Hardest XIV fight possible

So, I figured with all the dead horse beating topics (early pulls, XIV's lack of content/variety etc), something fun? could be posted. Mostly from a conversation with a FC member earlier as a joke on what could be the hardest possible fight in XIV, I thought, why not see what other people can come up with, so throw your best ideas out there.


- Multi-directional divebombs(4-8 in a row), no indicators.
- Akh Morn stacking.
- Ability to fall off arena.
- Vulnerability-/healing potency- lightning bolt chasing the stack, to avoid people just taking an AoE.
- AoE's that splash and create more AoEs.
- T9 meteors and earthshakers.
- Leviathan sliding mechanic.
- Mixed in with the high/low platforms in Alex and just to screw with you, they shift every 2 seconds.
- Twintania twisters

All at the same time and a variety throughout the fight at random times, non-scripted. Try to top that >_>

Dive bombs are enough to wipe most of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Israacf

Dive bombs are enough to wipe most of the playerbase.

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Sadly lol

>_> Reward them with a large house and some exclusive untradeable glamour and I'm sure some people might actually put in effort lol

Hardest fight possible?

One with frequent but random one-shot mechanics whose telegraph requires lightning fast reaction times even if you have no latency and a one-shot mechanic that auto-triggers if you move while the other mechanic isn't happening.

No need to add anything, really. Technically, it's a simple check of one's reaction time skill and most definitely possible under the right conditions, but it also doubles as a great demonstration how this skill is highly restricted/enabled by technical restrictions.

Add anything to DF. Bam. Instant hard fight.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Add anything to DF. Bam. Instant hard fight.

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Well, you win lol

The hardest fight is between each other.

Creating a good difficult encounter is more than just tossing a lot of bs into a mixing bowl that's just meant to spite players. It actually requires a lot of clever thinking.

Paradoxically, the most difficult content is frequently called "easy" by players who've beaten it, because very few people seem to realize that if something seems easy to them it's because they've gotten good at it.

In any case,

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

The hardest fight is between each other.

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Adding debuffs that all amount to the same thing? The party being unable to act or move. Enhance paraysus that works like Stun, Petrification, eep Freeze, Ozma Assimilation attack, etc. Then have them all at the same fight last for 5 mins and essntiualy be the enrage for a fight that causes a long but agonizing wipe.

Oh an Make the boss invincible during this phase so no DoT will ever kill him off

I would say, very broadly speaking, that any sort of scenario is fair game for an encounter, be it one-hit kills, spammed attacks, unavoidable AoEs, extreme debuffs, etc. in any combination are fair game, with one rule: There must be a tell. It doesn't matter if it's a glowing ground indicator or something as subtle as the boss flashing a split-second middle finger before doing it; as long as players exercising the correct amount of situational awareness are equipped to deal with it, then encounter designers can go nuts.

Gamers nowadays can handle a wipe or twenty when trying to overcome.

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Originally Posted by Mahri

Gamers nowadays can handle a wipe or twenty when trying to overcome.

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Just remember, people rage quit over a single wipe in XIV lol

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Originally Posted by Mahri

Creating a good difficult encounter is more than just tossing a lot of bs into a mixing bowl that's just meant to spite players. It actually requires a lot of clever thinking.

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Tell that to Dark souls :P

Elysium will beat it in 2 weeks any way. Or less...

;)

Or:

You give a boss a large toolkit with unknown limitations and the AI to actually use it well across multiple enemy compositions / situations.

Oh no, how will we memorize it?!

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

Tell that to Dark souls :P

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Dark Souls is (yes) my absolute favorite game of all time, and this is precisely where I'm coming from when I say all this. The best fights in that series are the ones which allow the player to pick up the rhythm, understand how a particular boss is going to attack, and plan their own offensive accordingly. Sometimes it's a gimmick, sometimes it's a duel, sometimes it's one-vs-many, sometime's it's man vs. oh-my-god-you've-gotta-be-kidding-me monster. Kalameet, Ornstein & Smough, Knight Artorias, Sir Alonne, the Executioner's Chariot, the Burnt Ivory King, Saint Aldrich, the Abyss Watchers, the Four Kings, and the Dancer of the Boreal Valley; these are some of the prime examples of really mean fights that nonetheless feel great because there's such a payoff to figuring it out, and you can tell that quite a lot of work (that aforementioned cleverness) went in to making sure they get it just right.

Ironically, this series does have some prime examples of how not to design hard fights. Bed of Chaos, being nothing more than a gimmick with totally unavoidable instant-death mechanics and a requirement that you fight with shoddy platforming controls to win, Oceiros the Consumed King, who's easy on paper yet is marred with an incredibly damaging attack with no tell and a giant hitbox, and the Nameless King, which is a good one-on-one fight but requires the elimination of a shoddy, cheesy miniboss (of a sort) that seems designed to obliterate your resources before the actual boss can be taken on.

The fact that it has both good and bad difficult fights makes it a useful subject for discussions like these. The issue with MMOs is that difficult odds need to be handled not only by yourself, but by however-many-other players, and so once again...

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

The hardest fight is between each other.

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:P

Also...

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

Just remember, people rage quit over a single wipe in XIV lol

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Originally Posted by Mahri

Don't do this, guys! You're better than this. YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS!

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-- Me, every single time that "A motion to abandon" prompt comes up during a Weeping City run.

I mean, you're right, but I can't stop hoping, y'know?

Just include jumping puzzles.

A boss that morphs into any other random boss (model, skills, AI but not stats) within the game every 30 seconds. The boss will also update its pool to pick from when new bosses come out.

But there's a 10% chance that the model becomes misaligned with its skills and AI just to mess with people

A boss where getting hit by any avoidable attack is an instant kill.

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Originally Posted by Shadotterdan

A boss where getting hit by any avoidable attack is an instant kill.

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Nidhogg comes close. Cauterize can already oneshot most players, as does Horrid Roar. Hot Wings/Tail is a little too weak for that (This is on NM, I haven;t done EX)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Or:

You give a boss a large toolkit with unknown limitations and the AI to actually use it well across multiple enemy compositions / situations.

Oh no, how will we memorize it?!

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bouquet + spread mechanic + petrification + adds divebombing + tankbuster

there are mechanics that cant go toguether because is impossible to deal with it....

creating a boss encounter isnt easy i guess

Ozma Extreme.

That is all.

Titan savage. Landslide now covers the entire arena ;)

Hypersavage Coil mode. A boss rush with the final bosses of Coil (T5, T9 and T12-13). Starting by Twintania, then Nael Deus Narnus (T9 savage one), adding Bahamut dives to her own dives, and then Fight Bahamut + Phoenyx after defeat Nael. No echo, level 60 upgrade bosses (so, no level unsych).

Well, Twintania and Nael seems doable, but i don't know about deal with Bahamut and Phoenyx at the same time. Tank swap there will be interesting.

Of course if you die, you start from the first one :D

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Originally Posted by Millerna

Titan savage. Landslide now covers the entire arena ;)

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Pff, that's giving the adventurers too much of a chance. How about instead: The boss can fly. You can't. There is no arena floor. Just enter the fight, and fall to your death. Repeat until you get sick of it and leave. :P

For a less silly idea, one that's difficult but not impossible, maybe a fight involving jumping as a mechanic? When the devs were teasing Sephirot Ex, they mentioned a "jump rope" motif for some of the mechanics. I was disappointed to see how little that motif factored into the fight - I was expecting aoes that you actually needed to use the jump command to avoid. So, how about a fight where the floor periodically glows red, and if you don't jump, you die?

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Originally Posted by Obysuca

Try to top that >_>

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Pray make your way to the waking sands

That's more frustrating

lol Xenos super titan fight idea who can survive rock mohrn?

I bet mixing stacking vulrability de-buffs, AoE's that have 360 degree knockback that pertrafiy (with added vuln de-buff), tankbusters that always take a tank to 1hp with an added bonus of the ground having a random direction toss mechanic (think spring loaded floor pads that also add vuln-stacks) that activate when u walk on them while lit for a walled arena (no-wall seams to unfair but make it so half the floor is lit at all times) & just make it DF solo-qurry only... the sear amount of cowardination between randoms for something that f't up would be legendary, but maybe doable (as long as it "NEVER" got nerfed)

that or just bring back origional Steps of faith with a forced "min ilv" & lv sync... that murdered the player base so much they nerfed it outa fear for their sub numbers, still in most cases solo-DF runs can be far worse than a pre-nerf EX if the fights hard enouf normally with PF

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Originally Posted by The_NPC

that or just bring back origional Steps of faith with a forced "min ilv" & lv sync... that murdered the player base so much they nerfed it outa fear for their sub numbers, still in most cases solo-DF runs can be far worse than a pre-nerf EX if the fights hard enouf normally with PF

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id love more fights tuned like the original steps i mean it was different but it felt epic, like having to fight nidhogg without the power of a dragons eye and needing the environment to kill the boss. Possibly without the "we screwed up lets wait 10 minutes to redo" element in it.

Every phase change your hotbars are randomly rearranged.

Brute Justice fused Ultrazord-style to Manipulator...

... with Living Liquid adds ^^

Well Pepsiman already rekt about 99.9% of the community.... So I'd say him :P

For an extra challenge, bring Absolute Virtue in from FF11. Chainspell meteor FTL.

Maybe any of Wildstar's 40 man raids? That would probably do the trick.

How about "Yojimbo (from FFX) at the Gold Saucer"?

He walks over to a roulette table and puts down a pile of gil. You must dps that pile to reduce the amount he's bet. But you reasonably cannot zero it.
Then everyone is transported to random spots on the roulette wheel, and 3 balls drop on you, doing 5k if they hit you. Then the wheel spins and you have to dodge the randomly bouncing balls.

If Yojimbo wins, his distributed winnings appear and you have to knock his tokens (moved by hitting them) from high win zones to low win ones.
After 10 seconds, Yojimbo collects.
If he does not win, then he claims the game is rigged, starts throwing aoes at the table/arena, gaining 5% more gil for every person hit. Then collects 75% of his original bet.

So now Yojimbo has some cash so it is back to a normal arena. Here Yojimbo will throw a pair of dice into the air and smack them with his sword in a random direction. Getting hit by a die deals 10k damage, knocks you to the wall, and stuns you for 10 sec.
Depending on his die roll (2-12), he will perform a sequence of attacks.

Every time he does this, he loses X gil from what he won at the roulette table until he runs out and plays roulette again. But once he's "broke", he takes 10x damage for some 20-30 seconds.

So its a 2 part fight.
First you have to dps, avoid, and coordinate to minimize his earnings.
Then you have to deal with a flurry of random attack sequences, including landslides, divebombs, doom, petrification.... just ALL the good stuff.

And IF you win... IF...
You get ALL the "special gil" he used during the fight, and access to a "store" where you can buy any raid gear, including an exclusive weapon.

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/69144911.jpg

Two bosses at the same time: John Cena and Roman Reigns.

Every time you beat them down to 1% they'll be fully healed and get 3 bars of Limit Break.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Just include jumping puzzles.

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the vault of glass FFXIV edition would be pretty fun, just would have to make sure you can't knock atheon off the edge lol

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Originally Posted by Evangela

Two bosses at the same time: John Cena and Roman Reigns.

Every time you beat them down to 1% they'll be fully healed and get 3 bars of Limit Break.

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Or we can make people fight you, as in YOU. No one would win.

Or we implant skynet into a boss and make it sentient. there goes your hardest fight.

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Originally Posted by Millerna

Titan savage. Landslide now covers the entire arena ;)

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thats hilarious lol

Ozma + Thordan ex + Nidhogg ex divebombs = only 1% clear rate across all servers.

Since only one team in the entire world managed it- just add pre-nerf T5 twisters to anything, job done.

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Originally Posted by Israacf

Dive bombs are enough to wipe most of the playerbase.

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I laughed at that more than I will want to admit...