Too much dancing

[Simaril]

Simply put: too many encounters are extremely heavily focused on moving out of damage. In the legendary Final Fantasy games of the past where we were introduced to Cid, and airships, and chocobos… how much movement out of the bad stuff was there?!? Very, very little – yet the games and encounters were interesting, challenging and FUN.

[Simaril]

I’ve raided in EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and I’ve just begun in FFXIV - though Garuda HM and Thornmarch. I’ve seen enough to know - I’m not overly thrilled with this game’s heavily choreographed movement approach to raid encounters. It didn’t keep me interested in WoW long, and I’m even less inclined to play a WoW clone.

Yes, there are some gear checks, supposedly Titan HM is one… but the movement aspect is pretty much always more important, and it’s often not hard to out gear an encounter before you reach it… So in other words; gear checks are minimized, and you’re always left with “the dance.” Raid encounters don’t have to be this way – it’s just the way so many ARE that it’s hard to think about how they could or should be.

As a Whm I grabbed ilvl 70 gear basically as soon as I hit 50 (50 in all crafts), and I haven’t felt like my mostly unmelded gear has even remotely been tested… However, I DO feel that my ability to get out of the bad area is constantly tested.

Many of you would probably say it’s my problem that I don’t like it, or I’m not good at getting out of the bad area… but I don’t think that’s what all MMOs, and particularly Final Fantasy MMOs should be about.

[Galen_Malchome]

Yes that is the main encounter design problem in MMOs anymore. It is Dance Dance Raiding rather than actually having a strategic or tactical nature. I would love to see encounters designed based upon a Tower Defense scenario, maybe even involving the placement of assess in the field, like the South Park Tower Defense game. There is also a WW2ish alternative world Tower Defense game that is a first person shooter. You can even have variable/scale-able rewards based upon how much assistance the group/raid uses to complete. More resources expended less reward.

Twitch gaming is over-rated and is more about learning what order to press your movement buttons than actually reacting to in-game cues.

[Simaril]

Twitch gaming is over-rated and is more about learning what order to press your movement buttons than actually reacting to in-game cues.

I'd rather play chess than a FPS.

FF tactics did involve more positioning than the normal series of FF games, and was really fun, challanging, and interesting, particularly if you didn't use exploits. I've been dreaming of FF tactics online for 15 years.

[dimsumdarren]

theres only so many ways you can disguise the red circles....make them yellow now! and pulsating! Maybe make them look like plumes...but a dodge-the-circle fight is still a dodge-the-circle fight. I'm quite disappointed with raid design. They had a chance with CT to make something for large group that took some coordination, but its basically just dodge-the-circle, but for 3 groups instead of 1.

I thought RIFT had some very well designed raid encounters, especially in hammerknell. You had people going upstairs, and downstairs, and dodging rotating laser, and positioning drops and stuff. I hope FFXIV doesnt just stick with dodging red circles, cause that sorta stuff has limited shelf life.

[Orophin]

Simply put: too many encounters are extremely heavily focused on moving out of damage. In the legendary Final Fantasy games of the past where we were introduced to Cid, and airships, and chocobos… how much movement out of the bad stuff was there?!? Very, very little – yet the games and encounters were interesting, challenging and FUN.

In the Legendary FF games your sprites sat there and ate damage and you healed through it. I think fights would be very dull and boring if all boss mechanics work from the perspective of a tank where everyone takes damage and must be healed for a majority of the fight. (course depending on the party this happens anyway...)

[Dedayius]

The DPS checks are really more of an uptime check for the most part. IE: you have 60 seconds to do X amount of damage while dodging red stuff. This is why ranged are often preferred and have such an advantage over melee; they just have better uptime. Thornmarch and Turn 4 are different in that they're more controlled chaos type of fights and, turn 4 anyways, really does require a certain level of gear or you just won't make it through because you should have 98% dps uptime as any class.

Sadly, you'll soon find out that Titan HM is purely about dodging. If you are appropriately geared (no relics) for the fight, it basically comes down to one person dies you wipe pre-heart phase. After that, 3-4 people knowing how to dodge and you'll win.

[Simaril]

There can be different types of gear checks... You can gear check tanks with bosses that do huge spikes of, or never ending flow of single target damage... which also would test healers... or the ability of dps to assist in healing. There can be healer gear checks that are more focused on raid healing, or more lots of damage to 3 or 4 people. DPS gear checks can be single target damage, or AoE, or multiple target - I really like the one's where you have to prioritize or ignore certain targets (thrornmarch!). It's been very easy to out gear every encounter I've seen so far. It doesn't always have to be gear checks... I don't think I've seen any need for CC in lv 50 instances.

I wouldn't mind a pure tank and spank gear check once in a while that truly tells you "You can't do this because you don't have the gear!" In fact, I'd really welcome that. I'm sure there are players out there that would have the gear, but wouldn't be able to perform to their potential. We don't see it though, because just about everything is a dance.

Ther are other mechaics we've seen that could be used more often, and I'd like to see other mechanics we haven't seen.



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!

[Zarzak]

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!

Sadly they took away one of the easiest ways to make this kind of thing happen. Elemental weakness/strengths.

Fighting Ifrit? Bust out your ice materia enhanced weapon (all weapons having a materia slot at this point obviously) that does ice based damage for extra damage.

Obviously with the over simplified version of BLM we have they couldn't exist in that kind of system. But that's only because they were designed for a place where the system doesn't exist.


Also randomness would be nice. Going with the above system.. ADS is a sophisticated defense robot right? Ok you hit him with too much fire damage ADS learns and adapts so now you need to use ice.. etc etc.


The small raid sizes also screws us out of a lot of dynamic mechanics. Since we can't realistically have things like "oh this add is weak to blunt damage" because in a 8 man environment you can't always have that available.

REALLY disappointed that 8 mans are the primary raids and 24 mans are simply pug content.

[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.