Boss Fight Mechanics

[Zumi]

Honestly I loved ffxi's tp based bosses where it was random and it was all about player skill.

These mechanics are just an automated wash rinse repeat thing. Where the fun dies quickly.

Don't get me wrong. I love ffxiv but there are somethings which become boring quickly. That and rehashed fights.

The majority of fights in FFXI were tank and spanks. They didn't really have mechanics. Their attacks where random but they didn't do much. For example Fafnir

Fafnir had 4 tp attacks
Hurricane Wing - AoE damage that causes blind
Horrid Roar - Removes 1 buff from a player
Absolute Terror - Terrors 1 player for a duration of time
Dragon Breath - Front aoe breath damage.

A 5th attack, Spike flail was casued by someone having hate from behind, but this could totally be avoided by having everyone stacked on his paws for the whole fight.

So the whole fight boiled down to. Curaga when he uses wind, heal the tanks that are tanking Fafnir, everyone else does damage. This took way less skill then anything in FFXIV.

[Koenignovi]

The majority of fights in FFXI were tank and spanks. They didn't really have mechanics. Their attacks where random but they didn't do much. For example Fafnir

Fafnir had 4 tp attacks
Hurricane Wing - AoE damage that causes blind
Horrid Roar - Removes 1 buff from a player
Absolute Terror - Terrors 1 player for a duration of time
Dragon Breath - Front aoe breath damage.

A 5th attack, Spike flail was casued by someone having hate from behind, but this could totally be avoided by having everyone stacked on his paws for the whole fight.

So the whole fight boiled down to. Curaga when he uses wind, heal the tanks that are tanking Fafnir, everyone else does damage. This took way less skill then anything in FFXIV.

Not just this, but eventually the fights became more of a "How can we buff the hardest and stun the longest before we win?" Most fights, if not all still to this day in FFxi are just zerg fests. The (H)NMs might have a select set of TP moves they use at random or predictably but really in the end it comes down to how long can you as a player survive before you kill the boss or it kills you. I think if anything, I still enjoy Odin and Kirin the most out of the FFxi bosses. At least they proved to your group that you had some kind of communication and organization during a fight.

[Catsby]

stuff about fafnir

You aren't wrong but you boiled it down a little too much and left out important mechanics inherit to all fights, which excluding from any fight in particular will make it seem shallow.

Other important points:
Fafnir was very early boss in an early expansion.
Resource management in XI was extremely intensive compare to XIV.
Enmity was far more complex in XI than XIV.
Bosses weren't immune to most status effects.
Many more that I'm too tired to remember.

So while many bosses felt like tank and spank they still had a lot of challenging things to be mindful of.

I think what OP and other people in this thread are looking for are fights where you don't mindlessly go through your rotation while occasionally avoiding some environmental hazard.

[Zumi]

You aren't wrong but you boiled it down a little too much and left out important mechanics inherit to all fights, which excluding from any fight in particular will make it seem shallow.

Other important points:
Fafnir was very early boss in an early expansion.
Resource management in XI was extremely intensive compare to XIV.
Enmity was far more complex in XI than XIV.
Bosses weren't immune to most status effects.
Many more that I'm too tired to remember.

So while many bosses felt like tank and spank they still had a lot of challenging things to be mindful of.

I think what OP and other people in this thread are looking for are fights where you don't mindlessly go through your rotation while occasionally avoiding some environmental hazard.

Fafnir was added in the Zilart expansion which was the first FFXI expansion almost the same point were are now with FFXIV with the first expansion about to come out so it is a fair comparison to what we see now. Almost every fight in FFXI were tank and spank and heal. Because the game was made on PS2 so they don't have a lot of the dodge aoe mechanics there really was no rotation in FFXI it was auto attack until you got 100 TP to use a WS, with the ocassional 3-5 min job ability like beserk, warcry, thrown in.

[Catsby]

To me the game is most fun when a fight doesn't spiral out of control because 1 person died. There are too many encounters where success hinges on everyone doing their thing properly.

[RyuDragnier]

To me the game is most fun when a fight doesn't spiral out of control because 1 person died. There are too many encounters where success hinges on everyone doing their thing properly.

This. I really don't like fights where the entire party must pay for 1 person's mistake, though this mostly applies to Coil. Still haven't seen a T9 clear due to groups being unable to pass Meteors or Divebombs.

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

... FFXI Boss snip ...

I find it interesting when folks compare ARR to RotZ, when ARR is really more like Vanilla in XI's lifecycle. But I digress...

Most bosses in XI were a matter of invalidating their random mechanics. "Proto" Omega, as a for instance, was where Shadow-tanking got it's teeth cut. Omega would positively ruin a meat tank, and so they had to work out a way to not take the massive damage that Omega could dish out. Enter the NIN/WAR, who was so good at holding Enmity a good one was way more preferable than any PLD (the defacto tank class for a long while) could ever hope to be. And even to this day PLDs are only brought along to meet tank only if they have Aegis/Ochain because without those they take way too much damage to justify not bringing a NIN.

And bosses weren't immune to most status effects because for the most part they didn't need to be. Most of what the players could do to them were piddly effects or their resistances were so huge it took Elemental Seal + The Debuff to stick for any real length of time. Anything you could stick easy used to be so bad that for a while there RDM's were laughed out the door because besides En-spells and Refresh which anyone could now SJ, that's all they were there for. When your debuffs are so laughable that people would be like 'Chainstun? Hah, that's just cute, go level a real job' you've got to wonder.

That all being said, the point in FFXI wasn't really the fights per se, but the prep for the fights. Without prep a boss would positively destroy you, with prep however, content usually wasn't super hard, just very technical. The onus then became for players to put forth the time to be prepared, where the closest we get to that is 'eat your food' (which was mandatory in XI due to it basically being as good as another piece of gear)

[Alkimi]

Y
I think what OP and other people in this thread are looking for are fights where you don't mindlessly go through your rotation while occasionally avoiding some environmental hazard.

None of Final Coil is "mindless". What you're describing are most regular dungeon bosses, which are going to be easy anyway.

[StouterTaru]

So the whole fight boiled down to. Curaga when he uses wind, heal the tanks that are tanking Fafnir, everyone else does damage. This took way less skill then anything in FFXIV.

Fafnir is a bad example of a skilled fight in FFXI, but the majority of FFXIV isn't much more difficult.

Difficult FFXIV fights are just a choreographed dance. Once you learn the steps, there's very little improvisation. Skill is knowing what's about to happen, and reacting quickly to it. FFXIV just has more going on faster.

Many of the FFXI fights would be rough with FFXIV mechanics; no 2 hours and built up status resistances. Of course, the bosses using 2 hour abilities were what made them so hard most of the time.

A lot of FFXI hard bosses had a move that would slap down a tank but took a short wind up, so they were kited around. One of my favorite fights was kiting Kirin, pulling hate as BLM and running like hell. I would like to see one of those in FFXIV.

[Zumi]

A lot of FFXI hard bosses had a move that would slap down a tank but took a short wind up, so they were kited around. One of my favorite fights was kiting Kirin, pulling hate as BLM and running like hell. I would like to see one of those in FFXIV.

Kirin wasn't hard at all. Many LS took like 2 alliances sometimes even 3 if it was on of those huge LS to him them meaning you really couldn't ever run out of bodies. There was no consequence for death you just got a raise he could be kited forever. This was another fight that didn't take any skill skill compared to how advanced FFXIV fights are.