Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Melithea]

Why do people always see the world in black or white ? Couldn't the alternative to "mechanics-driven battles" just be "battle with mechanics" ?

I want to take you more seriously, but your entire concept of acceptable mechanics appears to be adds and AOE attacks.

Are you just messing with me? Do you want another chance to come up with some better examples?

Wow.. using an award that shows the game is well designed so that disabled people can enjoy most of it to show how the endgame encounters are ridiculously easy

That's not what I did and I further explained the relevance in a follow-up. Shame on you for not having any reading comprehension.

And wrong, brutal coil is 2.3 don't correct people when you are the one who's wrong.

I had to go back and review the live letter because the information doesn't appear to be *anywhere else*, but I stand corrected on this. I didn't remember anything from the E3 special being slated for 2.3. So yay, there is actually going to be some difficult (recycled) content in 2.3 for people who actually enjoy a challenge.

[Kuwagami]

I want to take you more seriously, but your entire concept of acceptable mechanics appears to be adds and AOE attacks.

Are you just messing with me? Do you want another chance to come up with some better examples?

The examples weren't here to give "acceptable mechanics". They are fun fights at some point, but they tend to turn extremely easy after a time (at least for hydra and chimera).

The point was that a fight should not be
"Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > end of boss"
Or, to explain it better, these mechanics should not just come one after an other every 5 seconds with no room to do anything else. Coil2 is pretty much "Follow the path the devs have set or die" and I can't think of anything which can go out of this path. You still have the choice in your party set-up, but that's pretty much all.

In moggle ex, you have choice for pretty much everything (assuming the enrage timer doesn't start at pull, I'm not sure of that) : order to weaken the minions, when you change phases, how you tank the boss (titan egi shines there)






Sorry, I'm at a point where I can't find more words to explain what I want to say. I'll say one thing and hope it achieves to be understandable, wether people agree or not :
one shot mechanics are fine, as long as they are not overused.
A fight should not be :
insta-kill > insta-kill > insta-kill > super hard hitting unavoidable hit > insta-kill > repeat.

Nor it should be :
weak Aoe > adds > medium Aoe > weak Aoe > repeat. (

The first allows no room for error and becomes quickly boring if you can't find consistent players, or after a few consistent wins (doing the same exact dance everytime is not really appealing). The second is obviously not fitting a raid. It's fine for a dungeon though, but shouldn't be overused as well.

Rather than that, if you have a pool of attacks, like :
- strong unavoidable hit on tank *3
- room medium AoE *2
- one shot mechanic *1
- hard hitting AoE *2

and if the boss picks randomly 4 attacks from the pool then repeat, you'll have a fight overall more fun, and while better groups can win every mechanics, less skilled groups can hope to have an easier time on that phase. (more fun because it wouldn't be always the same fight)

Keep some timed mechanics (let's say like a 30 sec timer on blighted bouquet), phase changes with "do it or lose" mechanics, as the firsts can be a good reactivity check if you can't keep track of the timer, and the seconds are somehow necessary to give a "tough boss" feeling : they're growing in rage and show they aren't here as garden plants.

Just do not rely solely on them. They do not make a fight fun if they are overused.


(Numbers and examples are purely made up. I know there aren't fights that much of a cliche in the game yet. But a vast majority of top-end content at the moment relies solely on "do it or lose" mechanics.)

[Archulak]

The point was that a fight should not be
"Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > end of boss"
Or, to explain it better, these mechanics should not just come one after an other every 5 seconds with no room to do anything else. Coil2 is pretty much "Follow the path the devs have set or die" and I can't think of anything which can go out of this path. You still have the choice in your party set-up, but that's pretty much all.

So first off I think that most people have some misunderstanding of how the bosses in coil work they're all basically the same as players and they have CD's on all their skills the reason that the fights happen the same way all the time is that the AI uses every skill as soon as the CD is up. The reason that twin can be hard if you push at the wrong time is that as soon as it hits an hp threshold the CD for it's new mechanics starts ticking and twin always uses whatever comes up first, like delaying fireballs cause it needs to plummet or use DS. It's not about it being mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic (in coil, titan is a different story) it's just an AI using whatever is available. Btw no combination of atk's in this game can't be overcome by understanding the fight and knowing what's actually going on, though some of them can be quite inconvenience, so the player base learned what these things were and then how to force the easiest outcome.

And now for my second non-tangential point to the quote. I have literally watched vids of at least 4 different ways to do t6(briars, LoS, Super Slug, burn), 3 different ways to position the party in T7, 2 ways to handle the t7 ogres(stack, kite),6 different ways to push towers in T8, 5 different ways to drop meteors in 9, 3 different ways to handle the ghost during heavens fall and 2 ways to dodge the dive bombs. To say that there's 1 way to do everything in coil is insulting to players that come up with these strategies, and just sounds like ignorance coming from someone who has decided that the only proper way to do something is from whatever guide they read first.

Sorry to burst your bubble but FFXIV focus target is not a perfect indicator for Twintania during that phase since it happens when you're forced to focus on add dps. Which is why I said, "VoIP is really needed".

You could resize your focus target bar to be massive and stick it right in the middle of your screen if you fail to realize there's a bar casting that says twister, that shows it's exact cast time, that's not an imperfect indicator it's called a lack of awareness.

[Gormogon]

You could resize your focus target bar to be massive and stick it right in the middle of your screen if you fail to realize there's a bar casting that says twister, that shows it's exact cast time, that's not an imperfect indicator it's called a lack of awareness.

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

[Archulak]

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

This is not something you do in the middle of a fight you set it up before hand(Target bar and Focus Target bar are 2 separate hud icons that you can have at the same time)



You can clearly see that I have one mob targeted and another focus targeted and exactly when the one that is focused is casting a skill even though I'm not targeting it.

When the timers are made so that every skill comes out in a precise order, that's called a rotation (hence the mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic ). T5 is a bit particular because all the mechanics are timer based and overwrite themselves, it the order DK stun > plummet > DS > whatever else. In T6 (for example), I have never seen mechanics overwriting others. Nor in T2 (except phase changes, but it seems normal right ?)

The timers arn't made so that there's an order to them, the order happens because that's the way the CD's are used. Sure it's "scripted", but you can make the fights hit harder and bring you to within an inch of your life because you know that it's not going to happen again for a while. If you just bring in a bunch of random atks then you end up with fights not being determined by skill but by luck in which RNG pattern you happen to get, you also need to make sure that it's actually possible to survive the combinations that can occur meaning that even your hardest hitting skill a boss can have can do NO MORE than half a players hp pool if it can happen twice in a row.

[Gormogon]

snip

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

[Archulak]

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

Every time I've been in a pug they have asked everyone to focus it, sure they might not listen but that doesn't change the fact that there's no real reason you can't have it up so you can see twister being cast. If that's not a reliable method to see it idk what is. You can also focus it when you're about to pull and just keep it up the whole fight there's not really any doing it in the middle of battle going on.

[Spellbinder]

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

I hate to interrupt your exchange, but what you said was.

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

While not pointless, I do realize some people would forget to do it.

However, that's not an excuse as Archulak has pointed out. Before the party steps into the fight, why not take the initiative to say "Hey everyone, don't forget to turn on Focus Target before we start."?

[Dano]

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

focus target is something you learn very early in the game, and you can focus target Twin right at the start, they've fix the game so that the FT bar doesn't disappear when she disappears/divebombs. Seriously, if people can't dodge twisters then they are tunnel visioning too hard.

Unfortunately, not every fight can be Gilgamesh. Coil was clearly intended to be more hard than fun.

thank you and agree.

[Ooshima]

Hate to say this but I have no idea what some of the people are trying to bring forward.

I don't really see how "Focus Target" is really so hard. Drag the Focus Target UI to the middle of the screen or on level, or which ever you are comfortable with. Personally my Focus Target and Target bar, including my whole weaponskill bars are all centered/eye-leveled in a way or another to keep tract of casts and buffs/debuffs/procs.

If you can't really handle all these simple things then Coil isn't something for you. I'm not even trying to be elitist here for it is a fact that there are always people who are extremely slow at learning.

However all of us here have to realize that this is NOT your KOEI Dynasty Warriors type of game where you can have the option of starting the game in Easy Mode and simple hack through 1 star to 5 star rating battles even though you are the slowest learner or worst gamer around. Don't get me wrong, I've played every installment of DW and it's pretty fun to me. But no, FFXIV isn't your DW. You don't have an Easy Mode to cheese down the supposedly 5 star rating battle to something that looks like 2 star on "Normal Mode". Right here, Extreme mode means something and Coil means business. If you can't handle it then it isn't for you. If you don't find it fun, you should really look for other games that fits your bill. No point wasting your time trying to change a base design philosophy set for this game nor your money on this game. You are certainly better off with another game that makes you happy (why do you want to pay for a game and make yourself angry?).

There is nothing such as enable easy mode but having the same rewards. Even for a game like Dynasty Warriors the best tier weapon drops from Chaos Mode. If you selected Easy Mode it drops shit weapons. There was a suggestion around for an easy mode coil with no loot rewards or maybe just Allagan Tomestones which by all means I would welcome it if SE decides to do it. Probably for the sake everyone able to follow the story and lore which to me is a good thing that SE should probably consider. The only bad thing about now is that casuals who can't clear coil are gated behind the story and lore (although they can watch from youtube but that's totally not the point, the feeling is different when you experience it in-game) which I think an easy mode coil with no top tier loots should alleviate this.

But if you are the kind of person who wants the best thing but without working hard for it then FFXIV isn't the place. I'm not even sure if there exist a game that has an easy mode but gives the best items.