Cinder drift critique: top heavy mechanics are the wrong way to go *minor spoliers*

If you thought Ruby Weapon was overtuned, how did you make it past Tsukuyomi or Titania?

Guys its okay to wipe once or twice to learn mechanics. That's how you learn. My experience was we wiped on quicksand and the one boost panel thing but next time we did very well.

Also stop leaving on like the second or third day of content when you get a team that wipes once.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

This is ironically enough exactly I feel about Ruby. Just to clarify my initial opinion I'm not complaining that the fight is too hard, I'm complaining that its too easy.

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I find it interesting that it's usually the people who don't actually delve into Savage and Ex who voice those complaints about how this content is "too easy", because it's "wrong" type of challenge.

I do actually agree that XIV could definitely use some fights that don't run on a strict rotation. More reaction-based mechanics would certainly be nice.

However saying that mastery over jobs is not tested is incorrect - that's exactly what those enrages you complain about are for, so that you have to figure out how to do all those scripted mechanics without breaking your rotations. It's the basis of all job optimization in this game.
The other thing enrages ensure, is that you can't just corpse-through the fights despite failing those "easy" mechanics.

Something that's regrettable though, is that SE seems intent on gradually making the jobs so simple, there's soon going to be nothing much to actually show a mastery over.

Hard disagree. My first NM run was blind with 3 friends and 4 randoms, we cleared 2nd pull. Ran it again today with 2 different friends (they also went in blind) and 5 randoms, cleared 1st pull. No markers. No callouts. Both times.

The fight is fun, well-tuned, and if anything, [NM] is a little too easy. EX is tuned like the SB trials; challenging, until you learn it. Like it should be.

OP starts by implying the fight is too hard, then goes on to say it’s too easy and boring. With the overarching sentiment being that SE should do away with the mechanics. So, a 6 minute DPS check? Oh wait, OP wants the DPS check gone too. So...enter duty, immediate “Duty Complete” pops up, and everyone in the party gets a mount and a i485 weapon?

This ain’t it fam.

My only gripe with Ruby Weapon is the length of the intermission cutscene. It's fine in normal and builds the story. It's pretty tiresome when farming it in EX though.

Difficultywise? Eeh, I think it's easier than Shinryu Normal was. Shinryu's final phase had a couple of fairly stern mechanics. Ruby weapon final phase isn't far off being a face roll and I'm not really sure how you can fail on normal outside of people simply ignoring the meteors.

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Originally Posted by Raim

If a majority of people think its not overtuned, then you cant just stroll in here insisting that your opinion is right and everyone else is crazy. Wiping a few times on normal doesn't mean the fight is overtuned. If someone doesn't know the mechanic after a wipe, someone should explain it to them or they will catch on after seeing it once or twice.

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Because 15 or so people who troll the boards to say that every fight is "too easy" and you should "GIT GUD!" are representative of a clear majority of the playerbase.

Is this your first time on a game forum?

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

So finished the fight with some rather amusing reactions from people last night, including a "WTF THIS IS NORMAL?!?" winning. But the fight itself? Honestly I didn't enjoy it in the slightest compared to previous content.
hase 1 isn't that bad, if anything it's a pretty standard boss battle with some creative aoes mixed in like the liquefy attack. By itself that part would have been alright for a new trial. But phase 2

Oh phase 2 . . .

SQ you really REALLY need to tell your fight designers that multi wipe mechanics with stupid short enrage timer windows on top like this are not fun. Forcing your players into perfect execution of mechanics instead of perfect execution of their job role and knowing your class (not that there is much to know after tanks and heals got dumbed down) is the wrong direction to go.

This got compounded when one of the tanks in our fight had never done the Ivalice chain and therefore had never seen the arrow mechanic. Not a good thing when that part can again easily result in a wipe if your tanks and healers don't know it.

We need more boss battles that are engaging and less fights that have players looking for videos to explain why they just wiped before or after a failure, i consider myself lucky to have a group that stuck it out through five.

And we need more fights that don't veer into spending more time assigning positions then actually battling the boss. My time in Titania EX comes to mind where we did just that. And the fight itself became trivial in the process. It wasn't about knowing my class, it was about knowing where to stand.

There is no skill in rote memorization of a wipe mechanic. Anyone who says "But it's harder" is missing the point because it's not. The only challenge is learning the mechanic. after which I honestly found the fight stupidly easy. Stand here, DPS, repeat, yawn. This is where cinder drift fails because you've made the fight repetitive and boring.

It's going to play out the exact same way every single time because of top heavy mechanics. Tanks must do X, healers must do Y, damage dealers must not derp after both. Failure of any of the above inside some silly short enrage timer window will result in wipe and do it again. And it doesn't matter after that what class, what role, what level of knowing your job comes into the fight if you have "assignments" instead of "gameplay"

Compare this to some of the SB content like the four lords battles (byakko being my fav) or the entire Ivalice arc with some hard as heck bosses, but none of which that had to rely on stupid wipe mechanics to the degree ruby does. Or Copied in ShB. I'll never get tired of taking on the giant mecha or seeing which room I end up in to play death dodge with ring lasers and floor traps. But after doing cinder once I have zero desire to go back to it past helping friends. And even less of a desire to go anywhere near the EX version, least not without looking at a video first
[/sarcasm]

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whats the name of your MMO? oh right.....

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

For job cooldowns that are longer (like WHM’s Temperance), I have them set up on a separate hotbar directly beneath my character model so I can see then in my periphery. Otherwise, learning your rotation throughout a fight eventually builds the muscle memory you need to just know when they’ll be up again. I don’t think tracking cooldowns is a huge issue unless you’re new to things/inexperienced with a job or fight.

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I'll have to try that. I actually did it in SW:TOR back when I actively raided there, dunno why I haven't done the same in FFXIV.

Fully deterministic classes like SMN and MCH can technically have a fixed rotation, though the cooldowns generally don't align nicely so to use everything optimally the rotation will be several dozens of GCDs long. My brain struggles to remember that without any kind of visual aid. And for caster jobs there's the annoyance of having to dodge stuff when you're at a part of your rotation which has cast times. For those reasons I tend to use a priority-based playstyle, but that requires having the cooldown and resource information readily available.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

I'll state it again, memorizing where to stand for X or wipe isn't good gameplay or good game design, unlike "mess up and enjoy your vuln stacks and see if you can recover"

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Fair enough, mechanics should have a sufficient random factor to them that you can't just choose a safe position before the fight begins and stay there. After watching a video to refresh my memory I must admit that Ruby Weapon normal's second phase is woefully lacking in mechanics.

Ruby & Eden Normal were quite fine - everything was beatable after at least 2--4 wipes. I found shinryu and Orbonne (yeah, i know 24 man) on their patch days far more worse, especially on orbonne, you see enough disbands nowadays.

Yes, many job roles have been guttet/remodeled with Shadowbringers, but honestly: thats on the player to prepare themselves before they tackle on new content. And stack markers have been there since Heavensward...

Stack markers have been around since Coils, they just didn't start using a standard marker for it until late Heavensward. The first use of the now-standard four arrows marker than I can remember is in Void Ark.