History YMMV / FinalFantasyXIV

** A common complaint from newer players is the ''massive'' number of Main Scenario Quests required to unlock access to ''Heavensward''. This is not helped by how many of those quests involve lots of "[[FetchQuest go here, talk to this person]]", lots of "[[TwentyBearAsses go here, slay specific number of this monster]]", and/or long, exposition-heavy cutscenes. Yoshida admitted that putting ''Heavensward'' behind a gate that requires completing all 2.X content was a mistake, and was looking into making 4.0 not require similar conditions to unlock, but other than trimming some of the ''ARR'' quests with patch 5.3, no update to this was ever done, and reaching any given expansion requires you to complete all [=MSQs=] released before it. We are talking about over 100 hours of playtime, and that's ''if you skip all the cutscenes and all the dialogue''.

* BrokenBase: Even a game like ''XIV'' is not immune to the franchise's tradition of split opinions, as demonstrated below:
** Unfortunately, the game has the same problem that ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' does in that its abilities are spread over too long a period and it's getting worse each {{expansion|pack}}. This huge point of contention--why you see veterans and new players having completely different attitudes toward the game--really just boils down to new players experiencing everything in one go, whereas longtime players experience content bit by bit as it's released. If you're been playing since the 1.0 days or ARR's launch then you're probably a lot more fond of the game overall, having seen its growth firsthand. For what it's worth, the developers agree it's a slog: The reception towards 1.0 back in ''XIV'''s earlier days was so bad that many of the staff working on it were laid off, and Creator/SquareEnix had to make the game free to play in order to keep fans invested. Because of this, the game underwent an overhaul.
** Blue Mages, and by extension the entire concept of a Limited Job, has provided one. On one hand there are players thrilled with solo-centric Jobs being created, potentially breathing new life into old content and the open world areas and the opportunity to find new ways to break the content at the intended levels. On the other hand there are players that are angry that new Jobs they were looking forward to maining through the most current raid content at any given time may no longer have that opportunity, and dislike the concept of revisiting older content through any other means than unsynced groups that just steamroll the place for whatever may need farming, or even those who like the concept of a PurposelyOverpowered solo-centric Job but feel it's wasted in practice by locking so many of its abilities within dungeons and trials that require either massive overleveling, which hardly makes the class uniquely overpowered, or getting a party together and [[DistinctionWithoutADifference defeating the purpose of a solo-centric class]].
** Unskippable cutscenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium have remained a touchy subject ever since their inception in patch 4.2. Both dungeons have extended cutscenes, which set up the climax of the 2.0 questline of ''A Realm Reborn''. Originally, the cutscenes were skippable, which led to a MortonsFork problem for new players since veterans would invariably skip these cutscenes. The newbies could either watch the cutscenes and miss all the boss fights, or fight the enemies but miss all of the context and story beats. And since these dungeons are the climax of 2.0, this was not an easy decision to make. Eventually, Square Enix made it so that the cutscenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium were unskippable regardless of if you'd seen them before or not, so new players didn't have to choose between the story and the gameplay. Square Enix also increased the rewards from these two dungeons to compensate for the greater time investment. Even so, players still argue about whether or not the cutscenes should be skippable again. Those in favor of skippable cutscenes say that the cutscenes aren't that gripping, and that the dungeons are really tedious when you have to stop and watch a cutscene every few minutes. Those in favor of unskippable cutscenes say that it's the climax of the 2.0 story, and it's unfair for veterans to complain about something they aren't required to do (since doing the Main Scenario roulette is optional, so you technically only have to see the cutscenes once).
** ''The Forbidden Lands of Eureka'' has drawn particular ire from a rather large subset of the playerbase. One side views it as a boring, uninspired slog devoid of interesting quest objectives or a purpose beyond killing trash mobs with bloated HP pools. They are especially frustrated due to the highly coveted Relic weapons being relocated into it. Meanwhile, the other side enjoys an entire instance (four in total) dedicated to spawning what are essential open world-esque boss monsters that isn't bogged down by story interruption. Furthermore, they appreciate the relic being apart of new progression content in lieu of it being used as a way to entice players back into old content as with the previous two iterations. About the only consensus reached between the two sides is that Pagos, Eureka's second instance, was poorly implemented, as it attempted to restrict the "Nortorious Monster train" people had gotten used to in Anemos, yet also didn't provide any of the interesting alternatives later stages would add.
** The Dark Knight questline is often praised for humanizing the Warrior of Light by having them grapple with their traumatic experiences while tackling themes of self-love, the limits of responsibility, and the unintended consequences of their actions. But a significant portion of players dislike how it ascribes personality traits to the Warrior that may conflict with personal headcanons and ideas for how they want to interact with the story.
** The ''Stormblood'' Paladin questlines are seen by some as even further [[SeasonalRot degredation]], others actually appreciate that it takes you back to the Gladiator's Guild. For the most part, the beginning guild(s) become a non-entity after level 30 (around the time when the player gets the job crystal) so having them be more than just mere cameos actually did help give the impression time ''does'' pass.
** The introduction of the Hrothgar race has also divided fans. Many are those who like the idea of a PantheraAwesome race (with a subset of them who are ardent ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' fans being over the moon that they are essentially playable Ronso). Many are also those who were gravely disappointed at the fact that the race was included at the exclusion of male Viera. Hrothgars being gender-locked like Viera has also drawn many detractors. This particular issue mostly became moot, however, with the addition of male Viera in ''Endwalker'' and female Hrothgar coming with ''Dawntrail''. There are also those disappointed by the fact that Hrothgar and Viera are both incapable of wearing the vast majority of headgear, and that the devs have no apparent interest in fixing it considering they've gone a whole content cycle and even begun working on adding the other gender for both races while barely even acknowledging the headgear issue.
** [[spoiler:Gaius' redemption]] post-''Stormblood'', while initially very well received, has become considerably mixed in reception as of ''Shadowbringers''. Supporters were and continue to be ecstatic that [[spoiler:a beloved AntiVillain has returned to the setting in such a big way, and find his sections in the "Children of Welywrat" storyline very well written, citing that Gaius was always portrayed as a ALighterShadeOfBlack compared to other Garleans]]. Detractors claim that [[spoiler:it makes Gaius a complete KarmaHoudini, as regardless of him being an AntiVillain, he was still a firm supporter of Garlemald's brutal imperialism and was directly responsible for Ala Mhigo becoming the horrific hellhole it was in ''Stormblood'', and that while the new lore makes it easier to see him as an anti-villain, if he gets a relatively happy ending, it undermines his actions. The debate really flared up with the end of the Werlyt storyline, which saw Gaius working with the newly established government of the country he helped subjugate and the man who lost his entire family to his past actions as a Legatus explicitly forgiving him and calling him a friend albeit also sticking around to keep Gaius honest. While the game acknowledges his past and the Ala Mhigan's are implied to not fully trust him nor forgive him, it still caused a split over the idea if he was redeemed or not, and if it was deserved.]]
** Related the above, the story starting to portray Garleans as a whole in a more sympathetic and humanized way in ''Shadowbringers'' and especially ''Endwalker'' has been highly contentious. On one side, many players enjoyed seeing a deep dive into Garlean culture and examining the more fleshed out aspects of a faction that was originally one dimensionally villainous, and claim it makes sense since in ''Endwalker'', rather then dealing with high ranking Legati, you're mainly dealing with civilians and lower ranked soldiers who had no real say in Garlemald's crimes. It also helps that Jullus, one of the main focal point Garleans of the expansion, has proven [[EnsembleDarkhorse incredibly popular]]. On the other side, many players have expressed deep discomfort over how the story is suddenly asking them to sympathize with a faction that, up to this point, had been uniformly portrayed as being textbook fascists, especially after ''Stormblood'' went into great detail about just how brutally violent and oppressive Garlean conquest and occupation can be. A third faction believes that the ''execution'' was where it fell apart due to [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot Garlemald being reduced to only one zone]].
** The solo instance from the ''Endwalker'' quest "In From The Cold" has divided the player base cleanly in half between those who consider it ThatOneLevel and those who consider it a BestLevelEver. For context, [[spoiler:Zenos has used his echo power to transfer your soul into the body of a random Garlean soldier while Zenos possesses your body. He gives you a challenge to make your way across Garlemald in this unfamiliar and completely mediocre body to your allies before he reaches them in your body to attempt to kill them. For the instance itself, you have to sneak around the ruins of the Garlemald capital to repair a magitek mech to help blast your way through a horde of Garlean robots that you cannot take on yourself. And you do have to sneak around as all you have are rather weak gladiator skills and whatever medkits you can find to heal yourself with; you are only really capable of facing 1, maybe 2, possessed garleans at a time. Any more or getting the attention of a robot means certain death. Those who disliked the instance found it to be an extremely sudden difficulty spike that's dragged further down by the expansion's obsession with underbaked stealth mechanics. Those who enjoyed the instance found it to be a great instance of instilling tension in the player to match the Warrior of Light's, as we get to experience firsthand just how much more powerful the Warrior of Light really is than most people and how hobbled they are in a more mediocre body.]]
** The announcement that the relic weapons of ''Endwalker'' would be tied to the Hildibrand questline split the playerbase down the middle, which makes sense considering how divisive Hildibrand himself is. Those who enjoy his questlines are excited for the relic questline and excited that others will be more encouraged to do his questlines (as they are mandatory to start the relic). Those who dislike Hildibrand's brand of humor dislike that his questlines have become mandatory to access a major area of content for the expansion and that the relic questline will no doubt be like every other Hildibrand storyline.
** The way to progress the Relics also became contientous in part of the fanbase. It's significantly easier compared to previous Relic grinds, as a player only needs to spend the second-highest-level Tomestones of any given moment to get the items needed to create the weapons. On one side, players were glad that the Manderville weapons are significantly easier to grind out compared to older Relic weapons, and like that it gives utility to the uncapped Tomestones that otherwise they wouldn't have. On the other side, some players were [[ItsEasySoItSucks miffed at how easy they are to obtain]] and/or the lack of an interesting side-mode like Eureka and Bozja, claiming that grinding Tomestones is just a lazy way to force people to do old content rather than create new content.
** The Mentor system is a mixed bag among the playerbase. A Mentor is a player who has agreed to help people in the game by showing newbies the ropes, answering player questions, and generally acting as the gold standard of good player behavior. There's also the Mentor Roulette, which intentionally pairs Mentors who have done the normal and Extreme content in previous expansions with people who have been waiting the longest to queue up for something, and has its own unique rewards for doing it enough times. Those who like the Mentor system say that it gives players incentive to be nice, since you can only get it by earning enough player commendations (among other things), and that it's a good reward for players who are going out of their way to be helpful since it gives bonus EXP when paired with a newbie. There's also mounts that can't be obtained any way except doing a Mentor roulette enough times, and there's stories from players about Mentors who really were as helpful as they're supposed to be making them get hooked on the game. Those who dislike the system deride Mentors as unhelpful, rude, or even bad at the game, despite agreeing to be helpful as part of the deal. The latter group even coined the derisive nickname "Burger King crown" for Mentor icons, comparing it to something that makes people feel special without having to do anything special. There's a third group who don't mind the Mentor system in theory, but think it's flawed in practice. Mentors have to pass all of the Extreme raids from every expansion except the most recent one at any given point to open the Mentor roulette, which this group argues is a big sticking point against the system. Extreme raids are optional {{Superboss}}es which are designed to be very hard (and thus ''not'' newbie-friendly), those who queue up for Extreme raids generally do it through Party Finder instead of Duty Finder to give them more control, and most people just do older Extreme content unsynced anyways. Opinions among the playerbase vary wildly on both Mentor players and the system itself, with very little consensus on what (if anything) should be done about them.
** The game's changing of focus for boss "tells" -- indications as to what move the boss is going to use and/or where the attack will land -- is somewhat divisive. In ''A Realm Reborn'' and the majority of ''Heavensward'', most bosses used tells were just floor-markers that had several seconds of windup. Around ''Stormblood'', the focus changed to watching what the boss was casting and also what the boss itself was doing. As of ''Shadowbringers'', boss tells are often entirely visual, with the floor markers appearing when it's already too late to avoid getting hit. On one hand, it's seen by some players as an evolution of the gameplay, that it's a system the game teaches you in just the right amounts, and that it's better to make players keep their eyes on what they're doing rather than just the bottom half of the screen. Other players find the tells don't fully communicate what you have to do, requiring you to make educated guesses on how to dodge or just take the hit and learn the hard way. Combine this with server lag, client lag, netcode doing a poor job of explaining your position are compared to other players, the fact that attacks have a delay which [[GuideDangIt is not fully explained]], players who won't explain, and late-game fights to these players can be annoying. Either way, there's little overlap on how good the system of boss tells is, or what needs to be done about it.
** In general, the reception of ''Endwalker'' has been pretty split: on one end, some players consider it one of the best expansions in the game, while another part considers it mediocre or even downright bad. Commonly cited positive points are a satisfying, well-executed MSQ storyline, a well-received revamp of PVP, well-made raids, and interesting new jobs (including the first new healer added in six years), while detractors cite lackluster side content (specifically that cater to more hardcore players, such as a long relic grind), an increasing casualization of the game's systems and Job design, a plot that [[CosmicDeadline shows signs of being compressed]], and not feeling different enough from previous expansions to warrant the hype. Another, more middle-ground opinion thrown around is that while Endwalker did some things right and some of the contested side content DOES have some good ideas on display (such as the Island Sanctuary and Variant and Criterion Dungeons) they, and the expansion as a whole, didn't fulfill their potential the way these players hoped they would. This is also not going into the Post Endwalker interlude either...
** Speaking of Criterion Dungeons, pretty much everyone agreed that the rewards were not good -- especially for the HarderThanHard Savage version whose rewards barely counted as BraggingRightsReward -- which led to the content becoming abandoned quickly after release. This was due in large part to an odd combination of being too hard to be casual content done for fun, and too unrewarding to be hardcore content to be grinded out like Savage Raids. With all these factors working against it, the general playerbase has been expressing a need for fixes. What the playerbase ''is'' split on, however, is how exactly it should be fixed. A part of the playerbase say that it would only make sense for Criterion Dungeons to drop endgame level gear or at least upgrade materials for Tomestone gear - as unlike other optional content like Bozja, Eureka and Deep Dungeons, Item Level and gear DOES matter in Criterion - while another part of the playerbase fears that this would make Criterions feel "mandatory" to players to get better gear, and so they propose more casual rewards like glamour gear. With the release of the third Criterion Dungeon, Aloalo Island, a new reward was added that augments Tome weapons to 'Exquisite' versions the same level as the Savage-exclusive weapons and adds a fancy unique glow on each of them - BUT said reward is only available in the Savage mode of Criterion, which is considered by many to be ''harder'' than Savage raids and the equivalent of a mini-Ultimate, and you still need the Augmented tome weapon anyway to get the Exquisite version - which means that, unless you're waiting for the new expansion where Augmented weapons can get bought with Poetics, ''you'll still need to do Savage raids anyway to get them''. Said addition, predictably, did not go over well with a chunk of the playerbase. As an addendum, players who like Blue Mage were not particularly happy that the Exquisite version of the Blue Mage umbrella weapon is locked behind the Criterion Dungeon of Aloalo Island - AKA, content that Blue Mages currently ''can't do''.
** The "two-minute meta" unifies every class so that its strongest abilities are ready every 120 seconds, which has been a split on the gameplay side of things since ''Endwalker'' came out. In the "for" camp, these players argue that this focus on a two-minute burst makes the flow of combat easy to control by making sure everyone is using their most powerful moves when it will be the most effective. It also helps to add a bit more control and flow to the game's hardcore content, while also making the game's ever-precarious job balance much easier on the dev team by giving them something to focus on. On the "against" side, this same predictability is argued by these players as making the game too easy -- the rotation you use in this two-minute window has little to no variance, usually dependent on whether the job has randomization built in (such as a Dancer's moves getting the next one ready with a coin flip). As a result, the "against" side has complained that this focus on a two-minute burst makes high-end content boring.
** As of ''Shadowbringers'', Class/Job Quest storylines have been abandoned in favor of a combined "Role" series of quests. The players take various stances on it. Some lament their loss but acknowledge that it makes things easier for Square Enix, what with over ''20'' Jobs and counting, while others don't miss that Class Quests are gone -- different writers meant that the quality and investment in each quest could vary wildly from extremely high highs (Dark Knight being the shining example) to low lows that make them feel like mandatory slogs to get your Job Skills (Warrior and Paladin being the...opposite, to put it lightly), so condensing them down to five questlines means more time to run quality checks. On the against side, however, losing the Class Quest stories also makes some of the Jobs' power gains incredibly confusing in ways that if Class Quests had continued, they could have been explained better (with White Mage changing over from druidic earth and wind magic to purely light-aspected magic, along with Summoner's Demi-Phoenix and the level 90 Demi-Primals, as examples). A lot of people have also noted that, for the most part, ''Stormblood's'' Job Quests [[VindicatedByHistory were overall better than people criticized them for]], making it feel like the team gave up on them just before they found their groove with said quests. There's also some people who feel that the newer jobs should have a questline that spans the entire leveling experience.
** Final Fantasy XIV has a feature that scales your level and item level up and down (usually the former) whenever you're put in past duties. Proponents say that this lets you experience things "as they were" so to speak since putting you in a level 60 duty will scale your items and ability this way - it helps keep higher level players from overwhelming the content. Opponents view it as an annoyance for various reasons (see its entry on [[ScrappyMechanic/FinalFantasyXIV its page]]), and think its intended purpose of experiencing the content as it was when it was current is lost due to players overwhelming it anyway as well as the fact the game is changing anyway.

* LowTierLetdown: Dark Knight, at least on the [[PlayerVersusEnemy PvE]] side of things, has the misfortune of being viewed as the worst tank class/job, and the reasons for this are threefold:

* LowTierLetdown: Dark Knight, at least on the PvE side of things, has the misfortune of being viewed as the worst tank class/job, and the reasons for this are threefold:

* LowTierLetdown: Dark Knight has the misfortune of being viewed as the worst tank class/job, and the reasons for this are threefold:

** Dark Knight has an invulnerability that, in an almost ironic twist, straight up kills the user if they aren't healed back to full HP (though 6.1 would at least improve it). The Dark Knight also has two AntiMagic mitigation buffs that are hard to figure out the best opportunities for, since the game doesn't clarify which attacks count as magic damage. Patch 6.3 changed it so that attacks show if they're physical or magical, but this only comes after the damage has already been done (literally). What's worse, the Dark Knight has only two skills that restore their HP, one of which has a 60-second cooldown and shares a recast timer with a different ability, meaning that it's often unavailable, while the other is the third hit of their basic 1-2-3 combo, which makes it hard to use and doesn't even restore much HP when it lands. All of this means that Dark Knights are far squishier than they should be for a tank, and thus have to be focused on by healers in order to stay alive.

** Dark Knight is a GlassCannon when compared to fellow tanks, with the highest burst damage among them and putting out numbers comparable to melee DPS. However, with that power comes MP management. This means the Dark Knight has to rely on only two/three actions to get MP back, something the other tanks either don't have to worry about or just flat-out ignore -- the Paladin gets a good amount of skills that alleviate the MP burden that the Dark Knight doesn't have the luxury of, while the other two classes rely on their own resource (the Warrior's Fury and the Gunbreaker's Cartridges) without using MP at all.
** Dark Knight has an invulnerability that, in an almost ironic twist, straight up kills the user if they weren't healed back to full HP (though 6.1 would at least improve it). The Dark Knight also has two AntiMagic mitigation buffs that are hard to figure out the best opportunities for, since the game doesn't clarify which attacks count as magic damage. Patch 6.3 changed it so that attacks show if they're physical or magical, but this only comes after the damage has already been done (literally). What's worse, the Dark Knight has only two skills that restore their HP, one of which has a 60-second cooldown and shares a recast timer with a different move, meaning that it's often unavailable, while the other is the third hit of their basic 1-2-3 combo, which makes it hard to use and doesn't even restore much HP when it lands. All of this means that Dark Knights are far squishier than they should be for a tank, and thus have to be focused on by healers in order to stay alive.
** ''Endwalker'' especially had these issues on display -- Warrior became the go-to tank because of its absurdly good self-healing, Gunbreaker's damage and support abilities made it a good off-tank, and Paladin got more offensive tools and support for its magic. The Dark Knight got practically nothing in comparison, furthering its status as the worst tank job in the eyes of many players.

** On the [=PvE=] side of things, ever since ''Endwalker'' released, some players complained that Warrior was simply ''too good'' of a Tank - mainly due to its insane and frequent HP regeneration, its easy to learn moveset, and having the best Invulnerability action in the form of Holmgang, which has the shortest cooldown of all Invulnerability actions and pretty much none of the downsides. Pretty much the only thing that keeps Warrior from being too busted is that their DPS tends to be fairly low compared to the other Tanks - but even then, it's a minimal difference. Some mains of other Tanks like Paladins and Dark Knights also feel a non-insignificant dislike of Warrior due to the sensation that the developers are trying to make all ''other'' Tanks play more like Warrior in their moveset rather than letting the tanking Jobs have their own playstyle.

** The whole incident with Emmanellain in 3.2 can come across this way. [[spoiler:Emmanellain accidentally orders an unarmed woman shot, but it's undermined completely by the fact that the 'unarmed' woman had poisoned a dozen people including the Warrior of Light, was trying to restart a war, and was obviously not going to stand down any other way. It can be very hard to believe he was acting out of line in light of that. Also, as Emmanellain points out, he ordered his guards to "stop" the protestor, not "shoot" the protestor. While this is supposed to come off as splitting hairs, he kind of has a point that it's not what he meant.]] Notably, the Warrior of Light and Thancred take more issue with Emmanellain [[NeverMyFault refusing to admit responsibility]] for how the incident played out, but even this can be a bit difficult to accept since Emmanellain isn't really at fault for the situation going badly, especially since it was too quick and sudden for most people to be able to make the right call in the heat of the moment.

** A couple of times, someone from the Garlean Empire will challenge the heroes on why, if they claim to want peace, that they insist on waging war against the Empire. This is apparently supposed to be a solid critic, as the heroes invariably fail to provide a rebuttal and tend to agree the other person has a point. Yet the Garlean Empire is horrifically oppressive, as is shown many times throughout the game. And there being a significant gap between wanting peace and being willing to accept being conquered and enslaved by a tyrannical opposing force. Similarly, a Sharlayan official calls out Alphinaud and Alisaie on how they violated their homeland's principles of neutrality by fighting in the war, and asking what could be worth the blood they shed. The twins have no answer, and Alphinaud later remarks he's been struggling with the question for some time. The obvious answer of "I'm protecting the innocent, freeing slaves, and ending oppression" seemingly avoids him for the longest time.

** While each of the city-states face some sort of internal conflict, the most infamous of the trio falls on [[CrapsaccharineWorld Ul'dah]]. It becomes hard for a lot of players to sympathize with the nation when the Monetarists enforce a status quo of small handfuls of rich and wealthy at the expense of the majority, complete with [[DirtyCop paying off the Brass Blades]] and being willing to bankroll assassinations, enforced race riots, and other such crimes. Virtually every major character that voices an opinion ''hates'' the Monetarists, as does practically every refugee and citizen on the benevolent and/or poor ends of things. Once [[HateSink Teledji Adeledji]] is out of the picture [[spoiler:in his failed aftermath of trying to ''assassinate the Sultanate'']], the game then turns around, offers a weak HandWave that the others aren't ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards that bad]]'' and have the nation's best interests in mind, and [[KarmaHoudini moves on]]. It only becomes more bitter once Ul'dah [[CharacterFocus got most of the plot spotlight]] and generally shrugs off everything with the Monetarists as a necessary evil afterwards; even an EnsembleDarkhorse like Godbert, the sole TokenGoodTeammate of the group, becomes a BaseBreakingCharacter for some when he espouses their viewpoints and shuts down the Sultana completely as well. It's such a strange and stark dissonance with its own set up narrative that quite a few players theorize that the Ul'dah subplot was subject to some sort of ExecutiveMeddling, though that is entirely unconfirmed. This becomes even odder in contrast to Limsa Lominsa, whose biggest problematic political action (taking away land from the Kobolds and not keeping word on their pacts) actually ''is'' resolved rather well, with the game making it very clear that the Lominsans were in the wrong and owe the Kobolds reparations, and pretty much the only reason Merlwyb didn't do it sooner was because the Kobolds were too tempered by Titan to have diplomatic discussions with prior to the discovery of the cure to tempering.

** Dark Knight is a GlassCannon in comparison to fellow tanks, with the highest burst damage among them and putting out numbers comparable to melee DPS. However, with that power comes MP management. This means the Dark Knight has to rely on only two/three actions to get MP back, something the other tanks either don't have to worry about or just flat-out ignore -- the Paladin gets a good amount of skills that alleviate the MP burden while the Dark Knight doesn't have that luxury, while the other two classes rely on their own resource (the Warrior's Fury and the Gunbreaker's Cartridges) without using MP at all.

** ''Endwalker'' especially had these issues on display -- Warrior became the go-to tank because of its absurdly good self-healing, Gunbreaker's damage and support abilities made it a good off-tank, and Paladin got more offensive tools and support for its magic. The Dark Knight got practically nothing by comparison, furthering its status as the worst tank job in the eyes of many players.

** While Dark Knight has a mixed reception, the class' invulnerability skill Living Dead was widely considered to be the worst one compared to the other three tanks, due to the mechanics missing the mark on being, well, invulnerable. It requires a healer to do double time on healing (barring a quick patch-up from a White Mage's Benediction) to ensure they don't die in the next ten seconds when under the Walking Dead status. It was eventually given a massive buff by giving a massive LifeDrain trait while under Walking Dead, allowing the Dark Knight to self-sustain themselves. Additionally, if Walking Dead is successfully healed off, it turns into Undead Rebirth, which relieves the healing stress requirement. What used to be a terrible skill became a powerful HeroicSecondWind that rivals the Warrior's Holmgang, allowing Dark knights to face death with impunity and live through it.

** In-universe with Brayflox Alltalks, the goblin landowner of Brayflox's Longstop. In the second boss fight, she shows up being chased by a drake that you need to save her from. The drake itself is only a bit less durable than the boss and has a very damaging fireball, but after you kill it Brayflox decides to "help" you fight the boss by detonating bombs (that hurt you) and taunting the boss, then running behind one of the party members so it will target them with its fire breath. A later patch fixed this so that her bombs no longer harmed the players. Averted in the hard mode version of the dungeon where Brayflox hangs back and doesn't get involved with the battles.

* EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: Zig-Zagged. A sizeable percentage of the playerbase doesn't really care about the "Side content" and just treat the game as a largely solo experience with DropInMultiplayer. This has caused some CasualCompetitiveConflict.

** Averted with the Drowned City of Skalla boss, Kelpie. Two of its abilities, Hydro Pull and Hydro Push, would do the opposite of what they said. At first this was believed by the player base to be a reference to the way the creature would trick humans. In realty, it was a translation error and fixed soon after.

* HighTierScrappy: On the Crystalline Conflict side of things there's a couple of classes that are a thorn to many players' side.
** The Warrior is a force of nature in the battle field thanks to packing tons of damage and HP. They also have it a little too easy when getting into the fray, with Primal Rend essentially giving them a nigh-guaranteed safe entry by inflicting Stun to their target and anyone unfortunate to get caught. Since they're also not taking damage for the two seconds given, they're getting free shots on the competition with their abilities scaling from their HP. If you think you can just outrun them, then joke's on you if they dare to use "Blota" to drag you back in, giving you Heavy for good measure. It takes a lot to make them fall, and by the time you're done ganging up on one, you're running dry on abilities to keep fighting. Bloodwhetting, the class's key ability, ended up getting a nerf to reel in some of the Warrior's extreme bulk. Their presence has evened out over time due to players refining counter-strategies, but a good Warrior can still be a pain to deal with.
** The White Mage, while on the fragile side, brings much-wanted survival to a group if you leave them alone. Their powerful burst heal and damage playstyle carries over, and effectively have a third healing charge, thanks to Seraph Strike granting them Cure III. They also have the extremely powerful Miracle of Nature, which is the only status that can't be cured by ''anything''; it can only be blocked with Guard. They can effectively shut down any person they please because of that. The most damning ability of the kit, however, is their Limit Break, Afflatus Purgation, a 30-yalm laser that inflicts a ton of damage and a 3-second Stun. With good timing, it can easily stop the team's momentum cold and lead to a TotalPartyKill that can't be prevented. The class got hit with some nerfs in 6.11, reducing the stun down to 2 seconds and a potency drop for Afflatus Misery, and later a nerf to Miracle of Nature by lowering its range, forcing the White Mage to get in the thick of combat to use it. Much like Warrior, its presence has waned over time, but its power is not to be underestimated.
** Paladin is a menace to deal with not because of damage, but for the utilities that make them indestructible. Confiteor marks affected enemies with a debuff that heals the user when attacked, and Guardian allows them to jump in and Cover an ally, allowing them to save a critical party member from death. Capping off the kit is their Limit Break "Phalanx" which grants them Hallowed Ground's invulnerability and a powerful defensive buff to their party members, making them harder to kill. What little damage they do is made up for being next to impossible to kill without dogpiling them, and they can share that bulk with their allies, suddenly stopping an all-out assault cold.

** The game's changing of focus for boss "tells" -- indications as to what move the boss is going to use and/or where the attack will land -- is somewhat divisive. In ''A Realm Reborn'' and the majority of ''Heavensward'', most bosses used tells were just floor-markers that had several seconds of windup. Around ''Stormblood'', the focus changed to watching what the boss was casting and also what the boss itself was doing. As of ''Shadowbringers'', boss tells are often entirely visual, with the floor markers appearing when it's already too late to avoid getting hit. On one hand, it's seen by some players as an evolution of the gameplay, that it's a system the game teaches you in just the right amounts, and that it's better to make players keep their eyes on what they're doing rather than just the bottom half of the screen. Other players find the tells don't fully communicate what you have to do, requiring you to make educated guesses on how to dodge or just take the hit and learn the hard way. Combine this with server lag, netcode doing a poor job of explaining your position are compared to other players, the fact that attacks have a delay which [[GuideDangIt is not fully explained]], players who won't explain, and late-game fights to these players can be annoying. Either way, there's little overlap on how good the system of boss tells is, or what needs to be done about it.

** Final Fantasy XIV has a feature that scales your level and item level up and down (usually the former) whenever you're put in past duties. Proponents say that this lets you experience things "as they were" so to speak since putting you in a level 60 duty will scale your items and ability this way - it helps keep higher level players from overwhelming the content. Opponents view it as an annoyance for various reasons, and see it as somewhat of a ScrappyMechanic.

** As of ''Shadowbringers'', Class/Job Quest storylines have been abandoned in favor of a combined "Role" series of quests. The players take various stances on it. Some lament their loss but acknowledge that it makes things easier for Square Enix, what with over ''20'' Jobs and counting, while others don't miss that Class Quests are gone -- different writers meant that the quality and investment in each quest could vary wildly from extremely high highs (Dark Knight being the shining example) to low lows that make them feel like mandatory slogs to get your Job Skills (Warrior and Paladin being the...opposite, to put it lightly), so condensing them down to five questlines means more time to run quality checks. On the against side, however, losing the Class Quest stories also makes some of the Jobs' power gains incredibly confusing in ways that if Class Quests had continued, they could have been explained better (with White Mage changing over from druidic earth and wind magic to purely light-aspected magic, along with Summoner's Demi-Phoenix and the level 90 Demi-Primals, as examples). A lot of people have also noted that, for the most part, ''Stormblood's'' Job Quests [[VindicatedByHistory were overall better than people criticized them for]], making it feel like the team gave up on them just before they found their groove with said quests.

** While the balance of endgame content is generally pretty good these days, this issue nearly killed the competitive raiding scene all the way back in 3.0 with the first wing of Alexander. The Developers ''heavily'' overestimated the player base's preparedness for Savage Gordias and were still feeling out how they wanted to handle the difficulty of Savage compared to Normal. The result was a brutal, unforgiving, slip-up-and-die mechanically intense mess of boss fights (especially [[ThatOneBoss Living Liquid]]) that filtered out hundreds of prospective hardcore raiders. Yoshi-P and the Dev team actually had to apologize after they realized how unfun-difficult wing 3 and 4 were on Savage and made sure to test the balance and look closer at the mechanics for Savage raids much more closely from then on out.
** This also did some damage in 6.3 with the end of the Eighth Circle of Pandaemonium Savage. While the fight's mechanics were perfectly sensible once you solved the PuzzleBoss elements, it turned out that the team's internal raid testers were ''too good'' at doing Savage content and heavily misread how much damage your average savage party would be doing while still trying to get their first few clears. This resulted in the Savage-only BonusBoss phase being such a tight DPS check that there were some group compositions that [[UnwinnableByMistake legitimately couldn't muster the DPS to clear it no matter how hard they tried]], a very bad thing to have in a game that generally thrives in having every class be competitive enough to be taken along for high-end content, this led to another apology from Yoshi-P and the team and massive HP nerf to the final boss, with a promise they'd be a little better about properly gauging the outgoing damage of a party while progressing.

* ItsEasySoItSucks: Many veterans of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' and legacy players from 1.0 see ''Final Fantasy XIV'' as too easy and that a lack of punishment for failure is unappealing. People also see the hard mode dungeons as pathetically easy, despite the fact that said dungeons were designed for people who just finished the main story line and weren't made for people who have the best gear. Old content that have their difficulty reduced to allow new or struggling players to catch up are also seen as promoting bad players in the eyes of the more hardcore players. During the 2014 fan fest, WordOfGod stated that 2.0 was made easy on purpose since they were catering towards people who never played an MMORPG before. They also stated that with the level cap being raised to 60 when 3.0 launched, there will be increased danger and difficulty since the training wheels are now off.