The unbalanced reliance on fight design to make combat interesting

Title's a mouthful so I'll elaborate here.

I think the horse's pretty dead at this point and everyone here knows the corner that SE has designed themselves into when it comes to combat content.

Combat is getting stale and IMHO, the fundamental problem is because of the shifting of agency away from the player. Let me just try and list some generic "methods" that a player can engage in combat with enemies in other RPGs:

1. Critical hits
2. Single target damage
3. AOE damage
4. Accuracy
5. Skill/talent trees
6. Element advantage/weakness
7. Damage types (blunt/slash/pierce/maim)
8. Stuns
9. Silences
10. Meaningful Buffs/Debuffs
11. RNG (god forbid)
12. Dot mechanics
13. Aggro management
14. Resource management ala Mana, Stamina(TP)


However for the majority of this game's combat content, there's only.... damage. All your buttons are just different places to press for more damage. GCDs? Damage. oGCDs? More damage. Abilities? Yet even more damage. Everyone is being funneled into a "press all your buttons at the 2m mark" gameplay. How is this fun?

Now we list some done to death mechanics in this game:
1. AOEs
2. Tethers
3. Stacks
4. Spreads
5. Role specific spread/stack

Now what do they all have in common? That's right. Movement. That's all this game's combat boils down to. Deal damage while moving in predefined locations at predefined intervals. And that's the crux of the problem with this game's combat design as of this post. There are only so many ways you can mix the above mechanics until players catch on that they're all the same mechanics mixed in a different way, because there's simply no other way to have interactivity between the players and the boss.

There's now a paradox. There's not much a player can do to interact with the enemies, but there's also nothing new that they can put into fights other than more movement patterns. This is why the combat is getting stale, really quickly. It's all movement movement movement.

Thoughts?

TLDR: Players don't have many ways to interact with fights other than damage, while fights only consist of movement mechanics, therefore combat is quickly getting stale.

hell i'll take it one step further and say we can't even have unique indicators for mechanics that are spammed really anymore look at what they did to my boy purple AOE in crystal tower

I dunno. I sorta agree (at the end of my comment), but... There's still a decent amount of interesting things you can do just with AoEs, tethers, towers, and movement. They've done a good job of changing up the patterns, visual tells, and timing to make each fight unique (to a degree, obviously debatable). Each fight is like a choreographed dance, and learning that dance to perfection is fun, for me at least.

More importantly though, I think FFXIV stays away from the all the build variety, CCs, damage types, etc. in an attempt to keep the game more.... I don't wanna say accessible... but more appreciable, without spending hours researching build guides and planning a bunch of specific combos for your team (to utilize all those niche abilities with extra effects that aren't pure damage). Instead you can just jump into a fight and start practicing. Most everything you learn (beyond basic rotations and raidbuff alignment), you learn by watching the boss and practicing the footwork. I imagine that's more engaging for a lot of people, especially those who aren't into old RPGs. Ya'know, the traditional ones (mostly turn-based), that rely on having a bunch of complicated systems to keep you engaged. Unlike other MMOs, FFXIV has made a clear choice to steer away from it's traditional RPG roots. Instead of complex and open-ended, it's more actiony, less abstract, and easier to get into.

I do think there's some room for more aggro management and CC though. Adds are so rare in boss fights, but I think even the most basic ones can make a fight a lot more interesting. Just having a use for AoE abilities outside of dungeons is nice. I actually really liked the add phase in E8S, cause there were a lot of little optimizations to help you clear it early in the tier. But it wasn't strictly necessary for casual players to figure all that out; they could just come in later with better gear.

Some of those things actually used to exist but were removed because they caused more issues than they solved.

Damage types, for example. Time was swords were slashing damage, fists were blunt, bows and spears were piercing, etc. Problem is it meant some comps were basically required in order to work. DRGs had a debuff that increased piercing damage but BRDs did not, so BRDs basically had to be paired with DRGs at all times or their damage was drastically nerfed. Same with stuns. In 2.0 stun/interrupt mechanics were fairly common, but also very annoying because of how easy it was to accidentally trigger the DR and completely screw the whole party.

The current state of the game isn't some first try failed experiment. It's many years worth of evolution and redesigning the systems as both the devs and the players figure out what works and what doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Xephna

Now what do they all have in common? That's right. Movement. That's all this game's combat boils down to.

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When it comes to mechanics, movement is the great equalizer. Tankbusters mean nothing to DPS, positionals mean nothing to healers, unavoidable AoE is only relevant to healers, etc. Movement on the other hand affects all players at the same time, regardless of role. It's an easy way to involve the entire party with a single mechanic.

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Originally Posted by pikalovr

hell i'll take it one step further and say we can't even have unique indicators for mechanics that are spammed really anymore look at what they did to my boy purple AOE in crystal tower

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There's a reason for that. If you make the indicators unique for every fight, then initially you gotta guess what any given indicator means. Do you stack with it? Do you run away with it? It's trial and error. But by standardizing indicators, the guesswork is removed. We can see something and say "Yes, we stack that" or "Yes, we spread that". And with that basic work done, they can start doing other stuff with the unified markers. For your average dungeon fight, they can start doing more complicated mechanics right off the bat because they don't need to teach you what X indicator means.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

There's a reason for that. If you make the indicators unique for every fight, then initially you gotta guess what any given indicator means. Do you stack with it? Do you run away with it? It's trial and error. But by standardizing indicators, the guesswork is removed. We can see something and say "Yes, we stack that" or "Yes, we spread that". And with that basic work done, they can start doing other stuff with the unified markers. For your average dungeon fight, they can start doing more complicated mechanics right off the bat because they don't need to teach you what X indicator means.

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my guy you've had 50 levels of "training" by this point there was no reason to change the AOE. and it would be a great indicator (pun not intended) that there will be unique indicators and you will have to learn what they do through trial and error sometimes and thats 100% ok. not every marker should be universal, throw in the occasional odd ball to really throw players for a loop. like the numbered mechanics they're typically different depending on the mechanic and you have to learn what the numbers are for and thats 100% ok. most of the time you wipe once or twice and understand at least what the mechanic does. so no the "standardize" change argument doesn't hold up cause it's a good oddball and even has an AOE around it. which already narrows down it's intended mechanics spread from the parties or stack with the parties and doing either or you'll see you were right or wrong without costing the entire AR a wipe cause the little hill still appears even if everyone on the AOE dies even if all three players huddle on top of each other you'll still have people who will think it's a stay away and stay out and potentially save the raid

wiping to learn mechanics is ok and i don't get people have this phobia of wiping in game it's perfectly normal you wipe you go over what you need to or what you learned you come up with a plan you repull repeat. thats literally what MMORPGs are supposed to be about COMMUNICATION and PLAYER INTERACTIONS not just 8 guys silently repulling the boss cause maybe one guy messed up a keep away mechanic and they just assume he'll get it right this time

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Some of those things actually used to exist but were removed because they caused more issues than they solved.

Damage types, for example. Time was swords were slashing damage, fists were blunt, bows and spears were piercing, etc. Problem is it meant some comps were basically required in order to work. DRGs had a debuff that increased piercing damage but BRDs did not, so BRDs basically had to be paired with DRGs at all times or their damage was drastically nerfed. Same with stuns. In 2.0 stun/interrupt mechanics were fairly common, but also very annoying because of how easy it was to accidentally trigger the DR and completely screw the whole party.

The current state of the game isn't some first try failed experiment. It's many years worth of evolution and redesigning the systems as both the devs and the players figure out what works and what doesn't.



When it comes to mechanics, movement is the great equalizer. Tankbusters mean nothing to DPS, positionals mean nothing to healers, unavoidable AoE is only relevant to healers, etc. Movement on the other hand affects all players at the same time, regardless of role. It's an easy way to involve the entire party with a single mechanic.

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i'll argue the fact it was gutted far too quickly they could've really had a nice system going same with cross classing but they approached it poorly and instead of fixing their mistakes just threw it in the bin like they do most things. pet AI and ghosting occuring? bin it, aggro being more on DPS and healers than tanks? bin it can't figure out that maybe BRd should be able to also buff pierving damage so he could be brought in not only alongside a DRG? bin it (even tho i'd argue needing pairings or more of jobs is actually far more interesting than every role can basically be self sufficient and can work with any other job cause we can't anyone stepping on anyone elses toes clearly)

what you call a game built on redesigns and "evolution" i call a game that bins anything difficult to deal with (despite them having easy solutions) and DEVOLVES the combat. just look at healers AST when it was reworked lost both the option to use all 3 redraws when it wanted to and sleeve draw things that added to the complexity and potential skill ceiling of the job now you sit here and tell me thats evolving combat?

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Originally Posted by Xephna

Movement. That's all this game's combat boils down to.

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Yep.

All of the mechanics you first listed are fun to interact with, but difficult to balance, if the developers want to maintain gameplay that is accessible for those not familiar with an MMORPG.

Solutions to gameplay challenges cannot be too specific or obscure; in this context, it may just be a skill that doesn't get used regularly in a damage rotation. The risk is in having players forget what they're supposed to do, or what abilities they even have. This game is played online, with combat conducted in real time. Not everyone is capable of going through combat with ease: see all the BLMs that forget to cast their very-powerful AoE Sleep on key enemies, even in the easiest class/job story content, despite being specifically told to do so by the quest NPC. Many players attest to anxiety when in "important" roles such as tank or healer. You will not be able to rely on these players to interrupt powerful casts, or to control and separate enemies.

For the simplest example which still exists in the current game: if there is a key mechanic that requires an interrupt to resolve, then you risk having a single point of failure (tank, Interject), unless you bring a redundant physical ranged as backup. Some older content allows for stuns, but stun resistance makes it possible for the solution to become invalid. Meanwhile, if this key mechanic does not kill the group outright, it becomes a healer mechanic. (failed mech cleanup does seem to be the actual role of healers lol)

I remember it being said by the developers that XIV was intended to be a "Final Fantasy" title first, and an MMORPG second. I don't have extensive experience with the franchise, but I do know much (most?) of it consists of turn-based, single-player combat. The same folks who like to take time and consider their next action must play at a level that results in acceptable performance by the general playerbase. The bar has to be set low for the sake of this goal.

There is room, within encounter design, for mechanics which might require more specific abilities, even if only in higher-difficulty content; however, the current state of (PvE) job design means that, by ability count alone, it may be difficult to fit in abilities which would interact with enemy status and activity. If room was made for the sake of this, it would result in an odd situation in which a whole sub-set of abilities is never used, due to being not useful, in normal-difficulty story content.

You are right that it gets stale very quickly. "Choreographed dance" is an apt description, and not something I'm personally interested in. I think I'll probably finish playing through the story again via NG+ and then let my sub lapse until a major content patch, or even the next expansion...

people really out here saying the circus tower AOe should've been changed to the generic stack marker. to those of you i ask why? why was it necessary to change that one little marker? not why it was ok to or anything like that, but why was it NECESSARY? especiallly when it worked perfectly fine all these years prior

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Originally Posted by pikalovr

especiallly when it worked perfectly fine all these years prior

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It did? I can't even count the number of times I've seen people get the black circle, and run away from everyone, and die, because there's no way to tell it's a stack marker unless someone tells you (and even then people still run off and die.) The fact that everyone put up with it doesn't make it good.

You have to remember that the super consistent markers we have now didn't always exist. Some things were consistent (dragon in, ram out was just as true 9 years ago as it is today) but for the most part markers were completely random and there was no way to tell what a mechanic was until you mysteriously died to it. Standardized markers were introduced to help alleviate some of that frustration. Yes, there's something to be said for the challenge of figuring out mechanics and learning a fight as you go, but that only works once. The second, third, eighty fifth time you fight a boss it's not a puzzle any more. It's just an annoying situation of trying to remember "am I supposed to stack or run away from this marker on this fight?"

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

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wow it's almost as if trial and error is a thing, and having unique markers to force players to think about the potential ways to solve the marker is a good thing cause it actually promotes working together weird that huh in a MMORPG? you might not have realized what was needed there but someone else might've and they can speak up. i'm sorry if forgetting a mechanic is annoying to you then we might as well get rid of number mechanics and just explain every single mechanic as they're casted. you will forget mechanics you will have periods of trial and error there's absolutely no reason to get rid of unique markers or indicators you can make them easier to see (ram out, dragon in being a good example of something that could be shown better). but you don't remove them hence why i said what you call this a game built on revisions and "evolution", i call a game built on binning anything too hard to deal with (both on their side and the players side) and devolves. you wanna know what actual evolution in this game is? stuff like bozja the lost actions ADD onto our abilities and allow us to experiment and see what we can do. it added another form of skill expression that people can and did ignore anyways.

i've already explained why this AOE indicator works in another post above this

it would be a great indicator (pun not intended) that there will be unique indicators and you will have to learn what they do through trial and error sometimes and thats 100% ok. not every marker should be universal, throw in the occasional odd ball to really throw players for a loop. like the numbered mechanics they're typically different depending on the mechanic and you have to learn what the numbers are for and thats 100% ok. most of the time you wipe once or twice and understand at least what the mechanic does. so no the "standardize" change argument doesn't hold up cause it's a good oddball and even has an AOE around it. which already narrows down it's intended mechanics spread from the parties or stack with the parties and doing either or you'll see you were right or wrong without costing the entire AR a wipe cause the little hill still appears even if everyone on the AOE dies even if all three players huddle on top of each other you'll still have people who will think it's a stay away and stay out and potentially save the raid

and i'll say this once again

wiping to learn mechanics is ok and i don't get people have this phobia of wiping in game it's perfectly normal you wipe you go over what you need to or what you learned you come up with a plan you repull repeat. thats literally what MMORPGs are supposed to be about COMMUNICATION and PLAYER INTERACTIONS not just 8 guys silently repulling the boss cause maybe one guy messed up a keep away mechanic and they just assume he'll get it right this time

Like I said before, trial and error only works once. Once you figure something out it's not a puzzle anymore. And while yes, it's still new for new players even if you've done a fight a hundred times, if you then tell them about the mechanic ahead of time it's no longer trial and error for them either. All you've done is make more work for the sake of making more work. It's not more fun or engaging.

And there most definitely are non-standard mechanics. They're just tied to higher tier content where taking the time to fail and learn is the intended design. People expect to wipe a lot while figuring out new mechanics in EX/savage fights. Not so in random dungeons or alliance raids.

The "dance" is one of the main reasons I enjoy end game here. A lot of MMO's end game raids are basically just kill trash > fight target dummy, kill trash, fight target dummy with 1 or 2 mechanics, kill trash, fighting a boss with somewhat meaningful mechanics.

FFXIV removed the annoying trash clearing and the long walks of shame after every wipe and found a way to create mechanics that involves the entire party. Does it suck to wipe because 1 person screwed up? Sure, it can get annoying sometimes, but that's part of the fun. I guess if you pugged all the fights then ya that would be horrible, but with a static its great.

There's also only so much you can do in a game with such a slow GCD. Movement heavy mechanics fills in that gap.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

don't even know why i try to change people who want to face roll content with no opposition or thinking at this point

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except once AGAIN it's impossible to wipe that mechanic as it still produced the hill regardless of deaths, and like i said unless all three people stacked ontop of eachother and everyone else as well you were not wiping that raid. so tell me why it had to be removed? or is wiping not the only annoyance here? in which case i could argue that any fight that forces you out of uptime is "annoying". and should be taken away oh wait they already heard that people hate not having uptime on melee so they made 100% uptime on savage fights easier. instead of potentially having to do some wacky things for uptime or risk wiping/doing mechanics wrong to achieve it. also they instead of sticking to their guns and giving phys ranged jobs a reason to have a "ranged/movement" tax at all (which they still haven't addressed just fyi MCH, BRD, DNC are still extremely low especially MCH for being a selfish DPS) . they caved into players not wanting to have any opposition which is what is really the problem here you don't want to deal with thinking or wiping even once to remember a mechanic you just want to roll your face on the keyboard and clear the content. sure there can be general markers for mechanics that's perfectly fine but you have no good argument for removing what unique markers/indicators are left like people want the chimera in cutters cry changed. despite it not being necessary for MSQ to begin with. should we change it then? and why stop there? just make everything standard so you no longer have to think.

if nothing else i'd argue this game is too lenient of tells/markrers/groundeffects. almost everything has a cast bar a ground preview AOE or a marker WITH a ground preview AOE if it's AOE on the target the only time we really see them break this mold is with stuff like savages. let's take P1s for example with intemperence instead of the game sitting there holding your hand if you get something wrong you get a party wide damage down and risk wiping the party (emphasis on risk not a guaranteed wipe unless you mess up twice) and they throw in a purple crystal (thunder) that will throw people for a loop. but according to you we should just never see something like that in normal gameplay an EVOLUTION to a mechanic. cause it can be "annoying" to die to that simple change of the purple crystal. which is more annoying dying to a mechanic that basically gets told to you that you still messed up or one that you had to actually learn through trial and error and mess up again cause you forgot?

you want a recent example? newest dungeon in 6.1 (mandatory for MSQ mind you) has the final boss call down two sets of colored threads and he'll tether to one set of them a mechanic that you will learn from through trial and error cause you have a 50/50 here either something will happen to the tethered or untethered threads and it'll prolly be an AOe so you have a 50/50 on ti being a small donut AOE or a small AOE around the thread. so you're already at a 1/4 chance of guessing correctly if you're new or forgot the mechanic, and when i mess it up again running through it again i don't get annoyed or frustrated i go "oh yeah thats how it works" and do it the next time correctly. but no we can't ahve that get rid of it and just turn into a ground AOE with a 4 second delay before it comes out according to your logic cause dying to the current mechanic is "annoying"

it's not people being annoyed by mechanics it's people being annoyed they can't do everything perfectly 100% of the time. and it's why i'll die on this hill of bringing back more unique mechanics/indicators/markers/etc... and the game actually EVOLVES on those mechanics in all forms of content even the thread mechanic while not as game changing as having to do say in and out chains under intemperence. it's still evolves on the mechanics the game has taught you (tethers and AOEs). cause if you want a game that you can just faceroll the keyboard and get angry at literally the tiniest mistake. there's plenty of alternatives that allow you to feel that way and will baby you through everything.

so lets call it what it really is people being against any form of opposition or thinking.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Like I said before, trial and error only works once. Once you figure something out it's not a puzzle anymore.

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Apparently it is, considering what you had previously said about players being unable to comprehend how to handle those purple markers, despite everything.