History ScrappyMechanic / FinalFantasy

* Hard Mode being locked being New Game+ was seen as a very questionable design choice for a good chunk of players, as it essentially forces players who want an actual challenge to play the game over again. Games like ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'' can get away with this due to being relatively short and built on being replayable - this game, a 30+ hours story driven and fairly linear RPG, is very much ''not''.

* Quina's "Eat" ability. It instantly kills the enemy and possibly earns Quina a new ability, however it will only work if the enemy is at 1/4 of its health, a rather small window. Oftentimes whittling down the enemy's health will result in accidentally killing it. It doesn't help that a lot of the powers can be collected from enemies when you first meet Quina, meaning you don't yet have Scan to determine how much health they have left, only figuring out when he/she says "I no can eat until it's weaker!". Luckily, a Blue Magic skill Quina learns (Matra Magic) is a HPToOne move, but it comes with its own problems, as its accuracy, while not bad enough to make it unusable, doesn't guarantee a hit, and it means Quina (a party member that, by default, is as fast as [[MightyGlacier Steiner]]) needs extra turns to attempt to hit Matra Magic, and once it hits, one more to Eat the enemy.

* Due to the player having no direct control over the party's movements, the characters tend to either stray too far from the enemy when using melee abilities, huddle too close to their allies, or worse the Sentinel working to lure enemy attacks, and inadvertently get caught within the enemy's area-of-effect attacks.

* Having to give up a Relic slot on one character for the Sprint Shoes that allow you to move at a non-glacial pace on the map. At least you have double the amount of available slots compared to ''Final Fantasy V''. The Playstation release just gave you the ability to sprint by holding a button, but since this rendered the Sprint Shoes TheArtifact, given how using the button makes the shoes redundant at best and completely useless at worst, it was reverted in later remakes. The Pixel Remaster decides to marry both the Sprint Shoes and sprint ability, allowing you to go ''extremely'' (though uncontrollably) fast.

* Having to give up a Relic slot on one character for the Sprint Shoes that allow you to move at a non-glacial pace on the map. At least you have double the amount of available slots compared to ''Final Fantasy V''. The Playstation release just gave you the ability to sprint by holding a button, but since [[TheArtifact this rendered the Sprint Shoes completely useless]], it was reverted in later remakes. The Pixel Remaster decides to marry both the Sprint Shoes and sprint ability, allowing you to go ''extremely'' (though uncontrollably) fast.

* Having to give up a Relic slot on one character for the Sprint Shoes that allow you to move at a non-glacial pace on the map. At least you have double the amount of available slots compared to ''Final Fantasy V''. The Playstation release just gave you the ability to sprint by holding a button, but since [[MortonsFork this rendered the Sprint Shoes completely useless]], it was reverted in later remakes. The Pixel Remaster decides to marry both the Sprint Shoes and sprint ability, allowing you to go ''extremely'' (though uncontrollably) fast.

* Each character have their own casting or attacking animation, and all of them are variable by the speed of their animations. Because time is essentially the most important factor in battle, slow characters like Sazh or Vanille can take too much time gesticulating on the spot before casting her spell, which makes them vulnerable to being interrupted by an enemy attack.

* Similarly the AI handling the buffing (synergist) and debuffing (Saboteur) roles will cast until their full selection of buffs/debuffs are cast, then sit around and do nothing. What it should do is start recasting already cast spells to refersh their duration. This grealy limits the ability of either role in the hands of an AI:
** For synergists this means that you will have to deal with your buffs wearing off multuple times during a boss fight. While simply annoying for offensive buffs it's downright deadly for defensive buffs, as being hit with a bosses hardest ability during the period that your defensive buffs are down can lead to an instant game over, meaining an AI synergist is basically signing up for LuckBasedMission for any boss fight.

* Customization earns quite some flak for three reasons. First, money is exceptionally hard to obtain, as battles do not drop Gil and the best drops to sell are usually held by really strong monsters, making Weapon customization difficult to do as it requires a lot of money. Second, its system of balancing [=EXP=] Multiplier and points is rather convoluted. Third, [[GuideDangIt nothing in the game hints at the target time for battles being lowered the higher upgraded your weapon is]]. So the player can inadverdently shoot themselves in the foot by making great weapons, but not finishing battles soon enough to get 5 Stars, which results in better upgrade material being dropped.

** Gau's Rage ability is quite possibly the worst character-specific mechanic in the entire ''Final Fantasy'' series. Rages can be powerful when used correctly, and a few builds in certain situations can make Gau into a force to be reckoned with. But using Rages effectively is GuideDangIt incarnate. It's frustrating to get access to, frustrating to expand, and frustrating to use.

*** Finally, you don't have much access to the Veldt. Unless you go out of your way after leaving Narshe to return there (via a long walk across the Overworld and through previous dungeons), you won't get access again until you get the airship, which you lose after the next storyline dungeon until the end of the World of Balance. And then in the World of Ruin, its non-linear nature means you'll have to keep revisiting the Veldt to learn new Rages for Gau, going back into the boredom of finding specific enemies for him to Rage. By the time there's anything worth learning on the World of Ruin's Veldt, you've likely defeated over a hundred different enemies, so finding a specific enemy to Leap onto may take literal days of searching. Plus, all your other party members are powerhouses who can hit the damage cap with spells or their unique skills by the time you can grind for Rages on the Veldt, and they don't need to enter a Berserk state to do it. Outside of the few situations where a player has no choice but to use Gau, few players bother putting him in their party, as multiple other characters are not only just as powerful, but far more predictable.

** Gau's Rage ability is the worst character-specific mechanic in the game, and quite possibly the worst in the entire ''Final Fantasy'' series. Rages can be powerful when used correctly, but doing so is GuideDangIt incarnate.
*** Acquiring Rages means fighting on the Veldt, where you can encounter almost every enemy you've met thus far, including some boss enemies. Having Gau "Leap" at the enemy ends the battle, and then you need to continuing fighting on the Veldt until Gau randomly reappears and rejoins, now knowing the Rages of the enemies in the party when he first used Leap and when he returned. This means a lot of fighting enemies from across the game over and over until one appears whose Rage you want to learn, then fighting more enemies until Gau returns. To add insult to injury, while you'll earn money and magic points on the Veldt, you don't earn XP, so you don't even get to do some LevelGrinding.
*** Using the Rages runs into another set of annoyances. [[TheBerserker Gau becomes uncontrollable when he uses a Rage]] until the battle ends or he is KO'd. Every turn, he randomly uses the Attack command, or a unique command. What each Rage does is never explained in-game, so to know what each one can do, you need a guide or to start keeping track yourself. There's also no rhyme or reason to it -- the Stray Cat, an unremarkable normal enemy, uses a powerful physical attack. But the Intangir, a very powerful Behemoth palette swap, instantly KO's Gau to heal a party member. Even if you do know what abilities each enemy will give, Gau will only use Attack and his unique skill every turn for the rest of the battle, and there's no way to snap him out of it besides knocking him out. Need him to do something else, like an emergency heal or Phoenix Down? Tough luck.
*** Finally, you don't have much access to the Veldt. Unless you go out of your way after leaving Narshe to return there (via a long walk across the Overworld and through previous dungeons), you won't get access again until you get the airship, which you lose after the next storyline dungeon until the end of the World of Balance. And then in the World of Ruin, its non-linear nature means you'll have to keep revisiting the Veldt to learn new Rages for Gau, going back into the boredom of finding specific enemies for him to Rage. By this point, you've likely defeated well over a hundred different types of enemies, so finding a specific enemy to Leap onto may take literal days of searching before you find it. Plus, all your other party members are powerhouses who can hit the damage cap with spells or their unique skills by the time you can grind for Rages on the Veldt, and they don't need to enter a Berserk state to do it. This leaves Gau without much to do unless the player has no choice but to use him, as multiple other characters are not only more powerful, but more predictable.

** Gau's Rages are quite possibly the worst designed mechanic in the game. Sure, it ''can'' be extremely powerful when used correctly, but doing so is practically GuideDangIt incarnate. It's no wonder that Gau ends up as a LowTierLetdown, [[BrokenBase for some at least]], because of it.
*** Acquiring the Rages means fighting on the Veldt, where you can encounter almost every enemy you've met thus far, including some boss enemies. Having Gau "Leap" at them ends the battle, and then you need to continuing fighting on the Veldt until he randomly reappears and rejoins, now knowing the Rages of the enemies in the party when he first used Leap and when he returned. This means a lot of fighting enemies from across the game over and over until one appears whose Rage you want to learn, then fighting more enemies until Gau returns. To add insult to injury, while you'll earn money and magic points on the Veldt, you don't earn experience, so you don't even get to level grind.
*** Learning Gau's Rages is tedious enough, but when it comes to using them, you run into a whole other set of annoyances. Gau becomes uncontrollable when he uses a Rage until the battle ends or he is KO'd. Every turn he randomly uses the Attack command, or a unique command. What each Rage does is never explained in-game, so to know what each one can do, you need a guide or to start keeping track yourself. There's also no rhyme or reason to it -- the Stray Cat, an unremarkable normal enemy, uses a powerful physical attack, but the Intangir, a very powerful Behemoth palette swap, uses Transfusion, which instantly KO's Gau to heal a party member. Even if you do know what abilities each enemy will give, Gau will only use Attack and his unique skill every turn for the rest of the battle, and there's no way to snap him out of it besides knocking him out. Need him to do something else, like an emergency heal or Phoenix Down? Tough luck.
*** Finally, you don't have much access to the Veldt. Unless you go out of your way after leaving Narshe to return there (via a long walk across the Overworld and through previous dungeons), you won't get access again until you get the airship, which you lose after the next storyline dungeon until the end of the World of Balance. And then in the World of Ruin, its non-linear nature means you'll have to keep revisiting the Veldt to learn new Rages for Gau, going back into the boredom of finding specific enemies for him to Rage. By this point, you have likely defeated well over a hundred different enemies, so finding a specific enemy to Leap onto may take literal days of searching before you find it. Also by this point, all your other party members are becoming powerhouses who can hit the damage cap with spells or their unique skills by the time you can grind for Rages on the Veldt, and they don't need to enter a Berserk state to do it. This leaves Gau without much to do unless the player has no choice but to use him, as multiple other characters can be just as powerful but far more predictable.
** Mog is only slightly better with his Dances then Gau is with his Rages. Like Gau, Mog enters a Berserk state when his Dance works, and he has a chance to use one of four attacks every turn. While each Dance skillset has enough versatility that they're still useful (several include a party-healing ability, a OneHitKO move, and/or a powerful group-hitting attack), it's still random which one Mog will use each turn. It's not uncommon to see Mog using a healing ability on a party at full HP, or trying to use a Gravity-based attack on a boss (which are usually immune to such things) while he's dancing. And most of the boss enemies have unique terrains that prevent the Dance command from working anyway, so you can't use it even if you wanted to. The only reason Mog isn't a LowTierLetdown like Gau is because Mog can still attack and cast magic like almost everyone else outside of his dances, and Mog's stats boast [[StoneWall surprisingly high Defense and Magic Defense in spite of lackluster offensive stats]].
*** Speaking of Dance, the 50% chance of Mog stumbling if you use the dance not suited for the terrain. It can be very annoying to try to use Dance, only for Mog to stumble and waste his turns over and over.

* The [[LimitBreak Trance]] system, largely because of how uncontrollable the transformation is. It can take several hours of fighting in-game to charge up Trance, and when charged you ''immediately'' enter Trance, and then when the current battle is over the gauge completely depletes. Imagine this -- your Trance bar is almost filled, when you order an attack on an enemy in a random encounter. Before the attack goes through, the enemy attacks, the Trance bar fills, and the character enter Trance. They attack and kill the enemy, the battle ends, Trance gauge is depleted. This ''will'' happen. That's also not getting into how unbalanced the Trance abilities are between various characters; Quina just gets to use Eat on enemies with higher health and Steiner gets an attack power buff, while Eiko and Vivi get Dualcast and Zidane becomes a god of destruction able to deal massive damage to enemies for trivial amounts of MP.

* The {{Overly Long Fighting Animation}}s can be quite tedious, as well as the long camera pan around the battlefield at the beginning of every random encounter. Worse, they interfere with the attack queue, leading to multiple scenarios where you'd press a command, but the opponent gets to move because they were queued during the previous attack animation without you knowing, and your attack only goes off long after you initiated the command. This is particularly frustrating with the Heat status effect, which would qualify itself since it kills you for taking any action at all, but the unintuitive attack queue means many players have wiped out after an enemy inflicted Heat in between waiting for their characters to act.

* Having to give up a Relic slot on one character for the Sprint Shoes that allow you to move at a non-glacial pace on the map. At least you have double the amount of available slots compared to ''Final Fantasy V''. The Playstation release just gave you the ability to sprint by holding a button, but since [[MortonsFork this rendered the Sprint Shoes completely useless]], it was reverted in later remakes.

* Meliadoul in the PS1 version. Her abilities are awesome and ''ranged'' versions of Knight skills. There are two problems with this. For one, Orlandeau already knows them - and more. Two, they only work if there is a piece of equipment ''to'' break (Meaning no using them on Lucavi, even ''if'' most of your opponents are humans). This meant that Meliadoul was only really useful for giving her the Javelin II and [[AttackAttackAttack attacking]]. For this reason the PSP version [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap rescued her from the scrappy heap]] by letting them be used on monsters.

* In the original version, OverlyLongFightingAnimation applies to Dressphere changes during combat. If one wants to activate abilities on certain Garment Grids, they have to repeadedly change Dresspheres, watching the animations every time, which gets old really fast. International version (and, by extention ''HD Remaster'') adds the option to shorten, or outright remove the animations.

!!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''
* RageQuit penalties. Anyone that ditches a party on a quest will be unable to sign up for anything on the Duty Finder for thirty minutes. While the mechanic helps curb rage quitting ([[AntiRageQuitting which is what it's supposed to do]]), it also punishes players that want to leave due to the party being trolls, players who can't finish the quest, or players who run out of time to complete it. The thirty-minute penalty applies globally, which means that even if you're in a pre-made party with your friends, you can't do a Duty Finder quest until the timer runs out.
* [=FATEs=], which stand for Full Active Time Events. Said events are randomly generated everywhere and are usually "kill all monsters" or "gather items for this NPC". The better you perform in the events, the more experience points, gil, and company seals you can earn. [=FATEs=] are good for low level characters, but are a pain for high level players that need the events to level grind due to the RNG of the events popping up. Some quests and objectives may require a specific FATE to appear, which means a lot of waiting around if you're unlucky. It also doesn't help that many seasonal events are also based around the FATE mechanic.
** There are two [=FATEs=] that spawn [[BonusBoss King Behemoth and Odin]] and they require a ''lot'' of people to come together to take the bosses down. It is not unusual to see ''hundreds'' of players trying to fight the super bosses all at once, which can cause massive slowdown for many people. The problem was so bad that the boss characters would sometime fail to appear on many peoples' screens, making it impossible to attack them. Square did attempt to alleviate the issue by giving the bosses higher priority for character rendering, but the zerg rushes that follow can still cause issues. A similar phenomenon occurred with Ixion on the release of ''Stormblood''.
* The entirety of the Relic Weapon quest line that powers up your InfinityPlusOneSword to higher levels is a nightmare of RNG and grind. Finishing the initial leg of the quest required some effort, but was doable within a reasonable amount of time - you acquired the original, broken weapon, collected a few materials through event fights, fought a few open world monsters, and finally capped it off with easily-obtainable items purchased with end-game dungeon currency. It was when the Atma portion of the quest was reached that the entire chain quickly devolved into a mind-numbing experience. Tasked to locate 12 Atma crystals (randomly dropped from any FATE you participate in, with 1 unique Atma per zone), it was quickly discovered that the RNG drop rate was so terrible that one player could spend hours grinding in a single area and receive nothing, while incredible luck would mean another player could find all the Atma in equal or even decidedly less time. Worse still, the second half of the quest demanded you collect 9 books to give your weapon its true power (the Atma quest doesn't even do that, merely raising the weapon's item level) and every book carried an original price tag of 1500 mythology tomes to purchase, out of a 2000 tome cap. Although Patch 2.4 alleviated some of the pain by boosting the drop rates of the Atma crystals and reduced the amount of tomestones needed to purchase the books, the tomestones used for purchase were changed from Mythology to Soldiery, and the overall ease of acquiring them was limited compared to gathering Mythology. While the Atma books were, fortunately, a quest item and located in your key items inventory, the Atma crystals were treated as regular loot - capable of accidentally being discarded or sold. Worse yet, each Atma corresponds to a single Zodiac sign (Atma of the Crab, Archer, Fish, etc.) and took up a single inventory slot apiece, much like weapons and armor. It was only much, much later that Atma of the same type would stack together, but by that point the utility of obtaining a Relic Weapon was more or less moot.
** The Novus portion of the relic quest line cuts out the RNG in exchange for materia farming. You need 75 pieces of Alexandrite and 75 pieces of materia to power up your relic. Said materia are easy to obtain or buy from other players until you start using the higher grade materia, which are a lot more difficult to come by, involves some RNG in terms of what kind of materia you get, and you forking over a ton of gil on the market board if you want to buy high level materia from someone.[[note]]Due to the ever changing player economy and the introduction of grade 5 and 6 materia in future expansion packs, materia costs for grade 4 and below sunk and many side quests now give materia as well.[[/note]] Assuming one did manage to obtain all the materia and Alexandrite, the very next step involved "Light" farming - tasked with obtaining 2000 Light to power up the weapon, at a time when completing the entirety of a 24-player raid would only yield 8 points, and most other activities granting perhaps 1 or 2 at most.
*** The Zodiac weapon, which is the transformation of your relic weapon, is even more absurd by combining everything hated from the previous relic quests into one ball of "we enjoy watching players suffer." Hope you loved farming for the low drop rate Atmas because now you get to do it again for ''sixteen'' items needed for your Zodiac weapon and they can only be acquired by running the very lengthy dungeons! You'll also need several hundred thousand gil just to purchase a few key items needed for the quest, over 6000 Soldiery Tomestones for another item, and 60,000 grand company seals for a different item. Hope you also took up some crafting classes because now you'll need to get items that can only be obtained through crafting and desynthesis! If not, better hope you can afford to buy the crafted items from other players. Later patches would make the required items in dungeons always drop and the crafted materials no longer have to be high quality.
*** And hopefully you actually enjoyed the 2.0 run of relic quests, because they basically copy/pasted the procedure for the ''Heavensward'' relic quests. There's still FATE farming (though that can be skipped if you turn in a Zodiac weapon that is now completely useless due to the incessant, perfectly vertical gear progression), there's a fat materia requirement, there's a need for an absurd amount of tomestones, and there's a stage that requires running dungeons you've already completed. Though at least the dungeon runs are part of a repeatable subquest that ''guarantee'' you the item you want, rather than in the 2.0 version where it was completely random.
* Loot drops. By itself, the mechanic isn't bad, but when combined with a weekly lockout for raids, it's a major pain. Said weekly lockouts make it so after you fight the bosses of the most recent patch, you can't get any more loot from them until the weekly global timer resets. If you're really unlucky, you'll probably ''never'' see the piece of gear or token that you need. The weekly look lockouts do eventually get abolished once the gear from those raids are no longer the best ones that can be obtained, but you're still subjected to the whims of the RandomNumberGod on getting specific drops.
* Crafting scrips, high-level crafting/gathering, and collectibles for the ''Heavensward'' expansion and beyond are a bastion of headaches.
** While specialty nodes for gatherers appeared for a small window in ''ARR'', these windows allowed enough time for players to travel to different zones and gather the items they needed. The new nodes, however, only appear for roughly 55 real-time seconds. Some of them are far enough away from Aetherytes that you can only gather from one node at a time... and with some zones, they're so far away that you literally can't reach them in time from the Aetheryte. Plus, each one is only available twice per in-game day, or twice every 70 minutes. This could mean a lot of sitting around and waiting for over an hour in the same location just to try and get one thing you need.
** The collectible minigame involves using a series of skills in a precise order which not only renders the item gathered unfit for use in any crafting, but each item acquired takes up a single inventory slot. And, if any deviation in said minigame occurs, it's impossible to recover from and either means losing another collectible or wasting the node entirely. Collectibles must be of a certain rarity value (achieved through the minigame) to have any XP value as a turn-in, or be worth any amount of end-game scrip currency.
** Collectibles also impact crafting classes, who must engage in the same type of minigame upon making an item to turn in, if they wish to see any moderately level-appropriate XP rewards or acquire any scrips. The terrible thing for crafters is that it is extraordinarily difficult to make the items needed without first having the gear and tools to acquire said items, which requires acquiring those same items to make the gear, which requires having the gear to begin with, which necessitates obtaining the items... Which just turns the whole thing into a Catch22Dilemma.
* Eureka: Anemos turned out to be one entire scrappy mechanic. Any mob a but a couple levels above you will immediately murder you. The only decent way to make any EXP gains is to farm Notorious Monsters (a throwback to ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI''), which are basically [=FATEs=], the scrappy mechanic that ''will not die.'' The only way to gain levels is to join the "zerg train", which is a large group of players that go from FATE to FATE. But if you're under the recommended level for a FATE, you'll get less EXP and none of the drops you need to upgrade gear, meaning lower level players [[UnstableEquilibrium are left in the dust]]. Likewise, if you are planning to farm regular monsters while in a party, any level difference between party members will reduce the amount of EXP everyone gets per kill. If the level difference is big, EXP gains are severely reduced or even outright eliminated.
* Eureka: Pagos takes everything that people hated about Anemos and not only brings them back, but adds even more hated mechanics on top of it. The map design spaces everything far apart from each other, which means Aetherytes and other important locations can take a few minutes to reach while you're trying to avoid every high leveled monster. Dragons are also placed in many choke points where people would frequently travel. Said dragons are always sleeping, but running past them wakes them up and they ''will'' [[OneHitKill one shot you]] unless you're at the level cap. Unlike Anemos, you can't actually begin to grind for your relic until level 25 and you can't ride your mounts until you hit the level cap of 35. EXP gains in Pagos was extremely abysmal to the point that it was faster to level up by chain killing mobs instead of farming [=FATEs=], leading many to speculate that the slow EXP gains was done as a response to how quickly people leveled up in Anemos. Pagos also has Happy Bunnies, which have to be saved during certain [=FATEs=]. Completing them gives you ''no rewards'' since you're expected to get said rewards from a hidden treasure coffer. However, it's completely up to chance if you actually get a Happy Bunny if you beat the FATE and if you do get one, you lose out on the coffer if you or the bunny dies (later patches would give you EXP if you saved the Happy Bunnies). Once you do actually start your relic in Pagos, the method of doing it is abysmal; you need to collect several frosted crystals, which can only be obtained by collecting aether from monster kills. Aether fills up your bar and a full bar gives you one crystal. Crystals then have to be taken to a forge to be smelted into usable materials for Gerolt to use, but the path to the forge is a one way trip that's guarded by a dragon and the forge itself is surrounded by hostile monsters as well. The grind for aether is heavily reliant on luck since you will not always gain aether from each kill and the amount you do get is completely random. The grind for aether was so ill received that many players [[RageQuit practically gave up on their relic and abandoned Pagos entirely.]] Later patches would buff the EXP gains as well as the amount of aether obtained.
* Eureka: Pyros does make an attempt to improve some things, such as a denser monster intensity and a better map design to get around enemies more easily. However, Pyros also retains the same mechanics from the previous iterations of Eureka (FATE grinding, level grinding, grinding for crystals, etc.) as well as adding more annoying mechanics. Powering up your relic requires unlocking Logos actions from logograms. Said logorams can be earned from completing a FATE or finding them in coffers from Happy Bunnies, but they are subjected to RNG and you may never get the ones you want. There are 50 Logos actions total, but you only need 30 to upgrade your relic. Getting all 50 grants you the right to buy pretty neat looking armor, but [[GuideDangIt good luck trying to figure out which lologram combos unlock new actions]]. Even after you get your relic upgraded, you can choose to upgrade it further, but doing so ''removes all of your weapon's substats''. To get them back or get something better than what you had, you have to grind for aether in the same way you did for Pagos. Luckily, you only need two crystals to get a shot of getting better stats for your relic. Unfortunately, you can't choose what stats you can get or how much of it you want. It's purely up to luck. Don't like the results? Go back and grind aether again for another shot.
* Trusts for the dungeons in ''Shadowbringers'' are a good alternative when you either can't get a group going or want to play alone. Trusts are AI-controlled party members, and each one acts differently from one another. Trusts aren't perfect and have quite a number of shortcomings, however. Trusts don't react as quickly as players, so they will feel slow at times. Trusts also don't output damage as fast or heavy as a typical player, so a dungeon run can take quite a while. If there's a mechanic where you have to stack, you have to move the marker to the trusts since they won't go to you. Trusts can only be used when alone and not with other players. Using trusts also reduces the amount of loot you can get in a dungeon. Lastly, upon completing the main story of ''Shadowbringers'', unique trust allies will no longer be available as party members and the remaining trusts now have to be leveled up in order to be used in higher level dungeons. Be prepared to grind a lot if you want to use trusts in this way, since it can take around four to six runs of the same dungeon just to have a trust level up ''once'' due to the absurd amount of experience required. A later patch would rectify the EXP issue by having trusts gain a lot more than before, but the issues with the AI remain.
* Greased Lightning is a job mechanic for Monks that boosts the player's attack power and reduces cooldown on weapon skills every time the player does a full attack rotation. Greased Lighting could be stacked three times (four stacks by the time of the ''Shadowbringers'' expansion) and the stacks were lost if the timer expired. This meant that players had to always be attacking and any screw ups would lead to a pretty big DPS loss. Since many raid and trial bosses always have a "I'll hide off screen while the next phase comes up/perform my ultimate attack" gimmick, Monks would be guaranteed to lose their Greased Lightning stacks and had to build them up again. It wasn't until several years later in patch 5.3 where Greased Lightning was made into a trait that was always active and improves upon reaching certain level up milestones.
* In ''Stormblood'', White Mages had the lily system where players would have a random chance of gaining a lilly (maximum of three) upon casting Cure or Cure II. Using a lily would reduce the cooldown of other healing spells. However, the concept was very counterintuitive since you basically had to ignore most of your healing toolkit and spam the Cure spells in order to generate a lily. While the lily mechanic didn't heavily affect how White Mage played, it was a cumbersome system that people ignored or even forgot that it was there. ''Shadowbringers'' completely revamped the lilies by having the player gain one every thirty seconds in battle and getting three allowed them to cast Afflatus Misery, an absurdly powerful AOE spell.
* Cross class skills were a nightmare for most of its inception since the start of the game. During ''A Realm Reborn'' and ''Heavensward'', players could use certain skills obtained from certain classes and use them with other classes. Some skills like Swiftcast (makes the next spell instant cast) and Raging Strikes (boosts damage for a few seconds) while not mandatory, were absolutely needed if you wanted your class to be optimized. For most players, this meant having to level up a different class that they may not play or even like and having to get gear for said classes so they aren't gimped while leveling up. ''Stormblood'' would overhaul the cross class system by giving each role their own set of skills they could slot. The main issue was there was only 5 slots available and too many skills that were needed to have each role perform optimally. The developers doubled the amount of slots and by ''Shadowbringers'', they overhauled the system again where each role would naturally acquire the necessary skills via leveling up.
* The housing system was completely hated by the majority of players due to how frustrating it was to buy a plot. Originally, anyone could purchase land if it was available and there was no limit to how many plots you could own. This caused on infamous incident where two players on a populated server bought out ''the entire housing ward for themselves''. The developers quickly changed how housing was bought by making houses only available to one per player or free company. The developers also subjected freshly created or recently vacated plots behind an invisible timer. Said timer determined when the plot was available for purchase and it could range from a few minutes to as much as twenty four hours or more. When the plot was open to buy, whoever clicked on the placard and bought the land before anyone else could got the plot. This caused players that were desperate to own a house to effectively stop playing the game and wasted time standing around an empty plot while clicking the buy button over and over until the timer restriction expired. This was the norm until many patches later where the method of buying a house was changed again by instating a lottery system so that people can put a deposit down for the house and winners are picked randomly while losing players can get their money back.
* The portrait system introduced in patch 6.3 was liked in concept, but disliked in execution. For each one of your jobs, you can craft a portrait for your character which shows up at the beginning of a duty, dungeon, or raid, as a way of adding some personality to your character. However, there's a number of restrictions and annoyances that come with it. For one, any time you change anything about your character, you also have to go into the Portraits menu to update your portrait, or else it will reset to default when a duty starts. This even includes things that don't affect your appearance in the portrait, like changing your boots despite the portrait being a headshot or changing a ring when you're wearing gloves that hide the rings. And if you visit the aesthetician or use a Fantasia, that means updating all of your portraits one at a time. Also, there's restrictions on the poses you're allowed to make, such as that your character's face must not be obstructed. But what counts as "obstructed" is unclear; if you're wielding a weapon in the portrait, the system might decide that it's blocking the camera or obscuring your face, despite the weapon being nowhere near either one. Finally, the portraits only show up for a few seconds, the portraits go away the moment a boss is pulled in a raid, and players can just turn the portraits off (making all this effort wasted). While the playerbase responded well to the portraits as an idea, the execution left a lot to be desired because of the busywork and frustration involved with it.

* The means of obtaining the Bahamut Magicite is an exercise in frustration. You have to defeat an enemy called Deathgaze, which will drop Bahamut when you win. But Deathgaze can only be found at a random coordinate on the map, with no way to track where he is. Imagine if the chase for Ultima Weapon in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' was done when Ultima Weapon was invisible and appeared at a different spot every time, and you'll get an idea of why hunting for Deathgaze is such a pain. It's possible to go through the entire game without ever encountering Deathgaze simply because you never knew he was there. And even if you do manage to find him, it isn't enough to merely fight Deathgaze and win, as Deathgaze will escape after being attacked a few times. This means hunting for Deathgaze all over again, chipping away at his health until he's defeated. Thankfully, his health gauge doesn't replenish over time, so it's just a matter of whittling him down. Even so, it can take several hours to get Bahamut this way, owing to needing to PixelHunt with your airship.

* Equipment and Espers being [[SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear stuck on whoever's got them equipped]]. Got an Esper you want to shuffle around, but it's equipped on someone who's not in the party? Tough luck. There's at least [=NPCs=] on the airships to let you unequip them from people who aren't in the party, but such a thing really shouldn't have been necessary. The ''Pixel Remaster'' version thankfully [[AntiFrustrationFeatures remedies this]] by having the player shuffle such items around.
* Winning fights in the Colosseum is a matter of trying your luck against the AIRoulette. Every fight in the Colosseum is [[DuelBoss a one-on-one fight between one party member of your choice and a monster]]. These fights would be over half as quickly if you could control your character, but you can't. Whichever character you pick also gets controlled by the computer, while you do nothing but sit there and watch. Expect to see characters cast Poisona and Remedy on themselves despite having good status, try to heal themselves at full health, and cast the lowest-level spells on an enemy that has long since passed the threshold for such a thing working. On top of that, some ArtificialStupidity is on display as well -- Terra will enter into Trance and then just stand there, Mog might try to dance even though it will never work, and Sabin might use the Spiraler Blitz technique and instantly die, costing you whatever item you bet through no fault of your own. The Colosseum is the one place where Umaro, normally a LowTierLetdown, is considered viable, simply because Umaro can at least be trusted to act consistently.

** This game introduces the option to skip cutscenes, something that many ''FFX'' players sorely wished for. [[YankTheDogsChain Unfortunately]], watching these cutscenes counts for story completion, and to hit 100% you need to watch every single cutscene in its entirety; skipping a cutscene makes you forfeit the percentage you would've gotten from it, even if it's not your first time playing and you're doing a "100% in one playthrough" run or fighting a boss that gave you trouble and which has a lengthy cutscene beforehand for the whatever-th time. The even bigger kicker is that at one point in the story, you are asked to choose whether to return a plot-critical item to the Youth League or New Yevon. Returning it to New Yevon will lock you out of 100% for the rest of a first playthrough, [[GuideDangIt something the game does not tell you at all]]. Fortunately, a NewGamePlus lets you pick up completion percentage that you missed, but anything you already got percentage for will not add more.

* To achieve OneHundredPercentCompletion for the story, you need to watch every single cutscene in its entirety; skipping a cutscene makes you forfeit the percentage you would've gotten from it, even if it's not your first time playing and you're doing a "100% in one playthrough" run or fighting a boss that gave you trouble and which has a lengthy cutscene beforehand for the whatever-th time. The even bigger kicker is that at one point in the story, you are asked to choose whether to return a plot-critical item to the Youth League or New Yevon. Returning it to New Yevon will lock you out of 100% for the rest of a first playthrough, [[GuideDangIt something the game does not tell you at all]]. Fortunately, a NewGamePlus lets you pick up completion percentage that you missed, but anything you already got percentage for will not add more.

* To achieve OneHundredPercentCompletion for the story, you need to watch every single cutscene in its entirety; skipping a cutscene makes you forfeit the percentage you would've gotten from it, even if it's not your first time playing and you're doing a "100% in one playthrough" run or fighting a boss that gave you trouble and which has a lengthy cutscene beforehand for the whatever-th time. The even bigger kicker is that at one point in the story, you are asked to choose whether to return a plot-critical item to the Youth League or New Yevon. Returning it to New Yevon will lock you out of 100% for the rest of a first playthrough, something the game does not tell you at all. Fortunately, a NewGamePlus lets you pick up completion percentage that you missed, but anything you already got percentage for will not add more.

* To achieve OneHundredPercentCompletion for the story, you need to watch every single cutscene in its entirety; skipping a cutscene makes you forfeit the percentage you would've gotten from it, even if it's not your first time playing and you're doing a "100% in one playthrough" run or fighting a boss that gave you trouble for the whatever-th time. The even bigger kicker is that at one point in the story, you are asked to choose whether to return a plot-critical item to the Youth League or New Yevon. Returning it to New Yevon will lock you out of 100% for the rest of a first playthrough, something the game does not tell you at all. Fortunately, a NewGamePlus lets you pick up completion percentage that you missed, but anything you already got percentage for will not add more.

* The ''International'', PAL, and HD versions of the game have Dark Aeons, which are [[{{Superboss}} ridiculously powerful and require a lot of prep and grinding to stand a chance against them]]. Unfortunately, some of them block off areas needed to complete sidequests that would not be an issue at any point in previous versions of the game.

* The fact that after the midpoint of the game [[DemonicSpider sorcerer enemies]] can both paralyze the entire party, AND their normal attack has a chance to instakill any character. Even without being ambushed, it is entirely possible to have a TotalPartyKill without even having a chance to run. Made even worse by the fact that the ProRing, the item that claims to protect against instant death, only works against instant death SPELLS, not instant death attacks. These enemies were so hated for their RNG chance to kill even a max-level party with no possible response, that no normal enemy encounter like them ever appeared in any Final Fantasy game again.

* Crafting scrips and high-level crafting/gathering and collectibles in general for the ''Heavensward'' expansion. While specialty nodes for gatherers appeared for a small window in ''ARR'', these windows allowed enough time for players to travel to different zones and gather the items they needed. The new nodes, however, only appear for roughly 55 real-time seconds. Some of them are far enough away from Aetherytes that it's literally impossible to gather from more than one node at a time... all of which are only available twice per in-game day.
** This is compounded by the fact that the collectible minigame involves using a series of skills in a precise order which not only renders the item gathered unfit for use in any crafting, but each item acquired takes up a single inventory slot. And, if any deviation in said minigame occurs, it's impossible to recover from and either means losing another collectible or wasting the node entirely. Collectibles must be of a certain rarity value (achieved through the minigame) to have any XP value as a turn-in, or be worth any amount of end-game scrip currency.