At first I was like...

So yeah, at first I was like...this is really neat! I really liked the idea of the Grand Companies, the initial foray with the Auto-Attack was interesting, the r25 dungeon was dark and foreboding, the boss I fought was neat and the settlements were a nice addition.

...but then I was like...WTF! After having played for a good 8+ hrs last night, I've found many many things I really dislike with 1.18:

• The new method of Auto-Attack is horribly clunky and makes even the simple task of keeping a target lock on mobs difficult. When fighting multiple mobs it always disengages after each kill, and then you end up in the selection/targeting mode that when you use the arrow keys that normally would spin the page on your hotbar, its now changing from friendly/party/enemy targeting, and your cursor flies off somewhere else, instead of the next mob. You then have to find/re-target your mob, click again to confirm, and then finally AA start up again. Thats several second of valuable time to be doing dmg to the next mob.
  
  
• Continuing with the AA complaint from above, the cost of healing is absurdly quadrupled. Before I could cast cure/sacrifice dozens of time before running low on MP, now only a measly 3 times. So couple that with being beat on by multiple mobs, getting hit by crits and what I just said above...makes for very close fights, but tons more deaths cause you can barely keep yourself alive anymore.
  
  
• There is no more kill this mob and run to next and the next and the next continuous grinding. You must stop after 1 or 2 mobs, wait 1-3min {5-6+ if you're a mage with lots of MP} for your MP to refill then fight 1-2 mobs and repeat!
  
  
• Behest is completely broken now, and a worthless means of getting SP. Its horrible! Not only has SP gain per mob been reduced by at least 2/3rds what it was, even including the bonus SP you get for completing it. Its also back at a 1hr cooldown before you can do another! Gil has also been reduced by 2/3rds. You cannot solo behest at all anymore due to the quadrupled MP cost of cures.
  
  
• Guildleves also suffer from the same issues, they still have a 36hr timer for a measly 8 leves, and I can no longer do leves that were 3-5 stars, I can only do up to 2 stars if even that, again due to not being able to keep myself alive from the costly cure spells.
  
  
• Even the average mobs now are a bitch to kill, depending on the mob but I can barely kill one thats of even rank than I, and some that are several ranks below me almost kill me. I've tried several times to kill mobs that are up to 10 ranks above me like I was doing before 1.18 easily, now I can't kill them at all! They do so much dmg, and you just don't have the ability to keep up with curing anymore.
  
  
• I've heard from a plethora of people{r50} now that you can no longer solo the r35 NMs, again due to the quadrupled MP costs of curing. You can only cast Cure III 7 times and then you're dry of MP. This has also made PTing extremely difficult, and while I would normally say thats a good thing and more like XI, its really not. Even in XI you can cast cure more than 7 times at max lvl.
  
  
• On to the Grand Companies, I really liked them at first, enjoyed the stories, the CS were nice and the fights were fun. The distances you have to run between each mission though is a bit absurd, and the rewards are not bad. When I ran out of missions from Gridania due to only being r25, {there are lots more I'm told if you're r50} I moved onto Ul'Dah. It got worse as every mission there was carbon copy near identical to the ones I just did in Gridania ~ absurd distances to run, the CS were near identical and while the NPCs side quests were were slightly different and the enemies fought, nearly everything said was identical. That really ruined my fun with GCs...I havn't yet bothered to do LL cause I'm sure it'll be more of the same!
  
  
• Overall it seems that SE are finally moving XIV closer to how XI originally played, enforcing PTs,{but unfortunately its still as difficult as ever to find/form a PT, even the new "Seek" feature added is broken and doesn't work at all! Or its just so convoluted to make it work, its useless} and making it difficult to obtain SP/XP, and gil! Making MP more important and costly so it has to be better managed ~ I get that, and I thought it was a good idea on paper and while it was being reported on, but in all honesty, I really liked XIV better, before 1.18, and without auto-attack!

Anyway, these are my thoughts and while I havn't yet quit entirely again,{I'm still attempting to get used to the changes} I really dunno how long I'll stick around, per usual. Its just argh...go play it and decide for yourself what I'm talking about and see if you don't get frustrated beyond belief!

not solo friendly anymore, i give you that, if they quickly implement passive casting abilities, everything would change, wouldn't it?

then again MMO= mass MULTIPLAYER online, keyword "MULTIPLAYER", so its not meant to be played solo anyway.

True, but like I said near the end...there is no way to easily form a PT, there is no way to search for other players and ask them to PT, or even see who is online. And nobody talks much for that matter either or that I've seen.

Sure I've been witness to a few shouts for high level PTs, but nothing more. For all these changes to enforce PTs but not giving us any tools to properly and effectively communicate, then its rather bogus.

I like to PT, or at least I did in XI...never really got into an SP PT in XIV yet, but I still greatly enjoy doing my own thing and soloing more often than not. Yoshi even said that soloing was going to be a huge aspect of XIV and support for casual gamers and this patch has all but eliminated the ability to solo.

khal it took xi a good 5 years before they made it easier to find a party, was all shouts for invite or canvas whispering in jeuno. sometimes i can't even get into party for the whole day and i was living in PDT timezone back then.

I know, and I was playing XI during its early years, almost a year entirely in Japanese and it was still easier to get PTs than XIV right now. The thing that XI had right away was a member search option, you could see who was online, and send them a tell without typing out their names, and you could actually reply easily too.

Its just so clunky, and regardless of how long it took them to do it in XI, they already know how to do all this and they have the code already written for it. Its these little things that should have already been there, not almost a year later and we're still being given a broken record response of "we're working on it for a future update!"