Please reconsider phase changes that heavily disadvantage players

[Viridiana]

He's not wrong.

Well, he kinda is. He's saying that players aren't punished for doing too much dps, only for not controling the fight. . .because they're doing too much dps. There's a contradiction hidden in his statement.

Fights are not all about maintaining the maximum amount of DPS your class can dish out from start to finish. Raiding is about controlling the encounter via various mechanics and if one of those mechanic requires you to tone down your DPS, then that's what you do.

I can get behind mechanics more complicated than "max DPS all day, every day!" I can't really get behind "time to stand around until the boss attacks." Things like the counter-attacks some of the hunts have? No problem (as long as the debuff limit isn't killing your ability to see which counter is up). Things like Leviathan's head killing ranged attackers after the first minute or so of fighting? Sure. Things like bosses wiping the raid if you accidentally push their hp% too soon? Not so much (especially since when most of these launched the only way to tell hp% was to violate the ToS).

Fight mechanics are not meant to be advantageous to everyone nor be something people even like.

Eh. . .depends on what you mean by "like." Since I already mentioned Levi, I'll keep using him as an example. Do I "like" not being able to attack the head as BRD? Not really, but it's no big deal. Do SMNs "like" not being able to attack the tail? Probably not. Do the healers "like" the Briney Mirror mechanic encouraging them to swap? Again, probably not.

And you're right, the only real valid expectations we can have for mechanics is that they not be broken and that they not exclude a portion of the player base unfairly (like if Ifrit were immune to Fire spells, or something). But we can ask that they be fun, and a lot of people don't find slowing dps to accomodate a script fun.

Heck, if people would have their way, we'd have mostly Patchwerk-esque encounters.

I don't really see many people asking for Patchwerk. Just something that allows the dps to worry more about going too slow than too fast. I mean, most or all of these fights have time-based enrages, so there's clearly an expectation that a certain dps level will be met. And there are wide bands above that where your dps will let you clear the fight. But then there are bands where the math goes sour and kills you. I'm not seeing a good reason why it *should* be that way. Especially since the other side of the death-band is safe again (sometimes), but there's no easy way to tell if you'll clear it until it's too late.

I guess I can use examples of mechanics already in the game to illustrate my point. . .

T1: You can hold dps on Cad until after you feed him so that both snakes don't have a stack. Or, if your tanks are geared, you can say screw it and push. A fairly lenient mechanic, gear permitting. No problems here.
T2: No mechanics I can think of that would require holding.
T4: Save cooldowns for Dreadnoughts. I like this, because it doesn't require you to stop attacking entirely, but still requires you to plan ahead.
T5: Stagger cooldowns for Conflags. Do moderate damage to smaller snakes. Be ready to burn Dreads. I don't have any experience with T5 breaking horribly with too much dps, but I think I've heard reports of it. Regardless, these things are the types of mechanics I would like to see as a DPS.
Titan: Save cooldowns for heart. Be ready to burst gaols.
Garuda Ex: Burn all the targets but one, be ready to burn that one. Sometimes frustrating to learn, but one of the more interesting mechanics they put in the EX primals.
T6: Stop attacking during Blighted. Slow/halt dps until after honey. I like the first, but not the second.
T7: Slow/halt dps until after shriek (Is it shriek? I have little T7 experience, honestly).
T8: Here's your Patchwerk? Sure, it's more complicated than that, but it's the closest XIV has to Patch, and I'm not seeing people ask for more of this.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that I enjoy mechanics that require directed bursts more than I enjoy mechanics that require a halting of gameplay entirely. Blighted is kinda the exception to the latter, I guess because it's built in to the "dance," and because it's not just targetted at the DPS. Suffice to say, though, there already exist in-game mechanics that require dps to not go all out constantly, and I'd rather see more of them than ones that make everyone stop attacking.

[kyuven]

Snip

Good points. I think the point most people are trying to make is that you shouldn't have a challenge imposed upon you because you beat the exact challenge before. It's "fake difficulty."
Personally I'd like to see more bosses with variable mechanics. For example, IF they get pushed by fast enough DPS, they do something OTHER than what they would normally do. That way you're not exactly punished, but you face a different fight more geared towards your strengths. For instance, if the tank is generating an excessive amount of hate, at a certain point have the boss do something like spawn a few adds or toss out some sort of debuff to force the tank to change tactics. If the healers are healing targets for more HP than they have too much, give the boss a buff.
Obviously dynamic fights like this would be a nightmare to code, but they'd be nice for a challenge. But the difficult part WOULD be making it a challenge and not an irritation.
And it would make logical sense as well: A good "boss" will adjust his/her tactics for a particular situation depending on what the situation throws at him/her.

[SarcasmMisser]

I hope there are more fights like t7 in the future because there are too many DPS out there that need to pay attention to more than their hotbar. I wanna see them whine more.

[Gilraen]

I would pay money to see these kids play XI, I really would. I'm not talking Abyssea, either, I'm talking the 1-30 slog before Abyssea. I see alot of DDs play their characters like bats out of hell and when I suggest they slow down just a little so that they can stop tanking long enough to let the tanks, well, tank they get defensive and tell me to, "Mind my own business." or, "I know how to do my job, do you?" Yeah, I know my job, my job is to support the tank in taking down the bads. Not BE the tank. Oh the rage when these kids find playing hard like that in XI will just get them killed time and again. I'll be standing right there with a bucket and a grin.

[Kaethra]

I'd love to see something like this done, provided they don't add randomized instant death attacks with relatively short casts.

Level 5 Doom?

I think one of the things I suggested in another thread was like say this was done with the Titan Hardmode fight. Say you failed to DPS down the heart. Instead of being instagibbed for failing. You would go into a modified phase 5 of the fight. Basically it would be much harder, maybe even impossible for most. But what would happen is it would be phase 5 as normal for about 30 seconds, or maybe even 60 seconds. But what would happen here is Mountain Buster would be AOE. It wouldn't just hit the tank, it would hit everyone (and might be adjusted so its not doing 4-6k to everyone). After the time passes, the heart phase begins again and you get another shot at it. Get it down and go into normal Phase 5. Fail it again, and go into the modified Phase 5 again.

The idea here is that you take an instant death punishing situation and lighten it. You're still probably going to fail depending on what's going on. But you have a chance.. a slim one to pull it through. Maybe like in this titan example your DPS are lacking.. but you're healers are really awesome and pull through it. Not everyone has to be on their A game, but if there is someone who's really awesome for everyone who's on their B game.. you can still pull through. To a point. Obviously half and half wouldn't work. But one or two.

[Edli]

Would be more believable if "control the fight" didn't translate directly into "artificially limit your dps."

That's what controlling the fight means. It means to not tunnel vision and not caring only about your rotation. Yes DPS has to control their dmg output in the same way a healer has to control healing as to not overheal and take aggro. A DPS has to control it when he joins a dungeon way overgeared with an undergeared tank too. DPS control is as necessary of a tactic as is aggro and healing control.

Why did you ignore my second part of the post btw? On that exact fight you can DPS so hard as to not even see the second bee. So that fight doesn't punish high dps exclusively, it punishes wrong time to change phases that's all. High DPS can result in either a punishment or reward.

A fight is not only about DPSing as hard as you can till boss dies, is about winning the fight and going about it in the safest and more efficient route that you can manage.

[Obysuca]

I would pay money to see these kids play XI, I really would.

^ This

I'd love to see any kid who grew up with the WoW era of dumbed down easy mmos, try to play pre-aby XI lol They would be raging so much because they'd actually have to put effort into something and work towards achieving things, instead of it being handed to them XD It might actually be good for them, they might develop social skills instead of going into dungeons and never saying a word, unless someone dies of course lol It might also make the mmo community better, instead of the mentality most people new to mmos have where they think they can be rude and jerks to everyone because they're behind a monitor. I'd pay money to see them play a mmo that doesn't have cross server instances, so if they did something, everyone and their galka would know about it and avoid them.

A bit off topic, but that's what we need again in mmos. Forcing people to party for a majority of the mmo, instead of letting them solo their way to cap in 2-3 days. Looking at how some mmos are now, even when they're in a party, it's still pretty much just 4-24 people solo spamming skills, not counting healers, since there's no real strategy anymore and it's just "beat on it and dodge AoEs" :/

[Viridiana]

Why did you ignore my second part of the post btw? On that exact fight you can DPS so hard as to not even see the second bee. So that fight doesn't punish high dps exclusively, it punishes wrong time to change phases that's all. High DPS can result in either a punishment or reward.

It's not that I intended to ignore the second part, it's that the second part is where the math goes from being sour to being good again. Most groups don't have the option to push that hard. The dps levels look about like this, with 1 being highest:

1) Can skip the second bee
2) No skipping or borderline skipping, accidental wipes.
3) Intentionally hold just enough to not wipe.
4) Moderate dps, no need to hold because it aligns right.
5) Wipe to enrage.

The problem is that 4) arguably has it easier than 3), which is counter-intuitive. The other problem is if the group shoots for 1) and hits 2) instead. Can you tell the difference without parsing between 2) and 1)? Can you know before the fight starts if it will be 4) or if you need to plan for 3)?

I get needing to save cooldowns; I get needing to choose targets to burst; I get having to watch aggro; I don't understand why any part of the fight should require people to stand around doing nothing in order to not wipe. . .

[Psykotsu]

I don't understand why any part of the fight should require people to stand around doing nothing in order to not wipe. . .

Blighted Bouquet says hey.

[Viridiana]

Blighted Bouquet says hey.

You missed my giant post earlier where I said Blighted was kinda the exception.