Cinder drift critique: top heavy mechanics are the wrong way to go *minor spoliers*

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I haven’t had a chance to do normal or EX for Ruby Weapon, but what exactly is the problem with level 80 content (i.e., endgame content) requiring some semblance of competency from those attempting it? I think the endgame needs more challenging content that aren’t Extremes or Savage—there’s a huge gap between them and the other endgame content (alliance raids, normal mode raids, “expert” dungeons), and it could stand to be bridged a little bit.

I’d rather have more punishing mechanics as opposed to free-falling for 2 minutes dodging balls that don’t even kill you.

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It says a lot about Byakko when groups purposely stayed still just to see how many balls they could dodge without moving (almost all of them, hilariously. He's that easy).

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I’d rather have more punishing mechanics as opposed to free-falling for 2 minutes dodging balls that don’t even kill you.

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IMHO punishing mechanics are fine (vuln stacks) instant death or instant wipe ones aren't. They punish imperfection and that's a bad standard. You shouldn't have to be perfect in non-ultimate content.

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Originally Posted by Esmoire

I actually think the side content in this game should have gotten harder, sooner. Unless I am mistaken, this is the tightest DPS check outside of ex+ difficulty content, right? But it's honestly rather generous; first time I did it, we cleared the trial our first time even though we had a lot of people screwing up. The second time, we kept failing, and you could see why: PLD not using magic, healers not doing damage, DPS not using party damage buffs, etc. I think FFXIV needs some wake-up calls outside of ex/savage to get players to look into themselves and see if they can improve somewhere.

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Now now, we can't actually expect healers to be doing damage anymore. Especially in normal mode, the devs want healers to be healing not damage. That's the DPS's job. (heavy /s)

the mechanics for Ruby Weapon normal were easy to understand honestly, Phrase 1 was harder honestly, phrase 2 was uhh quite something cinematically but thats it.
I think the difficulty for what it was, was great! Also as HyoMinPark said punishing mechanics are better than what we are used to in normals.
It keeps ppl trying to figure out how to do the next mechanic properly etc, very fun fight imo!

The fight is fun and fine. Boss fights will always have mechanics to keep you engaged. This isn't a tank and spank. Get good or don't do it at all. You're not forced to do it anyways.

I've done the fight twice, both times in PuGs with mostly new people(second was roulette) and I'm honestly not seeing how this is hard content. First one had a few deaths and no wipes. Second had three wipes, each of which was to a different mechanic that were managed fine in subsequent pulls.

That sounds pretty much fine for the first few days of new content. I get the feeling a lot of people view ANY wipes as too hard/unwinnable with the current group, judging by how many people I've seen jump ship at the slightest issue in Eden Normal.

I've done the fight several times. Aside from initial wipes to quicksand, the trial is rather easy all things considered. Second phase imo is even easier than the first, and i did't know there was an enrage, until i've read about it here.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

usually after a rather short time there a mostly groups that demand you to watch a guide, even if you open your own one it would not feel as without guide ppl feel like wasting their time...

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Of course, but like I said - that's the standard for any EX/Savage, so it's nothing new and specific to Ruby.

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Originally Posted by tdb

So instead you want lame, easily avoidable mechanics during which you can press your DPS buttons in a memorized sequence? God forbid having to dodge a mechanic and getting out of phase with the rotation.

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Straw men aside here... This is ironically enough exactly I feel about Ruby. Just to clarify my initial opinion I'm not complaining that the fight is too hard, I'm complaining that its too easy.

Once you know the wipe mechanics in phase 2 it's the most basic tank and spank or "faceroll" as some would put it that ShB has come out with yet.

I'll state it again, memorizing where to stand for X or wipe isn't good gameplay or good game design, unlike "mess up and enjoy your vuln stacks and see if you can recover"

There's a world of difference between the two, both punish mistakes, but the former punishes imperfection by any player to the entire party, while the latter can be compensated for by things such as a tank switch or on the top of their game healers provided the dps doesn't keep derping into bad to 4-5 stack land.

And in the case of Ruby or some of the other EX's i'll state this again, memorizing a wipe mechanic =/= skill or knowing ones rotations. It's why I laugh at people who say "you just want faceroll content" because they keep missing the point. What I want is content that is engaging and more to the point replayable because the fights have variety depending on the actions of players impacting the battle field (good and bad) instead of the battlefield impacting players by a must do X top heavy mechanic.

Ultima is a perfect example of a boss that provides this. You want getting thrown out of your rotation as a BLM main I can't think of a better boss to do that when she starts getting insane in phase 2. The same can be said of the bosses in copied. They require awareness of the arena, they require you to keep on top of your cooldowns, they make you think about how long can i risk standing here for that next fire IV.

They don't as I said, make you spend the first 10 minutes of the fight laying waymarks and choosing positions

They don't make me go "Oh so I dps down the add after the tanks spread them, i dps the comet after the tank catches it, and i dps ruby after, yawn."

They don't make me go "Oh so I stand right here perfectly so when puck knocks me back I break the vines so I can get back to my insanely tight dps check."

They don't make me look at a 2 part 16 minute video for Alpha 4.0 savage and go "Wow...diagrams, we need diagrams? Really?"

Side note, I fully agree with the sentiment about being forced to look at guides being annoying as heck. Given back in ARR my first experience with an EX was people wanting to kick me because I went in blind to Garuda. It's soured me on the content ever since.

TLDR? You can make hard content without adding cheesy wipe mechanics, that's actually hard content. Cinder is a failure in that regard.

A thread started with perfectly legitimate complaints about how ridiculously overtuned Ruby Weapon is followed by a predictable chorus of "GIT GUD!"

These forums are joke.

If a majority of people think its not overtuned, then you cant just stroll in here insisting that your opinion is right and everyone else is crazy. Wiping a few times on normal doesn't mean the fight is overtuned. If someone doesn't know the mechanic after a wipe, someone should explain it to them or they will catch on after seeing it once or twice.

If you thought Ruby Weapon was overtuned, how did you make it past Tsukuyomi or Titania?

Guys its okay to wipe once or twice to learn mechanics. That's how you learn. My experience was we wiped on quicksand and the one boost panel thing but next time we did very well.

Also stop leaving on like the second or third day of content when you get a team that wipes once.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

This is ironically enough exactly I feel about Ruby. Just to clarify my initial opinion I'm not complaining that the fight is too hard, I'm complaining that its too easy.

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I find it interesting that it's usually the people who don't actually delve into Savage and Ex who voice those complaints about how this content is "too easy", because it's "wrong" type of challenge.

I do actually agree that XIV could definitely use some fights that don't run on a strict rotation. More reaction-based mechanics would certainly be nice.

However saying that mastery over jobs is not tested is incorrect - that's exactly what those enrages you complain about are for, so that you have to figure out how to do all those scripted mechanics without breaking your rotations. It's the basis of all job optimization in this game.
The other thing enrages ensure, is that you can't just corpse-through the fights despite failing those "easy" mechanics.

Something that's regrettable though, is that SE seems intent on gradually making the jobs so simple, there's soon going to be nothing much to actually show a mastery over.

Hard disagree. My first NM run was blind with 3 friends and 4 randoms, we cleared 2nd pull. Ran it again today with 2 different friends (they also went in blind) and 5 randoms, cleared 1st pull. No markers. No callouts. Both times.

The fight is fun, well-tuned, and if anything, [NM] is a little too easy. EX is tuned like the SB trials; challenging, until you learn it. Like it should be.

OP starts by implying the fight is too hard, then goes on to say it’s too easy and boring. With the overarching sentiment being that SE should do away with the mechanics. So, a 6 minute DPS check? Oh wait, OP wants the DPS check gone too. So...enter duty, immediate “Duty Complete” pops up, and everyone in the party gets a mount and a i485 weapon?

This ain’t it fam.

My only gripe with Ruby Weapon is the length of the intermission cutscene. It's fine in normal and builds the story. It's pretty tiresome when farming it in EX though.

Difficultywise? Eeh, I think it's easier than Shinryu Normal was. Shinryu's final phase had a couple of fairly stern mechanics. Ruby weapon final phase isn't far off being a face roll and I'm not really sure how you can fail on normal outside of people simply ignoring the meteors.

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Originally Posted by Raim

If a majority of people think its not overtuned, then you cant just stroll in here insisting that your opinion is right and everyone else is crazy. Wiping a few times on normal doesn't mean the fight is overtuned. If someone doesn't know the mechanic after a wipe, someone should explain it to them or they will catch on after seeing it once or twice.

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Because 15 or so people who troll the boards to say that every fight is "too easy" and you should "GIT GUD!" are representative of a clear majority of the playerbase.

Is this your first time on a game forum?

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

So finished the fight with some rather amusing reactions from people last night, including a "WTF THIS IS NORMAL?!?" winning. But the fight itself? Honestly I didn't enjoy it in the slightest compared to previous content.
hase 1 isn't that bad, if anything it's a pretty standard boss battle with some creative aoes mixed in like the liquefy attack. By itself that part would have been alright for a new trial. But phase 2

Oh phase 2 . . .

SQ you really REALLY need to tell your fight designers that multi wipe mechanics with stupid short enrage timer windows on top like this are not fun. Forcing your players into perfect execution of mechanics instead of perfect execution of their job role and knowing your class (not that there is much to know after tanks and heals got dumbed down) is the wrong direction to go.

This got compounded when one of the tanks in our fight had never done the Ivalice chain and therefore had never seen the arrow mechanic. Not a good thing when that part can again easily result in a wipe if your tanks and healers don't know it.

We need more boss battles that are engaging and less fights that have players looking for videos to explain why they just wiped before or after a failure, i consider myself lucky to have a group that stuck it out through five.

And we need more fights that don't veer into spending more time assigning positions then actually battling the boss. My time in Titania EX comes to mind where we did just that. And the fight itself became trivial in the process. It wasn't about knowing my class, it was about knowing where to stand.

There is no skill in rote memorization of a wipe mechanic. Anyone who says "But it's harder" is missing the point because it's not. The only challenge is learning the mechanic. after which I honestly found the fight stupidly easy. Stand here, DPS, repeat, yawn. This is where cinder drift fails because you've made the fight repetitive and boring.

It's going to play out the exact same way every single time because of top heavy mechanics. Tanks must do X, healers must do Y, damage dealers must not derp after both. Failure of any of the above inside some silly short enrage timer window will result in wipe and do it again. And it doesn't matter after that what class, what role, what level of knowing your job comes into the fight if you have "assignments" instead of "gameplay"

Compare this to some of the SB content like the four lords battles (byakko being my fav) or the entire Ivalice arc with some hard as heck bosses, but none of which that had to rely on stupid wipe mechanics to the degree ruby does. Or Copied in ShB. I'll never get tired of taking on the giant mecha or seeing which room I end up in to play death dodge with ring lasers and floor traps. But after doing cinder once I have zero desire to go back to it past helping friends. And even less of a desire to go anywhere near the EX version, least not without looking at a video first
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whats the name of your MMO? oh right.....

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

For job cooldowns that are longer (like WHM’s Temperance), I have them set up on a separate hotbar directly beneath my character model so I can see then in my periphery. Otherwise, learning your rotation throughout a fight eventually builds the muscle memory you need to just know when they’ll be up again. I don’t think tracking cooldowns is a huge issue unless you’re new to things/inexperienced with a job or fight.

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I'll have to try that. I actually did it in SW:TOR back when I actively raided there, dunno why I haven't done the same in FFXIV.

Fully deterministic classes like SMN and MCH can technically have a fixed rotation, though the cooldowns generally don't align nicely so to use everything optimally the rotation will be several dozens of GCDs long. My brain struggles to remember that without any kind of visual aid. And for caster jobs there's the annoyance of having to dodge stuff when you're at a part of your rotation which has cast times. For those reasons I tend to use a priority-based playstyle, but that requires having the cooldown and resource information readily available.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

I'll state it again, memorizing where to stand for X or wipe isn't good gameplay or good game design, unlike "mess up and enjoy your vuln stacks and see if you can recover"

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Fair enough, mechanics should have a sufficient random factor to them that you can't just choose a safe position before the fight begins and stay there. After watching a video to refresh my memory I must admit that Ruby Weapon normal's second phase is woefully lacking in mechanics.

Ruby & Eden Normal were quite fine - everything was beatable after at least 2--4 wipes. I found shinryu and Orbonne (yeah, i know 24 man) on their patch days far more worse, especially on orbonne, you see enough disbands nowadays.

Yes, many job roles have been guttet/remodeled with Shadowbringers, but honestly: thats on the player to prepare themselves before they tackle on new content. And stack markers have been there since Heavensward...

Stack markers have been around since Coils, they just didn't start using a standard marker for it until late Heavensward. The first use of the now-standard four arrows marker than I can remember is in Void Ark.

it was easy to me

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

Ultima is a perfect example of a boss that provides this. You want getting thrown out of your rotation as a BLM main I can't think of a better boss to do that when she starts getting insane in phase 2. The same can be said of the bosses in copied. They require awareness of the arena, they require you to keep on top of your cooldowns, they make you think about how long can i risk standing here for that next fire IV.

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Except these mechanics don't make me think. I ignore them. In Copied Factory, I eat those red squares as a Melee because the vulnerability stack means nothing. I'll get AoE healing there regardless or heal myself up with Bloodbath. Vulnerability stacks only matter if they threaten you, which they often don't outside Savage. Byakko is very guilty of this. I've ate several of the orbs before and still survived his AoE. Now I won't collect every single stack possible, but what motivation do I have to disengage when a single vulnerability stack means that already weak AoE does slightly more damage?

If you're using these fights purely for example sake, alright. Perhaps if they were made more threatening, it'd work better. If not... they're poor examples for the reason above. They don't make you think about the risk of standing there, you ignore them completely, take the vulnerability stack and continue about like nothing happened.

Ruby was fine. Nothing crazy exciting but a bit of nostalgia and nice fight. I fully admit the pinwheel aoe got me, I've only done the fight 2-3 times but I didn't figure that one out yet from glancing at it. I like that, it'll feel good to get the trick to it.

I can understand people finding the fight hard. That's fine, depends how much Duty Finder content you've done and how used you are to various mechanics and movement patterns. However, you will figure it out. Instead of immediately shouting "too hard nerf now!" the moment you wipe once, take it as a challenge and have fun getting through it.

Ignore the "it's super easy git gud u suck" crowd because they kill your motivation. The forums have given many of us the impression that we suck or it's bad to wipe once and that every fight is super easy. So we inwardly get angry at ourselves if we wipe or struggle and lash out against it on the forums or at our groups. Again, it's fine to find a fight difficult. Thousands of players struggle on all sorts of content. It's normal, the average. But beating difficult bosses as a team is what MMO's are all about. So enjoy it. And feel proud when you get through it.

After the first phase was over the rest was...pretty straight forward. I don't think I had much of an issue despite going in blind. Died a few times during the first phase and second phase though because it was a lot to process at once. But I was starting to gain a decent understanding of it by the time the fight was over. I'm sure I'll do worlds better next time if I get it for a roulette or something. Seriously, it's not that bad.

I found the fight suitably humbling. I look forward to taking another whack at it and improving my performance time and time again.

It's optional content - there's nothing wrong with it being hard.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

It wasn't about knowing my class, it was about knowing where to stand.

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Sounds like every FFXIV boss fight ever.

Also why invest most of my PvE time in other MMOs.

Just did Ruby normal mode with at least half (if not more) of the team being new as well, and we really didn't have an issue. We wiped twice but that was it (and if you wipe after outrage mode, then you don't have to start ALL the way back from the start which is nice). Way easier than some of the Edens imo. If anything, it was kind of boring. The new aoe executions were neat, though.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

It wasn't about knowing my class, it was about knowing where to stand.

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This is why I play this game in near-constant returner status. I sub when a patch drops, catch up on my story, and then spend my time elsewhere until the next one. I hope one day SE will go back to before they leaned so heavily into the choreographed square dances, but eh.

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Originally Posted by Flay_wind

I've done the fight several times. Aside from initial wipes to quicksand, the trial is rather easy all things considered. Second phase imo is even easier than the first, and i did't know there was an enrage, until i've read about it here.

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About that, I am one who saw that second phase "enrage". Quite the experience.