Too much dancing

[Sibyll]

Regarding old FF games... uhhh recently played ffII (america) there were a lot of interesting mechanics... Cecil becoming a paladin had to STOP attacking the mirror image of himself... the three sisters required a kill order and reflect was super helpful... the dungeon where you couldn't use anything metal... idk... they kept it interesting, without dancing at their disposal!

While there are a lot of interesting mechanics you can throw, the issue with the type of design you are describing is there is little replay value. Once people know that you have to kill the adds in a specific order or that using fire spells heals the boss, then the encounter becomes trivialized even though it might be very rewarding to figure it out on your own for the first time.

The issue with gear check mechanics is that the Tome gear makes it incredibly easy to meet these requirements. Turn 2 enrage method is an example of mechanics getting thrown out the window and the encounter becoming a tank and spank gear check.

Garuda Extreme has some mechanics that don't involve DDR. If you use the NA method it becomes a tank gear check.

Nearly every primal fight has a DPS check component. The encounter designs stress mastery of class and game mechanics more so than meeting arbitrary gear milestones, and I don't believe this is a bad thing. I regularly see very well geared DPS that can't make simple DPS checks because they understand class mechanics, tanks that melt because they don't know how to use cooldowns and players with relics and full myth tome gear that can't avoid AoEs on Titan HM.

SE has managed to gate content almost entirely on "do not stand in fire" mechanics which is rather sad when you think about it. Perhaps it's so they can confidently throw more complex mechanics at the players knowing that the player base has mastered the art of positioning.