Titan Extreme is NOT Fun

[Billie21]

First of all, everyone should see this:

Here's a great industry-eye view of challenging vs punishing content.

http://youtu.be/ea6UuRTjkKs

More specifically:

The player needs to have the ability to make informed choices about the game, even if they're split second ones. An uninformed choice isn't actually a choice at all.

"An awesome move that you can understand, but can't execute consistently might as well not even be in the game.

As a designer, when the player fails, you want them to always feel that they could have done better.
[...]
If instead they feel like the game made them fail, then you have failed as a designer.

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Now, let's check what people on this topic have expressed here.

Some of them think Titan EX is fun, others think it's not. But there are some recurring remarks, things that have been said in many threads in these forums, and that I've read often enough ingame, and I have bolded them in the following quotes:

You don't need to memorize the entire fight at all. At least not Titan HM.
All you need for Titan HM is basically:
1) Learn where to run when bombs show up
2) Post-heart, if you have bad lag, remember after which moves the plumes show up

I have a very "reactive" playstyle, and with those two points managed to clear Titan HM in no time when I actually attempted it.
As a healer I was very busy, but at no point did I feel any need to memorize the entire fight.
Why lock yourself into patterns anyway when none of your teammates are going to follow the same pattern every time?
My ping is around 200ms at best.
Titan Extreme sounds like it will be fun when I get there.

I had fun learning the titan extreme fighting and figuring out how to beat it. It was extremely satisfying to watch him bite the dust when we delivered the final blow.

I'm still failing to see how Twintania is less punishing than Titan Extreme. It takes most groups 12-16 hours of hard learning for Twintania (to down it at least) whereas Titan can be done in just 3-4.

First few Titan HM kills I got were in DL gear & AK gear. You don't have to buy it, you only have to keep doing it until you know the rotation by heart with a group of people who put the same amount of efforts as you did.

Titan EM, just do the same thing as before: Learn the patterns, and don't eat stuff that removes you from the fight. Get better, and beat it. Nothing in the game is particularly difficult as long as you think about it a bit and don't have the reaction time of a slug.

Because there's a fine line between hardcore and tedious.
Learning a fight with various interesting mechanics is fun. Overcoming them can be hardcore.
Learning to pre-dodge AoEs like a trained monkey for 15 minutes, wiping and beginning anew if one of 8 people lagged is not fun, which is the reason this thread was created in the first place.
Simple, no?

SE doesnt know that gray colors exist is black or white , life or death.....its a retarded way imho to implement "harder" bosses....u punish ppl with high ping , or poor reflexes and thats it...because to be fair Titan is just learning a pattern and thats it....

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Now before I move on, there is one important point I'd like to clarify.

As you've understood by now, I'm talking about the fact that you (apparently) need to "learn the fight" in order to be able to beat it.


First, there are people who seem to mistake "reaction time" with "knowing in advance". If you have to to learn beforehand what to do, then the mechanics doesn't rely on your reaction time, it relies on your memory.
Which doesn't mean that you don't need to act fast. But if you had to have seen it at least once before, if you cannot clear it on your first try, then it's not a reaction-based mechanics.

Is it necessarily a bad thing? No it isn't. And it is my opinion that FFXIV, in these most difficult fights, was aiming at something in between "reaction" and "foreknowledge".
A MMO is not like a single player game, that once you've cleared it's content, you won't do it again. In fact, a game as heavily grind-reliant as FFXIV expects you to do it multiple times.

There is a balance between the two extremes: "not knowing what to expect" and "knowing what's going to happen by heart".


Where am I going with this? "Learn the fight" might mean different things to different players.

Some actually do consider it "normal" (and even enjoyable) that the player has to learn the fight by heart in order to beat it.
Some might mean "to know the general mechanics, so that you are ready to react when it happens".

So, maybe all these people I've quoted earlier didn't all mean "know the choregraphy by heart" when they wrote "learn the fight". Maybe. Hopefully. Doubtfully.


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Now, on to the next point, which makes any previously expressed doubt in favor of FFXIV's way of handling difficulty in it's fights, moot: this is an online game.
With arguably a bad netcode. Or servers. Or... In any case it's far from perfect as far as playing online goes.
("perfect is impossible", you might reply, and: "people's circumstances will always vary"; you'd be right, but when you are creating an online game, you know that beforehand, don't you? SE didn't, apparently)


First of all: what is the problem?

Because I didn't bother going back into the multiple threads already existing on this topic, I just quoted someone on this thread who explained one of the probable reasons people do suffer from delay:

Sheesh, for the umpteenth time, you don't need "amazing connection SPEED" to dodge stuff.
You need to be lucky enough for your ISP to route your signal through a minimal number of hops with as little lag between as possible.
It's not something you can "fix" or buy a better version of - even if you keep bugging your ISPs support service. You can *TRY* to use a known workaround and buy a VPN (or switch ISPs altogether), but it only gets you so far, because SE uses such godawful network coding, that lag is not compensated for, it's amplified. Some US and Canada residents have it better, some have it worse - everything is decided by the route your packets take.

P.S. For people in Europe - fix or no fix - positional lag is still a big issue and it won't be even close to getting solved until SE actually coughs up the money and rents some datacenters in EU, you know, like every other half-decent MMO publisher does if they target EU playerbase.

Now on to the topic of this thread, or what does this mean for the "hard fights" in this game:

Kinda this.
I played through WoW's raid content during TBC, WoTLK and early Cataclysm. I've seen interesting fights, I've seen difficult fights, but with or without DBM/BigWigs, learning and mastering the fight did not end on memorizing the AoE patterns. In FFXIV, this is the case. We've had trouble with Titan HM right up to the point where our tank started to recite the phase pattern in voice chat for players unfamiliar with it - and people stopped dying to stuff IMMEDIATELY. Make an add-on that will flash your screen and announce the next mechanic - and a 5-year old can beat anything in this game. This wasn't the case with WoW, where add-ons or no add-ons, you still had a lot to learn. In FFXIV the ultimate recipe for victory is:

a) Have low ping and no packet loss ( = pay for VPN for many).
b) Memorize the pattern.
c) Pass the gear check.

That's it.
Which is kinda sad.

It's fun aside from the part that yaknow, plumes are a pain in the ass with their slow servers...

How is it them? well it's simple, I always lag enough for it to make it really annoyingly hard to dodge plumes when it's rush hour for FFXIV, so... my ping is reliable always the same (high for it to make it a combination with their server lag actually matter).

So yeah, dodging is fun as long as it's fair. Sadly, for now it is not, atleast until more people quit again and we can have not so crowded servers.

You got it: even if "Learn the fight" didn't mean "learn everything by heart", for people who suffer from delay, it does.
People cannot clear this content without learning it all by heart beforehand, and "pre-dodging".


I already see them coming, those that will say "it's not SE's fault if you lag".

Maybe.
In any case it is SE's fault that this online game is designed the way it is. They chose the mechanics, they chose how to handle difficulty, and they knew they were making an online game !
They sold it to people living all around the world, their official website has a dedicated section for buying the game in Australia and New Zealand.
If they did not know that people there would have a ping over 200, then they are clearly incompetent.


They could have designed their game differently. They could have based the difficulty on other mechanics:

I guess SE employees and some of the forum community live in a parallel universe where every member of every raid group has direct cables connecting their gaming rigs to FFXIV servers...

Because in our world, if you're lucky enough to have one too many hops between you and Montreal, or live across Atlantic from the datacenter your packets go through a maze of different carriers, and 300ms multiplied by a packet loss here and there equals death with how SE's "wonderful" network code works. I have a friend who had farmed the hell out of Vanilla, TBC, WoTLK and Cata fights in WoW, and the moment he saw Titan EX video he said "screw this, I'm not touching this fight with or without WTFast", because he could record a video of dodging a landslide and flying off in a direction perpendicular to the one it was cast any day being an excellent player otherwise. You can design fights built around tight dodging, sure - but only if

a) Your network code and datacenter placement do not hinder the players
b) Tight dodging is NOT the only gimmick of the entire fight.

It's not about being able to beat it or not. It's about the grueling proccess of memorizing a fight that's more AoE and I wouldn't enjoy... To me, it wasn't fun on HM, won't change now.
I said no creativity because I think "more AoE" is the easiest way of adding difficulty. And SE as been using it way too much for everything, even leveling content.

AoE in my opinion should complement mechanics, not be the mechanic. For example, look at Garuda EM... it simply makes you move, on a fight that you don't want to move thanks to LoS attacks and damage check.
That's the foundation of "fire on the ground" in WoW. You just get out. The faster you are, the less damage you take, and the more your healers will like you. Here there's no distinction - "barely got out" and "didn't even bother" = the same punishment ("barely" being punished because on the servers, you're still inside it).

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In short, and to get back to the opening of my message: these mechanics are not "difficult" they are "punishing".

The player needs to have the ability to make informed choices about the game, even if they're split second ones. An uninformed choice isn't actually a choice at all.

Delay means you cannot make any informed choice, because by the time you get the information, it is too late: time for you to react, then for the server to register your move, the server has already decided you're dead.

"An awesome move that you can understand, but can't execute consistently might as well not even be in the game.

You cannot dodge consistently and you cannot use certain abilities consistently (cf my sig).
When you click on a button, when you press a key, you expect something to happen. That is not always the case in FFXIV.
When your screen tells you you are in this specific place, and this is what's happening around you, you expect it to be the truth. That is rarely the case in FFXIV.

As a designer, when the player fails, you want them to always feel that they could have done better.
[...]
If instead they feel like the game made them fail, then you have failed as a designer.

Guess how she feels?


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Don't misunderstand me. Some players obviously do find it a fun fight.

The only question that will matter to SE is: are there enough of them to sustain the game?

Yoshida seem to believe so, considering his answer to the problem:

The latest interview with Game Watch that Reinheart kindly translated.
[...]
Yoshida: What I can official say from my end is that if you’re really going to fully go into the contents please have the best environment. But this is really hard, there are those that will say “You are the one creating the Online Game, you prepare that type of environment”, or look over it and make adjustments so you can dodge those.

GW: That’s impossible.

Yoshida: It is, if we do that we can’t make difficult contents.

GW: If you’re able to dodge with 3 digit Ping then it’s not fun as a game

Yoshida: We would need to extend the time players have to dodge. But doing that will make the content super easy, so it’s impossible.

There is just a problem here. The game requirements are as follow:

PlayStation 3 Version Details
Players:: 1
Required Hard Drive Space:: 12GB minimum
Controller:: DUALSHOCK 3 required
Keyboard Support:: Optional (only supports text entry)
Internet:: Broadband Connection
PlayStation®Network:: Persistant broadband internet connection required
Video Output:: NTSC: 480p, 720p


Windows Version Details
Minimum System Requirements
OS:: Windows® Vista 32/64bit, Windows® 7 32/64 bit, Windows® 8 32/64 bit, Windows® 8.1 32/64 bit
CPU:: Intel® Core™2 Duo
Memory:: 2GB (4GB recommended for 64bit OS)
Available space on hard disk/SSD 20GB
Graphics Card:: NVIDIA® Geforce® 8800 or higher, ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 or higher
Screen Resolution:: 1280x720
Internet:: Persistent broadband internet connection required
Sound Card:: DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX® 9.0c or higher)
DirectX®:: DirectX® 9.0c or higher

Recommended System Requirements
OS:: Windows® 7 64 bit
CPU:: Intel® Core™ i5　2.66GHｚ
Memory:: 4GB
Available space on hard disk/SSD:: 20GB
Graphics Card:: NVIDIA® Geforce® GTX 660 or higher, AMD Radeon™ HD 7950 or higher
Screen Resolution:: 1920x1080
Internet:: Persistent broadband internet connection required
Sound Card:: DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX® 9.0c or higher)
DirectX®:: DirectX® 9.0c or higher

Guess what? People with "persistant broadband connection do suffer from delay. If the "recommended system requirements" (not the minimum, mind you) are not enough to play endgame, don't you think there is something seriously wrong here?


From where I stand, this:

GW: That’s impossible.

Yoshida: It is, if we do that we can’t make difficult contents.

looks a lot like an admission of incompetence in game design. At the very least in MMO game design.


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One final word, since I've seen quite a few people on this thread and these forums in general, who claimed that not every player was supposed to be able to clear all content.
Based on supposed "skill" (though we have already established that "skill" was not the deciding factor in fully scripted fights) or based on setup, as Yoshida seem to believe himself, too:

Also, I believe if your connection is bad, you should NOT be able to clear high level content on any network dependent game unless you're so overleveled for it you can eat everything. If you can consistently clear "top' content in any online game while having noticeable lag, that content NEEDS to be tuned up. Yes, this means some people might never be able to do this due to crappy net, but if you have constant connection issues that negatively impact your gameplay, maybe you shouldn't be playing an online game at all.

I'll just quote the same video:

As a designer, you're not trying to defeat your player.

(and I know I quoted a lot, my aim was mainly to put things into perspective, and I don't believe I am a fountain of wisdom).

[Worm]

Yogg and Mimi were brutal but they relied on managing stacks and kiting fires rather than 1 shot. There are plenty of extremely brutal fights that don't rely on 1 shot KO moves as their difficulty. The fights in this game are pretty fun but you have to admit they are pretty shallow when compared to some of the top bosses of MMOs.

You didn't like Lich King?

[Hitome]

I certainly hope for SE that they don't intend to go the direction of 11 rather than WoW, considering one ended up an epic failure and the other, a world wide success.

Hm..epic failure must mean different things to different people.

GameRankings
85.13% (PS2) 81.89% (PC) 69.33% (X360)
Metacritic
85/100 (PS2) 85/100 (PC) 66/100 (X360)
Famitsu 38 out of 40
GameSpot 8.2 out of 10 (PC)
GameSpy 4 out of 5 (PC)
IGN 8.8 out of 10 (PS2)

GameRankings 92%
Metacritic 93%
1UP.com A
ActionTrip 9.1/10
Edge 9/10
Eurogamer 8/10
Game Informer 9.5/10
GamePro 4.5/5
GamesMaster 93%
GameSpot 9.5/10
GameSpy 5/5
IGN 9.1/10
PC Gamer UK 94%

Like these people.

I guess when DBM hasn't updated, people do whine about fights in WoW on occasion.

Looking at all the whine in this thread, I guess 14 is doing something right.

[Ri_ri]

snip

[Billie21]

Hm..epic failure must mean different things to different people.

You copied my quote from another post (or you took very long to post your message ), since I've already edited my message here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1735420.
Basically, it was a mistake I made.

[Vittorino]

This game heavily relies on Instant Kill Mechanics to make content difficult. Titan is the only fight IN THE ENTIRE GAME that has the possibility to completely remove you from the fight. On top of pretty much every action he does being an instant kill.

Constant dodging is not only trivial, but frustrating when if you screw up one time your done. I clear twintania weekly, and even twisters aren't as punishing as landslide. Sick of this being considered "fun" Content when half the people have difficulty getting out of ridiculous plumes. Please stop with all these instant kill mechanics that are way to over punishing.

I kill twintania weekly as well.. I have a remedy, stop crying and get good.

[Hitome]

Which is fine...because it tells me you cannot tell the difference between SE's first MMO and their second. Meaning, you have no experience in the former.

Question: do you ever see people whining about hardmode content in other games? I mean...when you were in WoW, did anyone in the raid get to a boss like C'thun, LK HM, or Yogg and say, "Wow, this is ridiculous! This boss is too hard."?

When they entered the dungeon, they understood it was labeled hard mode. You know. Kind of like this is extreme mode.

Do people really not understand the meaning of this word? Here, let's differentiate between the two words:

hard, adjective
difficult to do or accomplish; fatiguing; troublesome
difficult or troublesome with respect to an action, situation, person, etc.
difficult to deal with, manage, control, overcome, or understand

OK so hard is hard but not out of reach. How about extreme?

ex·treme adjective
of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average
exceeding the bounds of moderation

So near impossible. And guess what? That's what extreme fights are.

My apologies. It is difficult to convey just how silly this thread is in 1000 words or less.

[Billie21]

Which is fine...because it tells me you cannot tell the difference between SE's first MMO and their second. Meaning, you have no experience in the former.

No, it tells you exactly what I wrote there: that I was tired, and missread a line. I read 11, and my tired brain thought of 1.0. Considering I've never even played or watch videos of 11, I would be hard press to mistake the actual game with anything. I mistook the name. (and that's right, I have no experience in the former. point?)

Moving on:

Question: do you ever see people whining about hardmode content in other games? I mean...when you were in WoW, did anyone in the raid get to a boss like C'thun, LK HM, or Yogg and say, "Wow, this is ridiculous! This boss is too hard."?

When they entered the dungeon, they understood it was labeled hard mode. You know. Kind of like this is extreme mode.

Read my message another time, and tell me where someone (let alone myself) complained about the fight being "too hard"?

[Raikki]

tell me where someone (let alone myself) complained about the fight being "too hard"?

People don't like to admit when something is hard for them, so they say it's unfair or punishing or just call it stupid. For example, in 1.0 Darklight chest pieces and later Relic required doing dungeon speedruns. People who weren't up to the task never called them "hard". Instead, they said "speedruns are stupid". There's too much ego around here for people to admit when they have more practicing and learning to do.

[SarcasmMisser]

A game's difficulty is legitimate if there are people who enjoy what it offers, there's no objective measure and I don't need a post pages long to articulate this.

Remove the word difficult and the above sentence is just as true, because it's the same thing. Difficulty is another element to the experience and it is all different strokes for different folks. The idea that there are one-size fits all standards for any element of game design is hogwash and the very core of the problem with modern cookie cutter video game design where people are afraid to explore uncharted waters. The other side of the coin is the player who has these same expectations and cannot fathom why a game exists when it doesn't cater to their exacting standards instead of coming to the simple conclusion that you know, maybe a game wasn't made with their personal enjoyment in mind but other people.

In case it isn't clear, this is in response to that often-quoted youtube video and the people who are holding it as gospel. I think it is rubbish if someone likes difficulty you see as unfair why not just play another game and let them have their space in the sandpit. Your enjoyment is no more valid than theirs and there's enough room in this world for all kinds of games.