The last boss 91 dungeon tornado mechanics, a "wow style" mechanic ?

Im talking about the "moving diamond dust tornado" mechanics

I didn't went to the MT but I feel like this mechanic is very very interesting in the sense that it can reflect a desire of the developers to change "the battle system feeling", as it is now, the battle system feeling is "a scripted dance" and this scripted dance contains "scripted randomness" but still feel like a dance to learn, when in WoW, most of the battles dont feel like a dance but more like an "adjust to what happens" battles, those 2 "raid feeling" are very different but both are fun and enjoyable

So I do think that Square is trying to switch to a different kind of mechanics/raid feeling with DT

Yet I dont think SE will abandon the "dance" part but they will probably add more "wow style" fight parts where the difficulty comes entirely from "execution" rather than "learning the strat", just because the "lack" of job's identity is a limit to "wow style" mechanics, and maybe they are trying to first receive the community feedback on this kind of new mechanics so they adjust their "8.0 job changes" ?

Im sorry if it's not very comprehensible, doing high end pve in both wow and ff14 helps a lot to understand what im trying to say

The game has always had "scripted randomness", but it's generally still a script ie. the randomness happens at a certain time or order in the fight.

But anyway, they are intending to move away from "safe" mechanics they've done since Stormblood and just risk some of them falling flat or receiving complaints, so that they are more unique and interesting.

I'm confused what you mean by WoW-style...unless WoW did something very different in their current xpac compared to all previous ones, WoW and FFXIV have both always felt like "scripted dances" with "scripted randomness." I get the same "adjust to what happens" feeling from both games.

I really do hope DT will provide us with encounters that require us to adjust to various different combat events rather than trying to find the rhythm of a fight.
(also for more interesting between-the-boss segments that aren't just "pull monsters until you can't anymore and aoe them down" I still remember the part in a Legion dungeon where the group had to talk with partygoers to find a spy by narrowing down suspects due to witness reports on what they looked like. The only XIV dungeon traversal event I can remember is the giant tonberry :T)

I really do prefer more dynamic mechanics where you're having to actively observe/react to what's happening at every given moment rather then just analyzing an AoE pattern then determining the safe spot(s) to wait out the rest of the mechanic in well in advance.

Currently the game has no randomness whatsoever, except in very niche cases (like P8S doorboss where two segments can be swapped around at random).

Personally I hate DDR and rehearsal, and I like systems that make me adjust to chaos and make runs not pale boring copies of each other, all blending into a single vapid practice session, so if more random chaos happens and gets mixed in with the script, I'll be a happy rng enjoyer.

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

Im talking about the "moving diamond dust tornado" mechanics

I didn't went to the MT but I feel like this mechanic is very very interesting in the sense that it can reflect a desire of the developers to change "the battle system feeling", as it is now, the battle system feeling is "a scripted dance" and this scripted dance contains "scripted randomness" but still feel like a dance to learn, when in WoW, most of the battles dont feel like a dance but more like an "adjust to what happens" battles, those 2 "raid feeling" are very different but both are fun and enjoyable

So I do think that Square is trying to switch to a different kind of mechanics/raid feeling with DT

Yet I dont think SE will abandon the "dance" part but they will probably add more "wow style" fight parts where the difficulty comes entirely from "execution" rather than "learning the strat", just because the "lack" of job's identity is a limit to "wow style" mechanics, and maybe they are trying to first receive the community feedback on this kind of new mechanics so they adjust their "8.0 job changes" ?

Im sorry if it's not very comprehensible, doing high end pve in both wow and ff14 helps a lot to understand what im trying to say

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One of the things that YoshiP told those who attended the media tour is that the developers were encouraged to try out new things this expansion and not worry about playing it safe with design. Instead of giving up on things that get a bad initial response, they hope to reiterate on them until they find a version that remains "something different" and gets overall positive reaction from the player base.

Considering the player base is not a hive mind and there are some very firm opinions on content style, it will be interesting to see how this experiment turns out.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

I'm confused what you mean by WoW-style...unless WoW did something very different in their current xpac compared to all previous ones, WoW and FFXIV have both always felt like "scripted dances" with "scripted randomness." I get the same "adjust to what happens" feeling from both games.

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WoW is generally only scripted with certain mechanics happening at HP thresholds and bosses otherwise largely lean towards having abilities with variable cooldowns that are not always triggered immediately and can force people to respond to it differently if it ends up overlapping with another mechanic. The mechanic design also tends to be simpler and less rigid but you are constantly having to pay attention at every given moment because you never know precisely when something is going to go off and there is much more dynamic adjusting needed on the part of the player depending on how all the factors align.

XIV is almost entirely scripted with occasional "either or" situations like SoS EX or P8S where the order the boss executes certain mechanics in is random, but you always know they're going to happen eventually and precisely when. The mechanics themselves tend towards only having a few variations at most and generally involve some combination of differing orientation, different roles/players being targeted, and/or the mechanics used differing in some fashion (IE spread/stack, in/out). You generally already know at the start of a given mechanic how you're going to have to move based on what debuffs you're assigned, what role you are, etc.

So yes, there is "adjust to what happens" going on in both games, but the extent and manner in which you're doing so is by no means identical. WoW tends toward feeling like a game of whack a mole, but XIV feels like memorizing multiple dance routines. I'm inclined to say the former is more mentally engaging in repeated plays, though.

I never played WoW and cannot speak on those mechanics. There are some elements of randomness in some of XIV's mechanics that do force you to adjust on the fly so it is impossible to pre-position for them, but it is still scripted in the sense that you know when the mechanic is coming if you are keen to the boss's rotation. It would be interesting to see them design a boss fight that is totally random to see how players do with it. Perhaps not with mechanic resolution, but definitely not having a set order in which they occur. I don't know. In any case, they shouldn't be afraid to mix things up. Just do it, and have faith in the playerbase to adjust.

The closest this game has been to something like this was in old ARR and HW fights were some mechanics were triggered by time (as they are now) and some were triggered by HP %. Meaning that the natural fluctuation of your damage (due to crit and whatnot) would sometimes change at what time the next mechanic would begin, and sometimes even what mechanic would be triggered (if you did enough damage during a mechanic, you could skip the next one). This is technically still the case in some content, like Deluburm Reginae (Savage).
The most free-form fight I can think of from top of my hand is the Avatar Savage in the old Coils of Bahamut, but even that one wasn't "true random".
So, this mechanic, in particular, doesn't evoke the reactive style of WoW very much, since it still happens according to a deterministic script.
Now, if the flower+tornado aoe were to come at a completely random time (or not at all) and the tell was a certain boss animation 5s before it spawned, then it would be more in line with a "reactive" mechanic.