this game relies too much on instant death attacks to make endgame harder

[Kletian]

Dodgeable instant death is one of the few ways to make a fight the DPS can't just faceroll through. If an attack is survivable, it becomes the healers responsibility to keep the DPS alive even when they dont dodge it, and thats not fair.

[Tsukino]

I think it doesn't mesh particularly well with RPG mechanics in general, and the instant death AoE attacks are so plentiful sometimes they make it seem like that's the only thing the game has to offer.

Typically in an RPG you have to focus on maintaining your strategy and then adjusting tactics slightly for certain things. You achieve victory over time when you stick to the strategy and the strengths each role has. If the tank misses one provoke or the healer misses one heal this is typically recoverable as long as the other 98% of the time everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing. In an MMO, you can also usually recover if someone lags for a second and it forces them to miss something, as long as they're not lagging out constantly.

These instant death AoE dodge sequences, however, are completely all-or-nothing. It doesn't matter if you've been doing everything perfectly up to that point; if you don't move exactly at the right time you die and your party is reasonably likely to fail completely. If someone has slightly more lag or doesn't see it coming 100% of the time, you lose.

I think the main problem I have with it is that it removes emphasis on the actual mechanics of the game. Your damage, tanking, healing, and even your overall strategy don't have to be 100% perfect, but your AoE dodging does, making it feel like the single most important aspect of gameplay despite being just a single little gimmick.

[DiamonteZ]

Umm... FFXI was almost all instant death. That's why Ninja tanks became the only option...

[Rydin]

snip

Very good points. The most important part of that is if someone in your party suffers from one of the lag spikes that have been plaguing every instance (thank you duty finder) at the wrong time... then everyone wipes.

Healer gets a lag spike and gets knocked off by a landslide... game over.

This lag has almost become a mechanic unto itself.
So some runs it's like one game mechanic (the nasty lag spikes) fighting another mechanic (insta-death) and players are just collateral damage caught in the middle

[casker]

Meh. Somehow I find it refreshing that this game has the balls to throw 1hko into the mix. All of it is avoidable barring getting cheesed by lag. And actually, 1hko isn't the end of line. FF14 takes it a step further than other games with a mass res limit break, meaning there is counter play involved here. It is amazing to experience a near wipe and seeing that clutch limit break bring everyone back into the fight.

It's easy to single out 1hko as a mechanic but the fact is that it does punish mistakes and sloppy play, meaning it is harder, because you actually have to execute properly and know what you're doing. In an ifrit run earlier the mage whiffed the meteor and only hit two nails, leading to a wipe. Any mechanic is an avenue to fuck up. Getting rid of it isn't going to make the game harder and its not going to have the same level of difficulty without it either, which means yes, it adds difficulty. No, not the artificial kind. We died, because the mage screwed up, in a non-"binary" way.

And whatever, most everything you can think of has probably been done. And actually the game does offer a pretty good variety of mechanics. Most every boss is clearly defined and has their own twist. Especially compared to a game like GW2...where the crowning jewel of their content was Subject Alpha, who would just spam circles everywhere haphazardly to where you're just staring at the ground making sure not you're not standing in a venn diagram from hell, and mashing your ranged attack. The crowning jewel of GW2 content was the equivalent to the mid boss in Dzemael, except the midboss of Dzemael had a fun explanation and narrative for the fight, and you only had to fight him once, whereas GW2 made you fight subject alpha 3 fucking times because Arenanet was lazy as fuck.

[Rydin]

All of it is avoidable barring getting cheesed by lag.

which happens A LOT more than it should

[Sneakaboo]

I think there is nothing wrong with it, kinda makes it fun.
WOW takes it a line further with some bosses, it has some fights faster than titan that requires people to dodge an AOE or the whole raid wipes, and that goes on for 15 min.
It isn't very original though but well I never expected anything original from ARR.

The only issue I have with ARR is the horrible delay and server lag because they are overloaded, especially after the maintenance.

[casker]

which happens A LOT more than it should

I would agree but that's an argument to fix the lag rather than tune the game to accommodate the lag

[cfStatic]

I don't mind it personally, as it provides a competency and gear check for the players involved. That being said, yes, I think it's a tad overused.

[Alhanelem]

If this topic was about cheap mechanics like Hate Resets, then yeah.

Instead it's about things that you can easily avoid, so it's a standard Analhelm topic.

I'm offended at your comment. There is no standard ALHANelem topic, and if you keep calling me analhelm I will not hesitate to report for harassment. Fortunately for me, nobody else cares about your feud with me.

I rarely start topics. There's nothing "standard" about this. I pose a reasonable, legitimate conversation and the best you can do is hate on me for it?

IF you want to expand the topic to other overused/cheap mechanics, feel free. Just don't attack me for discussing what is, in my opinion, one of them.