Random Elements in Fights

So after lurking around on this site for a while as well as making note of the games design, it seems a lot of it (class design, meta strategies, optimization, general gameplay) revolves around how heavily scripted fights are. Which makes me wonder, how would these things change if more random elements were introduced, primarily in regards to enemy mechanics?

Every time you enter a roulette you get a random dungeon is that not random enough for you?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dragonexx

So after lurking around on this site for a while as well as making note of the games design, it seems a lot of it (class design, meta strategies, optimization, general gameplay) revolves around how heavily scripted fights are. Which makes me wonder, how would these things change if more random elements were introduced, primarily in regards to enemy mechanics?

---

Stone Vigil hard mode's final boss is about the only one that has truly "random" mechanics and that is limited to a few moves, all which have signature tells. there would have to be a massive shift in dev philosophy for them to move away from current design parameters.

The problem with adding randomness to an encounter is that too much of it can start to stray into artificial difficulty territory if certain combinations/timings of mechanics end up being much rougher to deal with.

Having played WoW in its earlier days, some of its mechanics could vary between being either trivial or hellish depending when/where they decide to occur and/or who they target. They eventually learned their lesson and largely stopped having unpleasant scenarios such as both healers or tanks being temporarily out of commission or otherwise placed into a situation that limits or prevents them from executing their role

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

The problem with adding randomness to an encounter is that too much of it can start to stray into artificial difficulty territory if certain combinations/timings of mechanics end up being much rougher to deal with.
Having played WoW in its earlier days, some of its mechanics could vary between being either trivial or hellish depending when/where they decide to occur and/or who they target. They eventually learned their lesson and largely stopped having unpleasant scenarios such as both healers or tanks being temporarily out of commission or otherwise placed into a situation that limits or prevents them from executing their role

---

At the same time though, there is a middle ground between completely random events and perfectly scripted events. You mentioned WoW, and they have come up with a good system of how this is done. The bosses will not use their abilities in a perfect order, but rather they have a cooldown for each ability and there is a window after the ability is usable that they will use said ability; in addition to not allowing for shotgun uses of different abilities. This sometimes allows for one ability to happen before or after another, depending on how the windows fall. You can never have a truly randomized encounter without making it very basic, but you are not able to plot out the fight from start to finish before you start the encounter either.

It'd be easy enough for XIV to start to transition to something like that, they just have to be willing to try it instead of staying with the formula they have that ends up making a lot of the game feel the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Stone Vigil hard mode's final boss is about the only one that has truly "random" mechanics and that is limited to a few moves, all which have signature tells. there would have to be a massive shift in dev philosophy for them to move away from current design parameters.

---

Rathalos embraced it.

I think more fights like Rathalos would be interesting in terms of fight randomness, just not in every single fight from here on out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cyreil

Rathalos embraced it.

I think more fights like Rathalos would be interesting in terms of fight randomness, just not in every single fight from here on out.

---

I was just thinking of Rathalos when I read this thread. I loved that fight so much (probably because it was easier having played Monster Hunter) and having it be all about actually reacting to each attack instead of just "okay it's doing the tankbuster, then it's the room-wide AoE, then it'll jump to the center and drop AoEs..." it gets so boring when everything is so predictable. That alone is why I don't even bother with Savage and higher, it's just a memory game. I like to adapt to what happens instead of memorizing everything.

welll Rath was a special case because they were trying to emulate Monster Hunter as per the crossover theme.

I find it incredulous that people still bring this up. how have you not known by now the devs of XIV want balance and conformity in their encounter design? This is not something that just gets changed on a whim.
there is not enough call for a shake up of things. unless the entirety of the playerbase is upset with how things have been going for the past 6 years, nothing is changing anytime soon.

I would be fine with some more Rathalos like anomalies but I wouldn't count on a full scale change.

I think Memoria Misera is a good balance, there is enough randomness that forced me to pay attention instead of going full auto-pilot.

I could see something like this working for more extreme content, and kinda hope they embrace that a little. At least, for the fights like Memoria Misera where it's not built to give you a preview of what it'll be like in Savage.
But as for the higher difficulties I don't see it happening. The devs like making very coreographed fights where people can plan strats, and you lose that if the fight is mainly about reacting to things as they come up.

This is something I keep wanting more and more. While the scripted nature of FF14 is handled fairly well by the devs, I don't think it does anything for content longevity. It also creates a barrier of entry for more difficult content which isn't a problem in itself but I'd like more challenging duties that I can just jump into without memorizing them beforehand. Changing the game to move entirely away from scripted fights probably won't happen, but SE could introduce content specifically designed to be unpredictable. I think it could work for dungeons and raids alike. In order to help fit the development of this content into their resources they might try to develop it over a period of time, adding some more variation patch by patch. It would also help if the content was design from the beginning to be scalable so that increasing the difficulty to match the next level cap is just a matter of turning up some numbers. Though even if SE did decide to do this, I don't see it happening any time soon. They have recently reorganized the way that they're releasing content already with the removal of dungeons and deep dungeons and the addition of stuff like Unreal trials.

Randomness is obviously more difficult to balance; you have to make sure that no variation of attacks and mechanics can make the fight unwinnable.

It's probably not worth the effort.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cyreil

Rathalos embraced it.

I think more fights like Rathalos would be interesting in terms of fight randomness, just not in every single fight from here on out.

---

Rathalos also doesn't have much in the way of actual mechanics beyond "Dodge the AOE based on the tell" and "stack up to soak fireball".

MM EX isn't really a "random" fight either. it has 3 things to watch out for, all of which are scripted in the start, random order in the back half. hardly a good example to use of true randomness.

Considering how many people really don’t like E8S’s semi-random Light Rampant mechanic, I doubt an encounter that relies purely on random mechanics would be very fun — especially for melee DPS. In the case of Hades Ex, during the first phase’s falling circles mechanic, a lot of groups just mitigate through it because it’s easier than trying to dodge them.

Regardless, I think the more random mechanics really only belong in Extremes and up. The higher the degree of randomness of the mechanic, the harder it is to execute. I can’t imagine having to coordinate a random PF/RF party to do Limit Cut+Hawk Blasters in an Extreme fight, and we’ve already seen what Soar did to the Party Finder lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Rathalos also doesn't have much in the way of actual mechanics beyond "Dodge the AOE based on the tell" and "stack up to soak fireball".

---

I mean, can't that describe like 90% of other fights anyway? Dodge AoEs and stack for stuff sometimes?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

I mean, can't that describe like 90% of other fights anyway? Dodge AoEs and stack for stuff sometimes?

---

Yeah but rathalos is simple to the extreme. Sit on side the entire fight

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Yeah but rathalos is simple to the extreme. Sit on side the entire fight

---

That definitely doesn't work. And if it's so simple people wouldn't get wrecked so much and they wouldn't have complained like they did when it first got added because there's no attack markers except the single-target fireball so they never knew when to do anything.

If you just stand off to the side you're probably not doing anything or going to die fairly quickly when it turns around and charges you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

That definitely doesn't work. And if it's so simple people wouldn't get wrecked so much and they wouldn't have complained like they did when it first got added because there's no attack markers except the single-target fireball so they never knew when to do anything.

If you just stand off to the side you're probably not doing anything or going to die fairly quickly when it turns around and charges you.

---

That's not what I meant. You just hug his left leg for the entirety of the last phase.


And people can't do simple mechanics in most dungeons, of course they can't do rathalos.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

That definitely doesn't work. And if it's so simple people wouldn't get wrecked so much and they wouldn't have complained like they did when it first got added because there's no attack markers except the single-target fireball so they never knew when to do anything.

If you just stand off to the side you're probably not doing anything or going to die fairly quickly when it turns around and charges you.

---

Actually, all of Rath's attacks in phase 1 & 2 sans fireballs can be dodged by just force hugging his left side.

Charge: Just move to his left side. Or any side, since it hits his front. Just don't be in front lol.
Tail whip: he whips from back to his front through right side x2. Just keep moving along with him to move to his left side, easy.
Jump back + fireball: only hits in front of him, stand on left side ez.
front bite + back tail whip: doesn't hit his sides. ez.

Phase 2 charge: same as phase 1. Just don't be in front of him.
Phase 2 fire bite: just don't be in front of him.
Phase 2 firebreath: cleaves in front of him. Y'know, just don't be in front of him. Amazing complexity.

But of course, it's only easy if people have some kind of reflexes, which a lot of players don't and hence complained. (Also because when the fight first released, I doubt many people realized Rath's blind spot making 90% of his attacks trivial to dodge). Hence why the meta for the fight became 3x Tanks (usually WAR due to insane IR burst windows on downed Rath) 1x Healer so that people could take extra beatings if they did screw up and the dps check was non-existant. When you understand all of his attacks, have even somewhat okay reflexes, Rath EX is easier than almost any other EX trial in the game due to fireball being the only damage you can't avoid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MariaArvana

Actually, all of Rath's attacks in phase 1 & 2 sans fireballs can be dodged by just force hugging his left side.

---

I don't know why you bothered typing up all that, because I never said sitting by his side didn't work. That person phrased it in a way that made it seem like they were saying being off to the side was what worked.

I've done the fight before. I've done the EX version before. You really don't need to 'splain to me how the fight works when I wasn't showing lack of knowledge. You're basing your entire point of even replying to me on misinformation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

I don't know why you bothered typing up all that, because I never said sitting by his side didn't work. That person phrased it in a way that made it seem like they were saying being off to the side was what worked.

I've done the fight before. I've done the EX version before. You really don't need to 'splain to me how the fight works when I wasn't showing lack of knowledge. You're basing your entire point of even replying to me on misinformation.

---

I mean, you did basically the same thing, instead of clarifying you just said I was wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I mean, you did basically the same thing, instead of clarifying you just said I was wrong.

---

Well, I suppose two wrong don't make a right, huh? You said "Sit on side the entire fight" so I assumed you meant the side, not Rathalos's side. Notice how once you said you meant his side and not the side, I didn't continue arguing with you about it. Because there was nothing left to argue because it was a misunderstanding. Get it? Also I don't know how you expect me to clarify for you.

I also didn't type up a whole guide for the fight, I went off the information I had. I didn't make a long post telling you how to do it. They could've just left it at what you said when you clarified, instead of acting like I knew literally nothing about it and needed an explanation about the entirety of the mechanics.

There's clearly nothing to discuss here, so I don't know what the point is anymore. It could've literally just been "oh I thought you meant this, sorry", but I guess it's fine to gang up on someone because you weren't clear in what you meant and that's somehow my fault.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doozer

I went off the information I had.

---

And so did I; since I recognized what Valkyrie was referring to by 'side' and you were disagreeing, it was only natural to elaborate since it appeared you were misunderstanding; that's all, no need to get hostile over it. Regardless of how it was worded, standing off to the side of the arena -would- work anyway till phase 2 fireball. When you're far from him, literally the only physical attack he can hit you with is a charge, and that's insanely telegraphed and can be easily dodged by anyone who is paying attention in the slightest. Regardless if you're far or close, he still takes 2 seconds to wind up that charge; it's a great strategy for ranged & casters since it literally nullifies all attacks but the charge. I do it quite often when I'm playing caster in the fight.

Besides, I was also addressing your other point on that post of why people complained despite the simplicity of the fight. Not because of difficulty, but because of perceived difficulty when it actuality, the fight was ultra simple from day 1.