Too much dancing

OP needs to do Coil Turn 2 enrage method. That's exactly what he's looking for. You just sit there eating ALL the damage while enjoying the rave lighting... hum I mean while DPSing the heck out of the boss. It's a fun fight for the healers which get to go all out AoE heals for once, but rather straightforward for the rest. Having one (or a few) battle like this in the game is fine, but too many would make things dull as hell pretty fast.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Part of what you're missing there, is that it really, really, really sucked if you wiped, and it took a lot of time and effort and socialization to put a raid together.
In titan HM some groups just auto attack for phase 1 until LB bar is half full... similar concept...

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Why would I want all the challenge to be from herding cats?

And auto-attacking for 10% while still dealing with mechanics is a pretty far cry from sitting on your hands for 80%. Nevermind that groups only build LB because their DPS is sub-par.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

There was another boss in a later x-pac that during a certain phase if anyone used any magic spell on the boss, it full cured... which caused many many wipes so yes; NOT hitting a button can be challanging too.

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Big difference between "don't hit your normal rotation" and "afk from the fight for 80%." Note that almost every BRD and a lot of PLDs that've ever done T2 have had to do the first one.

I think the one thing that is difficult to convey, in the case of a game like EQ1, was that you were part of a team, that had grown and bonded together through time and challenges.

Even when my role in a boss fight was limited in time (say as 3rd tank in a tank rotation) I was always enjoying the raids because the stakes were high, the people I was raiding with were mates who I cared for. Everything could go downhill very fast and one's ability to improvise when the unexpected happened was paramount. You wanted to make sure you did everything you could for the success of your team and the feeling of accomplishment was amazing. I was never bored.

This is not to say that EQ was perfect, far from it, and newer games have brought some interesting innovations. But to be more accessible, they have also become less immersive and more individual oriented than community / group oriented.

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Originally Posted by HailZenberg

I think the one thing that is difficult to convey, in the case of a game like EQ1, was that you were part of a team, that had grown and bonded together through time and challenges.

Even when my role in a boss fight was limited in time (say as 3rd tank in a tank rotation) I was always enjoying the raids because the stakes were high, the people I was raiding with were mates who I cared for. Everything could go downhill very fast and one's ability to improvise when the unexpected happened was paramount. You wanted to make sure you did everything you could for the success of your team and the feeling of accomplishment was amazing. I was never bored.

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I've seen all of that happen in XIV, even though it's more mechanics-oriented, though.

1) You can't tell me that static groups don't grow together as a team. That's practically the point of a static team.
2) I've seen and heard of raids and dungeons being saved after the **** hits the fan by people improvising and saving the day. Heck, I've been the one improvising before. . .
3) I'm pretty sure the people in my FC feel a sense of accomplishment progressing to where we have in raiding. We don't have T5 down yet, but each time a new turn's been completed, I've seen everyone getting excited to push on.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Yes, there are some gear checks, supposedly Titan HM is one…

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Titan is mostly about dodging and staying alive (not gear), and be able to do your heals or attacks at the same time, except for the tank.
CT is mostly a communication and coordination check. Regardless of gear and skill, it can go horribly if people start too early and leave others locked out. Or if somebody is new and he doesn't ask or is not helped. A noob tank putting Valefor's tail against his team or other team, people killing the Platinals on top of each other, etc.

Temple of qarn has some non-dodge mechanics. Run to platform to cleanse doom. Kill Qarns while they are on platform.
Aurum vale too. Eating fruit to cleanse the debuff is vital, an requires no dance.
Caduceus in turn 1 also has non dodge mechanics. Feeding him slimes and the requirement to kill the split snakes at same time.

If even all that sounds like too much work for you, and u just wanna stand there and dps, you might like garuda extreme as ranged class. U literally walk here, attack this, walk there, attack that. Positioning is important but theres hardly any dodging involved for me as bard.

Pardon my selective quotes…

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Originally Posted by HailZenberg

I think the one thing that is difficult to convey, in the case of a game like EQ1, was that you were part of a team, that had grown and bonded together through time and challenges.
Even when my role in a boss fight was limited in time (say as 3rd tank in a tank rotation) I was always enjoying the raids because the stakes were high, the people I was raiding with were mates who I cared for. You wanted to make sure you did everything you could for the success of your team and the feeling of accomplishment was amazing. I was never bored.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

I've seen all of that happen in XIV, even though it's more mechanics-oriented, though.
1) You can't tell me that static groups don't grow together as a team. That's practically the point of a static team.
2) I've seen and heard of raids and dungeons being saved after the **** hits the fan by people improvising and saving the day. Heck, I've been the one improvising before. . .
3) I'm pretty sure the people in my FC feel a sense of accomplishment progressing to where we have in raiding. We don't have T5 down yet, but each time a new turn's been completed, I've seen everyone getting excited to push on.

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On point #1 - I haven’t needed a static group for anything yet. You can pretty much solo everything except dungeons. So groups in general and static groups have been seriously de-emphasized, until the very endgame. In older MMOs you either couldn’t solo level, or it was very hard - so building relationships was part of the game… not something you had to figure out just before the final bit of content.

My issue on the 2nd and 3rd points is that there’s no risk… and no worries about epic failure (just try again in a few seconds). Improvising and success are great, but it’s different when there’s greater risk. Loss of XP or levels, a long run back, and herding cats made you make sure you had a reliable group who brought their A-game. Because those downsides weren’t terribly ‘fun’ you did everything you could to be absolutely prepared. I think that also mode those communities better than the superficial interactions that can get you through everything except X modes and T5

The social aspect is suffering because people are no longer willing to put time in to organising like you describe for EQ. People have far too many other things to do these days. They want to log on, get their raids done and get on with their lives.. but I (and many others) will agree that in FFXIV's case there's maybe a little too little to do as most of the "hardcore" can clear all their weekly content in a few hours then have nothing left to do. This is both a plus and a minus, and in today's market it's mostly a plus. Square's just catering to the majority.

I will also agree that don't stand in the fire is a boring mechanic. There's lots more interesting mechanics that can be put in. We've seen some really interesting fights from other MMOs. One thing though is that Yoshi and gang seem to be quite receptive and apparently listen to the playerbase.. we've seen some pretty big improvements in the last few patches and I believe more interesting fights will definitely be on their way.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

My issue on the 2nd and 3rd points is that there’s no risk… and no worries about epic failure (just try again in a few seconds). Improvising and success are great, but it’s different when there’s greater risk. Loss of XP or levels, a long run back, and herding cats made you make sure you had a reliable group who brought their A-game. Because those downsides weren’t terribly ‘fun’ you did everything you could to be absolutely prepared. I think that also mode those communities better than the superficial interactions that can get you through everything except X modes and T5

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Those of us who aren't WHMs have absolutely no guarantee that we'll be able to try again in "a few seconds." Heck, even in static groups there's no real guarantee that the run won't be called early or that someone playing sub-par won't be rotated out.

Don't get me wrong, I fully realize that the social aspect has been de-emphasized. That doesn't mean it isn't present. And the fact that the game will send you back to the start of the dungeon with no weakness when you die doesn't mean you can just graveyard zerg the fights. Nor does it mean that you don't have to put forth effort. As a DD, if I go into Titan EX playing like crap the group will either kick me or abandon, then I have to sit through a god-knows-how-long queue all over again. It's not consequence-free.

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Originally Posted by Sessurea

Temple of qarn has some non-dodge mechanics. Run to platform to cleanse doom. Kill Qarns while they are on platform.
Aurum vale too. Eating fruit to cleanse the debuff is vital, an requires no dance.
Caduceus in turn 1 also has non dodge mechanics. Feeding him slimes and the requirement to kill the split snakes at same time.

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Honestly I would love more stuff like that or Garuda X less stuff like Titan. Stuff that requires thought or a job(carrying slimes, using stun, silence, slow or debuffs). Mog for example was challenging and fun. You could figure out how to do a order all your own, and you dodged without needing a millisecond to do so.
I hear they are going to make turn 6-10 like Titan a dodge fest. Which I pray will not be true, but it is rumor. Just please dont be true

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Simply put: Final Fantasy games of the past where we were TURN BASED

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Minus 1 and this game is just a newer version of that. Lol FF games of the past your OP isn't even relevant because every FF game has been turn based except for XI and this one. How can you even reference them to make your point and then go an to talk about MMO's. Every single FF game used predetermined enemy mechanics. Some one wrote a book about your post and it was just filled with Lolcat memes.

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Originally Posted by dimsumdarren

They had a chance with CT to make something for large group that took some coordination, but its basically just dodge-the-circle, but for 3 groups instead of 1.

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You're kidding me, right? Take a closer look at CT. The Bone dragon fight is amazingly unique, there are no "dodge the circles" at all in that fight. What about the Atomoses? And Thanatos (or w/e his name is). Or the Bomb part. Or Behemoth. What you said literally only applies to the first set of trash mobs and Acheron. All the other fights are amazingly choreographed and take tons of coordination and strategy. The only reason it's so easy to do now is because EVERYONE knows the fights because everyone grinds it.

I came to this thread expecting a compendium of keystroke combinations that allow my character to perform various dances in game when pressed in the correct order.

I'm walking away very disappointed.

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

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Originally Posted by Jamez82

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

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They didn't remove the elemental wheel because they wanted BLM to work the way it does, they removed the elemental wheel to prevent the class stacking and/or useless classes that occurred in XI, and from there they could do whatever they wanted with BLM.

If enemies have a primary weakness, groups only bring the classes that are most capable against that weakness. If enemies have an immunity, groups forbid classes that rely on that immunity from ever joining. Sure, SE could've given every class the ability to use every element equally well... but that sounds like a whole bunch of complication and homogenization with no real payout.

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Originally Posted by Jamez82

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

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Elemental resistances are bad design for the players and can be bad for the bosses and encounters. Resistance on the players gates content until an arbitrary resistance minimum is met. For boss encounters I could see this working if handled properly. For example, Ifrit might get increased damage from Ice, normal damage from Lightning and be healed by Fire and so a Black Mage might need to adjust his rotation between encounters. Design like this could give depth to the class, as there would be a huge difference between someone pushing buttons and someone that has taken the time to learn how his skills interact with encounter.

The thing you want to avoid is to just add elemental resistances just for the sake of having an arbitrary number to stack. It's just hard to argue what these stats would really add to the game in terms of depth.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Kerafyrm, The Sleeper (EverQuest)

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Nope. Stop.

Kerafyrm wasn't a boss. Kerafyrm was a world event. SOE intended The Sleeper to be unkillable and did everything but make the thing literally unkillable. The proof is that SOE saw the guild alliance killing Kerafyrm and DESPAWNED the dragon because they thought that they were exploiting in order to accomplish it. After the uproar, SOE reset the event and let the guild alliance attempt it. After 3 hours of suiciding themselves at the dragon they finally killed it. Their reward? NOTHING.

The dragon didn't drop any loot. It had no loot table. Why? Because it wasn't a freaking boss. And it's "mechanics" were killing everyone one by one. Luckily it was expansions after The Sleeper was added, so they had better gear, and they had 200 people and could just toss bodies at it and rez 1000 times spamming Manaburn/Harmtouch and melee/pets until the thing finally died. Epic? Sure. Interesting mechanics? Absolutely not.

Not a good example.

We should not be looking at FFXI for combat ideas. FFXI had terrible, slow combat. Waiting for TP to fill so you can stop auto attacking and do a special move and so someone else in your group can do a special move and then WEAPON SKILL CHAIN WOOOO...now we go back to auto attacking for a while...boo....

Or be a BLM...where you spam one elemental ability because it's a fire elemental so...duh...use ice ad nauseum. Super fun. Way more fun than, say, using a bunch of varied abilities and showing your mastery of the elements to defeat your foes in a multicolored blast, right?

Resistance blocks are dumb, Yoshida recognized that, and we should all be glad they're gone. They don't work in MMOs.

Also I played EQ1 back in the day too man. Have you gone back to play it? The best parts of that game are you making up things to do with friends in the environment...like swim races in a river or something or exploring a zone. The actual "game" is terrible 1 button stand still combat. Do you really expect SE to NOT move forward and have us pressing more buttons than that and moving around as well? Which, by the way, there are plenty of stand and deliver moments in FFXIV and PLENTY OF VARIED MECHANICS...but I won't reiterate what people have already said unless provoked from here on out.

EQ1 did a great job making the world feel large and scary and forcing players to band together to deal with it, but they got just about everything else wrong. What exactly was fun about sitting in the same spot in a dungeon and killing the same monsters over and over?

Wouldn't you rather fight your way through the Crushbone Fortress to finally defeat Emperor Crush only to spot Ambassador DVinn running out the back and having to chase and capture him? That's an experience. But they didn't give us that. They gave us killing everything in the throne room until Emperor Crush popped in for us. How nice of him.

EQ1 was revolutionary at the time and had great environmental atmosphere, but it was a bad game. So let's please move on so we can have better mechanics and less tedium.

PS. That being said we should totally have more scary things out in the world. Like Odin should cause more terror when he spawns. People should be screaming for Odin to be killed because of all the damage he's causing...things like that. And more things to explore and find. FFXIV has room to grow and expand. Give us stuff to find, Yoshida!

Too much dancing?

When they make a fight that doesn't have the "dance" people cry it's too hard, when they put in the fight with the dance, people cry that they have to stop dpsing and move.

MMO's use to be around strategy and gear checks, but when they went that route, it took a LONG time to get the gear.. a LONG TIME. People complained that it was too hard to get the needed gear for these fights and didn't want to play. So to keep making money, keep the games going longer, the developers had to make it easier to get gear, and people still complained because they couldn't get the gear.. and then it was made easier, and complaints, and easier, and complain... see the pattern?

People expect and want their ideal game from every single mmo, and complain when it's not.

People complain about moving out of circles, YET in Final Fantasy 11 there wasn't circles to move, you just stood there and focused on your tp, mp, and timing, BUT people found that boring because they don't need to worry about what they were doing (in that game people didn't understand tank mechanics very well, so when a dark knight came along and did one of their combos and pulled hate or a thief SATA and wiped the group, it was the tanks fault, EVEN THOUGH they were the one's who went all out and killed the group), so to combat the boringness of just standing there waiting to do an ability, and try and add a bit of skill to the players so it isn't just outgear the fight and your done, games like WoW started adding fights you had to move around, you are still waiting on cooldowns while moving, but now just not standing there. It was a great idea, now you need not just gear but skill to play and dungeon and raid, but people who lacked the skill complained because they couldn't do it, so after a while to increase revenue to get those people who complained and were quitting, they started giving gear to allow you to overcome the skill. And that is where we are now in the mmo community.

Raid and boss battles that require skill, but that skill can be overcome by gear. Yes there are some fights that the gear check is there, but again look at turn 2 for example.. it is a skill check fight, but people who didn't have the skill to transfer a buff around, found a way to make it a tank n spank fight that required no skill whatsoever, just gear.. now you need gear alone to overcome the fight.. some people say it is a skill check.. ONLY ON HEALER, not on anyone else. Turn 1 was a skill fight with the slimes and position and dps control, but gear again turned it into an almost simple fight. DPS burns, off tank (or rare case bard) makes a slime and feeds until split, then you burn the boss.. the only skill that is still needed is making sure they die at same time.

Pharos is a skill fight, but people are so overgeared for it that it makes it harder because the try and tank n spank knowing they overgeared it.. and look what happenend? Pharos is the most hated dungeon there is.. why? Boss 1, boss 2, and boss 4 all required skill, gear doesn't overcome that, so people have to actually LEARN the boss mechanics and follow them. Boss 1, hit boss and then stop hitting boss and kill dogs otherwise dogs kill healer and group dies. What happenend when people first went in, burn boss, ignore adds, helaer dies "WTF you stupid healer why you die" or "WTF stupid tank, get adds", rinse and repeat.. nobody understood the fight they just figured their i70+ gear would let them overpower the dungeon with a gear check of i57. Boss 2, kill eggs too fast, boss enrages you go splat, kill eggs to slow you get overrun by adds. So first try was destroy eggs, boss kills, 2nd try don't kill eggs and got overrun by adds, 3rd try kill highlighted eggs boss enrages we go splat.. people give up. 3rd boss is just too weak so burn strat works. 4th boss was about add control, healing, positioning during her teleport, and interuppts.. yet most people STILL can't beat that boss, becasue either adds are ignored they grab healer healer can't heal we wipe, or people stand in center and get killed by Siren's attack, or tank doesn't interuppt and everyone takes major damage and a healing debuff that the healer panics because everyone is about to die and doesn't remove while healing at only 30% effective... those are strategy mechanic fights and most people can't do it.

I don't think the problem is too much dancing. Honestly, once a player has completed almost all the content in the game, the very structure of the game leads to an unending cesspool of frustration, pain, and anguish. In a single player game, hard bosses like Twintania and the like are a challenging, but ultimately fun experience because once you have mastered the fight, you can feel confident that if you were to do it again, you can be sure you will win. Trying to do the same thing in an MMORPG will only give that sense of satisfaction for the first week. Afterwards, a never-ending conveyor belt of players new to the fight or just the monotony of rerunning the same old thing over and over again will fray away even the most patient of players.

So people try to analyze their frustration and say that there are "too much of x mechanic" or something else, but really what is happening is that they are being turned into victims of a system that psychologically demands that they win all the important raid fights and cap their currency every week. It's the result of taking what is really more of a stop gap measure against players performing a mass exodus out of the game and implementing that instead of something with honest replayability.

I do think that there's too much movement with the likes of Titan. CT seems to get the mix of movement and strategy pretty well, especially Behemoth one

ill give my two cents on this one, I have always felt that they tried to mix oldschool tank and spank mechanics, with "true action combat" and it doesn't work. As it becomes less about positioning and knowing when to use certain skill in your chain and how many buttons can i spam till i have to move, especially as playing as a black mage. I will not mention the name of my old game but it was true action combat, I literally had to the bosses attack (actually use a dodge skill, not just walk out of the way) or eat the attack and odds are die. Now in this game they want me to dodge circles occasionally while i am forced to eat certain attacks, yes again that happened in my old game, but it was very rare, and in those instances it was up to the rest of the party to trade a debuff or other such mechanic and we could avoid it entirely. and lastly, IF I was truly skilled in my class i could literally go the entire dungeon dodging attacks and not take any damage.

Now as i stated earlier if they want to do red circles and danger zones, screw the wow combat and give us "true action combat" and i think that this game would get a lot more interesting...

Bloody post limits...

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Originally Posted by Hiroradius

Too much dancing?.....

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I hope they just increase the rewards for Pharos instead of nerfing it. I understand people skip it because it's not worth the effort when Copperbell/Haukke HM give the same reward for significantly less effort, but I think it'd be better to give motivation for skilled players to get more bang for their buck.

The irritating thing about gear overcoming skill checks is that groups almost entirely go for the gear check method, ADS for example, making it insanely difficult to find a group that's willing to do the skill method or raising the gear expectations for groups looking to do the gear check method. The 2-split vs the 3-split method on Garuda Ex is another example. Try doing the 2-split method with tanks that are at i65-i70 and see how well that goes. Yet another fight where it's almost impossible to do it in the manner it was intended because people can't be bothered to learn simple mechanics or improve.

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Originally Posted by Hiroradius

Too much dancing?

When they make a fight that doesn't have the "dance" people cry it's too hard, when they put in the fight with the dance, people cry that they have to stop dpsing and move.

MMO's use to be around strategy and gear checks, but when they went that route, it took a LONG time to get the gear.. a LONG TIME. People complained that it was too hard to get the needed gear for these fights and didn't want to play. So to keep making money, keep the games going longer, the developers had to make it easier to get gear, and people still complained because they couldn't get the gear.. and then it was made easier, and complaints, and easier, and complain... see the pattern?

People expect and want their ideal game from every single mmo, and complain when it's not.

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I like what you’re getting at here… Right now it seems like dancing is the only “check” in the game. I would prefer more variety. Perhaps Titan could be an individual avoidance check, Garuda could be a coordinated movement check, and Ifrit could be a gear check. That kind of almost seems like what they were going for, but instead it feels like they’re all 100% dance checks. Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil. Also, other classic mmo mechanics seem to be absent: threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

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Originally Posted by Vesuvias

ill give my two cents on this one, I have always felt that they tried to mix oldschool tank and spank mechanics, with "true action combat" and it doesn't work. As it becomes less about positioning and knowing when to use certain skill in your chain and how many buttons can i spam till i have to move, especially as playing as a black mage.

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Totally agree! “how many buttons can I spam before I move” reminds me of old school Street Fighter, or some lame FPS.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil.

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You do realize that the vast majority of players, unlike you, do not level all of their crafting classes to 50 before getting their first combat class to 50, right? That is to say, most people's first level 50 will not be decked out in full ilvl 70 upon reaching 50.

So let me get this straight. You specifically bought items to make gears enough to outgear any gear checks in the beginning of the end-game then complain that OMG I have to dodge and my gears mean nothing at those levels? Try doing AK pre-nerf with AF gears and you'll see your sooooooo desired gear checks. The contents you listed are to be done before you got i70. It's just nerfed now because the current gear check is in Coil. It used to be that if you don't have the gears, you have to work the skills you got to get past it.

i like the way it is, i find it challenging, and like me, there are other casual players that love the game the way it is, i didnt had crafters lvled up, i started with an arcanist, dungeons were pretty hard, especially AK, damn wall haha, i dont know, maybe u play a lot more hours than me and you find this mechanics boring, but they r fine with me

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Originally Posted by Simaril

threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

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10000000000x This.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil. Also, other classic mmo mechanics seem to be absent: threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

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The only thing I can agree on is the ease of obtaining gear. When you overgear the content the difficulty is going to be reduced to the simplest mechanics because your gear is trivializing the rest.

Take Titan HM for example. It has a hard DPS check that is trivialized by over gearing or building up limit break, a healing check that is trivialized by over gearing, and a personal awareness check that is reduced by over gearing. However, based on your logic this entire fight is just "don't stand in fire".

You realize that nearly every fight can be reduced to tank and spank or avoid AoE when you over gear the encounter enough right? Try running the encounters with a party in ilvl appropriate gear and see if the entire fight is just avoiding AoEs.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

The only thing I can agree on is the ease of obtaining gear. When you overgear the content the difficulty is going to be reduced to the simplest mechanics because your gear is trivializing the rest.

Take Titan HM for example. It has a hard DPS check that is trivialized by over gearing or building up limit break, a healing check that is trivialized by over gearing, and a personal awareness check that is reduced by over gearing. However, based on your logic this entire fight is just "don't stand in fire".

You realize that nearly every fight can be reduced to tank and spank or avoid AoE when you over gear the encounter enough right? Try running the encounters with a party in ilvl appropriate gear and see if the entire fight is just avoiding AoEs .

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You can have ilv 70 before you get to lv50 (I did). Gear should trivialize older content, it shouldn't trivialize content before you can even access it... SE trivialized any gearcheck by designing the game that you can so easily outgear content before you reach it. By doing that, SE has (as you say) "reduced this game to the simplest mechanics." If you're not too lazy or stupid to get the right gear, (or if you have the skill such that you don't need it) this has made the game revolve around dancing, and nothing else.


In your Titan HM example, you can't quite over gear the personal awareness check - at least not with gear that's available before you clear Titan. In ilv 70, you do outgear all other aspects of gear check, but not the dance check. Go to DF and I bet you'll have very little success; often players in full ilv 70+ fail just as hard as anyone else.

I don't understand the gripe here... I mean, yeah it's irritating to have to find 7 other people who know how to dance, and one weak link causes the whole chain to fail... but seriously.

Without dancing, there's too much focus on gear and not enough focus on skill. I find that battles with no mechanics to them are extremely boring battles, whereas dancing battles are kind of exhilarating. To me, fighting Titan in the morning has the same effect as a cup of coffee.

When I played beta, I was thinking, "How freakin' boring! You just stand there and hit the button for your strongest attack over and over!" But when the game launched and I started getting to lv.30 and beyond I was more like, "Whoa, these dungeons are pretty fun!"

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Originally Posted by SallyF

Without dancing, there's too much focus on gear and not enough focus on skill. I find that battles with no mechanics to them are extremely boring battles, whereas dancing battles are kind of exhilarating. "

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Is dancing the ONLY interesting mechanic? Are other interesting mechanics under or over utilized?

I don't hate all dancing, I just think there's too much of it.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

You can have ilv 70 before you get to lv50 (I did).

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Being ilvl 70 before hitting 50 on a DoW/M is a non-trivial task. It either requires you to have crafting classes and gil to craft the gear yourself prior to hitting 50 on a DoW/M, lots of gil to buy the gear off the market board, or another DoW/M already at level 50 to farm tomes with. I see no possible way for a player's very first DoW/M to have i70 gear before hitting 50 without putting a ton of forethought into maxing out at least 2-3 crafting classes and farming up mats and gil.

You are basically going out of your way to over gear your character and then complaining that the encounters get reduced to "dancing", and the fights that don't have this mechanic are reduced to tank and spanks.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Gear should trivialize older content, it shouldn't trivialize content before you can even access it... SE trivialized any gearcheck by designing the game that you can so easily outgear content before you reach it.

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If you farm WP, AK and Copperbell/Haukke HM for tomes before attempting any of the primals then yes. There is, however, the option to attempt these instance prior to farming the gear for them.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

In your Titan HM example, you can't quite over gear the personal awareness check - at least not with gear that's available before you clear Titan. In ilv 70, you do outgear all other aspects of gear check, but not the dance check. Go to DF and I bet you'll have very little success; often players in full ilv 70+ fail just as hard as anyone else.

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So what you are saying is that you think that in full 70+ gear that you should just be able to walk into Titan HM and breeze through it because you out gear it?

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Is dancing the ONLY interesting mechanic? Are other interesting mechanics under or over utilized?

I don't hate all dancing, I just think there's too much of it.

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That's like complaining that encounters in other MMOs are reduced to tank and spanks when you over gear the content.

Frankly I'd like to see them scale down the item level for certain encounters, similar to how they scale down level for low level dungeons, to maintain at least some level of difficulty. In the game's current state it's pretty much common practice to go into a lot of the end game content at 10-15 ilvl above what is actually necessary to complete it.

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Originally Posted by Simaril

You can have ilv 70 before you get to lv50 (I did). Gear should trivialize older content, it shouldn't trivialize content before you can even access it... SE trivialized any gearcheck by designing the game that you can so easily outgear content before you reach it. By doing that, SE has (as you say) "reduced this game to the simplest mechanics." If you're not too lazy or stupid to get the right gear, (or if you have the skill such that you don't need it) this has made the game revolve around dancing, and nothing else.

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Again, most people don't do what you did and max out every single crafting class before hitting 50 on a combat class. Quit whining that you outgear content when you went several hours out of your way to gear yourself up before you could even use the gear. . .

Okay, okay, okay.. lets say you're right and the gearcheck is NOT trivial. Heck, let's say the gear check is very significant...

Do you want to play an MMO where the only two interesting mechanics are ilvl and dancing????? How much dancing is enough? Aren't there other mechanics you can imagine... or expect from SE???

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Originally Posted by Simaril

Okay, okay, okay.. lets say you're right and the gearcheck is NOT trivial. Heck, let's say the gear check is very significant...

Do you want to play an MMO where the only two interesting mechanics are ilvl and dancing????? How much dancing is enough? Aren't there other mechanics you can imagine... or expect from SE???

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Yes I do. I find it thoroughly entertaining to watch people with relic weapons and i90 gear fail at Titan HM. I hope they continue to include mechanics like this in every new instance.

Play Coil. Nicely tuned fights, if you do them properly.

Twintania has a bunch of nice mechanics with only little to no dancing and is not a simple tank & spank. And even with full 90 you are not overgeared for it.