Almost into 7.3, what you think about the *improved* encounter design?

Or more likely, one of the main selling points of Dawntrail.

They sold the idea that 7.0 was meant to focus their work on improving their encounters, so and so that they relegated any major job work into 8.0, either because they only could do one at a time, or because they thought both somehow would overwhelm people. I don't really remember which.

Initially at 7.0, I was pleased with the fights, but not exactly impressed. Then it happens that I got it all wrong, they didn't mean to ship Dawntrail with the improvement premise, but only in 7.2. So, the patch is now almost done with. What do you think about everything?

My personal perception is that I like it for what it is... But I don't like it for what I thought it would be. If that makes sense? Through the DT Keynotes, I really got the impression that they would finally step out of their boxes and offer a wildly different experience, even if experimental.

What we got, instead is basically a continuation of the 'DDR design' but really well executed - together with a few rare elements here and there, such as real adds to a fight.

In the end, I ask myself: did we really need to skip the focus on job improvement for this? On a sidenote, given the recent 'costs' fiasco (or mistranslation? Idk) it could actually explain it, because it makes no sense to me that you'll redesign fights without jobs at the same time, as one thing should depend on the other.

Maintaining (2xtrash + boss)x3 while speeding up the DDR isn't an improvement. High-skilled players still find it boring, whereas those at the other end of the skill spectrum find it both boring and too difficult.

Say it with me kids

You can’t improve encounter design on the back of awful class design

I've been enjoying the CEs, Extreme and Savage. The hunts are extremely good. The dungeons have been good too but like usual, if you repeat the same dungeon for 8 months to cap tomestones as intended, it makes you physically sick.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Say it with me kids

You can’t improve encounter design on the back of awful class design

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You can’t improve encounter design on the back of awful class design!

100% agree. They need more meaningful toolkits and to bring in fresh ideas like actually using duty actions. If blizzard can make an engaging class with a core of 8 buttons and some flavor rp abilities why do I have 36 buttons that are all a variation of eachother in this game? Bring back more procs and rng in rotations. If the fights are going to be boring at least let me enjoy reacting to my class.

This comes from someone who does not enjoy progress raiding any more, so through the lens of someone who plays the game more casually now:

There have been no noticeable changes to the design paradigm of boss encounters.
Everything is still dodging AoE's in a fight with a strict, unchanging timeline.

Adjustments to visual indicators and changes to mechanical speed does not constitute a meaningful change in combat design.
Especially more casual content like dungeons have become incredibly boring because of stale, boring class gameplay.

The only fight in this patch (that I remember) that actually dares to do something different is the turtle guy CE in OC.

The change was a response to players complaining about the lack of challenging mechanics for melee DPS and casters. It's more like they're bringing back a few things they had removed from high-end (and normal, in general) content to accommodate for parsers, and people who wouldn't want to get frustrated (challenged) when playing FFXIV.

Nothing feels innovative, at least in my opinion. It's the same stack + spreads + proteans + find safe spot. They've also amped melee DPS damage and reduced cast times as much as they could, so at the end of the day the result isn't much different, and we have even more boring jobs.

I like it, I wouldn't really call it 'new' because a lot of them just feel like Shadowbringers fights, but faster, but I still like it, and I hope 8.0 continues, and elaborates on the direction. While boss design has been great, they really need to figure what to do with dungeon trash. Dungeon trash design has lagged way too far behind boss design.

Job design still needs work so it better match the pace of fights. I have a hunch they want combat to lean more towards action/spectacle design, but with MMO mechanics, and I think job design will follow suit in 8.0. I'm expecting noticeable changes to job gameplay, but they're still going to disappoint a lot of purists.

i like the add phase in m6s.

it's just slightly faster mechanics and more visual vomit. why this game's community has gaslighted themselves into thinking it's some great improvement is beyond me.

*also it doesn't change the fact that practically all jobs are mindnumbing to play.