Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Fendred]

The dodge fests are probably their way of trying to find something that makes the raw, unevolved holy trinity stick. The problem is that nothing works, because the entire universe revolves around the tank, and tank as a role just isn't a very interesting thing to play (in general... I know there are plenty of people who like tanking). Also, there is hardly any teamwork when it comes to being a damage dealer because all the important support and controller capabilities are placed into healers and tanks. He should be doing a primary role/secondary role type system with controller, supporter, and damage dealer being the roles (or something similar). At least it would be easier to step up into a more complex role system from the holy trinity than trying to rework everything from the ground up.

[allecs]

Snap son, you must have done Ultima bard mode too! All my arguments have fallen to pieces. oh wait, no they didn't, and the only thing you've demonstrated is that you have painfully limited experience with anything outside of the odd primal. Also please tell me about these mmos with amazing encounter design. be specific, I'll be checking your answers.

What are you talking about? I've been in coil and guess what!? MOAR DODGE lol Coil is not hard and ONE dungeon doesn't not make up for the ENTIRE game lol. Please stop.

[Velthice]

What are you talking about? I've been in coil and guess what!? MOAR DODGE lol Coil is not hard and ONE dungeon doesn't not make up for the ENTIRE game lol. Please stop.

Nah it looks like I'm hitting a nerve. Speaking of dodging, cool dodging of my question. Since that one was too hard for you, I guess I'll throw a soft ball. This should be easy for you. What makes an interesting encounter to you? Because to me it sounds like you just want every boss to be a tank and spank affair you and the boss just beat the crap out of each other until one of you dies. How exciting~

in fact i'm going to pose that question to everyone reading. What makes an interesting encounter to you?

[silentwindfr]

i just did notice a major flaws of the game... the type of flaws that can kill the motivation of most player...

"why get higher gears than i90 if you don't do content like BC2?"
i means i90 gears is far more than enough for 95% of the whole content of the game, the gears from the 2.0 is enough for beat 95% of the content of the game. i'm the only one that feel that it absurd?
when i recently did notice that... my motivation did vanish... why i will fight and get better stuff if this stuff don't serve me? (especially when i found fugly most of the 2.2-2.3 gears, exept high allagan and dungeon gear. but since i don't have a FC doing raid, i haven't pass T5. not because i'm bad, but because i don't have the 7 other people for do it.)

the game is only focus on raid, all other progression are irrevelant, no other activity can be placed to the same level than raiding... it's really really bad in many way, if people don't have what it take for raiding, they have no reason to stay on the game.

i think it's the most critical issus with the game soo far, they really need to add another activity outside raiding, because if they don't do it, on the long term they will loose people that simply don't see why they will grind like crazy for gears that useless for them anyway!!!!

[Exstal]

What makes an interesting encounter to you?

Titan Extreme.

Why? I love when people die to landslide. It's the only fight that I would voluntarily redo in this game.

[Dark-Saviour]

While I'm not keen on the fact that the action-centric basis of the game tends to be limited to dodging either, I've got to ask what it is people would actually consider 'hard' in terms of encounters.

I'm not huge on battles being as scripted as they are, but if you remove the 'When X, do Y" sort of dynamic entirely, it seems like all battles would just run together and be similar.
People have said that in XI, battles were hard because "Everyone needed to do their job," but that statement doesn't really mean much in itself. What did they need to do (that wasn't reactionary) that made the battles hard?

And some pages back, it was said that a problem is that beyond having to merely dodge things, the game actually tells you where they will hit, but I'm not sure what anyone would consider a proper alternative. If you just want to get rid of the visual indicators and require people to move based on the direction that the boss is facing, I guess I can see that, but what would you do for attacks that aren't conal or PbAoE? If you remove the visual indicators then there is no real way to dodge or mitigate them.

Personally, I love action-centric gameplay, but I feel the game fell into a sort of half-assed middle-ground in terms of combat mechanics, much in the same way GW2 did (though, while that tends more towards the action-based side of things, FFXIV really tends more towards the traditional combat style). I'd honestly like to see something faster-paced with less of the tab-targetting, single-click sort of skill usage and something more like... I dunno... Devil May Cry.
That said, I'm not someone that enjoys content so ****ing ridiculous it makes me want to rip my hair out as I retry it several dozen times, so if the game did that and it was fun, I would be fine if it still weren't stupidly hard.

[Krr]

in fact i'm going to pose that question to everyone reading. What makes an interesting encounter to you?

Just within what can be done in the game engine, let's see~

I'm going to assume these fights were being done when they were relevant and nontrivial. None of this 'echo' or 'doing first coil for fun at item level 90' or 'strats that were reliant on being overgeared' crap. Mind you, I don't conceptualize any of these fights as the peak of the game's design potential, but they clearly shine above the other recent releases.

Caduceus: Actually very little dodging. Judgement calls need to be made by the party on the spawning of adds, though usually with a designated spawner, occasional tail swipe baiting might constitute 'dodging'. Main 'mechanic' of the encounter is the method by which the boss's damage excaberates over time until eventually becoming lethal (soft enrage, essentially,) and manipulating it through the feeding mechanic. Boss split gives both tanks something to do other than 'swap every x seconds'. Players essentially need to coordinate separating and killing both snakes roughly close to each other to avoid essentially resetting or unnecessarily lengthening the encounter.

ADS (pre-enrage): Multiple routes of what are essentially trash throughout the lair that actually determine what mechanics are used and give benefits or disadvantages based on party compositions. Two classes (brd, pld,) have a special role that involves using Silence (should've been more viable for monks and scholars to use too, tbh, but class design issues.) Tanks tank swap, mixing up the usual reliance on adds the game had for offtank duties at the time. Main mechanics to watch out for were a plague pass, and visible encounter-long enrage timer, with some (admittedly quite a bit of) aoe peppered throughout. But a lot of longer-term coordination and team decision making was the name of the game here.

T4: Literally an elevator fight from an action game. Almost no dodging but constant, frequent movement as two tanks have to coordinate a large number of smaller enemies. DPS have to be both meeting a minimum check to pass each phase while still metering out high burn for two heavy DPS check phases. Casters are special in that they deal high AOE damage, melee are special in that they can do heavy burn on dreads or other meaty targets that arrive. Tanks have to manage cooldown timing and healers have to be ready for lethal pressure damage during given phases.

Thornmarch ex -very little dodging at its core. DPS have to coordinate and actually throttle themselves a bit while still meeting minimum requirements, and use an actual combat mechanic that most casters have been taught through experience (interrupting casts with damage). Healers are primarily concerned with staying outta trouble and keeping certain debuffs purged. Judgements have to be made on when it is safe to push the fight while still keeping it moving. DPS have to watch their combat resources in the form of cooldowns, and make sure they have them available for the end of the fight while still doing their jobs decently.

Ramuh EX: Recent, but actually pretty well-thought from what I've played of it. Avoidable damage is present to keep players (especially melee,) aware and moving once in a while, but the main core of the fight revolves around managing a global resource (lightning orbs) and enforcing certain static (HEH) positioning requirements (thunderstorm). The obligatory thematic primal enrage check with a twist- melee need extra awareness for this one due to pressure damage from thunderstorms, and everyone needs to be focus firing (not that they shouldn't be at this point.) Chaotic Strike could be something you need to 'avoid' but it's by and large a party coordination check to make sure players get cleaned without being blown up by their lovely volunteers.

Players will always have established methods for strategizing out encounters. Hell, T4 charts practically looked like a series of football plays. But it's very possible to design encounters where classes actually feel out their uniqueness beyond just 'DPS number' or 'HP Bar' or 'HP Bar Manager' (AOE vs. ST? Burn vs. Sustain? Damage prevention or damage recovery?) and even perform utilities that aren't directly related to their role (Silences and stuns, anyone? Kiting? What about all those other debuffs on our bar we never get to use?,) or have to push their class mechanics to their limits, and individual players have to make real-time decisions. Fights with set patterns of AOE to memorize or mechanics that have predetermined, static solutions don't do this.

Good fights use AOE to create pressure. Bad fights use AOE to create dance dance revolution patterns.

[Taruranto]

Right now I have players bailing on HM Tam in DF because the final boss is "too hard" because of the randomness.

Literally, wat?

[Magis]

Literally, wat?

Wtf... he says it's random? She does a 3 ability rotation. Line aoe, circle aoe, then red wedding mechanic.

[Eej]

i think it's the most critical issus with the game soo far, they really need to add another activity outside raiding, because if they don't do it, on the long term they will loose people that simply don't see why they will grind like crazy for gears that useless for them anyway!!!!

Raiding is the main thing that is going to keep people playing the game constantly. Maybe Gold Saucer will change this, who knows? They fully expect many people to play for a couple months after each patch, get all the new loot and see all the new encounters but not actually go into Coil, then go off and play other games. Yoshi P is confident that they'll come back with every patch anyway as long as they consistently release hardcore and casual content.