DualShocker Interview - 3.5 pt 2 next week, supposedly

[Naunet]

The Phageborn Convergence in WildStar (especially when Sword is one of the active bosses) is a fight that I think does a good job of being less about dps and more about mechanics, proper tanking, and healing without feeling super gimmicky. The sword boss has an equalize ability that he casts periodically (pretty much after every middle phase - which is a part in the fight where one boss teleports to the center of the room and the raid has to deal with a special mechanic that's different for each), which equally redistributes the remaining combined health of all living bosses. The primary strategy to deal with Sword comp (and he's up 99% of the time) is to control your dps to take advantage of equalize to slowly whittle down the HP of the other three bosses. Thus to beat the fight, dps is not at all "everything" and much of the fight is simply about properly dealing with and surviving mechanics (until the very end, where you've ideally knocked down everyone to <10% with equalize, and it's a race against the clock to kill them all, because with each boss death the room becomes increasingly dangerous).

The only encounter that even comes close to that in FFXIV is that boss in Pharos Sirius that spawns dogs at certain HP percentages.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The only encounter that even comes close to that in FFXIV is that boss in Pharos Sirius that spawns dogs at certain HP percentages.

Symond the Unsinkable, Zu and (to a lesser extent) the Siren are cases where to much dps makes the fight harder as you end up pushing add phases into mechanics/AoE phases.

SE also has a bad habit of making fights with fairly short enrage timers and where the longer you take the harder the fight gets. Savage Cruise Chaser is a good example of this as every skipped limit cut reduces the damage it deals in later phases. More dps doesn't just allow you to skip mechanics it actively makes the later mechanics easier.

In order for being defensive/playing it safe to be a viable strategy the longer a fight goes on the easier it needs to get. If Cruise Chaser started with X damage up buff stacks at the start, lost one each time it did limit cut and an enrage happened when it does limit cut when it has no stacks you would have a fight where dps is important but the fight gets harder if you focus on dps to much but you still need a minimum amount of dps.

[Zojha]

Symond the Unsinkable, Zu and (to a lesser extent) the Siren are cases where to much dps makes the fight harder as you end up pushing add phases into mechanics/AoE phases.

Ifrit EX straight wipes you if you deal too much damage and accidentally push past a nail phase. It is pretty much the only wipe cause in unsync.

We have several fights in this game actually that punish you for having good or well geared DPS players and/or excellent healers/tanks, mostly old ones. And the big question is: Why exactly are you punishing players for taking part in the vertical progression you offer and why exactly are you punishing players for playing their job well...?

With all due respect: The notion is pretty perverse. You should reward people for playing their jobs to the fullest and gearing up, not punish them for it. It should make fights easier, not harder as you suggest. It doesn't even solve the issue, because the meta for those fights doesn't become to take it slow, it's to go full speed until you hit the stop sign, wait, then go full speed again and rinse/repeat until you can safely full speed to the end.

It just seems like a helpless attempt to achieve something without addressing the actual issues.

[St0rmchild]

Ifrit EX straight wipes you if you deal too much damage and accidentally push past a nail phase. It is pretty much the only wipe cause in unsync.

We have several fights in this game actually that punish you for having good or well geared DPS players and/or excellent healers/tanks, mostly old ones. And the big question is: Why exactly are you punishing players for taking part in the vertical progression you offer and why exactly are you punishing players for playing their job well...?

You're not being punished for overgearing/being gud, you're being punished for cheesing the fight (pushing through and thereby disregarding mechanics phases)

[loreleidiangelo]

You're not being punished for overgearing/being gud, you're being punished for cheesing the fight (pushing through and thereby disregarding mechanics phases)

Have you actually done Ifrit EX when it was current? That and T7 were notorious for having parts where you'd basically have to stop attacking or else you hard-wiped (Ifrit) or had a phase transition so awkward it 99% of the time led to a wipe (Melusine). T7 in particular had a lot of skilled raiders complaining about the awful phase push once their DPS started to get decked out in full 110s. All mechanics were being done properly, there was no "cheese" involved. (How would you even cheese those fights, anyway?)

[LalaRu]

... you'd basically have to stop attacking or else you hard-wiped (Ifrit) ... a lot of skilled raiders complaining about the awful phase ...

I think skilled raiders did not get wiped, because skilled raiders, when nails comes out, instantly goes to them to get rid of them. Most likely, some raider were not so much 'skilled' and continuing dps Ifrit at that time. Being geared and being skilled has proven multiple times not being correlated.

[aleph_null]

I think skilled raiders did not get wiped, because skilled raiders, when nails comes out, instantly goes to them to get rid of them. Most likely, some raider were not so much 'skilled' and continuing dps Ifrit at that time. Being geared and being skilled has proven multiple times not being correlated.

You don't get it lol, without holding back dps you won't even see the nails. The phase skips directly to the ulti attack even before the nails appear. Same thing with levi, you have to hold back until the balls appear, if you keep dpsing normally levi will do the ulti before the balls appear.

It's stupid that the mechanics that determine an instant wipe is skippable.

[Iromi]

You're not being punished for overgearing/being gud, you're being punished for cheesing the fight (pushing through and thereby disregarding mechanics phases)

So what is the point of getting better gear and being stronger? Is it not to make previous fights easier? What reward do we get for working hard obtaining better gear? All it does in fights like that is hinder mechanics. In any other mmo I played or game for that matter, it def made fights easier and impossible to fail...in this game it causes instant wipe. Kind of sad.

[Lambdafish]

So what is the point of getting better gear and being stronger? Is it not to make previous fights easier? What reward do we get for working hard obtaining better gear? All it does in fights like that is hinder mechanics. In any other mmo I played or game for that matter, it def made fights easier and impossible to fail...in this game it causes instant wipe. Kind of sad.

"Getting better gear" works on a cycle. You get better gear to beat current content, and when the content and gear cycles out you start again. You don't "get i270 gear" to challenge leviathan because the content is long become irrelevant. The instant wipe is an unintended side effect of the fight not being intended to allow you to cheese it in that way and unsynced was likely not even considered at that point in development.

[aleph_null]

"Getting better gear" works on a cycle. You get better gear to beat current content, and when the content and gear cycles out you start again. You don't "get i270 gear" to challenge leviathan because the content is long become irrelevant. The instant wipe is an unintended side effect of the fight not being intended to allow you to cheese it in that way and unsynced was likely not even considered at that point in development.

It's the dev's fault if they don't take into account overgearing though. Especially considering this game is heavily based on vertical progression.

The simplest albeit not necessarily the best solution to this would be enforcing ilv syncing on every fight to the highest ilv obtainable during the patch when they're current (e.g. 210 for thordan ex and gordias savage, 240 for sephirot/nidhogg ex and midas savage, etc.), though it seems like certain fights from 2.x still have problems with bad pushes even at the intended max ilv (?), can't say for sure since I started playing after 3.0.