Titan Extreme is NOT Fun

[Goodberry]

Titan and all these darn instakilla fights are the FF14 equivalent of Horde bias in WoW. The company's favourite pet (but the kind of pet who never learned not to "mess up" all over the house). The almost fatal flaw in what could be so good. What keeps me always on the brink of unsubscribing. For now, I'll try experimenting if the game can be played ignoring darn Titan, extreme fights etc. Need a lot of patience. A bit like playing Alliance in WoW. :P

[ToraFomalhaut]

Not that I want to justify abusing the stacking tank debuff mechanic, but there's only so much you can do with multiple tanks in small group raids. Damage split (Hydra), armor debuffs, adds to tank - and that's pretty much it. Sure, you can design crazy stuff like the Netherspite encounter or proper council-type fights like WoW's ODS but... It takes proper designers and time which SE doesn't have it seems. I have no idea why they can't modify a few bits here and there, fine-tuning some fights to only have one tank (and allowing stuff like Atramedes encounter), but I guess their whole system is as unflexible as it gets. So unless something changes drastically, we can expect more AoEs, more forced tank-swapping and the like.

I agree with you, I often wonder why bother forcing two tanks in DF sign ups considering there is the tank shortage / dps over population. If you aren't going to bother developing content that makes dynamic use of an additional tank outside of just plain swapping every few hits then why not just scrap the need for more than one tank and allow DF queues to use the spot for another DPS or healer?

Don't get me wrong, tank swapping is a legitimate tactic sure, but just not in every fight... It just screams unimaginative / lazy design. They need to stop designing the content around the duty finder as the rigid party set up restrictions are impeding their mechanic options greatly.

[Warlyx]

Nothing is unflexible, SE can do everthing , but guess they got lazy already....look at CT :

1 wing : adds add adds , 1 boss fight that has adds that need to me moved , the MT is bored as hell...offtanks pull back adds....boring too but at least u are moving...
2 wing : Atomos , loladds ,Tanathos ,boring as hell to tank , boss or adds boooooooring
3 wing : Flame demons , boring ,stand there tank , move a bit when needed
4 wing : KB , tanktowers lolololol , tanking behe isnt fun either, the giant tank at least has to pay attention
last boss , LOL

tanking in CT is the most boring tanking experience EVER ,even if u MT everything ....

but yeah 8 tanks in a raid , but its the same issue every other mmorpg faces at endgame...

create bosses with 1 tank : lack of tanks in endgame (even more lol),and ppl that like to tank quit because getting the "TANK SPOT " in a raid is impossible.

create raids with 2 tank in mind : still lack of tanks , and some ppl are forced to reroll ,quit or just dont raid as tank, because getting a spot as tank is hard.

[FelisC]

I didn't read all 21 pages, but I find it fun and I haven't cleared it yet.

[Evenstar]

Not that I want to justify abusing the stacking tank debuff mechanic, but there's only so much you can do with multiple tanks in small group raids. Damage split (Hydra), armor debuffs, adds to tank - and that's pretty much it. Sure, you can design crazy stuff like the Netherspite encounter or proper council-type fights like WoW's ODS but... It takes proper designers and time which SE doesn't have it seems. I have no idea why they can't modify a few bits here and there, fine-tuning some fights to only have one tank (and allowing stuff like Atramedes encounter), but I guess their whole system is as unflexible as it gets. So unless something changes drastically, we can expect more AoEs, more forced tank-swapping and the like.

Everything SE and Yoshi had to do so far has been rushed.

2.0 was rushed to make up for the crazy 1.0 version.

2.1 was rushed because 75% of 2.1 should have been in 2.0.

2.2 will be rushed too I think, but starting 2.3 I expect proper content from Yoshi and SE. I give them until then at least. Right now I am not happy with a few things and the huge amount of copy/paste with small changes in the content (NM/HM/XM battles, beastmen quests, boss mechanics all are copy/paste).

[valho]

If this is the reaction to Titan extreme, then imagine the reaction to Ifrit extreme XD.

Personally I don't have the guts at present to tackle garuda extreme, but like with HM titan I'm sure we will all get the hang of it and it will be less scary. Titan has always been a very predictable encounter.

Sadly Ifrit Extreme doesn't provide as much challenge as Titan Extreme, after my FC team try it for a few hours we already got the hang of it and know that we can kill it the next day when we try again, it was getting late and everyone was tired. Titan Extreme itself took us some hours of practice in the span of 2 days in order to get the phases down and everyone in sync to down it. It takes a lot of focus and a simple mistake usually means wipe. Our FC team are happy we manage to down it and now we can teach help others in our FC to clear Primal Extreme.

[chococo]

Frustration is probably not due to the game mechanics alone, but rather, it requires your entire party to perform well due to the mechanics. There is no leeway for any of your party members to screw up, and so makes the encounter rely heavily on everyone, which you have no control of. Everyone is bound to make mistakes, but party members making mistakes during different attempts = continue to fail.

This is also bad for the community as people play the blame game when thing screws up, and also the exclusion of people who's connection are noticeably slower. The number of JP parties excluding ENs (specifying JP only) on JP servers are increasing at an alarming rate, primarily cos hey dun want people with laggy connections to screw up their runs.

[valho]

Frustration is probably not due to the game mechanics alone, but rather, it requires your entire party to perform well due to the mechanics. There is no leeway for any of your party members to screw up, and so makes the encounter rely heavily on everyone, which you have no control of. Everyone is bound to make mistakes, but party members making mistakes during different attempts = continue to fail.

This is also bad for the community as people play the blame game when thing screws up, and also the exclusion of people who's connection are noticeably slower. The number of JP parties excluding ENs (specifying JP only) on JP servers are increasing at an alarming rate, primarily cos hey dun want people with laggy connections to screw up their runs.

Yeap been seeing that quite a bit too. The reason they exclude EN is probably not due to laggy connection but due to communication problem, most JP doesn't even use the auto translate, and they can't type English, so it's hard for them to communicate their strategy to EN players. Usually if I end up in a JP party I'll have my FFXIV-APP so that I can at least get an idea what they are saying, no problem so far.

[Hitome]

It's really sad to see people still clinging onto WoW. It's a great game and still going, you know? Perhaps wander back over to it.

Not telling you to leave but telling you that if you miss that type of gameplay, you won't find it in 14. I played 11 and WoW for about an equal amount of time (~7 years). I never thought any fight in WoW was challenging from Vanilla to WotLK and never gave me the same sense of satisfaction that something in 11 or 14 does. Was 11 tedious? Yes, perhaps to some. Did it not have mods like WoW did to make fights easier? No, it didn't. Know what? Made things more fun for me.

Obviously not everyone is the same. If you want my opinion, 14 will head more towards the 11 direction than WoW direction based on what we have so far. Use intelligent decisions and go do things that you find fun.

[ToraFomalhaut]

It's really sad to see people still clinging onto WoW. It's a great game and still going, you know? Perhaps wander back over to it.

Not telling you to leave but telling you that if you miss that type of gameplay, you won't find it in 14. I played 11 and WoW for about an equal amount of time (~7 years). I never thought any fight in WoW was challenging from Vanilla to WotLK and never gave me the same sense of satisfaction that something in 11 or 14 does. Was 11 tedious? Yes, perhaps to some. Did it not have mods like WoW did to make fights easier? No, it didn't. Know what? Made things more fun for me.

Obviously not everyone is the same. If you want my opinion, 14 will head more towards the 11 direction than WoW direction based on what we have so far. Use intelligent decisions and go do things that you find fun.

I don't think the problem being discussed here is that anyone wants the game to be more WoW or XI like in particular. Just that the examples of endgame content we have so far show clear signs of poor design. Given that combat encounters are core to any mmo, I don't think it's wrong in any way to discuss encounters from other games that worked well and showed ingenuity and a unique flare of creativity as examples of how things could be done better and differently.

IfritX in FFXIV is the third iteration of the encounter and it's really not showing anything new or unique in it's core combat mechanics. It's a heaviliy scripted fight, where in you only have to memorise the sequence of events and you can prime your responses in accordance. Furthermore in order to make the DF party set up seem justified the encounter designers have been repeatedly relying on a tank swapping mechanic. Which is perfectly fine, but does start to show their lack of ingenuity when you start seeing it in nearly every endgame encounter.