Less Memorization - More Reaction? (Trials/Raids/Bosses)

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Originally Posted by Synestra

T10 and T11 are good examples where even minor randomness makes fight more fun even when it is on farm, i hope SE will keep adding fights similiar to those and maybe even add slightly more randomness in them. Nothing is more boring than having a pattern based fight on farm, it gets super dull after first few clears to the point i dont even want to do it anymore :s

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Agreed ^^ I look forward to the final phases of t10/11 a lot. "Do I need to soak or not?!" "Are tethers on tanks?!!" As brd I also enjoy how redfire has a total life of it's own too in 12, similar case with flare star in 13. I also really enjoy ramuh w/o TS or marked party members .

SE have proven that they can stress the player with just random elements of minor chaos within scripted fights. While I think most players enjoy these, I'm not sure I'd want more than I'm currently getting.

On one hand - yes, please. I'm sick of being sent to watch guide videos while at the same time yelled at when I actually want to watch in-game CSs. Also sick of having lists of things to learn, just another thing next to the menial grinds, to make the game feel more like a job than fun.

On the other hand - I think of Titan Ex and that lag/latency horror makes me want flee as far away from anything reaction-based in this game as possible.

Perhaps a mix of the two (with those reaction timings not set to the lowest pings) could be nice, idk.

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Originally Posted by Ooshima

ps: If you haven't even done all the said contents you are complaining about, saying that they are boring (whether I think they are or not is another story), claiming that the only skill needed is to be able to memorize the attack patterns and do your rotations properly and you find no thrill in that yada yada. But you have nothing to show on the table, while 90% of the player base out there have yet to clear T13 and a large majority are still struggling with older turns and you right here talk almighty, it doesn't go well. I think it is pretty sad.

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do i need to do every content for be able to judge of the heavy scripted fight? not really... seriously stop to attack people based on them account information and what they have or not done. you have yourtought, that nice, but i don't try to make you look like an idiot because i have not them same! like i have said the fight did leave me a bad taste in the mouth and no thrill since it was heavy scripted... i play since long, very long (legacy player) and did stop the raid in FF14 for this, i haven't seen the need to do it, i haven't feel the thrill when i have done them.... that the point. you can try to defend it, that your right, however, what i'm saying.... and i'm not the only one here is the fight are way too scripted and they seems not wanting to put pressure on player by forcing them to react more than "learn" a dance.

i'm dead tired of the arrogance of people that because they have done this they are the only one that are allowed to judge it. however, like said i'm there since the V1 and i did abandon the raid, it's something they must look into it. it's not why people do it, but why people don't do it they must look into it. it's not about able or not able to do it... it's about wanting to do it. for me all the fight i have done or check up look bland. you like them fine with me, but i hate them. they are not fight, they are dance, they are rope jumping... a fight will be more random, you will need to know what the boss and how to react to it and fight him. not this.

you are a perfect example of people that don't want to be frutrasted or push out of them comfort zone that try soo badly to defend something that was pointed by soo many people before! you like this sort of content, fine. but that my right as customer and player of this game to say that i hate them for being bland. too much scripted fight have no replayability nor real challenge. the only challenge will be to master the dance after this? nothing else.

i have said countless time over the month, actually ff14 only make the player use them memory and forget them other capacity and more important make us play like bot more than human. it's sad... that all.

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

On one hand - yes, please. I'm sick of being sent to watch guide videos while at the same time yelled at when I actually want to watch in-game CSs. Also sick of having lists of things to learn, just another thing next to the menial grinds, to make the game feel more like a job than fun.

On the other hand - I think of Titan Ex and that lag/latency horror makes me want flee as far away from anything reaction-based in this game as possible.

Perhaps a mix of the two (with those reaction timings not set to the lowest pings) could be nice, idk.

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like said countless time, no one ask for a full random fight, but more for a mix, even if i think it need to be about 60% random and 40% scripted. and more important, why the fight are soo unforgiving actually, it's because it's scripted, if you are able to ignore the script because it's not dangerous enough the fight will loook way to easier. (like how look recently garuda hm) they are forced to make the skill of the monster unforgiving for not follow the script. if they are more random, the monster will be more forgiving, but at the same time more dangerous, since you will not die directly, but little by little the group will be exhausted and destroyed by the monster. if people take too much damage that must be healed, the healer will need to heal less the tank and use more mana, messing them rythm.

for make simple full scripted need to be unforgiving, that a given, but with more random, the random part don't need to be unforgiving but need to add more pressure on the group.

Random fights would be too hard.

This game is for babies.

Everything is memorization because it's the easiest way to allow everyone to get through everything in the game at one point, either early on or brute forcing with gear.

People complain about Savage 7 more than any other savage turn and that has the least RNG.

We're never getting RNG heavy fights at end game. They're all going to be DDR. The sooner you accept this the sooner you can either move on to a different game, or enjoy what XIV has.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

you are a perfect example of people that don't want to be frutrasted or push out of them comfort zone that try soo badly to defend something that was pointed by soo many people before! you like this sort of content, fine. but that my right as customer and player of this game to say that i hate them for being bland. too much scripted fight have no replayability nor real challenge. the only challenge will be to master the dance after this? nothing else.

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I have problems understanding your English, really.

Maybe that is why you didn't get it when I said earlier:

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(whether I think they are or not is another story)

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learn2read.

And if you want to talk about responding to randomness and what not, I have expressed my opinion also:

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In any case, if players want random stuff, we have things like Savage T8 towers. Random enough? How many have cleared it before complaining that they want more randomness?

Like Yoship said during the Q & A - if the far majority of the players can't even coordinate and handle a heavily scripted fight with tons of PoV and guides that explains the mechanics to the T, don't expect them to able to handle with random fights.

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T8 Savage's tower order are completely random. At the same time you have to deal with a different ballistic missiles mechanics where you can't simply stack like the normal version, and you have to deal with twin allagan field and twin homing missiles at the same time. Even the world first clear by Lucrezia, you can tell that there is shit load of things going on, lots of lighting quick reactions required, it is quite a mess. This is not your T8 normal where you can go pug in a DF with a scripted macro telling every single dude what to do to the T.

Seriously, there are contents as such in this game and nobody except the top 5% wants to try, and/or capable of dealing with it. You being a legacy player or played whatsoever game have nothing to do it it. This has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree that this game is easy or not. This is entirely about you complaining how things are easy when there are said contents that provides the challenges you talked about, but you are not even doing them! For Pete's sake man.

I just woke from a nap and what crazy upside down world did I wake up to where the vast majority of players find the game as is too easy?

This just sounds like an awfully stubborn way of reconciling an inability to do fights; "this game is boring" is the typical reaction when someone loses Park Road and Mayfair in a game of monopoly and decides to leave. There cannot be a more transparent, cliche way to dismiss the difficulty of a fight. Not to mention that the mechanics that do exist with "randomness" people mess up the most, makes for the most unconvincing criticism of the encounter design.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

like said countless time, no one ask for a full random fight, but more for a mix, even if i think it need to be about 60% random and 40% scripted. and more important, why the fight are soo unforgiving actually, it's because it's scripted, if you are able to ignore the script because it's not dangerous enough the fight will loook way to easier. (like how look recently garuda hm) they are forced to make the skill of the monster unforgiving for not follow the script. if they are more random, the monster will be more forgiving, but at the same time more dangerous, since you will not die directly, but little by little the group will be exhausted and destroyed by the monster. if people take too much damage that must be healed, the healer will need to heal less the tank and use more mana, messing them rythm.

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I think we have the essence of the whole thing right here. They're dogwhistling for an easier game, yeah let's make everything random but not wipe people over failed execution because uh.

Like already said, Final Coil has random elements on every turn and its really better than what second coil was (remember the full scripted T9!)

T10 random attack are fun and test player reactions. We have the same thing in teather/bom in T11.

Even T13 test player reaction with megaflare and dives.

Its the way to be and i hope Alexander in 3.0 will not come back to full scripted fight like T9.

Have you tried playing like WoD? People die all the time, it wouldn't be possible in this game when the average player can't dodge anything. I would love it but I don't think the ppl playing this game is good enough for it.
I just did wod and my 4 dps got hit by everything. That describes the average player

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Originally Posted by Kiara1

Have you tried playing like WoD? People die all the time, it wouldn't be possible in this game when the average player can't dodge anything. I would love it but I don't think the ppl playing this game is good enough for it.
I just did wod and my 4 dps got hit by everything. That describes the average player

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If SE wants more reflex-based gameplay, they got to fix up their net code first.

A little early warning for people with consistently high latency would ago a long way.

Either that or have ultra long telegraph times so people can easier dodge.

90 percent of the people in the game cant handle carved in stone boss rotations randomizing would lower the number or raiders even more than it already is. i have no issue if it goes random but the way this game is built just would not support it. combat in 1.0 was slower and capable of using random mechanics

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

If SE wants more reflex-based gameplay, they got to fix up their net code first.

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the net code is fine as it is..
as people like you still didnt recognize that its not the spell animation that hits (for example an explosion)... you get hit by aoe attacks right after the the ground mark disappears..

the animation comes right after and then followed by the actual damage which is actually the one and only "delay"... and people say "oh but i was out of that explosion already, why i did get hit by it?" its more like that every animation has its own duration... the mark on the ground counts, not the actual "animation effect".. same for limit breaks in PVP where the animation delay is very long. the ground mark disappears and the animation of meteor crashes in about 1-3 s later after which you receive the damage. so its more like "animation delay"... mark disappears -> animation -> damage received


and im playing in Europe.. while the servers being located in America... i have no problem at all. when you really watch closely the marks on the ground and watch on the other hand when you get hit and when not... you quickly recognize that there is really no delay concerning the connection..

The average joe in DF already can't react to fights that have pre-determined scripts.

I wouldn't mind more instances of a fork in the enemy rotation like T10 does in the last phase, but not straight up random choice of attacks the entire run.

We already got something like this in Stone vigil hard mode, last boss.
I agree with OP, I wouldn't mind seeing more bosses like that.

i think it would be healthy for the community. All this "watch the fight, or know the fight" crap could be far less, since ppl cannot just rely on something they learned.
i really hope they change it in the future. No wonder people get so bored also of coils since this memorization bores you way too fast.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

the net code is fine as it is..
as people like you still didnt recognize that its not the spell animation that hits (for example an explosion)... you get hit by aoe attacks right after the the ground mark disappears..

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It's the castbar that matters, not the ground marker, if you are in the AoE when castbar finishes, you will get hit. Only a few abilities in the game work differently (Mortal Gaze in Wod being a good example of one, the animation matters for that one, not the castbar).

Well theres 4 bosses already with a random element. Shiva Ex on which weapon she uses, Last boss in Stone Vigil HM, turn 10 phase 4 if theres a tether or not before the charge and turn 11, stack or spread, could say on tethers also. Forgot, t13, 1 or 2 towers on phase 4.

Having minor random elements like those above do work, basing the whole fight on random behaiviour can be problematic.

A lot of people talk like it's not possible to program rules to prevent some harder mechanics to happen too many times in a set period of time, or twice in a row, and make sure that they happen at least once, even in a "random" environment. :p

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Originally Posted by Zumi

There are lots of random elements in boss fights already mostly having to do with who gets picked with mechanics.

Examples in Final Coil

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And this is how I prefer it. When you have 7 other people to coordinate with in the harder content it is nice to know that, given time and practice, it is possible to work out how the encounter works and how to deal with what is throw at you. The fact that there is a set of abilities that go off in a particular way doesn't mean much if you can't respond to the random elements of who has to deal with what mechanics and reacting to it. And this has been a thing since Turn 5 and is in some EX primals, too, and that's great. It makes content fun whilst still being beatable without the need for insane luck.

What I'd like to see is more of this in non-raid content, too.

it possible to create exeption in a program for avoid 2 command to overlap, i don't see how is not possible. it's ask more work that sure, but it's not impossible.
same you have a lot of people that say that more random will be either impossible or too easy because SE will tune down the fight. when it's both false....

like said what was asked for long, it's fight less scripted and a bit more random, not fully random, some people think that will drive people away from raiding too... it depend mostly on how SE will balance this and more important the learning curve that the raid will offer for make people able to be good enough for this sort of content.

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Originally Posted by Themis

....It makes content fun whilst still being beatable without the need for insane luck...

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simply no, it's not more fun that not true, since when you have the scripte mastered the fight loose all challenge... it become boring and bland to do it anymore.... it will be dull and almost painfull to farm this sort of content.
by the way, if the fight can only be beaten by luck it's a bad fight! random is not always totally based on the luck! in all the raid i have done soo far only one time i have seen a random mechanic that was putting a looooot of difficulty into a fight. it's into World of Warcraft with the first encounter of Mogu'shan raid, where depending of the dog you did get, the fight was going of extremely easy to extremely hard. however this trouble is there because they have not take in account that some mechanic together was making the fight extremely hard for some static.

don't get me wrong you have always a part of script into a fight, indeed the target of the attack is random or the fight will be insanely dumb. every fight of raid soo far in most mmorg have script at some purcentage into it. like when the different phase of the boss begin. check even the old fight of warcraft, they always had a part of script, but they was smart enough for always put a lot of random in them fight for make sure people don't notice it. do it have make impossible to beat the different content they have offer? no. that the point, that a lot of people (me inclued) ask them to do, less script and more random, not no script and full random. it's dumb to even considerate a full random encounter.

a more random encounter will offer a certain replayability to the content, making the farming still enjoyable.

Stone Vigil HM boss, or perhaps, bosses, GIruveganaus!.... (Giruvegan FFXII *-*)


My favorite bosses in the whole game so far... Their attacks are random, interesting, you have to react. Hoping to see this in the next raid. I don't care if people then call the first world ones 'lucky bastards', I'd rather call them good reaction guys.


(t10 and t11 have luck stuff also, so... Tank tethers in t11 a lot? Everone can do it, even those first timing.... t10 without the tether + charge combo is mega-easy...)

One of the most difficult fights in FFXI 75 cap was "scripted" - Proto-Ultima in Limbus. You knew that Dissipation, a nasty ability was coming every 20% and you'd better have a BLM or RDM/DRK on point to stun it. You knew when someone was getting targeted by Citadel Buster and that you had about 30 seconds to GTFO (only element of randomnness was who got targeted. If they were a tank, they MIGHT live.)

And yet groups still struggled to clear this fight. We had an easier time with Omega, who was a lot more random, but whose abilities were a bit less totally-wipey.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

the net code is fine as it is..
as people like you still didnt recognize that its not the spell animation that hits (for example an explosion)... you get hit by aoe attacks right after the the ground mark disappears...

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Doesn't matter. Player see themselves getting clear of the AoE marker on the ground ... then they eat 3k damage ...

This is not a player problem. This is a bad UI problem.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

It's the castbar that matters, not the ground marker, if you are in the AoE when castbar finishes, you will get hit. Only a few abilities in the game work differently (Mortal Gaze in Wod being a good example of one, the animation matters for that one, not the castbar).

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Maybe they should fix that, since we are running out of the AoE, we will be looking at the ground not the mob's UF!

More reaction would be a lot more fun but I think the so called casuals will complain.

Here's a real example of reaction that happened yesterday I have video prof.
but no idea on uploading.

Cleared T11 yesterday boss was at 2% 2 dps down war down both healers down used Hallowed ground timed cool downs mecha hydra dead that's real reaction.

Reaction-based mechanics are usually friendlier to casuals since they tend to involve less instant death and/or allow more time to recover from mistakes. It's the common trade-off for the possibility that the RNG might be unusually cruel.

And Dererk, grats on your clear, but even that situation is an example of responding to scripted mechanics. What you did was choose the most appropriate response; the only difference being that you were forced to use certain cooldowns because your party members failed to handle their scripted elements and got killed :P

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

On one hand - yes, please. I'm sick of being sent to watch guide videos while at the same time yelled at when I actually want to watch in-game CSs. Also sick of having lists of things to learn, just another thing next to the menial grinds, to make the game feel more like a job than fun.

On the other hand - I think of Titan Ex and that lag/latency horror makes me want flee as far away from anything reaction-based in this game as possible.

Perhaps a mix of the two (with those reaction timings not set to the lowest pings) could be nice, idk.

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You'd still be expected to look up guides and memorize how to react to each boss ability, don't be naive enough to think that people somehow would no longer mind the random guy that joined their ex primal/Alexander PF not using all tools available to him just because things are used in a random order.

Players can reduce the UI problem in Titan by making a sharp turn after exiting the AOE ground area. This forces the client to tell the server that you are out of the AOE at the time of landing. That's how a friend of mine eventually beat Titan HM on PS3. He called it the "right angle trick." Get out of landslide, make a 90 degree turn and then run parallel to it for another second.

In that sense, I can agree that Blizzard and WoW hits the nail squared - They may have loads of problems with their game, but the raid boss designs are top notch. From what I could study, they separate their bosses into categories:

DPS burns - Fights where the most important thing is to burn the boss ASAP while dealing with his mechanics (Ex. Razorscale, Elegon, Festergut). They normally act as gear checks too.
Survival battles - Battles where the main focus is to STAY ALIVE, even at the expense of DPS. Such fights are really aggressive on the players (Mimiron, Putricide, Sindragosa, The Lich King)
Gimmick Fights - Fights where there's a special gimmick to handle, exclusive to the fight, and mastering the gimmick is the main key to beating the boss (Ji-Kun, Flame Leviathan, Instructor Razuvious, Thaddius, Lei Shen)

The one constant between all those fights is that they have a mix of reaction and memorization, in what fights have a somewhat fixed rotation intertwined with random elements. On top of that, they have random elements that need memorization to be dealt with. Some times they even mix the battle types, with fights being BOTH a DPS race and a gimmick fight, like Elegon.

So, as everything in life, it's the mixture that makes the cookie grow in the oven =)

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Players can reduce the UI problem in Titan by making a sharp turn after exiting the AOE ground area. This forces the client to tell the server that you are out of the AOE at the time of landing. That's how a friend of mine eventually beat Titan HM on PS3. He called it the "right angle trick." Get out of landslide, make a 90 degree turn and then run parallel to it for another second.

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This is still a developer problem. Not the player's.

Maybe their servers should ask the clients where the players are before hitting them for all of their HP.

Just saying.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

It's the castbar that matters, not the ground marker, if you are in the AoE when castbar finishes, you will get hit. Only a few abilities in the game work differently (Mortal Gaze in Wod being a good example of one, the animation matters for that one, not the castbar).

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This! Good examples are behemot meteor or curtain call, you can start running soon as castbar is finished and take no damage.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

This is still a developer problem. Not the player's.

Maybe their servers should ask the clients where the players are before hitting them for all of their HP.

Just saying.

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Trusting the client is one of the worst design choices for a multiplayer game. And server already trusts the client too much when it comes to movement, the server makes no attempt to check if the movement done was possible.

LOL yea cause Titan EX with random mechanics would be just awesome .. I don't think so.

Maybe if they ever increase the speed at which the servers calculate movement and positioning and to account for latency issues, then sure why not.

But fact is the servers process too slow and players all have varying degrees of latency which makes it an unlevel playing field.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

There is a fight with a good amount of randomness to it: Moggle EX. And people hate Moggle EX. Wonder why...

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I don't see that many people complaining about it. It is an interesting fight. The randomness isn't the huge issue either, the problem is it feels unfairly punitive when one person messes up. If a DPS messes up on titan ex and they fall off the level you can still get through it if everyone else is on the ball. If one DPS goes overboard and kills something before it is time then you're screwed. Worse in a DF a lot of people will try to continue instead of wiping right away. THAT is frustrating. Not the random nature of it.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

LOL yea cause Titan EX with random mechanics would be just awesome .. I don't think so.

Maybe if they ever increase the speed at which the servers calculate movement and positioning and to account for latency issues, then sure why not.

But fact is the servers process too slow and players all have varying degrees of latency which makes it an unlevel playing field.

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If you add randomness but give players an additional .5 seconds to dodge landslides and weights would you change your mind?

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Originally Posted by Ryans

Having world firsts mean less is probably the worst reason I can think for not making the game more enjoyable. That is literally 8 accounts of 4 million to get that honor. Why should the entire game be less challenging as a whole so that a handful of people won't get lucky?

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I agree. Balancing a game around 'World Firsts' is about the silliest game design philosophy I have heard. Memorization is boring. Reacting to dynamic events that require situational awareness and observation skills is interesting.

Guild Wars 2 had a lot of randomness in its fights, but they were boring as hell.

SHiva ex after diamond dust is a perfect mix between the two. after the 1st transition she can go staff or sword. At the staff she can do 1-4 snowstorm which hit pretty hard and sometimes they are back to back. The floor gets frozen at random times as well. That a perfect mixture but that fight was to easy

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Originally Posted by Alex_Lenderson

The idea could be as minor as giving a boss the same set of abilities but randomizing *when* they occur to something really crazy as giving bosses a pool of unique abilities but only grabbing one of them for the fight in addition to what they normally do.

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Here's a crazy idea. Give these bosses some Intelligence, give them a skill set and let them play against us. No more scripted moves, not RNG based attacks, but attacks based on the situation and the AI rules that the boss has been given - throw in a mild amount of RNG to prevent the Boss simply spamming an attack and there you go.

No fight would be the same, players would have to learn what the Boss can do, and figure out what to do in response.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Trusting the client is one of the worst design choices for a multiplayer game. And server already trusts the client too much when it comes to movement, the server makes no attempt to check if the movement done was possible.

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That right there is one of the biggest issues when it comes to cheating and RMT someone on the Dev team needs to spend a month looking at how to sanity check movement requests and coordinates - and then implement it.

I think that there should be optional objectives to dungeons trail to make things more interesting and less brain dead. For example completing objectives could have the benefit of increased rare item drop (like atmas, mounts, equipment etc) or provide some advantage against a mechanic that the boss has.

Devs see it as
Team jump rope Cannot have an unscripted attack pattern mixed in it. Cuz a lot of mechanics r like its all or nothing, hit or miss.
If bosses were more random A LOT of raiders would probs call it quits as the amount of skill needed to understand a fight would greatly increase and go beyond the watch vid strat.
Se spoiled a lot of statics with monotone 1-2-3 mechanic heavy fights that barely change if the static is on their game. That much control given to a player just makes them bored as they feel too safe.