Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

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Originally Posted by ZReport

He's just making a point that many people do agree with the blogger's viewpoints. One can assure themselves that the vocal majority agrees with his sentiments as well.

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And many people disagree so how can someone assume that the vocal majority agrees just from this thread? There is no way to know so don't say it's the vocal majority.

I really don't want this game more easier than it already is.
When I re-sub I'm going to continue coil and do the ex Primals because the rest of the things are joke in this game.
While I LOVE CT, it really is so easy the dungeons even HM are soo easy. The great Pharos Sirius, Child's play...I actually like struggling a bit in this game and trying to get the plays down in the game.
I don't play all that seriously, but the baby crap does get boring.

Also, I agree with Marta: Stop the insta death mechanics.
I really like Sylkis idea. Can't like it enough.

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

-Change instant wipes as a result of a failed DPS check or a failed "rope jump" by a single person to some sort of resource drain or detrimental effect for the party, and/or buff for the boss
--Examples
--If Titan heart is not broken, then empty everyone's MP and the limit bar
--Rot should kill the one person who had it only and buff the boss etc

-Change unrecoverable deaths so that it is possible to get back into the game
--Examples
--If you fall of the edge in titan/leviathan, you have to take time to climb/swim back up (which may cause a failed DPS check)
--If you have weakness then you might not be able to survive. Change it so that weakness reduces your capability to do your job well rather than reduce HP.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

And many people disagree so how can someone assume that the vocal majority agrees just from this thread? There is no way to know so don't say it's the vocal majority.

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That's why I said one can assume this to be so. We can't tell, but we can make a very good inference. Look at these official forums. Look at other FFXIV forums. Look at FFXI Reddit. What do you read? Listen to people doing these fights (and failing) in Teamspeak/Mumble/Skype. In fact, start at the beginning of this thread and count how many people "agree" and how many people "disagree."

You can see a ton of different threads or subthreads depicting the disdain for specfic mechanics in the game currently. Much more than those that disagree. Yes, there are people who are completely fine with the current state of affairs. If fact, I'm one of them. However this group of people are in a smaller minority. It's only now that someone has very eloqently posted his opinion on the matter.

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Originally Posted by AkiraTsurugi

Believe it or not, however, most people I know only care about the loot.

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This seems to be the underlying driving force behind the outcries to make content easier or, as the OP proposes, gear carried.

I do believe that loot is required to guide people towards doing content, specially when you have already beaten a piece of it to the point where you master it, but it seems that there is a big portion of the MMO gamer community that uses these games as therapy for some kind of hoarder problem and not for actual entertainment, thus finding every single roadblock a problem instead of a challenge.

The only reason I have to dislike huge roadblocks is the fact that it stops me from accessing other content. This would never be a problem if there was a shit ton of content to choose from, which is not the case in XIV due to its self-obsolescence tendencies, but this is a completely different topic.

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Originally Posted by Tirocupidus

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I'm pretty sure you're talking about my static specifically, because everything you said is exactly what's been bothering my group lately. That and one of our healers is probably the weakest mechanically of the entire group and dies to Acid Rain every time we get to Phase 3. It's frustrating spending well over a month on a fight, doing enough damage to push phases, and being completely incapable of progressing because of a few individuals whom, while they're generally good people and friends of the whole group, are slower on the take. The only T6 clear we had was when two of them were out for a night and we pugged a couple of players.

The answer however isn't "get a better raid" or "kick those scrubnubs" because that's exactly what the blogger was talking about being the problem. Because my friends don't dance, and if they don't dance, then should they really not be friends of mine? I don't necessarily agree with that. I'm a patient person, but my patience with the instakill mechanics is wearing thin. I can handle them, but it feels like the majority cannot and over time that will be unhealthy for the state of the game. It'll be interesting to see how fight design progresses through the next year.

@Bizniztyme Just to run it back, I took out the time to quickly jot down who was for and against the bloggers subject matter in the OP.

Agree: 15
Disagree: 11
Middle Ground: 7

A couple of the posters could be argue between agree and middle ground, but one can safely say using this as a very rough testbed that the opinon is just about split even, with just a few more leaning towards the Blogger's viewpoints. Of course one would have to magnify this amongst 1 million plus subscribers, and then pare that down to just those who attempt any form of endgame. However, you can safely say 55/45 or 60/40 in favor of the Blogger guy.

Weakness already does reduce your vital statistics, not just HP. o.o

The blogger had some good points, and dev team has some good points. One hopes that Balance™ between the two will one day be found.

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Originally Posted by ZReport

You can see a ton of different threads or subthreads depicting the disdain for specfic mechanics in the game currently. Much more than those that disagree. Yes, there are people who are completely fine with the current state of affairs. If fact, I'm one of them. However this group of people are in a smaller minority. It's only now that someone has very eloqently posted his opinion on the matter.

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You can also see a ton of threads of people complaining that the game is faceroll. So you go on assuming everyone agrees with you and I'll assume that everyone agrees with me and lets move on.

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Originally Posted by NovaUltimatum

Also he's not saying get rid of mechanics, he's saying that when they are the main focus (including one-shot mechanics), then the game is either boring/frustrating/unplayable by players depending on their play style.

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With this in mind, if the mechanics aren't the focus of the boss fight, what makes one different from the next? When I think of other MMO's I've played, the names of the bosses don't come to mind first, nor do the mob models (typically), but the mechanics that made them different from the last fight. The first boss I think of when MMO's comes to mind is from another game where everyone had to "dance" around erupting green liquid from cracks in the floor a few times during the fight. Maxing my numbers didn't define the fight, nor did his wicked beard. It was the uniqueness. For the record, if you got caught as a DPS in the liquid, it was a one shot. Now consider that you had 25 players who all had to do the same thing.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

You can also see a ton of threads of people complaining that the game is faceroll. So you go on assuming everyone agrees with you and I'll assume that everyone agrees with me and lets move on.

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How about this, then, for event structure criticisms, perhaps we can agree on this one:

I'm sick to death of having to leave people out of endgame content because of this antediluvian concept of X NUMBER OF PEOPLE ONLY, NO MORE NO LESS, LOCKOUT FOR WEEK AFTER COMPLETION.

As a person who maintains a small LS with lots of folks who would like to participate in content, I object stringently to this nonsensical idea that Dev Team has no choice but to enforce lockouts in order to keep gear rare from hyper-hardcore groups who would run Turn 6 through 9 eight times a week to gear up everyone's alts one by one.

Holy cow, Batman, if they want to, let them. Don't screw over the regular players because of folks who have no job and play XIV all day. Don't screw over groups of pals who want to play a damn game together (novel concept, I know, I'm an original thinker) because of individuals or groups consisting of a minute fraction of the populace who have sublimated into their computer chair for the sake of endless raiding.

Dev Team could also change drops structure in many ways, if need be. They could tokenize it. They could increase or decrease drop rates depending on # of folks who have cleared that content for the week. They could have one base drop per Turn, and an additional drop with x% chance of an additional drop, with x representing the number of people who had not completed that content for the week. If they were really insistent about overgearing, they could make the first drop only guaranteed if everyone in the content had not cleared it for the week, and any/all additional drops were x% chance. Something. Anything. Would beat the hell out of being hamstrung for the balance of the week.

Dev Team replies to issues about overgearing as if they do not have any control over the matter. Why?

Not kosher, kids.

Señor Yoshida, huge fan, love ya forever for saving the game, but damn if you didn't rip the social aspects of playing an MMO right out of the game's core and toss them into Vesper Bay. Work with us here.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

You can also see a ton of threads of people complaining that the game is faceroll. So you go on assuming everyone agrees with you and I'll assume that everyone agrees with me and lets move on.

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No sorry. I'm not a person who looks at things in terms of black and white. Instead I see the full picture. If you saw it too, you'd know that the majority exists with those that agree with the Blogger. Yes I see a ton of people who complain that the game is faceroll. In fact, I post primarily in a forum whos players currently see much of the game as faceroll (BlueGartr). However in reality, that "ton of people" is still in the minority.

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Originally Posted by Eagleheart

How about this, then, for event structure criticisms, perhaps we can agree on this one:

I'm sick to death of having to leave people out of endgame content because of this antediluvian concept of X NUMBER OF PEOPLE ONLY, NO MORE NO LESS, LOCKOUT FOR WEEK AFTER COMPLETION.
[/B].

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I'm have no opinion on that issue so you can complain about that all you want. So go ahead with your bad self I say. :)

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Originally Posted by ZReport

No sorry. I'm not a person who looks at things in terms of black and white. Instead I see the full picture. If you saw it too, you'd know that the majority exists with those that agree with the Blogger. Yes I see a ton of people who complain that the game is faceroll. In fact, I post primarily in a forum whos players currently see much of the game as faceroll (BlueGartr). However in reality, that "ton of people" is still in the minority.

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I'm moving on, let it go. We're never going to agree.

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Originally Posted by OmniEx

this guy suggests that the game should be balanced to where GEAR>SKILL.

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I don't think he said that at all. I think what he's saying is that memorizing patterns does not equal to SKILL, but mechanics + knowledge on the job = SKILL, and things like iLVL and Echo are not doing what they're supposed to on easing the fight for new players.
And I kinda agree with it, because you have people in SCoB that don't know how to use their jobs, only got to SCoB because they've done T5 so many times that they memorized it. Same in Levi Ex.

Also, he's not saying "let's discard all mechanics and make all fights face-roll and tank and spank".
What he's saying is the mechanics we have now (like the overuse of instant-wipes) could perhaps be changed to be more fun and interesting.
Why must all fights have a dps check that if not met causes the party to wipe? Like someone said, why not deplete the party's mp or sleep everyone or trigger another mechanics that would actually be punishing but still make you do your best to recover from it?
From how it stands, Tanks get to t5 without ever having to tackle anything or even move, and then they get bombarbed with insta-wipes to the whole pt. You, as an individual, stand powerless on a party until everyone is perfect. Not on their jobs, but perfect on the mechanics.

I don't agree with him to full extent, but it was a very well written opinion, and I think we can do a lot better and I see first hand what this unforgiving nature of content we have now does to people.

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Originally Posted by ZReport

"this is now my favorite fight in the game." Simply because how unrelenting it is as well as the fact that it completely ignores Echo applications and otherwise makes the fight harder with applications over 15%. It's the only fight (so far, for me, I know about Levi EX and T5-9) that forces everyone to play their roles under an unforgiving mechanic that completely removes you from the fight. I still believe that it will be my favorite fight after the fact as well. To this end, I can't wait to do further content beyond this point, as I'll find some of it very enjoyable. To the reverse, I agree with the OP in so far that every fight shouldn't be so extremely unforgiving. There should be a few fights that at least allow for some sort of recovery phase instead of "one death we're done."

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That post just made my day, thanks for havin an awesome mindset <3

Titan EX is indeed the best fight in the game along with Turn 6 and 7, at least for me !

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Originally Posted by Raenryong

though I do agree with less scripting.

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The combat system would need re-engineered if mechanics were random. As the devs have said FF14 encounters are supposed to be predictable so you know to use that life saving cooldown when a big hit is coming. The combat style doesn't lead itself to twitch abilities. First you have those damn animations on some key cooldowns. I don't want an animation to play when I want to save my life now! And even then you might be under the awfully long 2.5 second global cooldown. Until they decouple the animations, which I like, with the buffs and shorten the global cooldown, or remove them from all cooldown abilities then you can't have random effects. There's also the minor issue of the server code that can struggle if you have a less than perfect connection.

Also, any MMOs that I've played have been light on random because well... you want to down a boss because of teamwork and skill not because you got good 'RNG'. Random can make an encounter super easy or close to impossible.

I do not agree with everything said. The term team jump rope is something I haven't heard before but it is very true, if one person trips the whole raid will trip. One hit death mechanics can get tiring, I do not want them removed just would like to see less of them.

CT is as forgiving as it gets for endgame and has a lot of chances to recover if things get messy and I still dread PFing that because people are, in fact, that bad.

FFXI is still running, by the way.

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

I'm moving on, let it go. We're never going to agree.

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Cop-out response. But OK.

I do have to admit that quick enrage is indeed annoying, because of the fact when someone mess up, there's most likely no way to recover because the boss'll hit his enrage because of the time you "wasted" recovering. A long term enrage that build over time would probably be better.

Other then that, i'm feeling the fights as they are right now are well made.

That being said, i do not agree with 95% of what you posted.

You keep saying that gear/echo/whatever doesnt impact the fight in any way, which is 100% wrong. It does help, to a point.

For instance, on twintania, you'll need less peoples stacked to eat the fireball and thus, more time to kill the conflag, conflag which will die waaaay quicker because of the better gear/echo. You can also completly ignore the initial strategy to kill the snakes. Killing them anywhen in any order works now because of echo. Also, the dreadknight will hardly ever kill someone now, as it just get destroyed as soon as it spawns.

On t6, higher dps will ease the fight alot (skipping a second honey and, eventually, completly ignoring the last phase).

On a side note, taking FFXI as an exemple most of the time will most likely lower your credibility toward any sane player that actually played that game. Yes, FFXI was memorable, but peoples tend to forget waaaay too quickly the bad sides it also had.

No, you cant make a party how you want. You probably think you were able to, but that's only because this game had waaay too many jobs, and most of them were simply fundamentaly working the same. I've been in several dynamis/sky/sea/hnm ls, and there are several jobs i've never seen. Certain jobs were made for certain piece of content, and using something else was just plain useless.

What FFXIV did right on that side, is the fact every jobs are different, even if they take part in the same "role", and every of them can take part in any content without feeling useless.

Alot of other thing could be said regarding that post. But overall, i'd recommend you re-sub to FFXI and stick with it, till you realize FFXIV is not so bad, after all.

This is essentially all my complaints worded probably far better.

Hell this hits home since my static just fell apart because as they put it, "no one was having fun anymore". No one wanted to spend hours in coil trying to memorize the fight and dealing with a single person causing a mistake and wiping us.

My static was at our most fun when we did T1-4 and had it on farm. Even with learning those fights it wasn't bad. We simply had fun, then with extremes and T5 on wards it's just been hell trying to get everyone on to do the content and wipe for hours until we get it.

One problem I think with the current content is it's heavily balanced with the mindset that you have a solid static of 8 hardcore players who are very good at the game, or you're going to spend many hours trying to memorize a scripted fight.

Hell for anyone who doesn't agree with the OP, the 2 biggest pieces of damning evidence supporting how annoying this content is, is the fact that 1, people sell carries because for some people it's the only way they can clear this content, and 2, look in PF and see the number of endgame groups with 1-3 strike policies. This sort of content encourages elitism, because these fights are long and stressful and single mistakes can cause a do-over.

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Originally Posted by jellosnake

When I think of other MMO's I've played, the names of the bosses don't come to mind first, nor do the mob models (typically), but the mechanics that made them different from the last fight.

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This. At the end of the day, this.

I honestly love a lot of XIV's bosses - even several of the ones in pre-50 dungeons have some rather neat stuff going on, some of which is fairly subtle. It's the mechanics that make a boss fight to me, which is why I get disappointed at content that's easily overgeared and turns into a tank & spank 'till you win - which is probably 75% of the content post-50 right now, once you're geared enough.

Remember Leviathan Hard Mode? Me neither. But you'll remember Extreme.

Yeah, there's some related issues that do generally come from it. Player frustration (with other players often). Statics falling apart because one person can't keep up (or being necessary because of gear lockouts, although that's a completely different issue. But at the end of the day I remember these fights, they're going to stay with me for a very, very long time, and they're what I'm here for. They're why this is the only MMORPG I've ever even stuck with for more than 3-ish months, nevermind paid a continuing subscription for.

90%+ of the content added to this game doesn't require that extreme level of execution. That's fine. That remaining percentage is aimed at a different crowd, and if that's not you, that's fine, because you're not expected to be in love with absolutely everything the game does. And that's not even talking about just party content either; there are players who will never touch Atmas, never touch FC housing or personal housing, never touch crafting, never touch the Golden Saucer, etc.; and that's okay. There is a portion of the playerbase to whom each of these things is really important, too. It goes the same way with this 'perfectionist' level content.

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Originally Posted by Hachi-Roku

CT is as forgiving as it gets for endgame and has a lot of chances to recover if things get messy and I still dread PFing that because people are, in fact, that bad.

FFXI is still running, by the way.

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FFXI doesn't really have any mechanics to speak of, is heavily dated graphicswise, is deeply entrenched and seemingly uninviting to new players, is not advertised, nor is it looking to maintain two million subscribers going forward.

I realize that Spartan wit is a thing to be desirous of, but there is a point in debate where exposition is necessary.

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Originally Posted by Kletian

I disagree that limited attempt rather than limited successes would be a better time gate- it leads to more frustration and intolerance of people learning.

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I really do hate to break your bubble, but there is no tolerance for people learning already, unless there are 8/8 people learning.

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

Remember Leviathan Hard Mode? Me neither. But you'll remember Extreme.

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hmmm nope. It's the exact same fight with a grand total one 2 new mechanics :

1) adds
2) heal debuff

new spumes are just new spumes. Same, the rails going out are just a "you'll die" thingie. Nothing new.

On the other side, I'll remember Chimera from Cutter's cry, or Brayflox (story) last boss, or Qarn last boss. They aren't that hard, only a few gimmicks, but they are fun. Fun to learn, fun to fight, not THAT unforgiving (read here, no one-shot mechanics) but if you mess up too much you'll die. And no amount of gear can help you.

All in all, I'd prefer more bosses of this type but with synced ilevel.

Like, T1 would be synced down to i75 max. T5 would be i90 max, and so on (i60 max for Hard DR, 70 max for expert DR....), without so many insta death mechanics. It would be hard, but feasible, and echo would have a meaning

OP doesn't want to make the game easier, but more forgiving (which doesn't mean it will be easier).

Take T6 and T7 for example.
If someone gets eaten by mistake, it is not an instant wipe. Its not an instant wipe at a certain amount of stacks either, it depends on your skill and gear.
If someone accidentally sends out voice in the wrong direction and gets a person or two, its not an instant wipe. If it's a healer(s), the tank just has to hold it out for 30 seconds. If it's a melee DPS, just move the boss away. If it's the offtank and adds are coming, the party just has to stop attacking for a while. If someone is stoned where they are and gets shriek, everyone needs to run to the hiding spot (This happened to our party once and we actually made it through in the end).

Making a mistake makes the fight harder instead of impossible, and this is balanced by the ease of making the mistake. It's also not always easy to be able to recover, and it gives a chance for good players to shine. I think this is what OP wants.

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

On the other side, I'll remember Chimera from Cutter's cry, or Brayflox (story) last boss, or Qarn last boss. They aren't that hard, only a few gimmicks, but they are fun. Fun to learn, fun to fight, not THAT unforgiving (read here, no one-shot mechanics) but if you mess up too much you'll die. And no amount of gear can help you.

All in all, I'd prefer more bosses of this type but with synced ilevel.

Like, T1 would be synced down to i75 max. T5 would be i90 max, and so on (i60 max for Hard DR, 70 max for expert DR....), without so many insta death mechanics. It would be hard, but feasible, and echo would have a meaning

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No amount of gear will help you in those because they're literally synced to a cap. (Also Chimera is a one-shot on many characters, unless you're being synced down). With that said, if the tradeoff for loosening up execution is to instead cap our strength going into it? I am super okay with that, and have been requesting an iLvl sync for content for a long time.

What matters most is that I have to actually give a damn about the mechanics. When mechanics are easily outstripped and ignored, then they're forgettable to me. It doesn't work. That's why I'm fine with one shot mechanics - you have to care about them. And right now, in postgame content, without any sort of relevant capability cap on 80% of content, we can just ignore the majority of what's going on around us.

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Originally Posted by Yurihyuga

I can agree to your points but then we have to consider what is also fun. Wouldn't you have more fun having to make decisions on the go or those decisions being made for you by a mechanic driven system? This is the defining question most people don't watch videos and depend on luck to get past a script that can be read which has a rippling effect through the community.

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It's fun to move on to different, newer content once you've mastered a given fight. "Oh, this time Titan EX is going to use mountain buster THREE times instead of two! This is a completely new, engaging take on this fight I've already done 3 dozen times!"

The original poster claims the most fun he ever had in FFXI was camping sea and sky for years, so I am going to need some convincing not to just dismiss his opinions about what the people do and do not want entirely.

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OP doesn't want to make the game easier, but more forgiving (which doesn't mean it will be easier).

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Huh? Making it more forgiving will absolutely make it easier. Of those players he categorizes as "casual", the majority of them are most likely capable of clearing the content they're struggling on (EX primals, early Coil 2) and certainly with echo; the problem is they are perpetually stuck in runs with other casual players who are not. If a raid of mediocre players could lose two people and still beat an EX primal, even with echo, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

After clearing t7 last night, I agree with this guy. The jumprope mechanics are boring. Avoiding voice isn't a challenge, it's an annoyance.

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Originally Posted by ZReport

Cop-out response. But OK.

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I'm not going to argue with someone I'm never going to agree with, it's just going back and forth. Let it go, there's no copout, it's pointless.

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

OP doesn't want to make the game easier, but more forgiving (which doesn't mean it will be easier).

Take T6 and T7 for example.
If someone gets eaten by mistake, it is not an instant wipe. Its not an instant wipe at a certain amount of stacks either, it depends on your skill and gear.
If someone accidentally sends out voice in the wrong direction and gets a person or two, its not an instant wipe. If it's a healer(s), the tank just has to hold it out for 30 seconds. If it's a melee DPS, just move the boss away. If it's the offtank and adds are coming, the party just has to stop attacking for a while. If someone is stoned where they are and gets shriek, everyone needs to run to the hiding spot (This happened to our party once and we actually made it through in the end).

Making a mistake makes the fight harder instead of impossible, and this is balanced by the ease of making the mistake. It's also not always easy to be able to recover, and it gives a chance for good players to shine. I think this is what OP wants.

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That and the fact that the OP wants the game to be more social-friendly in the way of having social-friendly battles. The current metagame is very well oriented around having a very serious mindset with every fight, and it does not lend itself at all to being friendly or even making jokes midbattle, etc. Simply because you have mechanic after mechanic after mechanic thrown at you with little time to type anything outside of movement. The OP all so sutlely made posts about how he's "In Coil all day":

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After each patch, you'll see your FC/LS's static teams in coil all day, and wonder whether anyone will even have time to talk to you.

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The obstacle here (besides the obvious 8-man design limitation) is the instant death mechanics. As long as these mechanics exist, people will only want to play with those who won't make mistakes and would never want to *add* more people into their party.

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And it's very true. Yes, your friend might be the coolest person on the planet, but if he's bad at the game, most people except the nicest of friends will not tolerate the jokes and playing around during serious high end battles and bosses. To this the OP offers an alternate to current content, one that's much more friendly to all, one that also has multiple members outside of the 8-man focus. Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar or FFXI all had this dynamic. Yes, they had some serious fights too with unforgiving mechanics, but you had multiple chances of recovery during an on going wipe. More so than that, you as a player had a sense of camraderie with those who you play with as well. Not only because it had more forgiving mechanics, but also the fact that the types of battles allowed for people to be socialble in chat, and not have an as-serious attitude towards them.

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Originally Posted by Doki

It's just going to get worse. Just a few days ago I watched a raids preview for Wildstar, and thought to myself "That does not look like fun. It looks like hours upon hours of wipes."

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That's the current definition of challenge in MMOs, unfortunately. I dun see people clearing HNMs in FFXI that easily at first even if it was tank and spank.

Also, people against OPs line of thoughts are arguing with the most extreme cases. There's always a middle ground. For e.g. if titan EX was more random with his abilities, the effects of its abilities would be toned down accordingly. This may or may not make fights harder.

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Originally Posted by HolyShadow

For the majority of hardcore players, clearing mechanics-laden contents is actually quite boring.

What the? That's the exactly what "hardcore" players strive and wish for. To actually have fights where you have to put your head into the battle and the mechanics..

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Wait what ? Hardcore people want content hard for like 2 weeks of trying then becoming faceroll easy content because they know every mechanic ins and outs ?

You cannot be serious. You cannot call yourself "hardcore". Hardcore players want real challenge, not scripted challenge that lasts 2 weeks

I think the reliance on rote memory, time limits and insta-death mechanics is slowly going to wear down the community unless SE gets more creative in their encounter design. The lack of dynamism or any chance for improvisation in many of the encounters makes for play that's rigidly predefined every step of the fight. The minutia of every strategy is set in stone and almost any deviation means failure unless you're overgeared enough to ignore a particular mechanic. Still, it's always the exact same order with everyone doing the exact same thing. Luckily I have a cool FC going through coil and EX primals together but people who don't have a near insurmountable barrier of entry after a certain point. Pugging a lot of this stuff is an exercise in frustration in the least and near impossible at its worst. This leads to rage quits, arguments, and a general inability to even progress after a certain point without a static. A game is going to have a hard time surviving when a large portion of its community is functionally locked out of progression. And echo buffs or making gear easier to obtain really doesn't alleviate the issue of insta-death mechanics or fights that are so invariable that the slightest deviation means you might as well wipe and start over.

All this rigidity creates another issue too. A certain lack of epicness, for lack of a better term. Timed enrages, DPS checks, and timed phase changes all leading to situations that can’t be recovered from means you never get those epic boss fights that last a long time with swings and momentum, awesome recoveries from the brink of failure, or improvised “wow, I can’t believe we just pulled that off” moments. Those types of moments build communities whereas the current state of things makes it so any deviation, or even just someone trying to learn, leads to insta-wipes which leads to finger pointing, kicks, rage quits, etc., in the pug community. Which, in turn, leads to the community becoming more and more stratified and less and less people playing.

I just find it really funny that he uses T4 as an example of a well designed fight. T4 is possibly the worst designed fight in the game, it has no mechanics, a complete and utter gear check, and there is nothing epic about it.

What also hilarious is that people are asking for more RNG, when they can't even beat the current tier of contents, RNG is what makes people quit. If you cant beat a scripted with small bit of RNG in every fight (there is plenty small RNG), then how do you expect to beat completely randomized encounter, which no designer have ever come up with.

More casual mode coil with lower tier drop sure w.e, but then people will start complaining how they can't get max lv gear.

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Originally Posted by IzumiRaito

One solution could be AI-driven fights instead of scripted. An enemy that wants to target healers/top dps more often, ignoring the tank. An enemy that when for example blm starts slow-casting long skill, he instantly puts a heavy hitting aoe under him. Or enemy that uses some standard pvp strategies against players like cc'ing healers.

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It would be fun to have maybe a couple of fights like that where its really difficult to get moves done because the boss is "smart". No enrage. Just really tough because the boss is reactive and pushing melee away and interrupting casters. But having the whole game like that would be even more annoying than what it is currently I think.

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Take T6 and T7 for example.
If someone gets eaten by mistake, it is not an instant wipe. Its not an instant wipe at a certain amount of stacks either, it depends on your skill and gear.
If someone accidentally sends out voice in the wrong direction and gets a person or two, its not an instant wipe. If it's a healer(s), the tank just has to hold it out for 30 seconds. If it's a melee DPS, just move the boss away. If it's the offtank and adds are coming, the party just has to stop attacking for a while. If someone is stoned where they are and gets shriek, everyone needs to run to the hiding spot (This happened to our party once and we actually made it through in the end).

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If thats' what OP wants, then I don't understand OP's point at all then. Because that's the kind of stuff that most of the game is already.

OP hits perfectly the point on what has been bugging me since i cleared twinty a few weeks ago and tried to get other fc members there as well. besides all the rummaging about being hardcore and skillzzz, i simply think that current endgame design is simply no fun.

currently my fc is working on t6 and every time they get back from dozens of wipes there's a cold, bitter and disappointed atmosphere in fc chat. that's not exactly what i would expect from a game feature whose reason of existence is to keep people tied to the game.

Also, as somebody who raided in Vanilla WoW's first two tiers and thus actually has experience with a raid environment without very many one-shot avoidable mechanics, softish DPS requirements, generally healable raid damage provided people aren't TOO terrible all at once, etc., I would like to point out that that sort of design has to put HUGE pressure on tanks to gear up if it is to provide any sense of progression whatsoever.

Imo the 1 shot mechanics should only be in phase transitions.
Like it's just too cheap and lazy to make a fight only have 1 supposedly route to follow.
There's barely any variety in endgame strats. Cuz every other strat always funnel into the same drain because of the " in your face jump rope" 1 shot wipe raid mechanics. Oh well !

While I don't really think the FFXI style set up would work well, I do 100% agree on your stance against how end game battles work. I hope the developers see this, it was a very well written post and thank you for translating it for us.