The length of battles, the pace of combat... and the overall feel of combat.

I know I'm far from the only person that thinks foes die too fast. But I've been quite vocal about it. I've been writing about it here, since the Tanaka beginnings, all through the New Team's tenure.

Regardless of which class I play, it tends to be the same: With the exception of Primal battles, and some High Level NMs, when battling in party, I can barely hit a mob, or any in a group of foes (even a large one,) let alone use my TP actions, not to mention combos, before the thing is dead.

And I'm not referring to free roaming monsters, or solo-friendly content. Strongholds, dungeons, behests and caravan-escort events all suffer from the same malady. Battles feel inconsequential, perfunctory and ultimately unsatisfying, because each individual monster is no match for a full party. More scandalously still, entire hosts of them are frequently way below being an even match. Even when my LS decides to low-man a dungeon, with the purpose of farming chests, the mobs feel like a breezy dispatch. Invariably, obstacles derive from being overwhelmed by large numbers of mobs, in which case, there's little to do other than wait for swift death.

In the strongholds, even when you're getting astronomical amounts of experience, the excitement is scant. And there's a sense of disproportion between the effort and the reward. There's no strategy, no theorycrafting, and almost no difference if (as, say, a THM) you cast Lightning, Fire or Blizzard. Ultimately, all these facts, which I assume have been introduced on purpose by the devs (I would hate to think that this is accidental,) rather than making the game feel more exhilarating, and less grindy, end up producing the opposite effect. The rhythm of the game ends up being limp, unvaried, and tiring. And unrewarding, paradoxically enough, despite the high rewards.

I think at this point, I'm concluding than rather than combat based on waves of numerous, rather repetitive and barely differentiated mobs, I'd much rather have fewer, longer to dispatch, and more resourceful mobs coming my way. If a party of them is going to attack me, or if linking is going to add numbers to the equation, I'd like for the resulting group to be a structured party of differing classes/jobs, all vying for my comeuppance. At present, 15 mobs coming against me and my friends and, literally, seconds later lying dead at my party's feet only makes me feel like they are no enemies, but rather nuisances. My inner adventurer wants, instead, to feel like it's facing formidable challenges.

R

I can understand it to a degree, but right now we are facing a many vs many environment. Since mages take sleep much high in the level mobs need to be disposed quick.
A possible way to fix it is lowering level of sleeps (like level 15) and double exp gained, so exp don't become slower.
That's another thing to understand btw: this is a game where you can solo your levels. How you can solo a mob so strong you need 8 people and 5 minute to kill it ?

The pace of battles is a recurring issue in RPGs in general these days. Lots of games are looking for ways to avoid the stereotype of battle systems and thus speed up the pace and/or streamline battle. Square Enix's games appear to be no exception.

One of the biggest criticisms at launch was that the combat system was... well, boring. In response to this, they have made moves to tie it into something more exciting and fast-paced, which of course results in things finishing quicker, allowing you to move on to the next foe.

Sorry buddy, but slow battles just isn't the way things are going these days.

I think the strongholds aren't mean to be soloable.
SE don't need to make all enemies stronger, but the enemies in the party areas.

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Originally Posted by yukikaze_yanagi

That's another thing to understand btw: this is a game where you can solo your levels. How you can solo a mob so strong you need 8 people and 5 minute to kill it ?

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Originally Posted by Rutelor

And I'm not referring to free roaming monsters, or solo-friendly content. Strongholds, dungeons, behests and caravan-escort events all suffer from the same malady.

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I do like feeling more powerul in this game than I did n FFXI where it was practically impossible to exp without 6 people just for one mob. Being in a group now and taking on a group of monsters make we feel like we're actually accomplishing something.

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Originally Posted by AdvancedWind

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That's the same. Aside dungeons, where stronger mobs should be the law, the rest it's still solo-friendly. Heck, i soloed tons of coffers :||

I completely agree.

Tldr: It's just not fun yet, please keep trying.

I came to realize how far the game is from enjoyable when I recently started playing Xenoblade Chronicles.

To some it might sound like an unfair comparison but actually the controls and the execution of combat is very close to that of XIV. The only thing is that Xenoblade manages to involve strategy to even the short fights whereas in XIV you're mostly just watching the stats of the encountering 3d models do battle and your order of skills/spells doesn't have that big of an impact on the combat flow.

Strategy should start at level 2 not at endgame.

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Originally Posted by yukikaze_yanagi

I can understand it to a degree, but right now we are facing a many vs many environment. Since mages take sleep much high in the level mobs need to be disposed quick.
A possible way to fix it is lowering level of sleeps (like level 15) and double exp gained, so exp don't become slower.
That's another thing to understand btw: this is a game where you can solo your levels. How you can solo a mob so strong you need 8 people and 5 minute to kill it ?

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Elite monsters. Higher difficulty and substantially higher reward to justify the effort for parties.

There you go, I just found a solution in 20 seconds. I imagine if the devs actively think about it they could do a lot better.

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Originally Posted by Sephr

Elite monsters. Higher difficulty and substantially higher reward to justify the effort for parties.

There you go, I just found a solution in 20 seconds. I imagine if the devs actively think about it they could do a lot better.

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So every field mob should be elite ? <_< i hope you know i'm speaking of exp mobs, not dungeons or similar