, though I'm not sure how you get there without potentially alienating certain jobs from different areas of the game. If their vision is every job is viable, then even more so it may not be appealing to tap into class identity. I would challenge your perception of identity though, each tank's rotation has identity to it. GNB with the DPS-focused busy burst, PLD's flexibility with melee/ranged/magic, WAR's simplistic deterministic crits, DRK's straight forward dmg and resource management. In terms of healing rotation, I'd argue there isn't much to go with in making it a more "engaging" playstyle or role without making the job completely clunky, busy and annoying. Healing might be the only role that your "rotation" can vary fight to fight, and depending on your healing partner. When I say rotation here, I mean your usage of skills in response to mitigation, recovery and protection. ex. Each SCH may differ in terms of when they use Indomitability, sacred soil, fey blessing, seraph etc. This changes with each fight, this changes depending on your healing partner and your groups mit strategy. For this tier, my "rotation" is different for all 4 fights. In contrast, a DPS' rotation is about executing your optimal rotation in content, you may make some adjustments but you already know what "good" should look like. I think your points still have merit, there can still be a path to better class identity. I would argue that a healer rotation, even if it changes from a single skill, to 3 skills, is that really engaging? 1-1-1-1-1-1 to 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3? If you then want to add damage OGCDs, dependency mechanics, the healers will lose agency to actually heal, or have bloated skill bars. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

The 2 min meta sucks cause it makes a lot of jobs feel the same and it really makes the playing a unique job aspect of the game basically non-existent… healers are also extremely boring. The combat system needs a significant change if it’s gonna keep people’s attention cause Endwalker is basically shadowbringers 2 but dumbed down even more.

Great analysis. Ive been feeling a lot of this but didnt quite know how to put it into words, turns out you do. Really looking forward to the top video. It DESTROYED me mentally and I hope you could shed some light on why lol

Gotta agree. ShB was so strong. I raided every tear, whether with a group or in PF. Now it's just not fun enough to motivate me and most of my friends either no longer want to raid because of the homogeny or aren't interested in starting raiding. Feels bad man. Also I am a SMN main and I've grown SO TIRED of new SMN. The thematic direction I like, but they took a complicated job that had me really engaged and made it WAY TOO SIMPLE. I just align Slipstream in burst windows and like... that's it. I don't even know what room they have to improve it going into 7.0 cause it's just so tightly designed rn. Maybe we'll get a dot caster and it'll have some complexity to it and I'll enjoy that more. I'm just... really ready to move on from EW. 6.0 was great. 6.X has just... not had the same magic as 5.X

FFXIV being one of my favourite games it pains me not to be able to enjoy it at all anymore. BLM is the only one with high skill ceiling, the rest of their skill ceilings are lower than GW2's skill floor. My big gripe with the game is that it's so heavily scripted, by the book type of combat. There's zero variation. In other games you may have to do X or Z thing. In FFXIV you just do your rotation since there's nothing else you can do game design wise. Everyone just spams the same boring rotations and avoids the slow aoes till the enemy dies. Some variation could be nice, for an example in GW2 sometimes you as a guardian need to keep your shield up to block incoming projectiles or use reflect wall to send them back to the enemies. And there is multiple different abilities doing various of things spicing up the game play. FFXIV only has dmg abilities which are either on cast time or instant weaves. Then same with heals and the same exact buffs for most classes, 10% mitigation shield worthless unless doing Ultimate. So exciting.... Sure the Ultimate encounters may or not be insanely hard but that's only done due to jobs being so easy to play. Vice versa in GW2 where learning the job is often harder than even savage content in FFXIV. While as the encounters mechanic wise are easier in GW2 means you have to master the class over boss mechanics. Sometimes this isn't good either if too much skill ceiling, experienced player can do alone the damage rest of the raid is doing combined which has its own issues. To sum it all up, in FFXIV the colour of your spell particles defines the job, since they all play the same with same things to press and use apart from the few outliers.

When people said they wanted Mythic + in FF14, they meant more challenging trash pulls and mechanics that require constant healing and damage output. I played a lot of M+ in Legion and its incredibly fun as a healer. Dodging mechanics while keeping the team alive. It was engaging. Criterion aint it. The trash pull actually gave me hope because there was a lot of DPS going out on the tank. But once I fought the hamster, I realized that M+ Is just "What if Savage but 4 people?" And my soul died a second time. The first time was when I realized Sage was just "What if scholar but no fairy?"

I think they made the 2min meta so statics dont have higher dps than partyfinder which absolutly was the case before. Syncing the old buffs in weird ways gave a huge dps boost. More people than ever are clearing savage week 1 in PF. So the 2min meta is a huge boon for people who physically cant raid on a schedule. The price of more invested players being bored earlier is for sure worth paying. The easiest fix would be to remove raidbuffs entirely and replace them with unique personal cooldowns. That way your dps is not anymore based on how well your static spreadsheets but how well the individual player plays. The whole raidbuffs syncing thing in general is bad imo.

i can't speak to the rest of the points besides the over simplification/ homogenized jobs cause i started after shb but i agree 100% on the first few. On paper it seems like a good idea, make the jobs more accessible/simple with easy buff windows but in actuality it sucks, it's boring and it gets old fast. i hope they can somehow make everything accessible for newer players but keep things fun and interesting for the rest. Thanks for the video!

You really said every problem I had after I finished the MSQ. Especially the changes to the tanks. The job fantasy on tanks are gone and it feels like I’m just changing my weapon and not tue job. I hope someday the devs would consider balancing the jobs based on there job identity.

People say the same about healers in all games though, even stuff like Overwatch. As a healer main myself, I find DPS jobs boring because you can't really "see" anything happening against bosses.

agreed on all of it. they have a 10 year plan for the game but its going in the wrong direction. so sick of words like "accessibility" being thrown around. everything is becoming braindead to the point of almost being laughable. i wish we could go back to the 2.0 days. every class had its own identity, healers actually had to heal. now its all so formulaic , sterile and homogenized. its all designed so that every noob who jumps in the game for the first time is ensured to NEVER encounter any frustration or failure. its a joke . how stupid do they think people are? but theres no going back now. once the casual game design sets in, its over. cause people are incapable of dealing with something becoming more difficult or complex than what theyre used to. this path only leads in one direction (it never goes the other way). happened to all franchises. mainline final fantasy, resident evil, and pretty much any long running franchise you can name (with every new iteration it loses that element of hardcore and goes more casual and convenient. i have yet to see a game reverting back). i remember last year i even got a static together to do old raids on minimum item level. its not the same AT ALL. back in og 2.0 coils we never even got into cleric stance, just mostly healed the whole time and still barely cleared. now, it just feels like modern xiv even in old content. pop some regens, mitigate/heal busters and raidwides and back to spamming stone/ruin etc ad nauseum. havent seen a single enrage. (and a lot of people were new to the content and new to the game itself). if they dont get off this "casuals first and foremost" trajectory the game is gonna become unplayable. i dont want PVE to turn into what they did to PVE. completely interchangeable, soulless classes with zero personality . remember squenix! those noobs that you keep going out of your way to coddle so much are one day gonna grow up and realize the game lacks depth and doesnt respect the players skill and intelligence. stop oversimplifying everything!!!!!!!!!! this isnt kindergarten

Definitely agree with the homogenisation/simplification of jobs. Really disliked what they did with astrologician in the new expansion. And summoner as wel...

Def feel the lack of an exploratory zone, but I do think you're underselling how replayable a new deep dungeon is. As far as the two minute meta thing, aside from deaths being more punishing I don't really see how it makes a big difference. I'm pushing my cooldowns on cooldown either way. You said as much yourself. Why would I care if on my 3 minute window I have more direct hit from a bard? Agree about healers needing like half rotations like the tanks have. Normal content is so boring on them its grating.

It's worth mentioning that it's confirmed that Dawntrail (the next expansion) will have a new melee dps and a new caster dps, so gearing will probably get even weirder.

I miss SCH having 3 different dots with a 4th cross-classed from WHM for movement. HW was its peak. Haven't touched healers since then.

can't wait to get 1 materia from savage new criterion and be done with content in 20minutes lol. Damn I feel like only you, Xeems and me have similar ideas and issues with endwalker. FFXIV creators usually feel like they are sponsored by the company and only talk good things or don't talk at all to avoid talking negatives and it's pretty awful

As far as content goes, it feels like the entire endwalker patch msq could have been an optional trial series like the weapons in SHB. It feels so disconnected and doesn't seem like it's even planned to lead into the next expansion in a meaningful way.

Been playing since ARR Endwalker is the only expansion to feel weak in terms of gameplay content, everything is so simple now you can alt tab and clear dungeons and there is no combat zone with progression like Bozja so nothing to grind either 😢

Endwalker was surely something, its unfortunate to see how the game i mainly play for many years is going the way it is, i dont have high hopes for 7.0 myself but i at least hope ill still be around.

when it comes to the Tank point: I understand where you're coming from, but really what it sounds like your saying is, "once you've played one tank, with a little bit of practice, you can play them all." and.... Yeah. That's how experience works. Its like learning to play the ukulele, and then learning how to play the banjo or the guitar. they are all similar yes, and if you have experience with one then it is going to making learning the others easier. I don't see this as a problem. and as someone who's maxed out all of the tanks in the game and learned rotations, they absolutely do not all feel the same. DRK Knight has a lot more oGCD's to manage then the other three, GBR has a much more prominent burst phase, and WAR is pretty fast and loose when it comes to what you need to prioritize.

i'm so scared of drg rework in future, man...

They should do away with burst windows completely, just roll the damage into the rotational abilities across the board, and then use the fact that those buffs are gone to enable you to make every class's rotation more engaging all around. Put these buffing effects inside the rotations somehow, find a way to make the engagement come from activating buffs through the rotation for example. Simplification isn't a problem, simple can still be engaging and complex can be boring, monotonous or tedious. For example I find Ninja tedious as hell to play, but I find Reaper super engaging even though its vastly more simple than Ninja. I would argue that the biggest problem with the current way jobs are designed is it relies heavily on filler buttons because if they remove those filler buttons a certain portion of the community will lose their minds and shriek about 'DUMBING DOWN' even if the removal facilitates a fundamental design change that makes the jobs more fun and engaging to play. As for Endwalker vs Shadowbringers, the reason is the same as it is every single expansion, the old one is always praised by a certain segment of the community and especially by content creators because that kind of content gets views.

I must be in the minority but FFXIV feels so good to play to me. The pacing of skills, the interplay between them, I find most jobs pretty fun. But I don’t raid harder content so I guess my opinion doesn’t apply to a lot of stuff.

For the Jobs I also think they feel to samey nowadays, would like having buff windows reverted back to different timings and make certain jobs play better together. I personally think that having every job being basically interchangeable makes party compositions boring since theres no real difference with having certain comps. like have jobs with 90s buff windows be good with other 90s buff window jobs and vice versa. for gearing i think there should be more options for gearing. I like how extremes are used as a pre-savaage gearing prep, and i think that variant/criterion dungeons should act as the same way. pentamelded crafted gear as the defacto best sets for progression just feels really boring and i think there should be more viable options for progression gear like having full extreme gear (ilvl 645) or something. extreme diff content is underutilized and a i think vc dungeons should be just made into extreme dungeons where its used a diff gearing option for progression. the gap from casual content to hardcore is bit a jarring and extreme content is think is a good middle ground that should be used more often than just trials.

I will agree, the 2min burst window is probably my biggest complaint as much of how good or bad you are revolves around staying within the parameters of that 2min window. Does this mean I think it is hard to stay in that window, no, just that it does lead to playing to cater to that window becomes very stale. At the same time I do understand why they did it when you look at how they lay out boss fights to include the rotation of abilities by the boss as well. This is also why they add harder hitting AOE, more complex boss rotations, and so forth which I really don't think is that great of a trade off. I can't say I agree with you saying healers all play the same, as my experience with them suggests otherwise. What I do on Whm differs from Sge, same for Sch or Ast as they each have something more unique that they bring to the table. Whm is more your pure dump of raw healing power. Sge relies more heavily on mitigating dmg with a few options of raw healing. Sch is more a mix of mitigation and healing, and Ast is more of a dps buff/hot/mit healer. Does their DPS options leave something to be desired? More so on Sch, Ast, and Sch than Whm which seems to have well developed abilities in comparison. Tanks, I also have to disagree here that they don't play similar to one another. Each brings different buddy system buffs when off tank, and each shows their mettle differently with someone very comfortable playing the jobs to their extent. That they are interchangeable in a party make up shouldn't be confused with playing the same, at least that has been my experience when playing each. I do agree with the Criterion dungeon issue, this I feel SE really missed the target on. Is it fun to do for the little side story, sure along with some minor rewards, but it is literally a spend very little time to do it and done with it. Never to have a reason to return again. I still do PotD, HoH, and Eureka because it can be fun if not frustrating, to get through and get more reward out of doing. The Criterion savage seemed absolutely pointless to me given the lack luster rewards to difficulty. Just feels like it was cobbled together with spare time and no real purpose to it. This could have been an alternative gear up option with completion in each way offering a turn in towards a gear upgrade, but instead they entirely missed the mark.

Azurite said "pls make the game harder." I just want more healing for healers. Personally really enjoyed the bleed mechs in p5s esp week 1. I havent done the savages this tier except for p9 so thats the only one i can judge, and it def felt more like an extreme than a savage.

Criterion dungeons were such a disappointment to me. I enjoyed the variant dungeons, but as you said, there's no reason to repeat them. If they even just gave some reasonable tomestone payout like roulettes, I'd do them. As as casual M+ player in WoW, Criterion broke my heart as the skill leap from variant to criterion put it out of reach for me and most people I know. I'm not unhappy with EW, but I agree completely that there has been a lot of content, but none of it seems to have long legs - V&C dungeons, islands, relics, etc.

Did you mention Eureka Orthos? I don't remember at the end of the video... I think it's telling that some of the content is already able to be kinda forgotten and glossed over lol.

Jank 2 minute meta, god awful job balancing, EW might have an amazing MSQ, but it's honestly the worst FFXIV has been in terms of actual gameplay. As weak as SB's MSQ was, SB was the peak of the game in terms of job balancing and endgame content. ShB was when they started trying to streamline every job and make them oversimplified to keep the game more "accessible" to people. Which I guess isn't inherently a bad thing, but it's made endgame content feel so unrewarding. Edit, because I forgot: The way they're handling the current relic weapons is also lazy and lackluster, and I really hope the next step in the upcoming patch is more than just another 1500 tome sink for the third time

Nah he's right about Healers. I'm new to Healers and just got to lv 32 for my Conjurer/White Mage. The rotations at first are hilariously gruelingly boring. I just hope I get a thrill before 40 or imma skip Healers

There needs to be more than one way to get Savage level gear, yes, I agree. You could even have different gear entirely from another type of content like Criterion Savage, but just the same ilvl maybe different stats distribution. Sacrificing Exploratory maps was a mistake for whatever reason they gave it up this expansion. Eureka/Bozja can last you weeks if done casually and they're still worth doing to this day.

The current design is just not very good. They took all the difficulty out of the jobs, and instead put it in the content, and there's only so much you can do with the balance that lopsided. Bozja pretty much showcases the best that can be done with this approach.

Totally agree about tanks and healers, as a healer main that got pushed into dps just cause I got bored I don't think moving 2 minutes back to 90/180 cds will affect much at all, really, other than split meta comps for speed kills based on cd alignment. I think the real issue is how bursty every dps is, and that the game needs variation in some jobs being less focused on the big 2 minute window. I think the raid tiers are a bit more of a subjective case. Very few of the savage fights are objectively bad to me (p7s, e7s especially are flawed to me, there are some other individual things).

Saying Island Sanctuary is niche content means you need to say Savage fights are niche content as well. Or pretty much everything else. A repeated praise of XIV is that you aren't forced to do anything, and everything won't appeal to everyone. It's based on your goals and preferences. If you want every mount, you have to learn pretty much everything. If you want to be great at PvP, you can ignore everything else. If you want to be a farmer, hey, hang out on your island and get those achievements. I remember when Islands were announced and before there was any info, I had mentioned that maybe they could be attached to GC Rank, and that means people might need to relearn squadrons. One person /exploded/, saying they hated squadrons, it would be the worst decision to gate content to something they personally didn't care for. I countered that if I want a Savage mount, why is it gated behind learning a fight when I don't want to raid. It sparked this whole conversation around "what is the real content of XIV", which was much more civil with everyone but that person. Ultimately, the answer was "whatever you want it to be". Heck, one of the icons of Mateus is Kweh, who logs in, always in the same outfit, and spends literal hours running in circles throughout all of Ul'dah, not talking, responding to shouts of hello with 'Kweh' or 'Wark'. That's their real content.

this might be boring, but oh boy if ppl on speed communities weren't really hyping how good it felt having to play with jobs that had a 2 min burst. Turns out we end up being the cause of our own problems. So you'll excuse me if I cba to yet another pointless argument in this community which I can guarantee nothing good will come out off it.

Just saw the new expansion trailer. 2 new DPS jobs. DPS. With all the DPS we have, 2 more. Ok. So the oversimplification of the jobs is a real, real problem. And they obviously don't want to fix it. All healers are the same now. All tanks the same, bc they have to listen to the "but my job isn't top dps" people.

I feel FF14 has always tried to go the route of being for a Casual audience, whilst having content that can appeal to people looking for more of a challenge. However, EW has gone too far into casual territory. All jobs play the same, most fights play the same (Unless you do Savage, but I will get to that) and any side content is now just a tome farm. Even Crafting, which is designed to be a casual time sink, has gone too far into just spamming script recipes for turn ins. Savage is now targeted towards raid statics, which is the opposite end of the spectrum. Unless you have comms and a team to play with these fights are just not fun at all. PFing, whilst possible (I've done so) it just sucks any and all fun out of it. Extremes could be a good middle ground, but they are too damn easy, again catering too far to the casual side the game goes down with every expansion. I actually haven't bothered to log in for the past 5 weeks. There is no need to. Relic is just tomestone spam. Savage is not as fun as it used to be. Crafting is just spamming Scrip recipes for hours on end. Jobs all play the same. PVP would be great if I didn't get FOMO because of the dumb Season mechanic. It's an MMO. You should be able to do stuff in your own time and get the goodies anyway. And then to top it off the post patch MSQ has, in my personal opinion, sucked. It's going through stuff way too quick, I don't care about what's happening. And after all that there is stuff that just gripes me. Glamour is so archaic a system. You should be able to cover any piece with anything. Locking glamour to being on the same job just sucks. If I wanna glamour DRG armour over my DRK then just let me. Tomestones in themselves need changing to a better system. The gear progression has become stale. You're relying on luck when it comes to Savage and the tokens take too long to get. (gets even harder when people start locking the Ilvl of PF clear fights) Long story short. Content is either too damn easy (MSQ, Extreme) or too damn hard for the majority (Savage in PF / Ultimate) There is 0 middle ground for fun / challenging content. FF14 is an awful MMO to play at the moment if you are a competent/avid player who has no interest in Savage/Ultimate (Or you're a loner) I also blame ShB overwhelming positivity for why the game has gone down this route. They doubled down on everything that made ShB great, instead of realising that 95% of that reception was because of the story, not because of the gameplay. SB had the best Job gameplay imo and it has gone downhill since.

I hate 2 minute burst, way too much simplifying of jobs so they almost all feel the same. Agree on healers, they need some kind of rotation at least and just differences between jobs. I don't understand why they want every job to be able to do everything when you can switch jobs whenever you want. I really feel like they should push players to main a role, maybe buff the armoury bonus within the same role and make the jobs within them have very distinct strengths and weaknesses then make content that favors different things to incentivise swapping jobs so they can actually be different. Makes no sense to have this job system only to then make all the jobs basically the same.

I like your take more than a lot of other people who have complained about the 2 min window, because you've offered what you would prefer to see in its place. It makes it an actual discussion and not simply complaining into the void. So thank you for that. Also, on the topic of longevity, the lack of extensive replayable content might be the reason so many people complain about content drought between EW patches. I always felt people were complaining way too much about that, but now i see why it is actually worse than it was in the past. We don't have a restoration or bozja equivalent to farm away the time between patches, really. I will say i still think most of the issues i hear complaints about are hardcore player issues, but these 2 things definitely effect everyone and should be taken into consideration if possible in 7.x.

the weekly cap is bizarre the way its right know, they should at least make the loot system role base or remove the penalty restriction when you dont get the loot after clearing the content. Also i wonder whats SE plans for new players in 7.0 since the hydaelyn arc is finished kinda crazy to say that they will need to finish 800+ quests to reach the new expac

As someone who considers itself a healer main, I have a few suggestions. For AST, I propose a new mechanic. A three card hand, and the return of Sleeve Draw. The idea would be that when you draw a card, you can either play it on someone, or add it to your hand. Adding a card to your hand would count as using redraw. Having a flush (all pink, or all blue cards), a full house (three cards with different crests), or a straight (one blue, one pink, one wild), would grant access to a ranged three hit combo that would apply a DOT, and heal in an AOE with every hit. Crowns cards would be considered wild, and sleeve draw would give you a normal arcanum with its corresponding crest, but it would be considered wild. Or if that’s too much, let me move and cast at the same time. The mechanic is already in the game. MCH and BRD use it in PVP. WHM. Give AeroIII back. And let me use lilies to deal damage so I don’t have to waste my heals. SCH. The fairy gauge needs to be buffed. For a mechanic with its own gauge, commanding my fairy to heal a single target lacks enough impact. Maybe let me consume 20 or 30 of it to use some new attack, or make it drain and heal faster. SGE. Let me use eukrasia on Toxikon. Make it Eukrasian Toxikon, and let it inflict DOTs in an AOE. I know these are all half-baked, but these were just what popped into my head thinking about the healing jobs.

My comments 1. I think healer is one of the hardest jobs in the game as is in savage. Not rotationally, but if you added a "tank rotation" you would have a lot of issues with the rotation being broken by use of healing. On top of all of that, you are suggesting adding more buttons to healers. We absolutely don't need that, especially for controller players. 2. Saying tanks all play similarly I think is false. Thinking a warrior has a similar play style to a gnb is just crazy. One presses fell cleave on repeat, the other is a build up job with an ass load of weaving and managing the rotation to fit a specific set of abilities into no mercy. Dark has to balance their mana to use TBN and has a crazy burst. I can't talk much about PLD, but what are you even looking for? Yes, all thanks have a rotation and a similar set of mitigation with a few niche ones, but all tanks need these tools? What would you expect to change? As far as the 2 mins burst, I kind of agree. I mean, I don't think pressing a button on a different job every 90 second instead of 120 would make it more exciting like you suggest, but I think death punishes the 2 min meta a lot and I don't love this Everything else I agree with. Bozja/Zadnor had a lot of longevity to it end pretty much no EW side content has been able to match this, not not mention that the new relics are incredibly BORING

2:25 - I rather enjoy healing. My biggest gripe with it I guess is that the damaging skills/CDs you have are so limited. Healing itself is quite fun, but it's _so sporadic_. As an Astrologian/WHM you pop a heal over time on the tank/s, and then you spam either your AoE damage skill, or your single-target damage skill until your fingers fall off. On occasion you toss out an AoE or pop a CD, but that's about it. The healing itself is fine, it's just the fact that the content doesn't call for much healing, and as such you're relegated to a position of "underwhelming DPS with an abundance of healing abilities." I haven't touched savage content however so perhaps that puts things in a different perspecitve. Honestly the biggest issue I perceive with the game is its barrier of entry. ARR is long and arduous, and that's compounded by how shitty _all_ the jobs are at lower levels. Some jobs suffer more than others, but it's jarring to be put into a level 20/30 dungeon as say, a dancer. I campaigned through the game as a Warrior/Astrologian, and it was jarring how my kit as a warrior didn't really "unlock" until level 70. It took a long-ass base-game, with an expansion-length patch, and then another two expansions and post-expansion patches to actually start enjoying my job. That's far too long. Perhaps Warrior is particularly boring, but the problem extends to every single job I've played. Mechanics and skills unlock far too late. I think some Reaper stuff doesn't unlock until like 86 or so. This is in theory fine if it wasn't for the frequency with which you may enter low-level content. Doing older FATEs and dungeons is dull as hell.

I agree about healers, they need some remixing to help them not feel stale. I don't feel excited to press my keybinds as a healer anymore, I'm just going through the motions and spam-pressing my damage ability. I need more exciting damage abilities to use or some type of support buffs I can throw on my allies (yes I know AST has cards, but those are extremely boring).

Quite many aspects imo are very subjective. The reason ShB was better received as an expansion is def. because of covid, which forced ppl to stay at home and get to socialize alot more, while also bringing alot of new players into the game that end up having bias opinions towards Shb. Story also plays a role in that as it was one of the first time where majority of folks exp. Their honeymoon phase of ffxiv and claim it be the best story in media ever. (Its good but not as the fans overclaim it to be) But Shb itself compared to past expansion esp. raiding isn‘t anything groundbreaking or special. It had good raids but equally as many underwhelming ones. While EW def. Isn‘t the greatest expansion. It did try out new things and brought out 2 ultimates that really tested the player skills alot more compared to previous ones. EW is also an expansion that made raiding for newbies more accessable by simplifying jobs. I‘m def. not a fan of many job changes (esp. summoner) but I can also understand why they happened. Balance wise I would say EW def. did a poor job and it was esp. noticeable at p8s where the meta for week 1 raiders were signifciant noticeable. Criterion dg is great, but it def. should have being linked with the relic grind. Not having done that def. feels like a missed oppertunity.

I’m a newcomer and i’m curious. Before the 2 minute burst window meta, how did the “burst” window looked like? Because i saw some skills having different kinds of cd instead of 120 or 60 sec. For new players like me, I mean it’s really easy to understand: in higher contents for the dps check you basically need to do your rotation so that party buffs aligned, and the rotation is pretty much specific for certain jobs. Sure, some fights have tiny bit of optimization or changes that needs to be made because of downtime, but you’ll pretty much will be able to align party buffs. Also, i’ve seen some comments saying that the old jobs had their own “uniqueness” to them, can you share some of them with me? I’m just curious, because I never experienced the ARR, HW, Stormblood nor SHB savage tier. Feels like they made combat in such a way so that there’s no specific group comp meta can be formed, so that everyone is free to play whatever job they liked, without having them to be afraid pf not accepting certain jobs.

I honestly don’t know how to describe it but I wouldnt mind the two minute buff meta if the time between the buffs was more involved. It feels like outside the two minute buffs you are just kicking rocks until the next two minutes. Maybe if the playstyle leaned into a one minute meta to be l more exciting more frequently maybe thatll help.

Thanks for coming out and starting the conversation. I think this is a conversation that should be had, and I hope more people come out and say something.

I agree on most of the comments here, i just also want to add that i really dislike the way they handeled Relic weapons this tier. Whilst for some of my raidmembers it's easier to aquire them casually, for others like me who want to sink their teeth more into the game and need some sort of grindy-content, it feels incredibly montone and too easy to get for me. Relics weapons were always some sort of a reward for hard earned work for me, this simply doesn't feel like it anymore. Something annoying that this concept has aswell is, that is needs the same tomestones that i need for my crafting gear or potions, which makes me take much longer to get specific relics as a crafter then for example some of my members that don't craft at all and have enough tomestones to spare.

I feel it's the balance of using the same jobs people find stale in normal content then those who use them in Ultimates and Savage raiding. The difference of difficulty is heightened, say in between WHM and AST with those fights. (WHM I can use in ults and savage while sick / feverish or while eating) However, if you've ever PF'ed savage/ult raiding as healer, well, you've known hell. But with dungeons, the only variance is your party / group. Which just consists of 2 DPS anyway. The experience will then vary wildly. Can't please everyone, they have to at some point, choose what type of audience they really want to cater to. We begun with having the chance to even 'build' our stats, and borrow skills from other jobs. However, there's also the point that if someone finds healers boring, it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with the game. Great vid btw! Awesome points raised.

The more they simplify, the more boring it's going to get. They go the same route that WoW went some point. Job choice does not matter at all anymore.

the balance between accessibility and interesting is a fine line; i wish they would keep the ease of access on for example white mage, while making other jobs more complex. diversity of class play style could fix a lot.

Without a new exploration zone EW just feels so hollow IMO. If you're not a raider it just feels like there's barely anything to do, are players supposed to rank up their islands once a month for "content"....

I personally just want a little more complexity in the jobs again, like SMN didn't need to be made baby easy like it has been. Typically even the Melee DPS can be picked up pretty quickly, give some like nuance to the jobs again instead of their being a very set rotation for most of them. People having a preference for when they'd like refresh SMNs dots was nice and I feel like very few jobs still have that variety outside of maybe DNC, but thats all fight specific with them.

I think the big problem with 2 minutes after leveling all jobs is it doesn't give the job fantasies time to breath. The summoner rework would have been a 100 times better if it wasn't forced into a 1 min loop with the only variation being phoenix and bahamut. If each Primal was given time to breath and ruminate the job could establish its identity so much more. Tanks fall under a similar issue. Where every job is essentially forced to feel the same because they all operate on 1 minute loops with maybe an extra ogcd for 2 minutes / 90s gimmick. If the game wasn't balanced around condensed bursts every 1 and 2 minutes jobs would have so much more room to be themselves. another big problem with 1/2 minutes windows is the prospects for future job actions going into level 100 and beyond. It feels as if most jobs now can only really be complimented by additional ogcds or some sort of resource gauge that's essentially irrelevant because its designed to have the resources align with 1 min and 2 min (think samurai meditation stacks). With a more free idea of job designs jobs could have longer more interesting mini-phases within their rotation that don't perfectly loop. 2 minute rotations lend themselves to be coming mindless once you learnt the job because its really just the same thing over and over again. with maybe an extra ogcd here and there. The idea of a burst is not the problem, they feel cool and powerful. But every job being hemmed into the same design philosophy really restricts some cool and diverse playstyles. I love this game and always will, and I still have fun with the current combat system. I just wish the potential of the job system could be fleshed out more. and please make a tank that doesn't just 123 I'm begging.

I'm a savage raider who have played through E5S-E12S and all of the Pandaemonium series. After clearing P12S I really thought I needed a break from this game since all the static problems have been driving me nuts(I was the static lead). One of the things that I really want the devs to change is the savage raid's reward system. One big issue that I experienced for the latest Pandaemonium tier(Anabaseios) was that I kept having these people who dropped from the static on short notice. Because of the loot lock and gear distribution, these situations often led me to trying to find a paid substitute to yield their weekly loot so that I can distribute them as planned. FFXIV was the only major MMO that I invested myself into, so I just thought of this as a natural process. But while I was taking a break, I started to play Lost Ark, and that game changed my view entirely. (Now, I know that there are quite a few people out there who hate this game for being P2W, but lemme tell ya, it is actually entirely possible to play this game without paying a single penny. But that's another matter) For those who don't know, in Lost Ark, you farm your gears from Legion Commander Raids. When you get your weekly clear, you get "ingredients" for reward. You collect them, and make that new set of gear that allows you to reach the higher item level. And those rewards are given equally to all party members who have cleared, which means you don't have to get stressed out from the distribution issue at all. Plus, it usually takes 3-4 weeks to get a completed gear set(WITHOUT a static), which, combined with the equal distribution thing, makes the farming process far less stressful compared to FFXIV. Of course, aside from the rewards that are given equally to all party members, there are some random loot drops that could be useful to people. In FFXIV, these kinds of random loots are given in froms of RNG; dice roll. In Lost Ark, poeple make bidding i.e. whoever pays the highest price wins the item. People who need the item more than the gold will pay a suitable price to buy it, and pople who need gold more than the item will receive some nice extra gold from the raid. It is not some stupid RNG, but often a win-win for everyone. Because of all the static issue and raiding for 11 weeks in total to finally get my weapon, I literally got burnt out from the game. I did not want to raid anymore. I used to enjoy Blue Mage stuff and other side contents, but I was just too tired. While in Lost Ark, I could actually play the game without worrying too much about whether my raid friends will be available next week or not. If the entire group is there, good, it's a nice and relaxing raid. If not, meh, just find someone over PF, since rewards are exactly the same. Gotta miss next week's raid schedule since it's your mom's birthday? Great! Have fun with your mother. I don't have to stress them about "it's your responsiblity to find the sub" issue. This is not an issue if you're on PF, but PF means you entirely depend on RNG for gear farming. And if you need like both gloves and boots and like 4 coatings for your accessories? Good luck with PF-ing the second fight of the tier for at least maybe 10 weeks. The reward system, imo, needs to be changed. Not sure if Yoshi-P ever addressed this issue, and this might not be the major factor that drives people out of them game. But it did made me grow tired of the game that I've loved for at least 5 years. Man, I know good raids are hard to design, but that doesn't mean you have to leave the reward system like this.

On the comment with content from ShB to EW. Bozja had 3 raids, not 2. If you including the Savage of DR it's 4. The amount of content from Bozja is comparable to the Deep dungeon and then the criterion dungeons we are getting, if not more cause the DR savage was basically an entirely different raid with a fuck ton of different mechs and new bosses. On top of that you have entirely new progression systems added onto that. We also had MSQ and an entirely separate trial storyline (One of the best in the game, mind you). Ishgardian resto only needed crafters to be level 10, meaning it was more accessible to more players since you didn't need to beat EW. In my opinion we are getting around the same amount with horrible quality. Rubi was horribly tuned while most of the EX trials suck. Euphrosyne was a horrible Alliance Raid. Criterion is a one and done, with maybe the savage being a second run. The savage tiers are just so much better in ShB then in EW. There was a ridiculous amount of bugs this patch aswell, and pvp has been in an awful state since launch imo.

i am a warrior main and my god the difference in fun factor when i was playing with a ninja with 60 sec trick and just a normal group full of 2 minutes was crazy so when everything became a 2 I knew basically every group would be equally unfun.

I'd push back a bit on the 2-minute burst and healer state sc. The way things are are, to me, a sort of necessary evil that comes with designing the game for such a broad audience. The 2- minute burst meta makes it more self explanatory for the average player. Sure, it's less flexible, but at least it means that your average joe in savage will actually align their buffs and bursts by default. I'd prefer there to be more flexibility in our rotations, but that would honestly just make the state of playing with randoms worse as you begin to see people not adjusting their rotations correctly at all to maximize dps and then hitting enrages. Ultimately, I don't think there really is a way to perfectly balance jobs around such a broad range of player skillsets and challenge levels of content... Regarding healers... I feel that it's about as complex as you can make them. PF healers are already notoriously bad at balancing their dpsing and healing, so adding more complexity would make this even worse. Most of them will overfocus on one or the other, especially in prog where they should be more flexible between dpsing and healing as needed to both keep people alive and make dps checks. Prog, when not overgeared, is where healers are the most interesting. You can decision make around healing or dpsing with your gcds, shift your CDs around and compensate later, save runs with split second reactions, etc. If you play healer only once you, and others, are geared, then you have such a margin for error that you don't have to worry as much about having a tight healing plan and quick decision making because people just begin to live through mistakes. Especially since last tier, where they bumped up outgoing damage, healers actually have to heal when the raids first come out. Glancing at your logs, I only see a single run of the first 3 fights of the first tier on SGE, with mostly purple+pink parsers in the group, 2+ months after release of the tier. I'd say try progging a tier as a healer through savage, especially in PF as you mention, and see if that changes your mind on how engaging healer is.