Is EX/Savage content a battle or a dance number?

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Originally Posted by Xerek

I welcome opinions, it's the aggressive backlash of some I find disappointing.

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I can't say I read every post extremely closely, but I don't remember seeing anything aggressive?

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Originally Posted by Xerek

And again, if my problem is with the mechanics dance, how would a role-change help?

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And, again, I already said why. Because you haven't tried it yet? You have yet to explore all avenues and that leaves possibilities open that you may not realize. Despite how you feel this moment all of us change our minds sometimes when viewing something from a new perspective.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

What role I am won't change that.

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Since you haven't attempted it I personally feel you are giving up without even trying all options, but if that is what you believe then you do you.

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Originally Posted by Lilseph

The EX version required tank swaps tho. :O

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A PLD using Cover would eat the debuff so you never really needed to swap.

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Originally Posted by Miste

And, again, I already said why. Because you haven't tried it yet? You have yet to explore all avenues and that leaves possibilities open that you may not realize. Despite how you feel this moment all of us change our minds sometimes when viewing something from a new perspective.

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To use a food analogy (because who doesn't like a food analogy right?) to explain what I think the OP is getting at, and why he is disagreeing with you....

Let's say you love steak, but where you ordered it the steak is always served with peas and carrots and you *hate* peas and carrots so you decide not to get your meal there anymore. Then someone comes and says "why don't you try chicken or fish with the peas and carrots then."

Now maybe you are right that the combo of chicken, peas and carrots would be amazing.... but I think it is probably pretty normal for someone to feel that changing up the meat dish is not going to make the veggie dish any more appealing.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

To use a food analogy (because who doesn't like a food analogy right?) to explain what I think the OP is getting at, and why he is disagreeing with you....

Let's say you love steak, but where you ordered it the steak is always served with peas and carrots and you *hate* peas and carrots so you decide not to get your meal there anymore. Then someone comes and says "why don't you try chicken or fish with the peas and carrots then."

Now maybe you are right that the combo of chicken, peas and carrots would be amazing.... but I think it is probably pretty normal for someone to feel that changing up the meat dish is not going to make the veggie dish any more appealing.

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Beautiful. Perfect analogy. My problem is that the plate is swimming in peas and carrots, and I'm not allowed to eat my steak without finishing all the peas and carrots. I don't mind a few peas and carrots, but this...? Swapping out the meat isn't going to change my veggie issues. ;-)

I know people already said it but majority of all savage tiers start with an easy 1 and 2 which are dances but becomes savage at 3 and 4

O1s and O2s are completely identical to their normal counterparts I've spent such a small time learning the fight I don't even know the difference in either fight for both where is 3 and 4 have complete noticeable changes

But then again in my opinion savage hasn't been savage since A4s-8s....Gordias was just stupid on the devs part and A3s was almost impossible for most people and A4s had a mechanic that relied on server lag lol, creator just wasn't hard for people they flew through it quick and well this tier isnt hard either I pugged my way to a clear for 1-3s in the first week and 4s on my fourth becuase people suck lol

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Originally Posted by Xerek

Beautiful. Perfect analogy. My problem is that the plate is swimming in peas and carrots, and I'm not allowed to eat my steak without finishing all the peas and carrots. I don't mind a few peas and carrots, but this...? Swapping out the meat isn't going to change my veggie issues. ;-)

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I sympathize completely as I feel the same way. I love healing and have raided at a high level in every MMO I have played prior to FFXIV, but that experience just does not translate to this game at all. High damage, spiky damage, random damage, things that hurt like hell if you mess up but are survivable if your healers are on point.... THAT is my wheelhouse. This games choreography though just doesn't do it for me. I don't think it is bad or wrong design, nor am I (or would I) advocate it be changed as there are lots of people who DO like it.... but it is just not my cup of tea. :)

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Originally Posted by Aramina

Let's say you love steak, but where you ordered it the steak is always served with peas and carrots and you *hate* peas and carrots so you decide not to get your meal there anymore. Then someone comes and says "why don't you try chicken or fish with the peas and carrots then.".

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Nah, it is more like he doesn't want to try the steak with the peas and carrots cooked a different way to see if he would like it. For example I hate cauliflower if you cook it but I love it uncooked.

A different role in a fight doesn't change what veggies are there, but it does alter your experience since each role has some difference in what mechanics they are required to know and required to react to so therefore the veggies may be prepared in a way he would actually like it. Don't know if you like something until you try it. Don't like carrots steamed? Maybe you would like them glazed?

If mechanics are the root of his issue then the plain fact is that DPS and tank roles both have different kinds of mechanics that are relevant to those roles and without him trying it out he is leaving out the possibility of finding out a new perspective that he may find out he likes.

Like I said though, if he wants to give up then it's whatever. I only made suggestions in order to help. He obviously would rather not try it, so that's that.

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Originally Posted by Miste

If mechanics are the root of his issue then the plain fact is that DPS and tank roles both have different kinds of mechanics that are relevant to those roles and without him trying it out he is leaving out the possibility of finding out a new perspective that he may find out he likes.

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Some differences for sure... but whether I am a Scholar or a Bard won't change "Boss does lookaway mechanic every 60 seconds." or "Boss does a targeted aoe mechanic every 90 seconds." or "Must clump up every 120 seconds." etc. If the difficulty is designed entirely (or mostly) around memorization of when to turn, when to stack, when to spread, when to whatever...that is not for me. Any/All games have it to an extent (and is, or should be, completely expected), but for me it is too much in this game. If they were less frequent and difficulty came not from memorization but rather from adaptation and straight raw healing then that would be more appealing for me.

Again current design is not bad or wrong, just not something I enjoy and not something I am likely to enjoy. There are many things in this game that I love though, so I just focus on the different things I love here, and scratch my raiding itch in WoW :)

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Originally Posted by Xerek

In other words, I think mechanics play far too much of a part in Savage.

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At the end of the day, it isn't really just about mechanics. Savage has very strict enrage timers (when your ilvl is around the minimum to enter, this gets offset as your gear level rises), which means tanks mitigation and DPS must be on point, healers healing and DPS must be on point, DPS must have their rotations nailed down to a tee. Everyone must use their support skills perfectly. If any one of those things fail, it doesn't matter how well you perform the dance, you're hitting enrage. Even Extreme primals have an (albeit more forgiving) enrage timer. I know, I've lost track of how many times I hit Lakshmi Ex enrage timer (in fact, in my first attempt ever we hit enrage). Now, some fights use soft enrage timers, some use hard enrage timers. But, savage is meant to be "The boss will see you dead at any and all costs and will stop at nothing", and hence the harsh mechanics, harsh enrage timers, etc, make perfect sense.

It's alright that Savage/Ex isn't for you, it isn't trying to appeal to everyone. But, the current design works for how Savage/Ex are marketed. I'd say it's the best one for the job. I'm open to other options, but I think this one nails the difficulty perfectly. I haven't done Ultimate Savage, but I hear all mechanics there are an RNG-fest.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

Again current design is not bad or wrong, just not something I enjoy and not something I am likely to enjoy. There are many things in this game that I love though, so I just focus on the different things I love here, and scratch my raiding itch in WoW :)

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That's not a problem. If the WoW raiding scene suits you better, then that's fine. Must admit, I don't wanna go back to WoW, and haven't had chance to get into raiding here. I find Ex primals just perfect for me. I don't know why I like them but not Savage (especially since ShinEx is between O2S and O3S in terms of difficulty), but for some reason the Ex primals feel more exhilarating to me, whether I'm a tank or a healer (I do not like being a DPS at endgame, except for the dungeons, I feel more honed and refined with tanks/healers). So it's different strokes for different folks. Probably some weird psychological play going on here.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

Again current design is not bad or wrong, just not something I enjoy and not something I am likely to enjoy.

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That's totally fine. I am not trying to argue you into doing the content if you don't like it. I am simply encouraging and suggesting that people try foods cooked in a lot of different ways before giving up on said food. If I had based my opinion of cauliflower on the one time my mother served it to me cooked and refused to try it any other way I would have never found out how much I love it uncooked.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

Some differences for sure... but whether I am a Scholar or a Bard won't change "Boss does lookaway mechanic every 60 seconds." or "Boss does a targeted aoe mechanic every 90 seconds." or "Must clump up every 120 seconds." etc. If the difficulty is designed entirely (or mostly) around memorization of when to turn, when to stack, when to spread, when to whatever...that is not for me. Any/All games have it to an extent (and is, or should be, completely expected), but for me it is too much in this game. If they were less frequent and difficulty came not from memorization but rather from adaptation and straight raw healing then that would be more appealing for me.

Again current design is not bad or wrong, just not something I enjoy and not something I am likely to enjoy. There are many things in this game that I love though, so I just focus on the different things I love here, and scratch my raiding itch in WoW :)

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This.

I'm not talking the parts about where I need to be ready to handle tankbusters, or burst heal people to full. I'm talking the...well...all the mechanics Aramina described, and ones I mentioned in my OP. In O2S, I go up for Gravitational Manipulation. I'd go up as a tank, down for DPS. For -100 G, I go N as tank/healer, a diagonal as DPS. For tentacles I go to my assigned spot the first and third time as tank/healer, second time as DPS. Same with the bouncing ball, I float and sit on my point the first and third time as tank/healer, second as DPS. But...it's still the same. And that's what I refer to when I mention the dance. I don't mean the parts that need to be addressed by class skills, I mean the arbitrary "stand in a certain spot", "look away", "slide one way/slide another way" that have nothing to do with my class abilities. Those are the veggies on my plate and in Savage there are far too many of them for my tastes. And that's what it boils down to, my tastes. Changing roles will not change the mechanics that have nothing to do with role, or specifically the overabundance of them.

Honestly, Aramina summed up what I was trying to say perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Miste

That's totally fine. I am not trying to argue you into doing the content if you don't like it. I am simply encouraging and suggesting that people try foods cooked in a lot of different ways before giving up on said food. If I had based my opinion of cauliflower on the one time my mother served it to me cooked and refused to try it any other way I would have never found out how much I love it uncooked.

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That's cool :) Like I said I am not necessarily disagreeing with you.... but I have the option of doing things I *know* I like in this game and doing other things I *know* I like in other games. It's not so much being unwilling to try, but more if I can do crafting here that I love, and raiding on WoW that I love... I don't feel inspired to take a leap so to speak... well aside from the obvious of it would be cheaper if I could be entirely happy playing one game. :P

And for the record, I have tried O1S as a paladin in the past. It played out exactly as I expected. All of the mechanics that had nothing to do with class felt exactly the same, and anything having to do with class were rougher because I'm a better healer then tank. Changing roles has no impact whatsoever on mechanics that are not dependent on class abilities. It still felt like far too much time dancing to arbitrary mechanics then time spent doing my job. I can't see DPS being any different.

So wait, I'm confused. Are you trying to tell me a video game is nothing more than a pattern based AI? That's as insane as saying it's built on some kind of computer code.

Raiding in MMOs tends to just be a script loop, and that's why I don't do it anymore. You're just repeating the same crap ad nauseam and it's not really any compelling kind of challenge. Raiders like to puff themselves up feeling good about downing it, though. Grats, you've reduced yourself to the level of a trained monkey for the benefit of marginal stat upgrades on a digital pair of pants.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

I mean the arbitrary "stand in a certain spot", "look away", "slide one way/slide another way" that have nothing to do with my class abilities..

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Tbh, i think they are rookie traps and to ones surprise, they do keep people from O3/4S.
I think you should definitely give O3/4S a go at the very least. O3 doesn't have much random aspects outside of;

• Random Mindjack
• Random Spellblade Holy Markers
• Random Queen's Waltz Tile (Last Phase)

But even those keep some people on their toes, and can catch people off guard a lot of the time if they weren't paying attention, like how someone mentioned earlier about pug parties often struggling to get past the first few mechanics Halicarnassus throws out at players. I'd honestly give O3/4S a few tries before writing off the entire section of savage based upon the first 2, like others have said - the first 2 floors are pretty awful, and really - really simple, they pretty much just removed the safety barrier from O1S and that was it, yet people seem to slide off and kill themselves as much as they are hit by car-clamp somehow. "savage" >_>

I don't really want to parrot anything i've already mentioned, but i just want to say that at your gear level, O1/2S will not push you much to use your classes abilities at all. you can expect it all you want, but the reality is that you can pretty much do the 45% effort thing and still get by for the most part. They are so irrelevant now difficulty wise, that double jobs (even healers) can get by with ease.

What do you think should be done to make raids "more challenging" without the RNG aspect, i mean i'd probably be more frustrated at RNG if i had to deal with Almagest 3X in a row back to back. And also, if one was to... you know remove "mechanics", would anything take its place or would we just have 4 different looking sandbag bosses? :confused:

Yes all encounters are scripted. Maybe you find O1S and O2S less enjoyable because the only random mechanic you deal with is finding the safe spot.
O3S and O4S require more than just finding a safe spot. There are more random elements to deal with and hard hitting mechanics.

Maybe give O3S/O4S a go and see if you enjoy that level of difficulty more.

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

I know people already said it but majority of all savage tiers start with an easy 1 and 2 which are dances but becomes savage at 3 and 4

But then again in my opinion savage hasn't been savage since A4s-8s....Gordias was just stupid on the devs part and A3s was almost impossible for most people and A4s had a mechanic that relied on server lag lol, creator just wasn't hard for people they flew through it quick and well this tier isnt hard either I pugged my way to a clear for 1-3s in the first week and 4s on my fourth becuase people suck lol

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A4S did NOT have a mechanic that relied on server lag.
A4S had a mechanic that was able to be cheesed threw the use of the developers lack of insight into the game structure.
Saccing yourself is not the way the mechanic was ever meant to be done.


Also i think A3S was one of the only few good fights in the entire alexander raid, id welcome more fights like that.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

And for the record, I have tried O1S as a paladin in the past. It played out exactly as I expected. All of the mechanics that had nothing to do with class felt exactly the same, and anything having to do with class were rougher because I'm a better healer then tank. Changing roles has no impact whatsoever on mechanics that are not dependent on class abilities. It still felt like far too much time dancing to arbitrary mechanics then time spent doing my job. I can't see DPS being any different.

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Again, though, you’re talking about V1S. Which has very little reason to refer to itself as Savage content.
Try out V3S or V4S. They’re the actual Savage content this tier.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Again, though, you’re talking about V1S. Which has very little reason to refer to itself as Savage content.
Try out V3S or V4S. They’re the actual Savage content this tier.

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They have fewer mechanics then O1S and O2S and feel less like a dance, allowing more time to actually fight the fight? Because if nothing else, the guides I watched and read on O3S suggest there are more arbitrary, non-combat related mechanics to it, not less.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

They have fewer mechanics then O1S and O2S and feel less like a dance, allowing more time to actually fight the fight? Because if nothing else, the guides I watched and read on O3S suggest there are more arbitrary, non-combat related mechanics to it, not less.

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My point is, you’re basing your perspective on Savage content based off of the two easiest fights in the tier.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for now, to be honest. Your OP complained about the lack of difficulty, then the post I responded to seemed like you were complaining about the lack of job-specific mechanics (since you said something about how there was nothing different from playing a tank than playing a healer in V1S), but now you’re complaining about not wanting mechanics at all? Some clarification would be much appreciated.

“Mechanic dances” are what make a fight more interesting as opposed to a fight with no mechanics at all. If I wanted to fight a Striking Dummy, I would fight a Striking Dummy.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

My point is, you’re basing your perspective on Savage content based off of the two easiest fights in the tier.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for now, to be honest. Your OP complained about the lack of difficulty, then the post I responded to seemed like you were complaining about the lack of job-specific mechanics (since you said something about how there was nothing different from playing a tank than playing a healer in V1S), but now you’re complaining about not wanting mechanics at all? Some clarification would be much appreciated.

“Mechanic dances” are what make a fight more interesting as opposed to a fight with no mechanics at all. If I wanted to fight a Striking Dummy, I would fight a Striking Dummy.

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At no point, in my OP or otherwise, was difficulty mentioned. You misread, obviously.

As I noted prior, my issue was with the sheer volume of mechanic dances involved. Ones that have nothing to do with job roles or class skills. Ones that make me feel like I am memorizing dance steps to some choreographed routine. I have no issue with them in small doses, but in Savage they seem to be the majority of the fight, with one missed step equaling death. You might find that makes things more interesting. I find they suck the fun out of a fight. I'd rather be applying DoTs, barriers and cures, rather then moving to a set position, slide, make sure I'm up/down, etc. And as stated in my prior replies, that is simply a matter of preference/taste. It has absolutely nothing to do with difficulty. I learned O1S and O2S rather quickly, and got my weekly clear for one-two months. I didn't find them overly difficult, rather...I didn't find them overly fun. It felt like a chore. Find a party, queue up...now the dance steps begin. *yawn*

Or, to put it another way, I find an overabundance of arbitrary, non role/class-based mechanics absolutely kills the fun for me, making it feel more like a rehearsed dance routine and less like an actual savage fight. Others, obviously, can and do feel very different about it.

It's problem solving that turns into a dance.

If you go in before guides are released every mechanic is just "what happened?" followed by "what do we need to do to deal with it?"
so your raid leader is basically slowly forming a dance and everyone else is just learning the steps and when you got it put together it's almost just robotic movements more than anything.

The only part that is really a battle is the dps always suffers doing their rotations while learning but it's just a matter of once you get to enrage cleaning up and getting comfortable with the steps

What does it matter how easy it is? Harder mechanics do't change the fact that most of raiding is essentially memorizing an unchanging pattern of phases which are broken down into attack cycles. Harder just means you have less or no ability to recover from, and there are more and longer phases of mechanics. The only real randomness is which player might be targeted with a marker, or mixing up the location of floor tiles you stand on. But every single fight can be broken down into a list of phases that never deviate from their order of attacks in any real way.

This is because they decided to make hard endgame only 8 people. You can't have a boss using random raid wiping attacks when the arena is tiny and you only have two healers, two tanks, and a single target raise. There's no way to hold other players in reserve, so having the boss be random and use less mechanics isn't possible. The fights are against a single boss, for the most part, so you can't make it something like ffxi Dynamis, where it's as much about claiming area in a time limit as the bosses themselves. I don't know why he is getting so much pushback, because he's not saying anything controversial. The game is designed a certain way which makes fights a list of mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

Or, to put it another way, I find an overabundance of arbitrary, non role/class-based mechanics absolutely kills the fun for me, making it feel more like a rehearsed dance routine and less like an actual savage fight. Others, obviously, can and do feel very different about it.

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You do realize it's optional, yes? What you describe a choreographed dance, I call interesting gameplay. The last thing I want is for Savage to be reduced into a random series of target dummies. Over the course of several minute fights, just applying DoTs and barrier would get exceedingly dull. Given you criticise O2S of all fights for having too many "dance steps," I can't say I welcome what changes you'd consider making. I already find Catastrophe boring. Less mechanics would only make it worse.

I have an idea. Lets combine Ice Floors and Instant Death!
Everyone Loves those two mechanics in all other games right? Right!?

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Originally Posted by Xerek

snip.

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Wait, wait wait....i meant to address something else earlier, but I feel asleep, and voila! three more pages sprung up here lol.

As a healer, you actually don't have small windows to attack. You have plenty of time to execute your roles In fact, it is kind of expected that you apply your DoTs, put up your regens/barriers, and DPS, while healing. The first phase of O3S ends with everybody standing on their job panels - fail that, and your party is likely to die before you can get halfway through phase 2. But as a healer, you will be tested for your healing abilities. I'm of the opinion that you should actually try O3S first, as that is worthy of the title Savage. I would say that if you don't find O3S difficult, you have some merit. As it stands, I can't...well, I can't really say that I agree fully with your post, as its based on your experience with O1S and O2S...not the true savage fights which are the last two.

I’m honestly still confused as to what you really want, OP. You claim that you don’t enjoy mechanic-dancing/that they don’t make the content challenging, and that you would rather “be applying DoTs, barriers or cures” (which removing all mechanic-dances would turn these bosses into nothing more than Glorified Striking Dummies), but then you insinuate that you want more job/role specific mechanics...which would still end up being scripted mechanic dances:

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Originally Posted by Xerek

As I noted prior, my issue was with the sheer volume of mechanic dances involved. Ones that have nothing to do with job roles or class skills.

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After playing WoW for a long time, I'd have say I greatly prefer XIV's largely predictable, but more mechanically complicated encounter design.

There were tons of fights in the former where the difficulty varied horribly based on when/where certain mechanics decided to occur (IE, there were a lot of mechanics that randomly could put one or more of your healers out of the fight for quite some time, which was naturally terrible). There's really nothing here that could ruin you as badly as the randomness in WoW could.

I get you OP. When people hear the word "random" they instantly jump to the conclusion that a fight would have those group dance moves at a random order and random times, leading to unavoidable wipe combos. But there are different kinds of random that involve the roles and force you to adapt. Adds spawning from random places at random times. Random debuffs which can or can't be removed. Damage to random targets. Adds having a random kill order indicated by icons or something else. Tank swaps being based on your cooldowns being used up by randomly occurring tank busters (with an internal cooldown similar to what hunts have).

Many kinds of random and unpredictable are already present in existing content. Here are some which I remember.

- Aurum Vale: randomly targeted party members get extra stacks, making people cleanse themselves at different times and not simultaneously (with uncleansable debuffs this could be a tougher healing check)
- Lakshmi Ex: the adds in add phase get bubbles in a random order so dps have to adapt to that
- Odin trial: damage and cleansable debuffs on random targets
- Pharos Sirius: ground effects, constatly spawing adds and explosions keep every role busy on the first boss without it being a dance, and the last boss requires random party members to be fully healed to remove a deadly debuff

It would be nice to get a content mode where the most of the challenge comes from dealing with mechanics specific to each role without the ability to cheese them with a higher item level. Extreme 4 mans with an item level sync? Maybe I'll make a thread about this later.

OP so you want less mechanics and more hard hitting moments in the fight based on RNG right? Do you also not want cast bars (no visual ques either) to these moments so it can be completely reactionary? Because if you can tell what it is then all you have to do is memorize the cast (or que) so you can prep and react to them then it doesn’t matter when those moves come out, because you have memorized those moves. Btw if you are a tank and there are no casts and you take a tb unmitigated you die. If you say well just stagger your CDs, you will run out of CDs. If it is truly random then getting 7 TB in short succession will kill the tanks, because they ran out of CDs. (Let’s say shared Tb’s) At this point what do you say to the tanks/party? RNG wiped us let’s go again. Sure that’s fine, but that doesn’t reflect player skill and while some may like that not everyone will. Is that the kind of raiding you are looking for?

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Originally Posted by Reinha

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They actually already have this in Ex content. Prey mechanic (T10, A12S, etc) was a healing check. Digititus from A3S was a coordination check from everyone. T10 heat charge was a random pattern for tanks to react to. NeoExdeath has party debuffs assigned to roles during the grand crosses you have to position for and respond to. In V3S after animal farm she has random patterns to deal with. I have mostly tank/healed savage content so I am not as familiar with random DPS related checks.

The point being is they have had and still do have random mechanics in those fights, unending coil is their most recent rendition of this. IMO since Gordias (didn’t do Midan) they have moved farther away from using a lot of random mechanics. (A3S) This was a large part due to community backlash, see the response from unending coil having RNG thrown in during the later phases. They will keep adding random mechanics to the raids and fights, the extent is the Q.

It sound like what OP want is the fight like Shinryu EX?
it has randomness element (Hypernova/Levinbolt/Icestorm combo) and party can be overwhelmed (damage from his abilities are quite high).

If not, idk.

I do think it would be neat to have a varying degrees of encounters that focus on different ways to make it challenging. While personally I am not a huge fan of raid encounters that are low on mechanics and are simply target dummies or healing simulator, clearly other people do so maybe it is time SE varied up their encounter design to incorporate other ways to make certain raid encounters please different types of players.

Like one tier can have a boss that is honestly a dummy parse with a tight DPS check.

Another is a healing simulator massive raid wide DPS with a hard hitting auto attacks and frequent tank busters.

One that simply throws out a random mechanic every so often.

Idk I am not an encounter designer, but the general idea is not everyone enjoys the same thing while I personally enjoy mechanic heavy encounters, clearly not everyone feels the same. So why not have varying encounters so a wider range of players can find something they enjoy?

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Originally Posted by Xerek

...I recently dipped my toes into Savage content and discovered it not to my liking...

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Originally Posted by MeridaQ

They actually already have this in Ex content. Prey mechanic (T10, A12S, etc) was a healing check. Digititus from A3S was a coordination check from everyone. T10 heat charge was a random pattern for tanks to react to. NeoExdeath has party debuffs assigned to roles during the grand crosses you have to position for and respond to. In V3S after animal farm she has random patterns to deal with. I have mostly tank/healed savage content so I am not as familiar with random DPS related checks.

The point being is they have had and still do have random mechanics in those fights, unending coil is their most recent rendition of this. IMO since Gordias (didn’t do Midan) they have moved farther away from using a lot of random mechanics. (A3S) This was a large part due to community backlash, see the response from unending coil having RNG thrown in during the later phases. They will keep adding random mechanics to the raids and fights, the extent is the Q.

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The mechanics I marked with red are, to my understanding, something you resolve by moving or turning to a specific place or direction. If the mechanic is passed by using the WASD keys, that's dancing. The ones I marked with green I understood to be something you resolve with role-specific tools. Using Esuna, Provoke, enmity management, harder healing, aoe mitigation, single target mitigation, dps burst, targeting the correct enemy, stuns and other given combat abilities would not be a dance.

We agree on the point that both kinds of mechanics are already present in the game. Some people are just not happy with the ratio at which those mechanics are present. One healing check does not balance out the other 10-20 mechanics which are dance moves.

I don't think it's a matter of not liking it only. Savage design affects a lot of other things in game.

Like FCs in this game are useless, in part because at cap, all the endgame content that you do more than once per week is either 4-8 players. The hardest content is difficult enough that trying to make a FC do it simply won't work; one of the easiest ways to break up a FC is it splitting up into cliques based on who does savage and who doesn't.

You also really don't see any economy in this game because the amount of people doing endgame where they need food and consummables is still really tiny. Savage also is pretty bad for burning out players and hard to recruit for because of difficulty; for all the complaints about Omega being easy, that easiness is what's preventing people from complaining about being unable to replace or recruit.

I really think we need a large scale endgame mode that is FC based and relatively easy, but the players here will complain about anything, and when they tried with Diadem (which wasn't the best but still) players shout it down.

How else would you make content harder without making it suck? Bigger damage and bigger HP isnt "difficulty" either, it's what you describe exactly which makes the difficulty and challenge without making it awful content. I like Omega Savage.

Also plenty of free companies don't even have 8 level 70 players interested in raiding. making more "FC" based content would kill small FCs.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

How else would you make content harder without making it suck? Bigger damage and bigger HP isnt "difficulty" either, it's what you describe exactly which makes the difficulty and challenge without making it awful content. I like Omega Savage.

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Think the OP simply wants a variety, while I agree personal just tweaking the numbers to make it so the boss hits harder and has more hp is not what I would consider difficult, does not take away from the fact that others may find that difficult and enjoy that style of encounter. FFXIV has room for different encounter designs that focus on the different perspectives as to what people find difficult.

I am not encounter designer but would it really be that hard to make different types of encounters that have different focus as to what makes them harder then say the normal version? Maybe make a version or a boss that is simply a tight dps / hps check with very few mechanics. I do not know, though while I do not agree with the OP over simplification, I do think SE could benefit from having encounters that are more random in nature, or simply large target dummies, if it gets more people to do endgame.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Think the OP simply wants a variety, while I agree personal just tweaking the numbers to make it so the boss hits harder and has more hp is not what I would consider difficult, does not take away from the fact that others may find that difficult and enjoy that style of encounter. FFXIV has room for different encounter designs that focus on the different perspectives as to what people find difficult.

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As I noted earlier, it's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of fun. I had little trouble with O1S and O2S. I...just really, really didn't find them fun. I haven't run O3S, not because it looked too hard, but because it looked mind-numbingly boring. Reinha summed it up perfectly a few replies above. Mechanics that are countered with WASD are dance steps, those are the ones I detest in the quantity Savage throws at you. I'd rather counter mechanics with abilities. It's a matter of...

"Okay, tankbuster coming in. I better precast a big heal, get a barrier on them. Alright...roomwide AoE, need to counter with AoE heal before the boss drops that special attack that causes a player to take <x> damage, where <x> is the amount they're currently under max HP. Anyone under half will be dead..."

Vs.

"It's just a jump to the left! And then a step to the riiiight. Put your hands on your hips. You bring your knees in tiiiight!"

It's not about difficulty. It's about fun. If I wanted to, I could study a number of historical tomes and become an expert on history by memorizing a vast number of historical events. The reason I don't has nothing to do with the difficulty of the task, and everything to do with the fact I wouldn't enjoy it one bit.

Or, maybe it will make more sense this way...more Twin Bolt, less Classical Elements.