History FinalFantasyXIV / TropesPToR

* PlayEveryDay: There are several mechanics which reset each day -- duty roulettes mostly, but also beast tribes and certain other repeatable quests, Grand Company missions, the Mini Cactpot at the Gold Saucer, and the like. There are more mechanics which reset each ''week'' -- raid rewards, tomestone caps, a different set of repeatable quests, Wondrous Tails, the Challenge Log, Fashion Report, and others. However, the developers have largely gone out of their way to avert this, as they don't want players to feel like they "have to" log in and play every single day, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/517ql0/a_player_asks_on_how_to_maintain_motivation_and/ as confirmed by Yoshi-P in interviews]]. It's not that there'd nothing to do every day; it's that the development team doesn't want the game to be a chore.

* PurelyAestheticGender: The Warrior of Light can be either male or female, and it will have no effect on their stats whatsoever. Although races have a few (negligible) points of difference in starting stats, there is no stat difference at all between genders. There's a few pieces of cosmetic gear that can only be worn by men and some that can only be worn by women, but these are all at Level 1 and only for the purpose of glamours. And later patches have removed the gender lock on many of these.

* ParrotPetPosition: Certain minions, namely the the ones that are [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter adorable animals]], will sometimes take up this position on player characters' shoulders. On the tiny Lalafells, they become [[HeadPet Head Pets]].

* PlayEveryDay: There are several mechanics which reset each day -- duty roulettes mostly, but also beast tribes and certain other repeatable quests, Grand Company missions, the Mini Cactpot at the Gold Saucer, and the like. There are more mechanics which reset each ''week'' -- raid rewards, tomestone caps, a different set of repeatable quests, Wondrous Tails, the Challenge Log, Fashion Report...

* RealMoneyTrade: It exists, but only through third-party websites, and Square Enix is not happy about it. Simply put, if you're caught using one of these services, you're out of the game.

** As of ''Endwalker'' (6.0), you can skip some of this, getting instantly to level 80 in a job and doing all the content up to the end of ''Shadowbringers''. The only thing is, it costs $50 as of the time of writing to buy the requisite items in the Square Enix store (one levelling item and one story item). And you've still then got to go through a fair chunk of the story to unlock Radz-at-Han, which will involve levelling to around level 86. While this could be done in a week, there is still the fact you've spent $50 and needed to grind for about a week to get access to both ''Endwalker'' cities (Sharlayan and Radz-at-Han). This is a nothing to a real player, but an RMT seller has to grind and sell around 20 to 50 million gil to break even for this money/time investment. So RMT spam in the expansion zones is as unheard of now as it was in ''Heavensward'', a ban on any account that's had this done puts the RMT seller back considerably.

** Square-Enix has done a commendable amount to [[AntiRageQuitting top rage quitting in this game]]. Players new to an instance, who might require some instruction and/or get the party killed, bring with them a bonus to completing the instance. Also, an instance cannot be abandoned until 15 minutes have passed, anyone that quits in the middle of a quest will get slapped with a 30-minute timeout preventing them from joining anything else, and fights against some bosses have a mechanism called the 'Echo' which boosts stats for every failed attempt.

* RealMoneyTrade:
** The highly controversial lack of an Auction House in 1.0 was supposedly to combat the [=RMTs=] that plagued ''FFXI'', but as some on forums put it, it threw the baby out with the bath water. Note that [=RMTs=] are still in the game even without the Auction House. Of note, however, the Special Task Force [[strike:[[FunWithAcronyms Unit]]]] that went to town on the [=RMTers=] back in ''FFXI'' (albeit a bit late) are back in force. Also, in a testament to ''someone's'' stupidity, the RMT crowd were actually attempting to sell gil made during the ''open beta''. You know, after Square-Enix had stated categorically that characters and their possessions would '''not be carried over to the retail version of the game.'''
** In ''A Realm Reborn'' (2.0), they changed the Market Wards, to the Market Boards to the game. And yet frustratingly the RMT companies keep coming up with new ways to be obnoxious or to get around filters of the Special Task Force. There have been at least four companies with bots who shout, yell and even sent tells like in [=FF11=]. Amongst their latest tricks a year after relaunch, is to send friend requests to players they send tells to, to either trick the player in adding them as a friend, or just add more step of having to decline the request before being able to blacklist them. What's worse is that the blacklist function has a cap of two-hundred names, which can easily be filled up depending on how much travelling a player does, and while the player can freely delete the older RMT names from their list several weeks latter, is still tedious, and required to open up space to black list new ones. About every two weeks the STF puts out a post informing they just banned several thousand accounts or characters tied to RMT activity, and the [=RMTs=] still keep showing up.
** ''Heavensward'' (3.0) has a fairly steep requirement just to access the new city (Ishgard) and the new player hub (Idyllshire) - a player has to level to 50 then do all the storyline quests up to and including those released in 2.5. For a genuine player this is simply a matter of time, but for those creating characters for the purpose of advertising RMT it is a serious hurdle, as losing an account wipes out at least a month of work to get to Ishgard/Idyllshire that's difficult, if not impossible, to automate. For this reason RMT advertising in the Heavensward zones is unheard of, and generally is only found in the starter cities - where only new players reside who have no idea whether 4 dollars is a good price for 1 million gil, or why they would want 1 million gil. All of the players who might actually have a use for that magnitude of in-game money very rarely find themselves in the places where the RMT advertisers are.
** As of patch 3.4, RMT spam has gone way down, largely from Square-Enix adding a proper report button, accessed by right-clicking the offending person's name in chat. Whereas previously, reporting RMT involved writing the trader's name, the message they sent, and the world you are in into a support form that was hidden away in the support desk window. Many weren't aware that it was even possible, and those that did never bothered since it was incredibly tedious, often taking long enough that you'd get more spam while you were typing everything down.

** Square-Enix has done a commendable amount to stop rage quitting in this game. Players new to an instance (i.e. who might require some instruction and/or get the party killed) bring with them a bonus to completing the instance, an instance cannot be abandoned until 15 minutes have been spent in it (to stop one failure causing a sudden exit), the 30 minute penalty mentioned below applies (to stop players leaving to 'game' the instances to find a party they like) and fights against the primals have a mechanism called the 'echo' which boosts stats for every failed attempt at killing the primal (even where this would be a plot hole - see the above entry on plot holes).
** Rage quitting is also quite common in the game after a few failed runs in an instance. Anyone that quits in the middle of an organized quest (ones requiring a party) will get slapped with a 30 minute timeout, preventing them from joining any other instance. Party leaders are immune to the penalty.

* PacifismIsCowardice: Sharlayan has an extremely strict non-interventionist policy, its leaders declaring that the nation will only record history, not make it. This continuously baffles the Eorzean Alliance as time goes on.

-->'''Louisoix:''' To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom--it is indolence.

** As of ''Endwalker'' (6.0), you can skip some of this, getting instantly to level 80 in a job and doing all the content up to the end of ''Shadowbringers''. The only thing is, it costs $86 as of the time of writing to buy the requisite five items in the Square Enix store (one levelling item and four story items). And you've still then got to go through a fair chunk of the story to unlock Radz-at-Han, which will involve levelling to around level 86. While this could be done in a week, there is still the fact you've spent $86 and needed to grind for about a week to get access to both ''Endwalker'' cities (Sharlayan and Radz-at-Han). This is a nothing to a real player, but an RMT seller has to grind and sell around 20 to 50 million gil to break even for this money/time investment. So RMT spam in the expansion zones is as unheard of now as it was in ''Heavensward'', a ban on any account that's had this done puts the RMT seller back considerably.

* PunchClockVillain: There's a Garlean soldier who doesn't want to fight you and says he was forced to join the the empire by his mother so that he could make something of himself like father instead of sitting at home playing cards all day. Naturally, the soldier is happy to play cards with you if you decide to challenge him. Similarly, there's another soldier who is so bored by his job with the empire that he'll also be happy to play a card game with you, but he'll refuse to play when it's not the right time, saying that his commanding officer could be watching him.

* RareRandomDrop: All over the place, especially in higher-end content. Cosmetic items like mounts and minions are particularly coveted, as many aren’t guaranteed to drop every dungeon/trial run, and only one player will win the roll if they do.

* RiddleForTheAges: The final area of ''Endwalker'' raises the question of [[spoiler:what in the worlds happened to the denizens of Ostrakon Hena, called "The Nekropolis" -- the place appears to have been a thriving bar or cafe, and every sign shows that it was well-populated, but when Meteion found it, it was completely empty, with not even spirits or corpses left behind, and there's not a scrap of evidence explaining what happened in between]].

** In Heavensward (3.0), the new Jobs, Dark Knight, Astrologian, and Machinist start at level 30 and require players to complete the entire ''A Realm Reborn'' storyline from base game to Patch 2.55 to unlock.
** In ''Stormblood'', the Jobs, Samurai and Red Mage, both start at a high level 50. However, unlike the Heavensward Jobs, the trainers are in Eorzea proper, and you're capable of becoming them as soon as you finish the Praetorium. A later patch also adds Blue Mage as a "limited class".

** The trend continues with ''Endwalker'' and the level 70 starting Sage and Reaper. Sage does play with it just a little bit though; it ''starts'' in Limsa, but its job trainer eventually sets up base in Idyllshire.

* The second boss of Bardam's Mettle puts you under an "Out of the Action" debuff that makes it so you can't attack and can't cast spells. All you can do is dodge. Getting hit the by boss's attacks also doesn't subtract your HP. However, if you get hit twice in any of the three sections, you fail and get bound in place. If the entire party fails a section, you have to start over.

* PuzzleBoss: While many bosses can be beaten with a good old fashioned smackdown, other bosses require methods beyond whacking them with swords over and over again. One example is the fight against Diabolos, whose ultimate attack can almost instantly knock out anyone who gets caught unless the party can manipulate the correct pair of doors that will let them avoid the attack.