Too much dancing

[randomrope]

Simply put: Final Fantasy games of the past where we were TURN BASED

Minus 1 and this game is just a newer version of that. Lol FF games of the past your OP isn't even relevant because every FF game has been turn based except for XI and this one. How can you even reference them to make your point and then go an to talk about MMO's. Every single FF game used predetermined enemy mechanics. Some one wrote a book about your post and it was just filled with Lolcat memes.

[soopadook]

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.

You're kidding me, right? Take a closer look at CT. The Bone dragon fight is amazingly unique, there are no "dodge the circles" at all in that fight. What about the Atomoses? And Thanatos (or w/e his name is). Or the Bomb part. Or Behemoth. What you said literally only applies to the first set of trash mobs and Acheron. All the other fights are amazingly choreographed and take tons of coordination and strategy. The only reason it's so easy to do now is because EVERYONE knows the fights because everyone grinds it.

[Netsky]

I came to this thread expecting a compendium of keystroke combinations that allow my character to perform various dances in game when pressed in the correct order.

I'm walking away very disappointed.

[Jamez82]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

[ZephyrAM]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

They didn't remove the elemental wheel because they wanted BLM to work the way it does, they removed the elemental wheel to prevent the class stacking and/or useless classes that occurred in XI, and from there they could do whatever they wanted with BLM.

If enemies have a primary weakness, groups only bring the classes that are most capable against that weakness. If enemies have an immunity, groups forbid classes that rely on that immunity from ever joining. Sure, SE could've given every class the ability to use every element equally well... but that sounds like a whole bunch of complication and homogenization with no real payout.

[Sibyll]

SE really screwed a lot of potential strategies when they made the BLM work the way it does nothing except players have elemental resistances. That was a big screw up on their part.

Elemental resistances are bad design for the players and can be bad for the bosses and encounters. Resistance on the players gates content until an arbitrary resistance minimum is met. For boss encounters I could see this working if handled properly. For example, Ifrit might get increased damage from Ice, normal damage from Lightning and be healed by Fire and so a Black Mage might need to adjust his rotation between encounters. Design like this could give depth to the class, as there would be a huge difference between someone pushing buttons and someone that has taken the time to learn how his skills interact with encounter.

The thing you want to avoid is to just add elemental resistances just for the sake of having an arbitrary number to stack. It's just hard to argue what these stats would really add to the game in terms of depth.

[Ticklefairy]

Kerafyrm, The Sleeper (EverQuest)

Nope. Stop.

Kerafyrm wasn't a boss. Kerafyrm was a world event. SOE intended The Sleeper to be unkillable and did everything but make the thing literally unkillable. The proof is that SOE saw the guild alliance killing Kerafyrm and DESPAWNED the dragon because they thought that they were exploiting in order to accomplish it. After the uproar, SOE reset the event and let the guild alliance attempt it. After 3 hours of suiciding themselves at the dragon they finally killed it. Their reward? NOTHING.

The dragon didn't drop any loot. It had no loot table. Why? Because it wasn't a freaking boss. And it's "mechanics" were killing everyone one by one. Luckily it was expansions after The Sleeper was added, so they had better gear, and they had 200 people and could just toss bodies at it and rez 1000 times spamming Manaburn/Harmtouch and melee/pets until the thing finally died. Epic? Sure. Interesting mechanics? Absolutely not.

Not a good example.

[Ticklefairy]

We should not be looking at FFXI for combat ideas. FFXI had terrible, slow combat. Waiting for TP to fill so you can stop auto attacking and do a special move and so someone else in your group can do a special move and then WEAPON SKILL CHAIN WOOOO...now we go back to auto attacking for a while...boo....

Or be a BLM...where you spam one elemental ability because it's a fire elemental so...duh...use ice ad nauseum. Super fun. Way more fun than, say, using a bunch of varied abilities and showing your mastery of the elements to defeat your foes in a multicolored blast, right?

Resistance blocks are dumb, Yoshida recognized that, and we should all be glad they're gone. They don't work in MMOs.

[Ticklefairy]

Also I played EQ1 back in the day too man. Have you gone back to play it? The best parts of that game are you making up things to do with friends in the environment...like swim races in a river or something or exploring a zone. The actual "game" is terrible 1 button stand still combat. Do you really expect SE to NOT move forward and have us pressing more buttons than that and moving around as well? Which, by the way, there are plenty of stand and deliver moments in FFXIV and PLENTY OF VARIED MECHANICS...but I won't reiterate what people have already said unless provoked from here on out.

EQ1 did a great job making the world feel large and scary and forcing players to band together to deal with it, but they got just about everything else wrong. What exactly was fun about sitting in the same spot in a dungeon and killing the same monsters over and over?

[Ticklefairy]

Wouldn't you rather fight your way through the Crushbone Fortress to finally defeat Emperor Crush only to spot Ambassador DVinn running out the back and having to chase and capture him? That's an experience. But they didn't give us that. They gave us killing everything in the throne room until Emperor Crush popped in for us. How nice of him.

EQ1 was revolutionary at the time and had great environmental atmosphere, but it was a bad game. So let's please move on so we can have better mechanics and less tedium.

PS. That being said we should totally have more scary things out in the world. Like Odin should cause more terror when he spawns. People should be screaming for Odin to be killed because of all the damage he's causing...things like that. And more things to explore and find. FFXIV has room to grow and expand. Give us stuff to find, Yoshida!