Why I have no interest in Coils more specifically, T9.

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

I'm not saying dodge/stack mechanics are bad, I'm saying relying ONLY on them will cause problems down the road if they want to make content more challenging, but once again my words are misconstrued. Titan EX was a good when it came out as it was the first challenging bit with that style of game play, however all we have seen from coil is the same type of game play, its now old and needs a change.

While I can agree that not everything should be about stacking and spreading, we do have other fights that present somewhat different ways to handle mechanics. Chrysalis has a mechanic similar to Fire/Ice which we broke down into Stack and Spread because controlling it via the fire is easier than having the fire go out and everybody with ice going with them. (I'm speaking on the orbs that pop up that you have to 'catch' in an alternating pattern so the boss doesn't wreck you with damage (the consequence))

And MEX is only 'boring' as a tank if you're not following Tailturner and Woolywart since they don't use AOEs to do damage. They are unavoidable sources, and if they pick up something like 5 stacks because you weren't paying attention, there goes one healer... then a couple DPS to Mog Rain of Death... then yet another healer because while running to get their partner you died, so now there goes Wonderwall to go wreck his day. So the other healer possibly doesn't even get the raise confirmation, and there's your wipe. And who's to blame for Tailturner having too many stacks from the King?

But I think new stuff IS coming. ARR was supposed to be the baseline, as much has been said. But the fact that we have mechanics and we show up to these things to engage with the fight is a farsight better than WoW Raiding back in Vanilla. Steps of Faith and Chrysalis give me some hope we'll be seeing even more varied mechanics in Heavensward. But both of those fights got a large contingent of people complaining that they were 'too hard' (when indeed, all they really are is different.)

So I suppose at the end of the day what we have is a group of people arguing basically the same point. But one who is getting defensive that they don't want SE to take the only source of real challenge in the game away, because that's what they're so used to hearing on this forum, and the other group that's saying that they want to see more variance in the challenge. I still think if you focus only on player positioning as the only real source of challenge it's the only thing you're going to see, but suggesting that it's the ONLY source of challenge in Binding Coil at all is sort of a far cry too.

[Ayrie]

Another example of scripted AI decision making is tail swipes.

Most of these moves (t1, t10, ogres doing the rear facing elbow drops) do have specific triggers: boss state is not engaged in a higher priority attack and someone is in position to be hit. Triggers are met and the boss takes a swing. How do we exploit it? Some bard floats in and out of it to force it and force a damage lull for the healers.

All AI is: nested conditionals that gives the illusion of decision making. Once the conditions are discovered you can easily exploit it. League of Legends bots come to mind as another example. So either move in a defined pattern on a timer... Or move in a prescribed pattern to force, or eliminate, mechanics. Devs call.

[siverstorm]

snip

I'll start by saying my original half wasn't just directed to you in this thread.

However you've fallen back on so many different excuses in this thread alone starting with being unable to join a static and being responded to by others that you don't need to be raiding 40 hours a week to clear content. People can and have successfully cleared fights like t5 and t9 through their servers party finders so it's not ridiculous to expect that you can learn and eventually clear the fights, yeah it'll take much longer than a static but its not impossible.

Asking for "less mechanics" is asking for nerfs to get the same achievement for less work. I don't know how you're expecting to run around that point when you literally said "fights should only have 4-5 mechanics each." Implying that more is too hard. Was that not what you were saying? Because you've been going on and on about memorizing too many things as if it wasn't possible or too difficult up until now.

So now after getting through those points we're somehow sitting on the discussion being "I want more varied fights" which I can agree. If would be nice to see some new or different things in Alexander hard. But that doesn't mean every single fight was a dodge/stack fest as you literally said. You're also lumping every fights mechanics as dodging/stacking which then if you lump certain mechanics into this makes me question what you perceive as a mechanic.

T5 dreadknights, T5 twisters, T10 charge, T7 voices/shrieks, T7 renauld management, T8 towers/allagan field, T9 red/yellow meteors, T9 Heavensfall, T11 tethers, T12 brand, T12 bennu management, T12 fountains, T13 flare stars, T13 add phase, T13 earthshakers.

All examples of mechanics that aren't simple "dodge stack lols" some of them have added dodging/stacking mechanics in them but you can't lump those all as "solved by dodging or stacking the thing" I might make an exception to t12 brand and t11 tethers. I also feel like t11 tethers made a point to bring something unique to what would be considered a basic dodging/stacking mechanic.

And if you want to fall back on the excuse "its too much to memorize" I could start listing all the mechanics I remember off the top of my head from literally every other instance in the game instead?

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

*snip*

And let's not forget about T11's Heads. That has nothing to do with position but who's in charge of Enmity when.

[siverstorm]

And let's not forget about T11's Heads. That has nothing to do with position but who's in charge of Enmity when.

Now that I think about it wouldn't T11 add management be similar? In terms of keeping them rotating around the arena. Of course there's tons of dodging and stacking from various mechanics during that so I figure that would just be argued?

[Kosmos992k]

A small dev team would take years to fully debug a script from exploits. It takes a player base a fraction of the time to discover them.

That deck is woefully stacked against the devs. You like new content, like I do, yah?

I never said it was easy.

It would always be a work in progress, but then that has been true of Coil and primals in FFXIV, so I see no difference.

Exploits are what they are, if the exploit is game or fight breaking, then it should be fixed, if not, then either ignore it, or mitigate it.

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

Now that I think about it wouldn't T11 add management be similar? In terms of keeping them rotating around the arena. Of course there's tons of dodging and stacking from various mechanics during that so I figure that would just be argued?

But the real meat of that phase's challenge isn't in just dealing with the momentum of the adds, the being in the right position, not cleaving people or hitting them with lightning.

It's doing all that and making sure 2 adds die at about the same time. Which for some people is still hard.

[Kosmos992k]

Another example of scripted AI decision making is tail swipes.

Most of these moves (t1, t10, ogres doing the rear facing elbow drops) do have specific triggers: boss state is not engaged in a higher priority attack and someone is in position to be hit. Triggers are met and the boss takes a swing. How do we exploit it? Some bard floats in and out of it to force it and force a damage lull for the healers.

All AI is: nested conditionals that gives the illusion of decision making. Once the conditions are discovered you can easily exploit it. League of Legends bots come to mind as another example. So either move in a defined pattern on a timer... Or move in a prescribed pattern to force, or eliminate, mechanics. Devs call.

Is that an exploit or a strategy? The three card force is used quite effectively against living breathing humans, so why should we suppose that other living breathing humans cann not come up with a strategy to force certain moves by an enemy in a game. It's not whether it can be done, it's whether that strategy (which exploits player knowledge of the enemy) breaks the fight or simply mitigates a certain move by the Boss.

Developers do not and should not be looking to block every possible strategy players can use, instead they need to ensure that the AI cannot be totally circumvented effectively disabling it.

[Ayrie]

I never said it was easy.

It would always be a work in progress, but then that has been true of Coil and primals in FFXIV, so I see no difference.

Exploits are what they are, if the exploit is game or fight breaking, then it should be fixed, if not, then either ignore it, or mitigate it.

Then the community will cry foul that the leading edge groups got their gear in watered down content while those behind get hammered with the full wrath of the fight.

That will make things much worse for people not in the lead of progression, like many of us.

With the current coding practice: content eases with age. As it is the same fight in better gear with global buffs (hello echo). So the people in the lead have disadvantage instead of quirky bugs to exploit.

Edit: I submit to you as evidence: sticking Absolute Virtue in a goblin footprint. Heal tanking AV in a inaccessible spot so he cannot attack... simple examples of unintended coding flaws giving people easy clears, but making it harder on everyone as a result. It is an extreme example, but serves the point.

[Ashkendor]

Then the community will cry foul that the leading edge groups got their gear in watered down content while those behind get hammered with the full wrath of the fight.

Like when they fixed the thing with Titan-Egi taking like zero damage from Ramuh.

People cried so much about that.