People are bad at this game

[Fendred]

And part of the reason that nearly every group on NA servers insist on doing Garuda Extreme the wrong way is because they relied on videos to copy and couldn't be bothered to figure things out on their own, come up with their own strategies and use their brain to actually think things through themselves.

When Yoshida designed the game around western MMORPGs, he also copied the major flaws. One of those were the terrible boss encounter design that created a demand for those videos to begin with. Its not even about making their own strategies. It's about the fact that the nature of many boss abilities are unclear even after they use them. How many wipes do you think it took for people to figure out that having the guy with the fireball jump into the conflagration in the Twintania encounter would reset the counters on him? Or how did they even figure out what the counters were for? The fight is basically designed to floor people hundreds of times simply by providing no information on any of the abilities that can instantly wipe the group. So the community becomes dependent on a small group of highly dedicated players to break down the fights for them in place of the kind of "pre-fight" stuff a good boss encounter normally has.

Giving the players absolutely no information about the boss encounters is like having an experienced chess player go against someone who doesn't know anything about chess and will not be told hardly anything about the nature of the game before the match. It's just a massacre.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Coil is a different beast than the rest of the game's content. Only about 100 groups were expected to clear it before they add content beyond it and nerf the first 5 turns. It is intended as the final content in 2.0/2.1.

[Sibyll]

Giving the players absolutely no information about the boss encounters is like having an experienced chess player go against someone who doesn't know anything about chess and will not be told hardly anything about the nature of the game before the match. It's just a massacre.

Obviously people figured it out though, so it wasn't so cryptic that it was impossible. The designers are doing a pretty good job of building on previously taught mechanics and easing people into new mechanics. I don't see why people need to be provided any information prior to the fight. Where does this mentality that people are somehow entitled to just waltz into an encounter and down it on the first try? If it's going to be that damn easy then why even bother with the fight.

Furthermore, think it's a bit of a stretch to say they provide no information. They do a fairly good job of providing cues without spelling it out for you (buffs, line/reticle indicators for abilities). You use Twintania as an example, but what about all the other fights. Do you really think people wiped hundreds of times figuring out that you had to kill the razor plumes to protect the rocks on Garuda HM? How long do you think it took to figure out the mechanics for Caduceus? I mean the first 4 turns of coil are essentially basic training for turn 5. Are there any other encounters you can think of that were so cryptic as to require videos to complete?

You bring up a really good point, but I think it has more to do with people being too lazy to figure it out themselves than the information, or lack there of, provided about the encounters.

[Viridiana]

How many wipes do you think it took for people to figure out that having the guy with the fireball jump into the conflagration in the Twintania encounter would reset the counters on him?

Probably not as many as you think. The conflagration is just like Titan's gaol, only it's deadly if it lasts too long and you can purposely run into it. You don't take any damage when you're in the gaol, so it stands to reason you wouldn't take any damage in a conflagration, either. What better way to soak 13k damage? Heck, if I'm not mistaken, the first two strategies that were going around for conflags were "Sleep it" and "Have the tank run into it." You can't tell me, with those two already being figured out (and one of them quickly patched), that it took long to have someone run a fireball in there.