Since the portrait addition, having a good-looking character and cool/fun portrait are the best ways to farm commendations. I actually like that, because when playing an MMO expressing myself is more fun to me than the gameplay.

Not that I can talk. I main healer, so I've got nearly twice as many comms as I have instances run.

One of the things I greatly disliked about reddit was the hivemind that formed a couple years after it launched, which has only gotten worse as time passed. Anywhere posts and comments are driven by upvote or engagement algorithms is going to create an echo chamber, but I was curious to see if the decentralized aspect of this place might tone that down a bit. It's hard to tell right now because my feed is filled with some of the most indignant, extremist people from other platforms who are here as a form of protest.

Feature-wise, this place is functional and not too hard to navigate, but finding and subscribing to communities was pretty confusing and it's lacking a lot of QoL stuff that reddit has. I don't expect it to be a 1:1 clone but I sure would like notifications when someone responds to one of my posts. Or maybe the notifications just aren't working properly for me? I dunno.

I think feats are one of the coolest aspects of D&D character customization, so it's always a pain when it's stifled in favor of number-go-up. Depending on how high I plan to go, I give my players a feat every level or every other level. They end up with more than they know what to do with and end up taking RP feats, which are sorely underutilized because of the opportunity cost of obtaining them.

Yes, the PCs get more powerful, but that just means I rebalance enemies.

I'm hoping for a few more details regarding the lighting update and QoL changes. They said they're working on implementing features from popular 3rd-party add-ons, and I know thousands of console players would absolutely go nuts with hype if they announce that they're even considering implementing chat bubbles.

This would be awesome, but I can't imagine it happening due to the ripple effects of some players controlling a separate character in the narrative. Old content wouldn't make sense and new content would have to create multiple instances of dialogue any time a relationship or past event is mentioned with the player. I don't think it's impossible, but it does limit what they can do and adds more work to the pile.

But if they did do it, I would love it if veteran players got a prompt to recreate their character (as if using a fantasia) and then when they went to meet with the scions, Derplander would be their old WoL.

It feels like it's been so much longer. A lot has happened in both real life and the game since then.

Shadowbringers was my favorite narrative experience in any game I've ever played. The music, the lore, the characters. I've never cried more in a single day than I did during patch 5.3. It was a really special experience.

With any luck, some decent rewards and a little more balanced difficulty. I enjoyed the Variant Dungeon but there was really no reason to come back after you cleared the endings. I stepped into the Criterion version and got railed by the first boss pretty hard too. I didn't expect such a massive difficulty spike, and that wasn't even the Savage version. It would be nice if there was a glamour set and a hairstyle in there, or even a lootbox system like PotD.

Knockouts. It's a very simple rule. If you successfully sneak up on a creature and successfully hit them with an attack that deals bludgeoning damage, they need to pass a con save with a DC equal to 10 or half the damage dealt (whichever is higher) or they immediately fall unconscious. I feel like 5e doesn't really encourage stealth enough otherwise, and this way players have a decent way to pick off sentries and such before raiding a camp.

In theory you could do assassinations with a similar rule, but I haven't tried it out in a campaign.

The story is the main draw, and worth experiencing IMO, even if it takes forever to get going, but it's still a good MMO. I don't know if I'd call it "the best of all time," but I've enjoyed my time with it. The reason I keep my sub between story patches is because I like hanging out with friends and being in the world, which is what an MMO is all about.

I don't really have the time or interest for the super challenging content it offers, but I level jobs, I do treasure hunts with friends, I do Deep Dungeon, I obtain cool outfits, and I hang out at a friend's RP bar.

Like any game, though, it's not for everyone. If you like tab-target MMOs, WoW has better combat I think.

Yeah, the base class/job stone system is kind of pointless now. The fact that you even have to equip your job stone doesn't make sense anymore, with the exception of Arcanist, but hopefully some day SMN and SCH will be separated.

Last time I said this people pushed back a lot, but personally I just want level sync to scale down your damage/healing potencies instead of removing skills. Maybe make it an optional tick in the duty finder and call it potency sync. Slowly learning skills as you level is nice to help you get accustomed to the job, but once you've been level 90 for a year it's really hard to do Sastasha in leveling roulette without falling asleep. Having all this extra utility would hurt the balance of older dungeons, but older dungeons are already unbalanced so I don't think it's a very strong arguement.

Treasure Hunts are awesome, and you can seriously make bank doing them. The RNG keeps things interesting, and there's a lot of moments of hype. I don't have a lot of time to play these days, but when I do, I'm always down for some maps.

I think it's a fine way to balance combat. Utility outside of combat should be, I think, considered entirely separately. Even if you can be the most useful, active character in the party in an RP scenario, being ineffective in combat just straight-up sucks. So I don't think out-of-combat utility is something that should be considered when balancing classes.

That's not to say that I think the out-of-combat utility balance should be ignored, just that it should be considered distinct.

I doubt they'll rework MSQ. It was an intentional design decision to make MSQ extremely accessible to people new to MMOs. It's not until level 30 or so that dungeons and trials begin to present challenges, and even then it's generally very easy until max level. FFXIV is a story-driven game, and the MSQ is the vessel for that. Gameplay really only exists in MSQ to teach you the very basics and get you from point A to point B. Any content that's required to progress isn't going to ask much of the player.

The real challenge is in the optional content. Extreme trials and savage raids can be very difficult, especially on release. You'll generally need a preformed group to communicate for these, or all know the strategies beforehand. Extreme Trials tend to take a few hours to learn and clear blind. Savage raids can take anywhere from hours to weeks. Then there's Ultimates, which are some of the most difficult content in all of MMOs. These can take months of dedicated effort to clear.

As you progress, you can unlock side content every 10 levels from 50 onward. If you're looking for a challenge, that's where you'll find it.

For some reason the notification bell icon is only appearing after I check my inbox and see the message. Then I hit the bell and it tells me there's nothing new because I already read it. If it's working for you maybe it'll just sort itself out. I'm using the Connect app, by the way.

I've been playing on and off very casually since 2.0. These days I pretty much just log on after new patch releases to do the content. Between them, I ocassionally hop on to mess with glamours, run dailies, and chat with the FC mates who aren't in Discord.

My wife and I actually met through this game back in 2016, so it's got a special place in my heart.

I feel like this is the main reason they've been homogenizing tanks/healers and unifying burst timers. They feel compelled to add multiple new jobs every expansion, and this makes it much simpler to design and balance them. That said, I'd prefer seeing few unique jobs over many samey ones.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but personally I disliked the other relic grinds so much I never finished a weapon. I can just run the content I want with this one, so it's the only relic I've been able to stay current with.

I think I'd prefer it to be kind of Wonderous Tails-esque though, where it guides you into a broad selection of content.