Raid Design: Opacity & Why P12S Is Bad

Nearly all FFXIV mechanics can be reduced purely to coordinated player movement. Therefore, every *thing* the boss does in a mechanic is merely a means to get players to move around in a particular pattern.

The more opaque the translation from “mechanic" to "movement”, the more some good justification is required for its inclusion. For example, opaque mechanics increase prog time and difficulty, which can be good. Interesting mechanics also tend to naturally be opaque, but opaque mechanics are not necessarily interesting; senseless or excessive opacity relative to the resulting movement is bad, and designers ought to consider whether the resolution is as interesting as the mechanic opacity might imply.

P12S Pangenesis, in its resolving movement, is very simple—players move forward in pairs, and a player swaps with his neighbour. The sheer complexity of the mechanical *stuff* in Pangenesis, though—debuffs, stacking debuff arithmetic, x10 towers, multiple tower types, random additional debuffs after soaking a tower—is disproportionately opaque for the actual resolution, making it a difficult mechanic to solve (which is good for a 12th-floor fight) but underwhelming to execute. All that for what, really?

Nearly every mechanic in P12S P2 is like this—high opacity, low payoff.

Opacity also impacts the average player. Many non-"blind world prog" players simply do not know what Pangenesis slimes are or how they are correctly formed. This makes opaque mechanic weird, distant, unfun, and annoying, especially when you wipe to something you didn’t really fully understand.

FFXIV raid designers need to reconsider how they are structuring "difficult fights", as they are currently substituting opacity for interestingness.