Almost into 7.3, what you think about the *improved* encounter design?

Feel like I'm being gaslighted cause I honestly can't tell the difference

I just know that EW normal raids were boring as sin, meanwhile Arcadion is much more fun by a mile. M7 and M8 were slaughtering parties when they were new.

For the (EX and Savage) fights this patch, I do think they are starting to go too far in visual noise and speed. Maybe next tier can slow down a tiny bit, and pull back on the special effects?

They are pretty fun on pacing.
Savage wise m2s, m5 and m6 stand out in terms on fun. The tank buster thing in valigarmamda was pretty fun too.

I think Valigarmanda was my favorite Ex so far too. That TB dance just felt really fun! Ex4 is probably my least favorite, because even after they adjusted the colors, it still feels really hard on the eyes, as does that special effect used in Ex3, the weird rapidly moving “glitchy” neon pixels thing, but otherwise it was a fun fight. I’ll give Ex2 high marks for creativity, but the conga was the only part I really enjoyed. lol Haven’t tried any of the Savages this tier except the first one, but all the Normals have been fun.

The CEs in Crescent have been fun too, especially (being vague so as not to spoil) Turtle, Shark, Dragon and CB. Kinda hate the Urn though. lol

When LHW first came out you'd think it was an entirely new game the way the community reacted. I thought back then and still think that it was more of the same, and the savage tier turned out to be arguably the easiest to date. They made a few dungeon bosses punishing enough to kill someone who was afk and everyone rejoiced in the amazing new encounter design. Like most things it seems these days, people are leaving the honeymoon phase quickly and realizing there's virtually nothing new or innovative.

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Originally Posted by Volgia

They are pretty fun on pacing.
Savage wise m2s, m5 and m6 stand out in terms on fun. The tank buster thing in valigarmamda was pretty fun too.

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CS3 said that the improved encounter design was 7.2 and on, so Vali doesn't count even though it's one of the best trials.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Dungeons will never be difficult.

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I don't think people want dungeons to be difficult (well okay personally I want them to be harder, but if they do that some people will go riot), they want jobs to be fun again so that dungeons arent a boring slog. Oh and maybe remove the stale trash mob x2 >> boss formula.

The improved encounter design just feels like it's faster with more mechanics thrown at you for the hell of it with more splashy special effects. As someone with memory issues and slow response times, it basically just has me bouncing all around and trying not to die while having zero clue with what is going on.

Savage was great, FRU felt like it was missing something.

I'm not nearly as worried about encounter design as I am with the sheer lack of content (.7.3 is a literal joke, but it's supposed to last us 4 months).

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Originally Posted by Kozh

I don't think people want dungeons to be difficult (well okay personally I want them to be harder, but if they do that some people will go riot), they want jobs to be fun again so that dungeons arent a boring slog. Oh and maybe remove the stale trash mob x2 >> boss formula.

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That's my main gripe with dungeons.
I don't need them to be harder, I need them to actually be engaging.
I want an actual dungeon with varied objectives and environments (not the wallpaper somewhere in the background), not a hallway simulator that only tests if I know where my W key is.

Their idea of improved encounter designs was apparently throwing in some adds and calling it a day. Wheres the platforming? Moving objects like in HW dungeons? Make us do completely silly mechanics, regardless of uptime. Mechanics don't need to be harder they just need to be more diverse and interesting.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That's my main gripe with dungeons.
I don't need them to be harder, I need them to actually be engaging.
I want an actual dungeon with varied objectives and environments, not a hallway simulator that only tests if I know where my W key is.

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I actually don't agree

Dungeons with objectives and non-linear paths get boiled down to optimal paths after a day or two. It's really not as engaging as it seems (try playing WoW and see). What we need is to have square demand us use our kit more (stuns, interrupts, etc) and have to deal with actual mechanics from trash mobs. Also, Mythic+ please.

Did it actually come out with 7.2? I thought it was pushed back until 7.4 because nothing meaningful was changed. The 6 mechanics they love to regurgitate everywhere seemed a little faster though.

Given the trend...

You'll still be waiting for the improved encounter design well into 9.0.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

I actually don't agree

Dungeons with objectives and non-linear paths get boiled down to optimal paths after a day or two. It's really not as engaging as it seems (try playing WoW and see). What we need is to have square demand us use our kit more (stuns, interrupts, etc) and have to deal with actual mechanics from trash mobs. Also, Mythic+ please.

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I don't consider this a valid argument.
People will optimize the fun out of everything, especially in our current age of easily accessible information. That doesn't mean you just give up and design your content around them, because all you've now achieved is that you made it stale and boring for everyone.

We're seeing it with dungeons, we've seen it with Endwalker's giant hitboxes because "optimized players have full uptime anyway" and we see it with the current job design.

I know WoW has this problem with it's dungeons, the way Mythic+ works is the exact reason why it's been exacerbated. Of course you will use the most optimal route when you have to finish within a strict time limit.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I don't consider this a valid argument.
People will optimize the fun out of everything, especially in our current age of easily accessible information. That doesn't mean you just give up and design your content around them, because all you've now achieved is that you made it stale and boring for everyone.

We're seeing it with dungeons, we've seen it with Endwalker's giant hitboxes because "optimized players have full uptime anyway" and we see it with the current job design.

I know WoW has this problem with it's dungeons, the way Mythic+ works is the exact reason why it's been exacerbated. Of course you will use the most optimal route when you have to finish within a strict time limit.

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The trash mobs in WoW's dungeons also have actual mechanics. Even if it's mostly interrupts, dispels, and purges, it's at least more than modern XIV has.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

I actually don't agree

Dungeons with objectives and non-linear paths get boiled down to optimal paths after a day or two. It's really not as engaging as it seems (try playing WoW and see). What we need is to have square demand us use our kit more (stuns, interrupts, etc) and have to deal with actual mechanics from trash mobs. Also, Mythic+ please.

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The "after a day or two" here is very important. Instead of having dungeons that you can explore and figure out on your first couple of playthroughs we have dungeons that aren't even fun the first time you run them.

I agree that we also need more interesting trash with some mechanics, CC and interrupts though.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The trash mobs in WoW's dungeons also have actual mechanics. Even if it's mostly interrupts, dispels, and purges, it's at least more than modern XIV has.

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Trash in WoW has always been significantly more lethal. And while nowadays the mechanics they have can mostly be ignored on lower difficulties, you just AoE them down like we do here, but reach a certain keystone level in M+ and pulling the wrong packs together will end you quickly.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

I agree that we also need more interesting trash with some mechanics, CC and interrupts though.

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This is however not just an issue limited to dungeons.
Our current job kits are simply incapable of dealing with more varied/interesting mechanics.

I am relatively certain the twinning has several interrupts - surplus kamilya, the self-buffing quadrupeds, maybe the kettles at the end too? I think heroes’ gauntlet also had interrupts on the white mage and maybe paladins. Since then, I’m struggling to think of any.

Has it really been two expansions?

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Originally Posted by Kozh

I don't think people want dungeons to be difficult (well okay personally I want them to be harder, but if they do that some people will go riot), they want jobs to be fun again so that dungeons arent a boring slog. Oh and maybe remove the stale trash mob x2 >> boss formula.

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Jobs being fun is complex and subjective. Most people are just burnt out on the game in general.
When you understand jobs and optimization on a fundamental level, every job is basically the same anyways.

Its why when you ask people to articulate what would make jobs fun again they just ask for more GCDs or they want more debuffs/buffs to juggle, but that ultimately changes nothing about the jobs.

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

They could bring wall to walls back, but I don't know what people are looking for aside from that that isnt already present unless you're looking for unique minigames or something in dungeon encounters.

Every time they move from the mob x2 & >> boss formula, people complain and ask why they didnt just do what they always did because people dont like wasting time on more pulls

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Jobs being fun is complex and subjective. Most people are just burnt out on the game in general.
When you understand jobs and optimization on a fundamental level, every job is basically the same anyways.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Its why when you ask people to articulate what would make jobs fun again they just ask for more GCDs or they want more debuffs/buffs to juggle, but that ultimately changes nothing about the jobs.

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

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This has always been an issue, and I doubt it will ever change.
Players can easily recognize that something is wrong, even if you only have a surface level understanding of the gameplay. But trying to figure out the specifics of what feels "off" is a lot more difficult.
For me it absolutely is the gradual removal of small moment to moment decision making, XIV never had a huge amount of it but it was there.
Fluctuating resource generation, cooldowns not automatically aligning, smaller role/job mechanics that needed tracking, just to name a few.

Pretty much anything that wasn't just making sure to press your oGCDs on cooldown to keep them within raid buff windows, which is all we're doing nowadays really.

WoW on the other hand overdid it, especially in BfA when the azeryte armor gave you a bunch of procs on top of those from your spec/trinkets you already had to track, while making the actual core class gameplay simpler and simpler since WoD. It became more about juggling item procs than the fantasy of playing a mage, or a rogue.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

They could bring wall to walls back, but I don't know what people are looking for aside from that that isnt already present unless you're looking for unique minigames or something in dungeon encounters.

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Wall to wall is basically all we have in dungeons now, that is part of the issue. Sure, bring in some minigames, really anything other than 2 trash packs -> wall -> 2 trash packs and then fighting a single enemy in an arena that makes you dodge the same 3 or so AoE patterns.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Every time they move from the mob x2 & >> boss formula, people complain and ask why they didnt just do what they always did because people dont like wasting time on more pulls

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Doesn't surprise me that a lot of people have kind of just gotten used to the fast food design of dungeons.
They've served you nothing but the exact same cheeseburger for years and now they suddenly give you a salad when you were expecting another cheeseburger.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

They could bring wall to walls back, but I don't know what people are looking for aside from that that isnt already present unless you're looking for unique minigames or something in dungeon encounters.

Every time they move from the mob x2 & >> boss formula, people complain and ask why they didnt just do what they always did because people dont like wasting time on more pulls

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Maybe if the devs made trash mobs more than target dummies in FFXIV, people wouldn't be as annoyed with them deviating away from the x2 pack/wall formula.

The Alexandria Dungeon was notorious for spawning adds that did one mechanic then nothing for next 15 seconds.

Zero threats of death, boring gameplay.

My inside Granny misses the time when you had to use your brain to solve mechanics in dungeons/raids and not just being dancing as quick as possible. :/ (playing since HW release)
I miss the old classes battle design too.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Savage is arguably the best its ever been with the most recent tier.
There's a lot of salty weirdos in this thread.

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I don't think a lot of people (me included) contest the actual quality of the fight paradigm in Dawntrail. Compared to Endwalker ones, it's really better.

But I expected a different approach based on what was hyped during the Keynotes. Never thought they would abandon their "DDR", but instead of doubling down on it, I imagined they would incorporate other distinct elements more equally, to which we saw just superficially in a few moments here and there.

Can they bring more random elements to challenge people's ability to adjust?
Can they bring adds more often that need not just be down ASAP but handled in specific ways? (They did for one, at least...)
Can they introduce mechanics that a Phys Ranged would excel in dealing with?
Different arena approaches? I think the last time they made a really cool arena was during Titan Savage on the Eden raid.
How about more 'council fights' like Ark Angels not just in an Alliance Raid?
etc...
Come to think of it, they do address some of those in the Alliance Raid fights, don't they? If we look in retrospect, it got exciting elements that never see the light of the day in 8-mans.

Honestly I don’t even think current savage is particularly great especially on casters. It’s better than EW but that’s a damn low bar

If the answer to “we can’t figure out any other way to make mechanics than having you constantly run around” is “strip casts from casters” then it’s pretty big failure in my eyes. Healers are still boring as well and tanks are still playing baby mode melee

The whole “best tier ever” still feels super melee centric

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

Jobs being fun is complex and subjective. Most people are just burnt out on the game in general.
When you understand jobs and optimization on a fundamental level, every job is basically the same anyways.

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Fair enough.

That said, I personally very much disagree when it comes to healers and tanks (to some degree). Playing healers ever since shb/ew makes me want to jump off a cliff. I want more GCD and buff/debuffs to juggle. I want my RNG Ast back.

What improved encounter design?

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

What improved encounter design?

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The one that we supposedly didn't get attention to Jobs for.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

What improved encounter design?

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Im actually curious about this. Are we referring to smaller hitboxes and some forced downtime? I'm not sure what else changed.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Im actually curious about this. Are we referring to smaller hitboxes and some forced downtime? I'm not sure what else changed.

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At least in normal dungeons faster mechanics.

Other than that? Nothing.

Were you looking for less to no body checks? Nope we still got those.
Were you hoping for more mechanics for tanks/healers to use more of their defenses/heals? You sweet summer child.
Were you looking for more mechanics other than dodge this and take no damage outside of forced raidwides/stack markers/puddles? I mean we kinda got that but most of the fight is still dodge X take 0.

Only good thing we got was smaller hitboxes.

Boss positioning doesn't really matter still.
Tanks still sit on their defenses instead of using them thoroughly throughout the fight (because auto damage is still low).
Healers can still be replaced even on release because healing requirements are low enough to be covered by tanks/dps.
Mitigation is still king with next to no fights where pure healers shine so the pure/shield split was a wasted effort and destroyed AST for 0 reason (thanks SE).
Bosses still stop dealing damage when casting abilities.
Bosses still don't crit on autos.
To my knowledge there's little to no reason to bring caster/phys. ranged because there's no mechanics for them to bait out.

News flash dev team - making mechanics faster =/= improved design. Its just the same thing we've dealt with for years, just faster.

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Originally Posted by ASkellington

At least in normal dungeons faster mechanics.

Other than that? Nothing.

Were you looking for less to no body checks? Nope we still got those.
Were you hoping for more mechanics for tanks/healers to use more of their defenses/heals? You sweet summer child.
Were you looking for more mechanics other than dodge this and take no damage outside of forced raidwides/stack markers/puddles? I mean we kinda got that but most of the fight is still dodge X take 0.

Only good thing we got was smaller hitboxes.

Boss positioning doesn't really matter still.
Tanks still sit on their defenses instead of using them thoroughly throughout the fight (because auto damage is still low).
Healers can still be replaced even on release because healing requirements are low enough to be covered by tanks/dps.
Mitigation is still king with next to no fights where pure healers shine so the pure/shield split was a wasted effort and destroyed AST for 0 reason (thanks SE).
Bosses still stop dealing damage when casting abilities.
Bosses still don't crit on autos.
To my knowledge there's little to no reason to bring caster/phys. ranged because there's no mechanics for them to bait out.

News flash dev team - making mechanics faster =/= improved design. Its just the same thing we've dealt with for years, just faster.

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Obviously this isn't every encounter in the game but, I think m6s incorporates everything you're asking for besides bosses critting on autos and attacking while channeling their spells.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

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I don't think it's the masses. The casual masses tend to enjoy playing around with the toys.

It's the raiders.

WoW brought this back with Dragonflight and War Within, where there are actually talent trees even more complex than the original pre-Mists ones at that, with real meaningful choices (e.g. a lot of utility buttons are placed within the talent trees, forcing you to select your build around which ones you need/want).

I want to say this is more of a ... it's hard to put into terse words, but "community breakdown and player patience" issue is probably closest to accurate in that regard.

Give me some Queen instruments folks, because folks want it all, they want it all, they want it all, and they want it now.

They're people with one track minds. Too much to do in one lifetime. Not folks for compromise and wheres and whys and living lies ...

Okay, enough singing.

Trouble is that evaluating a raid member used to be understood to be a process that took time and a careful analysis. Nowadays, too many people want it to be a quick thought-free snap judgment preferably involving a scoring system standardized by some third party.

And this isn't possible with "complex jobs" because too much tends to depend on whether a player got lucky with their procs, and correspondingly little on their skill. (An example from FFXIV was Stormblood Bard, where the DoT crit proc had such a massive effect on overall DPS that a bard artless enough to be swinging around the bow like a baseball bat but who got lots of dot crits could very easily outperform one who shot like Ulysses and played like Mozart but had bad crit RNG ...)

If you (the royal you) want out of this pit of mid and misery, you're going to have to stop streamlining your time so much, folks. You're going to have to be willing to get back to "it's what's inside that counts" and away from this postmodern trend of superficial, often outsourced judgments.

Community, Gatorade commercial voice is IT in you?

I like the older expansion dungeons where you have to interact with random switches or items, or collect things, or 'solve' something that isn't just move out of the flashing area. Or ones where you can accidentally drag 10 trash into and start the boss fight cos there aren't 3 locked doors in the way. It's just nice to have variety or even for things to go wrong. The current dungeon design is mind numbingly boring

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Originally Posted by ValynS

I like the older expansion dungeons where you have to interact with random switches or items, or collect things, or 'solve' something that isn't just move out of the flashing area. Or ones where you can accidentally drag 10 trash into and start the boss fight cos there aren't 3 locked doors in the way. It's just nice to have variety or even for things to go wrong. The current dungeon design is mind numbingly boring

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And the worst part about that is, they are slowly working on removing all those unique early dungeons, all those creative encounters and experiences, to replace them with the same streamlined dungeon we have been running since at least Shadowbringers, just with a different coat of paint.

Edited to Add: I kinda wish they would bring more max level dungeons per patch instead of reworking the old dungeons. Having to see one dungeon for 9 months on expert is draining.

I would like to say that rather than remove that creative dungeon experience, they've opted to move it to their Variant Dungeon design team. As much as I love puzzles, solving a puzzle you've already solved before very quickly loses its luster. So making it a one time thing in the form of Variant is probably the best way to ensure the content keeps getting created, without being watered down to fit the mold of "content you may end up running 50+ times and will despise"

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

- Trash packs need to evolve radically. The design of boss encounters is just fine, both in dungeons and in higher-level instances (up to savage. I can't say for ultimate). But the packs could just as easily disappear, they're so uninteresting. They're only there to lengthen an instance.

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They're literally the only thing that doesn't make me puke in dungeons. Are they interesting? No, not really, but at least they're not DDR slop while hitting a dummy. Wish we had actual engaging jobs to enjoy ourselves over that trash though.
To my perspective it's the bosses that are here to lengthen an instance. At least they quelled this down a little in 7.2, so instead of being infuriating, bosses are now as bland as trash.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

I actually don't agree

Dungeons with objectives and non-linear paths get boiled down to optimal paths after a day or two. It's really not as engaging as it seems (try playing WoW and see). What we need is to have square demand us use our kit more (stuns, interrupts, etc) and have to deal with actual mechanics from trash mobs. Also, Mythic+ please.

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There is ways to go about it. Take variants for example. They could perfectly have worked as normal dungeons in a normal roulette, where paths there would have been decided at random by the system.
Doesn't resolve the problem of uninteresting trash or bosses or encounter design, but it certainly addresses dungeon variety.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

I am relatively certain the twinning has several interrupts - surplus kamilya, the self-buffing quadrupeds, maybe the kettles at the end too? I think heroes’ gauntlet also had interrupts on the white mage and maybe paladins. Since then, I’m struggling to think of any.

Has it really been two expansions?

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If interrupt is the pinnacle of what us as a community can think of when it comes to crowd control, in a franchise like FF plentiful already with everything there is to wish for, between heavy, slow, mini, etc etc, then I think we deserve what we're getting.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

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Finally, someone sees the light

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Originally Posted by ovIm

And the worst part about that is, they are slowly working on removing all those unique early dungeons, all those creative encounters and experiences, to replace them with the same streamlined dungeon we have been running since at least Shadowbringers, just with a different coat of paint.

Edited to Add: I kinda wish they would bring more max level dungeons per patch instead of reworking the old dungeons. Having to see one dungeon for 9 months on expert is draining.

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Same reason why I can't even bring myself to run the high level roulette since it's gonna be even more of Alexandria, Valley, or even more awful, the infamous luigi's mansion. Ugh.

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Originally Posted by RaionKansen

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

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Procs help a lot but they aren't the only thing that can make jobs more engaging. They need to add more things to pay attention to in general with regards to damage rotations.

Procs, so we need to check if we got a proc after using an ability.

Non-30/60/120s cooldowns so rotations aren't the same loop over and over and over again. If we had some 20, 40, 90 and 180s cooldowns, things wouldn't come up at the same point every cycle and you would actually have to pay more attention to your cooldowns. Your opener, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minute burst windows would all be slightly different due to different abilities being on/off cooldown. And you'd have your pot back up for the full re-opener at 6 minutes. Amazing. It's almost like the game was actually designed with this in mind instead of being boring, repetitive, 1-2 minute loop slop.

Buffs to keep up and debuffs to keep on the boss are good because they just give us more things to track and abilities that we need to use to reapply them. Not sure why they keep getting rid of these. NIN losing Huton and VPR losing its DoT (that was in the game for such a short period of time that I can't even remember what it was called...) sucked.

Abilities that augment other abilities are good (Kaiten). Imagine having to make sure you have enough gauge to spend on an ability by the time another ability comes off cooldown.

We need more diversity between jobs too. Every job boiling down to "123, build, burst. Press your 30/60/120s buttons on cooldown" reinforces how boring the jobs are. You can't even change jobs to freshen the game up anymore.

TL;DR - they need to make the dev team go play WoW again.

Improved fight design? There's improved fight design? Where? When did this happen? I haven't seen it.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Same reason why I can't even bring myself to run the high level roulette since it's gonna be even more of Alexandria, Valley, or even more awful, the infamous luigi's mansion. Ugh.

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Would be great if they scaled the expansion leveling dungeons to 100 so they could add there. If you don't have (or want) jobs to level anymore, you'll almost never see those places again, and some of them are really cool like Vanguard.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Procs help a lot but they aren't the only thing that can make jobs more engaging. They need to add more things to pay attention to in general with regards to damage rotations.

Procs, so we need to check if we got a proc after using an ability.

Non-30/60/120s cooldowns so rotations aren't the same loop over and over and over again. If we had some 20, 40, 90 and 180s cooldowns, things wouldn't come up at the same point every cycle and you would actually have to pay more attention to your cooldowns. Your opener, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minute burst windows would all be slightly different due to different abilities being on/off cooldown. And you'd have your pot back up for the full re-opener at 6 minutes. Amazing. It's almost like the game was actually designed with this in mind instead of being boring, repetitive, 1-2 minute loop slop.

Buffs to keep up and debuffs to keep on the boss are good because they just give us more things to track and abilities that we need to use to reapply them. Not sure why they keep getting rid of these. NIN losing Huton and VPR losing its DoT (that was in the game for such a short period of time that I can't even remember what it was called...) sucked.

Abilities that augment other abilities are good (Kaiten). Imagine having to make sure you have enough gauge to spend on an ability by the time another ability comes off cooldown.

We need more diversity between jobs too. Every job boiling down to "123, build, burst. Press your 30/60/120s buttons on cooldown" reinforces how boring the jobs are. You can't even change jobs to freshen the game up anymore.

TL;DR - they need to make the dev team go play WoW again.

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I hate to compare both games but they're right.

Of course, the combat approaches are vastly different, but the idea is still there: In WoW, there's no such thing as a "2min meta" (well, not counting a Bloodlust window, but that's usually in the opener when somebody brings the buff), and classes there only have inwards mechanics - timers, procs, abilities that interact with other abilities, short time and long time cooldown management, utility management, resource management. None of those elements are unknown to XIV, we had them in some capacity in the past.

In short, it is possible to make the jobs work without a collective burst window happening every 2 minutes if they had interesting inwards mechanics. And even beyond that if we still had party buffers like AST, who brings it in short intervals, it would still add a layer of complexity in figuring out the best way to adjust to a card coming at you every so often.