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

Haven't read through the entire thread, but surely someone has mentioned the final boss of Stone Vigil HM. That fight is entirely reaction based. If you got hit by something, that was your own fault for not paying attention to the bosses movements.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chihaya

Absolute Virtue ver. FFXIV go

---

I want this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yumi_umi

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

---

You say that yet you havent completed 2nd or final coil. the turns that have more randomness are in said areas.

People ceaselessly whine about every fight when it's completely predictable. I somehow doubt making people have to use their brains is going to assist the apparently helpless masses.

The top players really have no trouble with whatever SE puts out. I think its only 5-10% of the playerbase that clears final coil of Bahamut every week. But those players will clear the raid regardless of the mechanics because they are skilled.

Its the middle and casual players the ones who don't clear final coil that have a problem with clearing content. Randomness is an difficulty increase in most cases will only have a effect for mid or casual players. Hardcore players will still clear it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

The top players really have no trouble with whatever SE puts out. I think its only 5-10% of the playerbase that clears final coil of Bahamut every week. But those players will clear the raid regardless of the mechanics because they are skilled.

Its the middle and casual players the ones who don't clear final coil that have a problem with clearing content. Randomness is an difficulty increase in most cases will only have a effect for mid or casual players. Hardcore players will still clear it.

---

I agree, simply making the encounters random would not work. What about applying a bit more logic to the boss encounters?

What I mean is, Titan (for example) has a set of moves that he can use - like we do, so we can make the fight interesting. Give Titan;

• a global cool down,
• a rule set for when and how to use the moves,
• rules about the order his skills should be used in to make use of status effects,
• a way to assign threat and target priority,
• grant the rock head a tiny amount of intelligence for decision making,
• finally add 2 tenths of a second "thinking" time to his decision making

The thinking time prevents the fights from becoming cheapened by obvious "cheating" by the AI. This also gives the players a chance to react to what is going on.

This could work for any/all bosses, and would still allow certain phases of a fight to be scripted if that is what the designers desire. It would make the fights more interesting because a) the boss would act based on the player actions, and the players would have to have a strategy to deal with the expected actions of the boss, as well as reacting to whatever the boss actually does.

To make things a little more 'realistic' the AI could get a little fuzzy when there are two or more viable options, occasionally picking the less optimal option.

This would make fights much more unique each time they are run, and maintain a level of difficulty over a longer period of time until players either over-gear the fight, or the attacks used by the Boss are nerfed to facilitate easier progression over time.

I just feel like this would work so much better since it does away with team jump rope, but does not introduce simple RNG based cheating boss attacks. It's a bit more work for the devs, but the end result would be much more satisfying for players - in my opinion.

That's all true and good for the players that are looking for additional challenge. Trouble is the vast majority of the playerbase is drowning in the current simplified version.

There's no way around it. Randomization and enhanced AI requires more from players. It requires additional pre planned contingency stats to deal with certain combinations (last phase t10 is an example). It then also requires players to have the awareness to identify in real time what is being thrown at them as it can be a number of things. And yet still is subject to proper execution.

All we have now in general is straight execution. Those extra layers will be extra stumbling blocks to most. People can't follow a script how the heck do we expect them to improvise? This is a nice change for the upper crust that wants to be more engaged in fights after they are learned. Everyone else is just trying to survive in the 1st place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alex_Lenderson

Anyone else feel this would be interesting?

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

The idea is to reward reaction and quick thinking as opposed to the rote memorization a lot of bosses are now. I'm not suggesting just make it harder, there should also be a flip side such as bosses having a bit less HP or a a few tenths of a second more to dodge abilities.

---

If you can't dodge a mechanic that you know is coming, what makes you think you are going to dodge it not knowing it's coming?

Agreed. If theres one thing this game is lacking, its RNG

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Izsha

That's all true and good for the players that are looking for additional challenge. Trouble is the vast majority of the playerbase is drowning in the current simplified version.

---

It's just laziness. If it wasn't, I guarantee you this game would seriously crash - by the way you all sound you figure every player in this game is incompetent and can't put 2 + 2 = 4 together. People seriously don't know what they're capable of until you give them a chance and stop nannying them.

Only primary issue: lag for some.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

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

---

Pragmatism.

Otherwise the input lag will cause motion sickness for many players - such as me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DrOstler

Agreed. If theres one thing this game is lacking, its RNG

---

Touché.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Catwho

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

---

It was an easy fight if people weren't being stupid.

The bigger problem were the stakes involved. You needed 6 items to go into that fight, and there was a 50k entry fee + 3 day wait between attempts, so you were looking at a minimum 18 days to get one Ultima pop set farmed unless you had a large LS which could split up and cover different Temenos areas on a given run and having the same person lot all the pop items since they weren't tradable back then.

Didn't help that Omega generally had the better drops and only needed 4 items (12 days) to proceed to fight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nestama

Haven't read through the entire thread, but surely someone has mentioned the final boss of Stone Vigil HM. That fight is entirely reaction based. If you got hit by something, that was your own fault for not paying attention to the bosses movements.

---

It was also a clear indicator of how poor this game's handling of AoE hitboxes are, since you could be clearly out of the attack, but still get hit by the attack because your position was snapshotted before the animation for the attack went off.

Definitely. It's horrible that you can map coil bosses in a timeline of moves.

I think most of the fights are random enough thanks to the other 3, 7 or 23 RNG variables added when you zone in to the encounter.

Where is the proof that a majority of players are bad and can't do scripted fights? Of course there are people who don't understand mechanics of a fight, but to say having more randomization in a fight is a bad idea because a majority of players are too "bad" is a horrible reason because you're not basing that statement on anything measurable.

Bottom line is, if encounters were a little more randomized, I know I would have fun. I want that feeling you get when you fight a new boss for the first time, it's scripted, but you don't know whats coming next. I want that all the time.

Server lag however... is a legitimate reason. Fix that, and more random elements can be added to scripted fights.

ITT: People assume that introducing randomness will make it harder or impossible because it won't be rebalanced

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Izsha

That's all true and good for the players that are looking for additional challenge. Trouble is the vast majority of the playerbase is drowning in the current simplified version. There's no way around it. Randomization and enhanced AI requires more from players.

---

well i... i don't WANT to follow scripts, cause its horribly boring, i don't feel like learning a fight. It's a lot more fun to react on a situation.
If i want to learn, i study or learn a language, but i don't play a game.
I really think that people adapt to randomness better then to boring scripts... because it's more fun and rewarding in the end.
in ARR you learn NOT to do your job very well from 1-50...

it's time to actually change that don't you think?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bishop81

Pragmatism.

Otherwise the input lag will cause motion sickness for many players - such as me.

---

What input lag are you speaking of? The game makes use of movement prediction (now wish it also had a lag compensation, attacking moving targets as a melee is a pain in the ass) already, you would still see your character move and stop in real time, even with the propability checks added.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

What input lag are you speaking of? The game makes use of movement prediction (now wish it also had a lag compensation, attacking moving targets as a melee is a pain in the ass) already, you would still see your character move and stop in real time, even with the propability checks added.

---

Lag as in a slight delay between me pushing the forward button and my character actually moving.

GW1 didn't work for me for this reason. PSO2 made me sick.

The reason is because the client confirms with the server before moving the my character on screen, hence the lag.

PS: Vice City (yes, the PS2 game) also had this problem even though it's an offline game. The game took too long to process from button press to on screen action - they probably pipelined a ton of stuff hence the lag.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bishop81

The reason is because the client confirms with the server before moving the my character on screen, hence the lag.

---

Movement prediction exists to eliminate this issue, which this game already uses. You will always see your character in real time, the client simply predicts where your character will end up with your movement, only if you have massive lag or the system is poorly implemented will you ever see your character rubberband or move with a delay.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

Movement prediction exists to eliminate this issue, which this game already uses. You will always see your character in real time, the client simply predicts where your character will end up with your movement, only if you have massive lag or the system is poorly implemented will you ever see your character rubberband or move with a delay.

---

The prediction is used for other players on your screen. There is no reason to predict your movements since the information required to determine that is already at your client - from your keyboard.

If you have massive lag, you will notice that you can still run around (of course the server isn't getting the information), when the lag cease and the server catches up, it just takes the client's word as to where you are. Others will see you rubberband but your own rubberbanding isn't visible from your side - you will see others rubberband though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bishop81

The prediction is used for other players on your screen. There is no reason to predict your movements since the information required to determine that is already at your client - from your keyboard.

If you have massive lag, you will notice that you can still run around (of course the server isn't getting the information), when the lag cease and the server catches up, it just takes the client's word as to where you are. Others will see you rubberband but your own rubberbanding isn't visible from your side - you will see others rubberband though.

---

And the server blindly trusting the client with no checks made at all is what allows poshacking. SE doesn't even need to make it strict, they only need to have a simple plausisiblity check there. Your client sends the position updates to server, you are already seeing yourself move, server checks if this movement makes sense, if yes, nothing extraordinary happens, if the answer is no (will only happen if you are lagging hard or poshacking), your position is changed by the server. The client never needs to wait for a server response to start moving your character.

"The prediction is used for other players on your screen.": For mobs too and SE is doing a bad job with it, try hitting a moving enemy with melee and you see what I mean.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

And the server blindly trusting the client with no checks made at all is what allows poshacking. SE doesn't even need to make it strict, they only need to have a simple plausisiblity check there. Your client sends the position updates to server, you are already seeing yourself move, server checks if this movement makes sense, if yes, nothing extraordinary happens, if the answer is no (will only happen if you are lagging hard or poshacking), your position is changed by the server. The client never needs to wait for a server response to start moving your character.

"The prediction is used for other players on your screen.": For mobs too and SE is doing a bad job with it, try hitting a moving enemy with melee and you see what I mean.

---

I know, that's why I said, trusting the client is out of pragmatism. The alternative is input lag and some players feeling ill.

As for why they don't do plausibility checks, beats me. Maybe it's not as easy to determine what is and isn't "plausible" movement as we think. /shrug

PS: WoW doesn't check either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Garlyle

That's basically exactly what Thornmarch EX is. There's X number of attacks that come out, with some new ones being added after the first revive. The only rule to it is that it doesn't like to do the same one back to back.

I know a lot of players who don't want to go back to Thornmarch EX unless they have to.

---

To be fair, Thornmarch EX isn't a totally fair comparison to having a Single Coil Boss be less scripted. Moggle Mog has *8* Key Enemies that are roaming all over the place (7 Moogles and King Moggle Mog); it *is* an exercise in Chaos / Wackiness on purpose.

As Felis said, 1.0's Ifrit Extreme (much harder than If EX now) was a great example of Randomness within Structure:

Each Phase had a certain set of moves, but the moves were random in usage.

The trouble is, randomness requires more from players. To have the same mechanics now, but random is a direct increase in difficulty. Period. That's what I mean when I say most of the playerbase will just struggle even more.

In order to maintain difficulty, you have to either nerf the power of the moves, or give more time to react to them.

Take titan for example. A great many players find its current scripted form very difficult. To randomize it's current form would make it even harder for those players. To randomize, you would need to either increase cast times on plumes etc so players have time to recognize the random element and then react, or nerf damage to allow more mistakes. The original goal of randomization is for players that know these fights to not get as bored. But for players like me that can already react fast enough to dodge plumes with no warning, the slower or weaker random version would just put me to sleep it would be so easy.

Tldr: in order to meet the goal if keeping vets more engaged, the mechanics would need to be nerfed and still end up weak and boring for vets. To not nerf or weaken but just add random is a direct increase to difficulty and weaker players will struggle even more. It's a no win. We can't have fights that are challenging and engaging for high performers but are still accessable to the masses. Just broadly applying randomness everywhere won't help meet the initial goal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

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

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

---

I think the Dev Team heard our complaints, especially after stuff like Titan EX and 2nd Coil.

I do think Turn 10+ show some promise of a *bit* of Randomness within a heavily Scripted fight (not enough IMHO). One key thing that should be kept in mind:

* If the Dev Team added more Random / Less Boring Scripted Fights, there needs to be FEWER Insta-Kill Moves. Or, make sure the Random never occurs on the Insta-Kill Moves.

These go hand-in-hand for balancing out the fight.

Of course having more Random in something like Titan EX (with being able to be Knocked Off / Instant Death), or in Turn 5, 9, with so many Raid Wipes because of 1 Mistake, would NOT be good.

There are ways to make Boss attacks "dangerous" without them 1 Shotting / Instant Killing:

* Massive HP Loss (but Not Death)
* Ability/Stat Debuffs (Loss of Attack Power, Defense, Healing Potency)
* Other Debuffs (Strong Poison, Slow, Heavy, Paralyze)
* Confusion / Charmed, Stun, etc.

And plenty of other ways.

So if the Dev Team designed Boss Attacks to be less "Instant Death! Entire Raid Wipes because of 1 Mistake" and more of other Penalties (like the above or other methods besides Death), then I think Less Scripted, More Random can work. And that's NOT a "nerf." The Dev Team currently using so many "Instant Death" moves is lazy Combat Design.

And again, you can always have *certain Moves* / Phases be Scripted (Shiva Diamond Dust always happens at X%), but other things can be more Random / Less Scripted.

Ultimately, as it is now, once you learn the "Dance" / Team Jump Rope / Pattern, you really are just playing Dance Dance Revolution w/ the Boss (memorizing the fight, rinse and repeat). :rolleyes:

This game needs to shy away from pvp it was never meant for it and to this day its no where near being the lead content in the game.. that's just my opinion.
ON the other hand heres what we have not seen yet:
1. 25 man ls/fc party type raids where you can go in with your entire linkshell or free company rather than having to put up with trolling and other random nonsense from random players.
2. Need to get away from dungeons like coil and primals as pretty much teh only content.
3. Smn class almost all teh previous games once you fought the primals you aquired them as a summoning skill not pets .. this pet thing is in every game why make this one like every other game why not use them as they were used in the past ? as skills taht can be used against the bosses or trash mobs and or on your own party.

They tried that with Stone Vigil HM. I don't think it worked out too good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

No one cares about world firsts. People simply don't like RNG and having it as a combat mechanic would turn people off because they can get wiped by something they can't prepare for, which in turn makes farming/grinding more of a chore than it already is.

---

That exactly is what happens when a new encounter comes out, and no one ever done it. I welcome that change, because the game will become more challenging.

But... people then will come to forum en masse whining about that. Remember Pharos Sirius, people..... Pharos Sirius....

I think T10 gets a nice balance of RNG in the last phase. That's the kind of RNG I want.

Things like Titan ex/t9 are two of the most fun fights in the game for me, I love doing them both, but at the same time I just know them off heart and it takes a little of the fun out of it. I know exactly whats coming next and what to look out for its engraved into my head after all the runs. It's not the scripting that makes them fun, just the mechanics that they both have. I'm not saying make titan randomise everything and throw out 3 sets of bombs and 4 landslides in a row then mountain buster the tank a good 4 times. You can keep a mix of scripted and still throw in some RNG elements that don't oneshot the raid but still add a bit of spice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LalaRu

That exactly is what happens when a new encounter comes out, and no one ever done it. I welcome that change, because the game will become more challenging.

But... people then will come to forum en masse whining about that. Remember Pharos Sirius, people..... Pharos Sirius....

---

what was random about pharos? it was harder then other dungeons but not random, or am i missing something?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Anty

what was random about pharos?

---

Only random thing in there was if siren will teleport to middle or charge from sides, cant really think anything else in there.