Content should be challenging to execute... Not challenging to learn

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Originally Posted by SirDiscoFrog

Bismark Ex is doable blind

Ravana Ex is doable blind

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Sure, if everyone else knows the fight and you get carried. Bismark is the easier of the two so I'll use that. In Bismark HM you were thrown off his back safely. There is no way to know that this is impossible. I guarantee that the first groups to do this fight had their first failures here. There is no cast bar and no debuf to read. He behaves exactly the same as in HM and if players' only knowledge is HM Bismark then they would not get off his back until they are thrown - since they know time is important and would want to get as much damage in as possible. Even if they were able to get it down in one go and avoid this, they would get hit by it at the end when you go on the 2nd time.

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Originally Posted by Kyant

Sure, if everyone else knows the fight and you get carried..

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False. Did it blind with 7 others, not a single one of us knew it. We mostly knew what was going on from the previous fight and the dps learned the hard way about the debuffs, myself included. Healers didnt even know why we were taking so much damage until i noticed the reflected message on my screen similar to Levi EX. I was a prime example of the 3 stack debuff that killed me and a drg. I dont know how many HMs you've done but most of the ones ive been in run off his back once he shudders just out of fear, so did the same. Wipes did happen and we learned from them. I feel like he is one shotable blind but that could be contested (That party would need to be very very good at noticing things as soon as they happen and probably have voice chat...maybe not the voice chat. In any case they would need to be very on point). He definitely however is beatable with a party going in blind/with Hm knowledge. Ravana I can say took us a lot longer doing it mostly blind. Last phase we did have someone explain what was screwing us up as she did it before us. Even those who know the fight at one point went in blind. And those who looked up guides? Guess how them guides came to be.

If we mean one shotting it blind, I doubt many could do it. If we mean after 2+ tries of going at it blind, then yes, monkeys can eventually figure out what's going on.

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Originally Posted by Velia

Titan is fundamentally broken design, it's markers for the line punch and puddles are misleading, or come up too late. They always have. Titan is a very bad benchmark to use for this.

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If you have latency issues, sure. And I say this as someone who was playing overseas for the first year and a half of ARR, so I know how bad the latency can make it. Doesn't change the fact that services like WTFast make Titan significantly easier.

Honestly, the only dynamic thing any part of life has, on an exclusively individual level, is the learning aspect. It's new and foreign to us, even if the subject matter may not be to someone else, so we have to basically start as a clean slate. It's also temporary, as it'll no longer be surprising once you've learned it. Proper execution is generally an act of repetition, which comes AFTER you learn how to do it. There's nothing actually challenging about mindlessly throwing something at a wall repeatedly or doing something you've done countless times in the past. Is the Rubik's Cube difficult to someone who has solved the puzzle hundreds, if not thousands, of times? Is basic addition/subtraction difficult to an accountant?

The idea of adding RNG to keep a fight fresh would not work well, if that were to be a retort. In the case of boss fights in a game, adding every element of RNG to the encounter makes it difficult to balance. If you wanted to add an ability to the boss that makes them invincible for 10sec while you have to kill/lure adds across the room to key positions, it'd be possible for this boss to do this repeatedly because RNG, thus possibly making it impossible to win. If you limit how often it can be used or at what intervals, it becomes predictable... no challenge once you've seen it and "learned" how to get through it, despite the intent of having that RNG there for it. In other words, you'd be pretty much where things are now. Boss fights like Bismarck EX are very faceroll mechanically. It's more or less all about your setup (gear, jobs, etc) and familiarity of the story version. Fights like T9 are relatively refreshing, albeit possibly TOO lengthy in the mechanics lol. T9 could have easily done away with something like the hot/cold mechanic and still have been new and challenging while you progressed.

Learning is a huge part about what makes a game fun, despite the negative connotation a rather large percentage of the population might view "learning" to be. It's not scary, and is in fact, something you do daily... hopefully, unless you're a vegetable or dead. It can certainly be overwhelming at times, but it rarely hits that point for a game like this. T9 is one of the only examples of that, where learning mechanics can be overwhelming (not the part of actually being able to do them). You're going to fail as you learn, that's just normal. So unless you want to do the exact same thing for every single encounter time and time again, you're going to have to suck it up and learn something new once in a while.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

I beat all 4 floors of Alex today, and didn't watch 1 video or read any books, websites, ect. Players did this really wierd thing today, they shared information on what the boss does and made strategies to counter them. So you say that it don't take any skill (only research), but the skilled players are beating it much faster. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Here's a wierd concept, the players that ACTUALLY did some of the previous bahamut raid honed their skills and beat Alexander much easier. The people that said screw it, are struggling on Alex right now.

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I don't see you beating Alexander without doing research is evidence against his statement. You said yourself that players shared information. That is exactly the same as watching a video or reading a strategy. You had a preconceived notion about how about the encounter would play out and without that information you would not have succeed. I think that is the point they were trying to get across.

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Originally Posted by Ryans

I don't see you beating Alexander without doing research is evidence against his statement. You said yourself that players shared information. That is exactly the same as watching a video or reading a strategy. You had a preconceived notion about how about the encounter would play out and without that information you would not have succeed. I think that is the point they were trying to get across.

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What he means is that he created his own strategy.

Remember Steps of Faith? Incredibly easy to learn (hell, there are even text box prompts as the fight progresses) and required simple execution.

"Nerf pls! Anyone who says otherwise is a stoopid elitist!"

*nerfed*

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Originally Posted by IzzyData

I disagree. I'm pretty confident that no matter how long you spend learning about how to pilot a jet you couldn't do it your first try. You could easily watch and read about anything in FFXIV and execute it flawlessly on your first attempt. The skill part of the game would be learning your class and abilities, but if you already knew that then the boss encounters themselves are nothing after knowing what to do.

Perhaps there is a thin line between the two, but it in my opinion the game is definitely more about knowledge than technical ability.

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Came here to say this is false. This is the purpose of training, and millions of people do it. Back to the topic, the fastest clears for anything didn't use any thing of the sort (duh, it didn't exist because they were the first clears). So it's faster to just not cheat and to learn it the right way.

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Originally Posted by SirDiscoFrog

-snip-

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Yet thread on the same page complaining A4 is too hard

This is easy mode and alot of the mechanics are similar to coil.
Hmmm alot of balls coming to 1 target, better intercept some for them.
Adds that should probably be not kept together.
Stacking debuff is bad when goes too high.
Getting this debuff that passes on and damage another player when I come in contact with them

Or just trial and errors things like killing the leg with adds out give the boss a buff - should probably avoid it
2 lasers kills people, should have at least 2 people intercept the lines... and look for it after adds are out during p2

Ravana EX blind huh...
I'll be surprised if you passed with no knowledge of Swift liberation or people not going on panic mode and scatter after pillar of heavens then having laughing rose one shot people. Then also dealing with the tethered orbs. Hence you admit someone had to explain the last phase - which also meant it was not blind. There are some orders of the fight you need to memorize. You might have been blind but I'm sure some of the other players had an idea already what was going on.

For the first groups that clear this, there was alot more trial and error to figure out what went on, not a go in blind and lolwin
My group that went in for the first time had just 1 experienced person. We were able to make it to Bloody Fuller relatively quick but it was alot of grinding and learning after that.

I kinda agree with OP. I feel like by accepting these type of mechanics, we are selling ourselves short. I like to think that almost everybody that plays this game could beat lots of endgame content without watching videos. I believe you all could. I think its because we live in this society that wants instant gratification and don't want to apply ourselves. Im 36 years old. Ive played games like Ninja Gaiden and mega man, etc. that relied on memory, but it was your own memory of what you saw during your time playing, not studying someone else's play. Thats what made games fun and challenging. Like the other person said, if I told you what my moves are and told you when they were coming, how is that more challenging than just knowing what they are? If there weren't videos online, how many can say they can pass those bosses? I think most of you can, just you don't want to take the time to figure it out, you want someone else to do the thinking for you. Stop selling yourselves short. You are smarter than that. You are capable.

Look at it like this, football players watch video film on other teams to learn what they run and what it looks like. Watching a vid of a fight in this game is akin to watching a football game a week before it happens, then going back in time to play in said game knowing exactly when and where play is going. Thats not "gettin gud" or "learning mechanics", thats called cheating. And the person giving away said info would be called names just as bad...think about it. Would what you do in this game to win was done anywhere else, would you be praised? Or condemned?

I'd be fine with going in blind in learning mechanics if they gave you some idea of what to do. For instance in A1, one of my party members ran through the add debuff and got shrunk, that's when we came up with the idea of putting it under the missiles, none of us had done the fight before.

While in A4 with the judgment debuff, it doesn't accurately explain what to do with it or what it does. That is what I'd call a bad way to do things, they shouldn't be stingy with information.

I really think this game needs a dungeon journal like WoW where it tells you what the boss mechanics are and what they do so you have some idea of what will happen when you go in. But just because you have an idea of what the mechanics are, you still need to figure out the specific strategy around the mechanics and practice until you know what they look like and what to watch out for.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

This is easy mode and alot of the mechanics are similar to coil.

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Not everyone that plays the game ever did coil. I've already cleared Alexander, all four floors, and started the game about a month and a half ago at the end of may. I didn't have time to do coil as I was focused on Main Story Quests and getting my ilevel up before HW, I have no idea what any of the coil mechanics are, what the zones are like, or exactly what coil even is. It would be a better bet to assume that the people doing Alexander right now have never done coil.

The problem about this is that you can't have reflex based fights when the game itself has a natural delay of like half second... this is why they make very scripted fights where the key to succeeding is knowing what's coming to you beforehand.

People already die like no tomorrow to things like landslide and plumes in a fixed Titan rotation...and blame "lag" for it. Imagine those 2 attacks in a complete random rotation. The outrage lol.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

People already die like no tomorrow to things like landslide and plumes in a fixed Titan rotation...and blame "lag" for it. Imagine those 2 attacks in a complete random rotation. The outrage lol.

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For the record that titan hitbox on landslide is BS, there are plenty of times where I was out of it on my screen and the server disagreed. It's even better when he landslides in one direction, I'm out of it on my screen, and get hit in the opposite direction anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the damage on the telegraphs shouldn't be calculated until the actual animation goes off, as is, if you're in the telegraph when the cast finishes, you get hit once it goes off. Instead, you shouldn't take damage unless you're standing where it is when the attack actually goes off.

It was me explaining why Alexander was cleared within 2hrs after release, because raider are already used to dealing with the mechanics (not exactly the same but many similarities) and the whole thing is very simple compared to previous raids. I also cleared it on the first day it was released - I had people that cleared it earlier act as guides. I didn't do any reading/video watching myself beforehand. I would say I was carried in the first round but as we get more and more new people through I began to carry more weight in the runs.

And yes there are definitely more people doing Alexander that never done coil before that's why there's this other thread complaining how hard it is to PUG A4 and your mention of Judgement.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

And yes there are definitely more people doing Alexander that never done coil before that's why there's this other thread complaining how hard it is to PUG A4 and your mention of Judgement.

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I personally don't think A4 pugging is too hard on anyone except the healers! I don't think the fight itself is too hard, I'm just annoyed by the lack of information about things like perpetual laser and how the judgment debuff works.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I'd be fine with going in blind in learning mechanics if they gave you some idea of what to do. For instance in A1, one of my party members ran through the add debuff and got shrunk, that's when we came up with the idea of putting it under the missiles, none of us had done the fight before.

While in A4 with the judgment debuff, it doesn't accurately explain what to do with it or what it does. That is what I'd call a bad way to do things, they shouldn't be stingy with information.

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If you're referring to the Judgement Nisi A/B ability, it is clear from the tooltip of the debuff. It says "You have Judgment A or B and that receiving the other judgement will result in a death sentence". It is not a stretch of the imagination to infer from this that you do not want the other debuff. Considering the fact that the Judgement Nisi only applies to healers (unless you're busy wiping) that spend their time watching the party list anyway, it is also not a challenging task to see that another debuff has been placed among the party members. I argue that there's no lack or obfuscation of information happening.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

I really think this game needs a dungeon journal like WoW where it tells you what the boss mechanics are and what they do so you have some idea of what will happen when you go in. But just because you have an idea of what the mechanics are, you still need to figure out the specific strategy around the mechanics and practice until you know what they look like and what to watch out for.

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Let me apologize in advance for my french, so to speak. But the dungeon journal in WoW is a piece of shit that should never exist in the form it does now. The level of information it provides and the time at which it provides that information makes it a guide to solve an encounter from the very developers themselves.

If the journal provided this information some time after the release of content, then sure. It helps those people that have fallen behind. If the journal provided information that was diffuse but acted as hints to figure out a strange mechanic, then sure, it helps players overcome a hurdle. Unless I'm mistaken the journal provides detailed information (e.g. At 10% the boss will do <thing>, this is how you conteract it.) the moment the patch hits, or even before that if PTRs are involved.

Endgame encounters are in essence puzzles that are solved with coordination and violence. Half the challenge is figuring out what the pieces of the puzzle is. With the dungeon journal, that half of the challenge is removed and just placed in front of the user.

The journal coddles the player. It removes incentive for players to be attentive and catch audiovisual cues from the game environment as well as for players to read tooltips and piece the fragments of information together to form a solution to the problem set before them.

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Originally Posted by Ryans

You said yourself that players shared information. That is exactly the same as watching a video or reading a strategy.

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Are you telling me that going in blind, wiping, observing and then chatting with your party members in order to devise a strategy against the boss is the same as watching a video or reading a guide text online? Gods forfend.