Why the hate with endgame fights?

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When you make a claim like that, and say defeating Savage is easy (yes, you did, implicitly, by saying it's not an achievement), people are going to want to see you back that up.

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I never said it was easy, i said it wasn't an achievement. That is I don't value people who beat it any more highly than others. and yeah, ill back it up. But then I don't value people who make me run through hoops much either.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

But a lot of you don't understand casual content at all. Not enough to understand what increasing difficulty means. I know what I need to do when I get into savage, and Im tempted to clear sometimes just to shut up the forum scrubs who think its some kind of achievement. But I don't think you get what making stuff harder means to the playerbase.

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So basically, you ignored everything I said back there right?

The problem isn't that we don't understand casual content. It's that you don't understand or are simply ignoring what we are saying.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

My anger is mostly because of three things.

-bad endgame content focusing on one hit kills and repeating single boss fights over and over.
-how stupid the community is about wanting stuff harder and harder despite how much that failed in HW.
-SE not changing the formula in one bit from HW in terms of endgame content.

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I'm not sure if you realise, but the bit in bold is exactly what we are arguing for as well.

You go on to talk about people struggling even in Shinryu story mode. Why do you think that is? I don't think it's because it's too hard, because frankly it isn't. IMHO I think it's because there's absolutely nothing else in the current endgame leading up to that to prepare them for it. This step up in difficulty is even more apparent once you go up to Shinryu EX. This has been the case since HW (As you've observed) and this is why we are kicking off about this as well.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

if you want to seriously think about this, take one dungeon boss 60 and up, and tell me how you will make it harder. Like take the mol at the end of bardem's mettle. How will you make him gradually harder?

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Once again, you're not listening to anything we say are you?

Let me try and put this in a manner in which you might actually take note:

LEVELING DUNGEON BOSSES ARE *NOT* THE PROBLEM

EXPERT ROULETTE DUNGEONS BOSSES *ARE* THE PROBLEM

/cough, I hate shouting, it's so rude, but sometimes a Lala's got to do what a Lala's got to do =(

Your example of the boss at the end of Bardam's is a decent boss and you know it, thus why you used it as an example to try and further your agenda. It's dangerous both through decent mechanics and solid damage output that you can't really trivialise it through gear thanks to level sync. This is not a boss that anyone here is suggesting needs to be tuned, so you can stop trying to use that as an extreme example for your silly little forum games already thanks.

Now for a comparison, lets look at the bosses in Kugane Castle. It takes multiple failures coupled with a sleeping healer before there's any risk of anyone dieing. The only way I've seen anyone die in a manner that a simple Regen couldn't keep them alive through everything is on the Ninja boss with the tile flip move, it is possible to get hit by both tile flips and that will kill you. But that's also quite an impressive (and amusing) trick to pull off, hardly a fair example.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

No one seems to get this. The only way you can make a mechanic hard is if failing it kills you, or if it will kill the whole party unless quick action is done. So when people talk about increasing difficulty, they tend to just be abstract about it.

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It's quotes like this that make me believe that you literally have no grasp on what you are talking about.

Hang on, let me get the 72pt bold marker out again, I think it's needed here:

MAKE THE MECHANIC *EASIER* TO ACHIEVE BUT ALSO MORE PUNISHING WHEN YOU FAIL IT

Believe it or not, there's actually more to an encounter's difficulty than how much raw damage it throws at you. For example, if we take Hashmal's extreme edge attack and simply make the cast time several seconds slower, it would become noticeably easier despite still being close to a one shot. The endgame in ARR was far more simplistic than what we have now, it certainly wasn't a pushover by any stretch. Titan HM and Susano EX are similarly challenging encounters when you consider how they were when they were relevant fresh content. One is simplistic but highly punishing, the other is far more complex but also much more forgiving at the same time.

This same mentality has carried over to dungeons in an even more extreme manner. Have you ever seen the WaterPony boss at the start of Skalla done entirely cleanly with no debuffs getting thrown around? I'm fairly certain I haven't. It's actually pretty challenging for everyone to place their puddle and position their tether in a manner that they're not going to hit themselves or the rest of the group. But then it just doesn't matter so very few people bother with it. It's pretty routine to see 5-6+ debuff stacks and it just doesn't do enough for anyone to care.

Until you grasp the various nuances of encounter design, then I'm afraid your knee jerk comments and cherry picked examples hold no water with me.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I never said it was easy, i said it wasn't an achievement. That is I don't value people who beat it any more highly than others. and yeah, ill back it up. But then I don't value people who make me run through hoops much either.

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I'll look forward to seeing the log.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

It certainly won't prepare all players for extreme fights, but it does reinforce the basic idea of paying attention to what you're doing.

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I can agree with this. I want harder and more interesting dungeons too, but not for the idea that it would improve players. Just for the reason that it would be fun and encourage developing different kinds of skills than boss fights do, such as knowing when and what to interrupt/stun and put to sleep or kiting and LoS pulling. If MSQ dungeons stayed easier but each new optional hard mode dungeon was actually hard, we would have a good balance of challenge and still letting all kinds of players continue the story. A difficult Aurum Vale HM would be first on my dungeon wish list.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I never said it was easy, i said it wasn't an achievement. That is I don't value people who beat it any more highly than others. and yeah, ill back it up. But then I don't value people who make me run through hoops much either.

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In what you quoted, I specifically stated why saying "it's not an achievement" is saying it's easy. Whether or not you value an achievement or the people who achieve it is one thing: I don't value the Oscars, or the Olympics, but both are still achievements. I cannot say receiving a Golden Globe is not an achievement, because I know it is a road not everybody can travel.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

This same mentality has carried over to dungeons in an even more extreme manner. Have you ever seen the WaterPony boss at the start of Skalla done entirely cleanly with no debuffs getting thrown around? I'm fairly certain I haven't. It's actually pretty challenging for everyone to place their puddle and position their tether in a manner that they're not going to hit themselves or the rest of the group. But then it just doesn't matter so very few people bother with it. It's pretty routine to see 5-6+ debuff stacks and it just doesn't do enough for anyone to care.

Until you grasp the various nuances of encounter design, then I'm afraid your knee jerk comments and cherry picked examples hold no water with me.

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As someone that farmed Skalla for ages, I can attest to this. I never bothered to do that fight correctly because I never died no matter what I did. It's faceroll and not punishing.

yes ive done skalla cleanly, the only issue is that the boss jumps to a random side and screws up placement. No, i dont see people in it with five stacks, or who power through it. No, if you make hashmal slower it doesn't help, any more than the already slow one-hit mechanics help apparently, and there's a lot of them. Nid hards divebomb is an example (and its inspiration in stone vigil). and no, expert roulette doesn't matter, its possible to ignore it completely because its only real reward is tomes; its the same reason why hall of the novice is ignored, the rewards aren't vital and the content isn't forced. you can force trials, though. I suggested the mol mostly because its already in the game and apparently it isnt enough since you can go beat him and not know how to do the stuff in endgame you think people don't know how to do.

You're saying "expert roulette needs to be harder!" while turning around and saying nerfed forms of what existing casual content are fine to make it harder with. Which makes no sense to me. I mean, if you view the leveling experience up to shin as being easy, it already has stuff like this, and its not teaching anyone apparently.

The Skalla pony actively discourages you from dodging the puddles because dps gcd's are more valuable than the minimal extra healing needed for the extra damage. How I would change it? Make the puddles smaller and dot heavier. And make the water orb apply a damage down debuff.

More punish, more fair

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

yes ive done skalla cleanly, the only issue is that the boss jumps to a random side and screws up placement. No, i dont see people in it with five stacks

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I don't believe you, his random jump is part of the mechanic, you failed because you uh, failed, not because he jumped to a random side. I suspect you don't see people with five stacks because you're simply not looking. But having your eyes firmly shut seems to be a reoccurring theme here so meh.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

No, if you make hashmal slower it doesn't help, any more than the already slow one-hit mechanics help apparently, and there's a lot of them.

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Rubbish. Absolute drivel. I see multiple people on every single last Hashmal recording that I've got that are running in the right direction for extreme edge but didn't quite make it for whatever reason. By giving them a few extra seconds, a higher percentage of people would be able to consistently survive thus making the mechanic easier by virtue. Storymode Nid is precisely the same deal, it's even more clearly telegraphed, just some people don't have the awareness or mechanical skill to reliably survive it. Giving these people a larger window to get clear would make it easier for them. I'm really not sure how you can argue against this TBH.

Bonus question, you say there's a lot of other one-hit mechanics in Hashmal, name them. I can think of 2 that are truly one-hits. That's not really a lot is it?

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

expert roulette doesn't matter, its possible to ignore it completely because its only real reward is tomes

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Expert Roulette DOES matter because it's the first taste people get of the end game in FFXIV and frankly, it tastes like stale complacency and disappointment if you ask me. The reason people tend not to bother is because there are far more stimulating ways to get tomes (like just about every other alternative).

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I suggested the mol mostly because its already in the game and apparently it isnt enough since you can go beat him and not know how to do the stuff in endgame you think people don't know how to do.

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You suggested the mol because it makes your point look good, don't even bother trying to lie to me. Would your point stand if you used Yojimbo as a reference? I don't think so.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I don't believe you, his random jump is part of the mechanic, you failed because you uh, failed, not because he jumped to a random side. I suspect you don't see people with five stacks because you're simply not looking.

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I heal expert roulette. Its only a GCD penalty if you are melee, I'm guessing. As healer or ranged, i drop the puddle in a corner and do fine. Most melee don't power through it any more than they take every single non fatal hit they can in a dungeon; we're trained to dodge.

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Rubbish. Absolute drivel. I see multiple people on every single last Hashmal recording that I've got that are running in the right direction for extreme edge but didn't quite make it for whatever reason. By giving them a few extra seconds, a higher percentage of people would be able to consistently survive thus making the mechanic easier by virtue. Storymode Nid is precisely the same deal, it's even more clearly telegraphed, just some people don't have the awareness or mechanical skill to reliably survive it. Giving these people a larger window to get clear would make it easier for them. I'm really not sure how you can argue against this TBH.

Bonus question, you say there's a lot of other one-hit mechanics in Hashmal, name them. I can think of 2 that are truly one-hits. That's not really a lot is it?

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Look, if current endgame, including hashmal, is not teaching people to do well, why is puttng an easier form of him in expert any help? They already do it and succeed or fail. It doesn't teach them anything they don't already know. the made hashmal harder because dodges in ex trials are hard or harder than him, he is the bridging stuff you want.

Hashmal can one hit with his rush, his red orbs, his tower drops, his hammer drops, and can if someone misses a dust orb if you are closer to ilvl 310 on dps or heals. Others can survive it, but i am paranoid about people bein at full health and shielded after the stack then.

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You suggested the mol because it makes your point look good, don't even bother trying to lie to me. Would your point stand if you used Yojimbo as a reference? I don't think so.

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No, it was the first thing to come to mind as a post 60 boss. Yojimbo is different because he is hamstrung by the number of players and mechanics. You can't make yojimbo harder with his existing mechanics; he'd need to be retrofit completely because even with four dragon adds and three rounds of coins, players pick them all up. You'd have to set wipe potential at 50 or 60 coins, and triple the number of coin drops while adding paralyze or stun to daigoro to make it a challenge.

It's not all that different. Serously think about how he can be made harder, without being too hard. The antitower last boss is similar, the mechanic design is just too static to really make hard.

I can't do a thoroughly thought out post right now because mobile limitations (but I will come back to this thread later and write out my thoughts to things), but the fact that you can outright fail Yojimbo's coin mechanic and only take 16,000 damage means that the mechanic is poorly designed.

It doesn't teach players to execute it correctly; it teaches them: "I can completely ignore this mechanic and suffer very little for it". Such a mindset is not good to have, because then people go into Savage or Extremes or even the 24-mans with this mindset of "I don't have to actually execute mechanics because they don't punish me for failing". Then, naturally after they fail a mechanic, they whine about the content "is too hard" and should be brought down.

I had more HP in Heavensward than Yojimbo's coin mechanic does to me at level 70 in full 290 gear. I shouldn't feel more challenged by the bosses in Doma Castle or Bardam's Mettle or even Aurum Vale than supposed "expert dungeon" bosses. When a DPS can reliably tank the bosses in "expert dungeons", there's an issue there.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Giving these people a larger window to get clear would make it easier for them.

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And the issue in using that tuning tool is: The line between "easy" and "hard" is very thin.

Typical human reaction times to stimuli lie in the deci-second area, so a measly half a second more or less can make a huge difference in the difficulty of a mechanic. Add latency to the equation and a mechanic that is meant to be "difficult" to avoid might well be impossible to avoid for some, while designing mechanics with higher latency in mind can make them too easy for people with less.

This makes it a fairly bad tool for difficulty tuning, especially in an online game. You're prone to get it wrong one way or the other.

That in turn is why heavily scripted fights are usually the go-to choice: By having set things happen at set times, you can be proactive about it and cut down on reaction times - If you're already standing in the middle when Hashmal jumps, you'll probably have ample time to look around and get to the safe zone, because the way is short. If you don't, you might be standing too deep in the wrong side and simply cannot make it even if you react instantly. And I wager the main reason why people fail that mechanic is because they simply don't know the script yet and thus don't pre-position themselves, because the timing is very lenient if you do, the timing on most mechanics is from my experience.

This circumvents the issues that come with reaction time tuning somewhat, because learning the script takes most of the reaction difficulty out of the mechanic and this shifts a lot of difficulty to learning the script by heart instead. When I tried out raiding, it was therefore common to assign positions, debuff behavior, add order etc in advance to try and reduce the amount of "reaction" you needed to do as much as possible.

But that's starting to ramble. Bottom line is: Yes, you can try to tune mechanic difficulty via reaction times, but it's iffy.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Look, if current endgame, including hashmal, is not teaching people to do well, why is puttng an easier form of him in expert any help? They already do it and succeed or fail.

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Because practice makes perfect, and irrespective of the lack of difficulty, Expert is a better place to enforce good play habits than 24 man simply because it's far harder to go under the radar and get mindlessly carried. My 165 DPS BLM from earlier in the thread was reasonably well equipped with several Rabanastre drops. They got the loot, so they must be doing just fine no? People get better with practice, but where are they supposed to practice as is? ARR used the tome dungeons for this and from my experience, it worked well.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Hashmal can one hit with his rush, his red orbs, his tower drops, his hammer drops, and can if someone misses a dust orb if you are closer to ilvl 310 on dps or heals. Others can survive it, but i am paranoid about people bein at full health and shielded after the stack then.

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The rush isn't a one shot (It's the dot tick that kills, that's a 50/50 roll of the dice), red orbs most certainly aren't a one shot, it takes 2 to kill you. Hammer drops? You know you get 14 seconds to move away from those right (Not to mention, the damage falls away rapidly, by this logic you might as well call falling boulder a one shot as well)? Dust Orb also isn't a one shot, it's what, 24k before shields? You get a point for Tower falls tho, the other is Rock Cutter as a non tank just incase you weren't aware.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

No, it was the first thing to come to mind as a post 60 boss. Yojimbo is different because he is hamstrung by the number of players and mechanics. You can't make yojimbo harder with his existing mechanics

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How is Yojimbo hamstrung by the number of players and mechanics in a way that the final boss of Bardams isn't? We are talking about the same thing here right? The Yol, aka the bird boss at the very end with the dives and cyclone wings mechanic at the last few percent?

Sneaky game design tip for you: you can make existing mechanics and make them harder via more than just upping the damage. Upping the tempo, layering the mechanics together and making things more punishing are all methods that SE have used in the past. By piling pressure on players, you can make even relatively simple mechanics highly challenging (A3S is an excellent demonstration of this), but this is missing the point of my comment. Even I don't want Expert to be something like A3S lol =(

Again, you're missing the point here tho, it doesn't need to be harder as such, it just needs to A) Be less forgiving and B) More relevant to the content that follows, I want to have to actually watch the screen when I play. Your comment that adjusting a boss to make it more relevant and challenging is more than just tweaking a few values, but then I'm of the view that this is something better addressed going forward anyways. The damage with current content is done. Wasting time and resources to rejig what we have now would be pointless IMHO. Rather SE need to take a long hard look at where they've gone wrong and adjust accordingly. A significant part of the problem is that a good portion of the player base massively overgears the expert roulette dungeons which makes for a highly polarised view of them. Enter them with the min Ilvl and it's quite a different experience. This is a facet of the problem that needs to be addressed. Captain Sloppy in Baelsar's Wall was one example where they got it right. He didn't just roll over with enough gear, you still had to respect the mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

And the issue in using that tuning tool is: The line between "easy" and "hard" is very thin.

Typical human reaction times to stimuli lie in the deci-second area, so a measly half a second more or less can make a huge difference in the difficulty of a mechanic. Add latency to the equation and a mechanic that is meant to be "difficult" to avoid might well be impossible to avoid for some, while designing mechanics with higher latency in mind can make them too easy for people with less.

This makes it a fairly bad tool for difficulty tuning, especially in an online game. You're prone to get it wrong one way or the other.

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Hiya, please appreciate that that comment was in reply to someone stating:

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The only way you can make a mechanic hard is if failing it kills you, or if it will kill the whole party unless quick action is done.

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I'm not trying to state that it's the best way to adjust things so there's no need to lecture me on it =P

Rather that there are multiple ways to make a mechanic or encounter hard beyond 'does it one shot me'.

Case in point, look at Thordan EX, outside of the post transition spear, it's not a fight that throws one shots at you, rather it overwhelms you, forces mistakes and things tend to snowball hard from there.

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Originally Posted by Brill_

While I'd like to see some content that ramps up the challenge towards savage, would it work? The community is all about rush rush rush. Harder content means things will take longer and some groups might wipe. Seeing as the community is intolerant of such things, people would leave. People instant leave aurum vale. They left Pharo Sirius before that got nerfed.

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Pharos Sirius was my favorite dungeon. I was crushed when they nerfed it. The only reason the community is all about "rush rush rush" is because that is what the developers have incentivized by having very poor reward structure and dungeon difficulty. People would go slower if they NEEDED to.

If the design paradigm shifted so that people couldn't rush as readily/easily there'd almost assuredly be some growing pains, but I personally think it's for the health of the game/playerbase.

They need to adjust the rewards too. If you make every dungeon give the same reward (irrelevant loot/miniscule currency) then it's only natural that people will gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I want the sense of danger in dungeons, so I have been thinking about one mechanic to make a hard move dungeon feel truly hard. You know, since I haven't really posted specifics. Anybody remember in most ff games, there are enemies capable of stealing from you?

See where I'm going with this?

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Here. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Eureka-Concept

While I crafted this concept for Eureka, you could just as easily pull ideas from it and apply it to "expert" dungeons.

Real enemy behavior and consequences for failing it.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

No one seems to get this. The only way you can make a mechanic hard is if failing it kills you, or if it will kill the whole party unless quick action is done. So when people talk about increasing difficulty, they tend to just be abstract about it. Especially when they say the one content that actually does this, shin hard, is still very easy.

if you want to seriously think about this, take one dungeon boss 60 and up, and tell me how you will make it harder. Like take the mol at the end of bardem's mettle. How will you make him gradually harder?

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That is 100% inaccurate Riyah. You can make things more difficult aside from damage and shift the consequences to later mechanics thus creating a design where fights snowball out of control, but still allow the ability to recover through good play, gear, and maybe even a little luck.

Here is a link to a Eureka concept I built. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Eureka-Concept

IMO captures a fairly robust scaling difficulty that would give plenty of room for players to succeed and even more room to grow.

That said - below is a post I made on reddit WAY back. I do apologize that the concept was for an 8 man version (and I'm far too lazy to retool it for 4m atm), I hope it meets your needs.

Compare the live version of Guard Scorpion from to this 8 man version. Mechanics Inlcude:

1. Tank buster is just a raw tail stab. It does fairly high damage and is cast very frequently. Ideal tank rotation would be once a MT runs out of cooldowns to mitigate them you'd swap.
   
2. Tail Laser + gun fire would separate the room in 2 occasionally. Stepping into the void zones deal huge damage regardless, but from laser side could add HP down stacks, and Fire DoT stacks for the gunfire side. In case you had to switch sides, get shielded up and sprint across take 1-2 stacks, but you wouldn't want to do it super frequently and you'd probably want to make sure you alternated debuffs if you did.
   
3. The boss would then summon adds periodically to help take you out (maybe magitek bits?). They'd need to be picked up by a tank and they'd deal fairly high damage per second. The tank would then need to kite through the boss moves described in the previous mechanic, unless LB/DPS is available/super high. in order to help DPS them down. If multiple were left up, it's likely DPS would eventually fall behind or the tank would go down to sustained damage.
   
4. Targeting Reticule: At this time he'd also target 2 people with the targeting reticule and it would lock on and repeatedly fire a napalm that coats the floor chasing the players with the mark. You'd want to ensure you didn't have both debuffs on the same side of the room or you'd likely run out of safe room, and you'd want to ensure you didn't have too many people on one side either to minimize the random reticule spawn.
   
5. AOE Gunfire move. Hits whole room, medium damage. Casts fairly frequently. Nothing fancy.
   
6. Wide Tail Laser. Periodically the tail becomes target-able and any damage done to the tail at this time causes the boss to hit you with a gunfire counter attacking dealing light damage. Fast hitting attackers may find themselves taking considerably more damage than slower ones though. Each time you are hit you get a vuln up stack that lasts for 2s. The idea here would be to manage your stacks by switching targets repeatedly and you can't just burn the tail down else the party wide-damage could be too overwhelming. If the tail is killed, the boss gets a stack of vuln up and takes additional damage. If the tail is not killed it deals bonus damage based on its remaining HP. During this time the boss can use any and all other mechanics except for splitting the room up.
   
7. Enrages at 10%. Just like Ultima weapon, the Guard Scorpion readies a final attack to take everyone out with it. You have 30s to burn the last 10% (could save LB to help mitigate the DPS differential if not needed on a specific add phase). It raises its tail and repeatedly keeps spamming AOE gunfire (think like O3S Gravi wave) that hits hard so it's not just a free DPS check for 30s.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Case in point, look at Thordan EX, outside of the post transition spear, it's not a fight that throws one shots at you, rather it overwhelms you, forces mistakes and things tend to snowball hard from there.

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Let's start looking at GOOD expert fights then shall we? An example of a good expert fight would be Keeper of the lake last boss. He throws very basic AOE telegraphs on you but they are large and come at certain angles that can be predicted. He overwhelms with frequent AOE targeted attacks that keep the healer and dps occupied enough so that not every mistake can be corrected. You have a decent dps check in the form of a bird. And you learn the tank some positioning with the adds. Good fight.

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Originally Posted by ViolaCrossfire

Let's start looking at GOOD expert fights then shall we? An example of a good expert fight would be Keeper of the lake last boss.

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Absolutely, he plays exactly the same overwhelm and distract card as Thordan EX uses. A great example of this is the shield generator click that needs to be used whilst all manner of AoEs are going off around you.

Agreed, it was fantastic boss.

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Originally Posted by ViolaCrossfire

Let's start looking at GOOD expert fights then shall we? An example of a good expert fight would be Keeper of the lake last boss. He throws very basic AOE telegraphs on you but they are large and come at certain angles that can be predicted. He overwhelms with frequent AOE targeted attacks that keep the healer and dps occupied enough so that not every mistake can be corrected. You have a decent dps check in the form of a bird. And you learn the tank some positioning with the adds. Good fight.

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While it was a good fight, it did have the issue of healers dying far too often making it a wipe which was frustrating.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

While it was a good fight, it did have the issue of healers dying far too often making it a wipe which was frustrating.

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That wasn’t really the fault of the fight, nor of its mechanics, but of an (either) unawareness (or ineptitude) on the part of the healer(s) that kept dying. Practice makes perfect; I’m sure that even those healers that died and caused wipes could have improved with more practice if they had put their minds to it (though, that is also a problem with content: a lot people want the shinies but they don’t want to put forth the effort or improvement needed to get them).



My only issue with the “casual” content of this game is that the “endgame casual” content (i.e., Level 70 content) in no way prepares individuals for harder content; in a lot of ways, the “expert” content at endgame is easier than the content one had to do to get there, and I feel like that’s a problem. There’s a huge jump in difficulty from Kugane Castle to Rabanastre to Shinryu Ex to Neo-Exdeath to Ultimate Savage. There’s an obvious lack of consistency in the way the developers design and curve the difficulty of their content—

For example, Lakshmi Ex/Susano Ex to Shinryu Ex. All three are Extreme primals, but Shinryu laughs at Susano, and even Susano laughs at Lakshmi. Inconsistency in difficulty. That’s why so many people go into ShinEx thinking it will be just like Susano Ex and then get splattered during first phase. Another example: V1S/V2S and V3S/V4S. Massive jump in difficulty, especially from Catastrophe to Halicarnassus. I take issue in the inconsistency in difficulty jumps. I am perfectly fine with the difficulty scaling up as you move up a tier, or even Extreme primals. But to have such inconsistent jumps in it I am not fine with.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

That wasn’t really the fault of the fight, nor of its mechanics, but of an (either) unawareness (or ineptitude) on the part of the healer(s) that kept dying. Practice makes perfect; I’m sure that even those healers that died and caused wipes could have improved with more practice if they had put their minds to it (though, that is also a problem with content: a lot people want the shinies but they don’t want to put forth the effort or improvement needed to get them).

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While I won't entirely disagree with this, I think this does bring the issue of one group of players trying to force a play style on the others. I'd agree that are big issues with the end game curve, but a lot of that is a lack of casual content making it hard to scale it

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

While I won't entirely disagree with this, I think this does bring the issue of one group of players trying to force a play style on the others. I'd agree that are big issues with the end game curve, but a lot of that is a lack of casual content making it hard to scale it

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I personally do not see a “lack” of casual content when it comes to endgame, but perceptions are different from everyone. If I had to label the content one can currently do at 70, I would label it as such:

“Casual”: Expert dungeons, 24-mans, normal-mode 8-mans
“Midcore”: Extreme primals (though, I would personally put Lakshmi/Susano in “soft-midcore”), V1S (probably also “soft-midcore”), V2S
“Hardcore”: V3S, V4S (I would personally put these in a more “soft-hardcore”), Ultimate Savage

I think the “balance” of endgame battle content (excluding PvP; I’m not familiar enough with PvP to categorize it) is fine on paper, but each “type” of content has issues with difficulty scaling between the others in each “category” (I say this because of how I scale Extremes and V1S as more “soft-midcore” when they are aimed to be more midcore/hardcore, especially Savage since, well, it’s supposed to be “savage”).

I don’t force my particular playstyle on others. But asking someone to just pay attention in content and contribute as part of a team and just learn from their mistakes is not a bad thing. I don’t think so anyways.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

While I won't entirely disagree with this, I think this does bring the issue of one group of players trying to force a play style on the others. I'd agree that are big issues with the end game curve, but a lot of that is a lack of casual content making it hard to scale it

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Oh I agree, this is why I do thing that it's something that needs to be measured out carefully and as such, why I found some of the examples raised against my comments to be so off the mark. Putting O1S as is into the trial roulette would be beyond stupid. But a tweaked version of it would likely fit in very well.

I don't feel I'm utterly correct in my views on how this game should be balanced. Rather, I think SE have gotten progressively worse at handling this as time has gone by.

Lakshmi ex, susano ex, and shinryu ex, all have their own gimmicks... lakshmi is about using vril to reduce damage/effects, susano is your classic spread and stack, and shinryu is like thordan ex (throw all the stuff at you).... comparing them is like apples oranges and grapes.... compare them only to their base fights... maybe we need a nm/hm/ex trials again...

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Fun would be endgame that an entire FC can do, with more than eight people and not reliant on a single boss's pattern dancing. Fun would actually be some variation in group comp and tactics, maybe even using all that useless CC we have to stage enemies and making tanks have real offtank duties that require tank stance and judgment on which mobs to tackle next.

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Can you actually use examples of your ideas here? There was CC/kiting/more in-depth Off tank adds back in Coil, they really weren't as noteworthy as you might thing. Most of the old raids in WoW similarly did such things. It usually amounts to some players gaining a new assigned role that really isn't as fun as you might hope.

Tanking and Healing need significant reworks if they want to adjust the damage dealing meta. Throughputs are too high and active mitigation comes mostly through cooldowns that aren't reliant upon stances.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

FFXI Byakko: get your endgame FC cleared and able to visit an entirely seperate zone called Sky, and navigate its dangers to get the item to pop the god Byakko, who himself was part of chain of Gods all linked together to summon the big boss Kirin. The zone was actually open to other players, whether leveling (beastmasters) or getting other pops. The fight used your entire FC and had room for players of all level of skill.

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So, you WANT very LARGE swathes of content tied behind difficult fights? I thought many people were not wanting this, complaining that Coil was story locked or that extra versions of fights were Savage only?

Spoilers: Any fight in any MMO ever that had 'room for players of all skills' are pretty bad. Doing such a difficult task usually requires:
1.) The boss has so much health and there's basically no cap to the amount of players you can bring, so you just bring everyone with a pulse (Ala WoW 40 mans)
2.) "Everyone contributing" includes people who supply the raid. If you want to make this feel more worthwhile, you start adding virtually mandatory and long farming requirements. IE consumables or gear that's so useful or potentially even required that for every X hours of attempts you need Y hours of farming for materials. This was all of Vanilla WoW, it was harsh and required far, far more hours to actually raid. Know what you're asking for here.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

FFXIV Byakko. Take five minutes to unlock a circular arena with one boss that only 8 people can enter. Beat on the boss for a week till you get his pattern, then either do it a little more to get a weapon that may last you 3-4 weeks, or do it till your sick of it to get maybe a 1-3% chance at a mount. Everybody dps's, and tanks or heals as little as possible.

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"Tanking or healing as little as possible" is called efficiency. The more picky the requirements are on efficiency, the harder a fight is. Is the itemization and loot tables for primals bad? I'd mostly agree. But the way they're handled is pretty above average as far as MMORPG raid bosses goes.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

The harder normal content gets, the more likely players will do it in statics, and vote abandon over trying to get it done. If you do trial roulette a bunch, you know people tend to do this on trials as it is; I've joined many in progress as tank.

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Right, which is why I'm curious as to your suggestions above. FF11 and Vanilla WoW were certainly rewarding in that time and effort were weighed more heavily than raw performance, but this comes at a very significant time-cost for most players, which really isn't a popular trend these days. (See: any complaints of Relic Weapons)

I'm more of an advocate for 3 tiers of difficult for endgame. As of now, we have a hodgepodge of WoW Normal/LFR for our one 'Normal" difficulty. And our Savage difficulty is somewhere bouncing between "Heroic/Mythic". The problem only made worse by the hard limit of 4-6 bosses per patch at most.

I haven't come across people complaining about Savage/EX content existing in the game. That said, FF14 was always considered to be a super casual MMO, and has a much larger player base which fits that definition. All of the non-standard content which has been implemented so far (Ultimate, Rival Wings), in addition to no 4.1 relic having been added, has really left a void in content for casual players. We were promised more content with fewer dungeons being made during 4.x, yet that content is geared toward very specific, and small, segments of the community.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

To be frank? People are entitled and lazy. There's really not much else to it. They don't want to do the work but they want what ever doing the work would earn them.

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Not sure about you, but I play games for fun, not work. I can go out and get paid for work.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Not sure about you, but I play games for fun, not work. I can go out and get paid for work.

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https://isitfunnyoroffensive.com/wp-...15633232_n.jpg

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Not sure about you, but I play games for fun, not work. I can go out and get paid for work.

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So....basically, you're pretty much fine with going through the whole game Netflixing while hardly paying attention? Are you the type that dislikes being challenged in optional content? Besides, there's only so much the devs can add every 3-4 months when the casual base just eats through everything in just a few days. Part of that is on the devs for making things easy like that, part of that is on the player base for not going in moderation.

Rage timers are fairly lame. Especially in Omega Savage, it's around 10 min.

As soon as that rage timer is hit the blaming starts up. People start throwing in parse results and people drop out or are kicked. It becomes a hate mess real fast. All because the game decided to get board with you.

It's arbitrary and is most likely what has lead to all the hate in SB.

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Originally Posted by Bobs

Rage timers are fairly lame. Especially in Omega Savage, it's around 10 min.

As soon as that rage timer is hit the blaming starts up. People start throwing in parse results and people drop out or are kicked. It becomes a hate mess real fast. All because the game decided to get board with you.

It's arbitrary and is most likely what has lead to all the hate in SB.

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I call BS on that. You actually need enrage because you're not supposed to take ages killing a boss...if all trials didn't have an enrage, everybody would have a clear on these fights because all healers have to do is just rez everyone. Besides, if I recall, you'll get close to enrage timer almost every time with Shinryu Ex. The end of the fight is literally a huge DPS check.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I call BS on that. You actually need enrage because you're not supposed to take ages killing a boss...if all trials didn't have an enrage, everybody would have a clear on these fights because all healers have to do is just rez everyone. Besides, if I recall, you'll get close to enrage timer almost every time with Shinryu Ex. The end of the fight is literally a huge DPS check.

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I'd also like to add that enrage is actually pretty useful for progression. If you can survive until enrage, you know you've seen all the boss's mechanics. From there you and your party know what to expect, and can begin making adjustments to improve from there. It's all part of the challenge and learning how to get better.

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Originally Posted by Bobs

Rage timers are fairly lame. Especially in Omega Savage, it's around 10 min.

As soon as that rage timer is hit the blaming starts up. People start throwing in parse results and people drop out or are kicked. It becomes a hate mess real fast. All because the game decided to get board with you.

It's arbitrary and is most likely what has lead to all the hate in SB.

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Enrage timers are there as gear checks, to punish a lot of mistakes and to make sure you don't cheese the fight with 2 tanks and 6 healers even if you take the entire lockout to clear it. I feel like that would be more lame. Also, enrages have been around since ARR.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

snip.

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You're making the assumption that people who put effort into the game and their characters somehow don't have fun. While everyone has their own definition of what constitutes fun, I'm honestly scratching my head of your claim that doing anything at endgame in this game is even remotely similar to work.


You're free to have your idea of "fun" all you want, but if you are doing group content with others, it's no longer about you and how you have your fun, its now about the other 3/7/23 other people you are playing with.


If your idea of fun somehow hinders the group from progress, chances are you will be replaced by someone that doesn't use the guise of "fun" for being unable playing their characters and the game at a acceptable and competent level . End of story.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Enrage timers are there as gear checks, to punish a lot of mistakes and to make sure you don't cheese the fight with 2 tanks and 6 healers even if you take the entire lockout to clear it. I feel like that would be more lame. Also, enrages have been around since ARR.

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And that's why enrage timers need to die in a fire.

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

And that's why enrage timers need to die in a fire.

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Because they're beneficial from a design standpoint? That's an odd thing to say.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Because they're beneficial from a design standpoint? That's an odd thing to say.

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I see it as a negative design wise, to each their own.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Not sure about you, but I play games for fun, not work. I can go out and get paid for work.

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I had more fun last night learning how to heal Exdeath (Savage) than I have had in weeks doing "Expert" dungeons. Why? The former required my brain.

That's the issue with anecdotes. Your definition of fun isn't universal. Now I wouldn't take near the amount of umbrage I do if people who didn't want to put forth an effort stayed out of harder content. Instead, they whine everything is too hard and needs nerfs. So now what I enjoy gets watered down because you (generalizing) can't be bothered to do more than press a handful of buttons.

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

I see it as a negative design wise, to each their own.

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So how would you change it then? If we have no enrage timers, players can just rez and heal through the fight eternally until players finally kill the boss. Well...at least until they run out of MP, but with a good party comp, that can easily be negated.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

So how would you change it then? If we have no enrage timers, players can just rez and heal through the fight eternally until players finally kill the boss. Well...at least until they run out of MP, but with a good party comp, that can easily be negated.

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Exactly how I would have itwork.

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

Exactly how I would have itwork.

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And thus negate any challenge whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

Exactly how I would have itwork.

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So...you basically don't want any content that requires the players to actually play properly....

Like I don't even....

95% of the game doesn't require you to play properly already, do you really need the last 5% too? lol

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

Exactly how I would have itwork.

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This is pretty much how big MMO bosses used to work if you go back 10-20 years.

I'm not sure if it's rose tinted glasses or you simply don't know any better. But I can promise you first hand that it absolutely didn't make for 'better' bosses. At best, you had encounters that were slow and methodical, but more often you just ended up with painful zergfests where you had to grind a boss down before people gave up or were simply unable to raise fast enough.