Should Ferrofluid's animation be changed?

Hi, I'd just like to leave a suggestion regarding this boss of "Alexander - The Arm of the Father."

I've noticed that Living Liquid's "Ferrofluid" tether does not change colors according to whether the victims have "Positive Charge" or "Negative Charge" status ailments caused by the attack, it is always one orange line and one blue line. At first I thought it did change colors and always ran to the edge of the platform, only to be thrown off and yelled at by the other player.

Is it possible to make Ferrofluid's tether lines reflect the colors of the victims' charge ailments? Just having blue and orange lines all the time is very confusing, especially if the charge symbol over the player's head is somehow obscured (by names, markers, the boss, etc.), and it gets so much worse in Savage because everyone gets hit by Ferrofluid at once.

It shouldn't be a difficult change, it has no effect on the difficulty of the fight and it should make everyone's lives a lot easier.

Agreed. I had to learn the hard way that the tether doesn't change color for whatever reason. I can't begin to count how many times the person tethered to me had their marker obscured so I had to make a wild guess as to which way to run. It's a wonder that the tether doesn't change color already.

I've downed A3S without even knowing the tethers were specific colors. Lmao.

The joke of it all is even when ferro is messed up, there is a chance the debuff isn't applied.

I'm colorblind so I never noticed that D:

All I do is watch the + and - and run accordingly!

Anyways it's ok to add this, just like the different lines on Garuda's Suparna and Chirada (wich I can't see the difference between them because red and green are too similar there for me :D)

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Originally Posted by SkullcrusherMountain

it has no effect on the difficulty of the fight and it should make everyone's lives a lot easier.

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... Umm, didn't you just contradict yourself? Besides, looking around for whoever you're tagged onto is part of the challenge in the mechanic, and from the way it acts right now, it was most likely designed this way for the player to look for the other player tagged onto him.

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Originally Posted by RainDurell

... Umm, didn't you just contradict yourself?

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Yeah, I probably could've worded that last part better. :(

I'm not talking about making it easier to see which player you're tethered to, my gripe is that you can't see what kind of tether it is if something obscures the overhead symbol.

It's not a problem in Normal since only two people get hit with Ferrofluid and you see it in the status list, but in Savage everyone gets hit, and if you can't see the name and charge symbol your tether-buddy have because something blocks it (like the other players' names and symbols), then it becomes a 50%-chance guessing game. That's neither challenging nor a mechanic, that's just fake difficulty.

That's why I want to see the tethers change colors with the charge symbols; you'll still need to find your tether-buddy for trajectory purposes (so you don't fly into a Cascade pool or something), but at least you'll know what direction to run.

But how exactly should they change it? Changing only the color of the tethers wouldn't work for obvious color blind reason that every other tether mechanic in a raid setting used to be plagued with. So they'd need to implement an entirely different tether graphic that would be instantly distinguishable from the current one.

The difficulty in the mechanic is finding the person you're attached to, looking at both of your symbols, and both of you making the correct decision on how to move. If the tethers were changed so that matching symbols had 1 type of tether and differing symbols had a different tether, then the mechanic would be simplified to look at tether, run to center of room or perimeter. I understand there's still trajectory to worry about if you have matching ones, but as long as one person stands still and one is designated to do the lining up, no worries.

I can sympathize with you on the names and symbols blocking as I had to deal with that learning A3, but changing the game settings to show initials instead of full names helps, having the group spread out more helps (shouldn't all be clustered under the jiggly butt anyways) and minimize symbols to only the group members which absolutely need it, which would maybe be the tanks on this fight.

Totaly derailing, changing colors won'tfix anyissue ppl are having handling with mechanic. I think the issue most people have is tunnel visioning. My raid group was having consistency issues so the following attempt I called out every mechanic including cleaves up to tinyhand in p4 before they even happened to prove a point. Scripted fight, everyone should be ready for the next mechanic before it happens. assume your always gonna get marked and be ready to adjust

While I do think repoe is correct about it being more of an issue of tunnel-visioning, I also believe there is another problem at hand: Clarity. Square Enix seems to have difficulty implementing proper clarity this expansion, see for example the similar wording Carve and Spit and Dream Within a Dream. And it is perhaps most noticeable in the fight with Living Liquid and its unique Ferrofluid ability. A fight in the past, Kaliya, used a similar mechanic, where she would tether two sets of two players together with Nanospore Jet, and in the process, color-code them. So, I am a little confused as to why they didn't simply tint the animation based on which version of the spell it cast on the pair of players. For example the dual Positive and dual Negative would both be solid orange and blue respectfully, with the opposing charges being either a mixed tether or a different color all together for the tether (I think purple would be nice). While this would ease the difficulty a tad, it would also be more clear and easier to react to, which I think is the real goal of this discussion, encouraging more easily read mechanics in the future.

It's working as intended, it's meant to be confusing as you have to look through all the symbols and discern the symbol of your partner. Simply spreading out after the cascade in anticipation of ferrofluid is an easy way of handling the mechanic.

Just look at the pt list, there will be a + or - next to that persons name, you don't even have to look for the specific person just scan for the symbol. Its literally the first debuff symbol next to their name and is usually easier to read than the symbol overhead anyway.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Just look at the pt list, there will be a + or - next to that persons name, you don't even have to look for the specific person just scan for the symbol. Its literally the first debuff symbol next to their name and is usually easier to read than the symbol overhead anyway.

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Oh, you poor naive child... didn't you know? In Savage there are four sets of debuffs and you are generally close together due to there being four melee, four ranged, having stacked up for defensive buffs and fast healing before Cascade, and every second counting towards beating enrage. So, unfortunately, this concept doesn't work well.

What they should change is put the Ferrofluid mark in front of the custom player mark, not behind the player mark.

I'm gonna make a lousy suguesstion, instead of changing the tethers, we change some of the icons. For the Opposite polarity tethers we assign a number, 1 or 2 to the respective icons (Not the icons for tethers of the same pole). A player with a positing charge and a 1 should look for a player with a negative charge and a 1. Same goes with players with 2

This should diffrentiate the debuff icons and alliviate some of the associated colorblindness issues (and probably prove repoe's point in the process)

I agree, OP. I don't see any reason why the ferrofluid tethers should work any differently than the tethers in T11.

T11 did these types of tethers in a much better way, since you had blue tethers, and red/green tethers. Figuring out who you were tethered to wasn't a big deal, as it was more important to know what to do after nanospore jet went out, knowing how to move to avoid vulnerability stacks, or dying. (since that also insta-killed the player you were tethered to)

As for dealing with colorblindness, all that has to be done is changing one of the tethers to look slightly differently, so ones that can't differentiate between the two colors can do so by the way the tethers look.