Is EX/Savage content a battle or a dance number?

[MeridaQ]

OP so you want less mechanics and more hard hitting moments in the fight based on RNG right? Do you also not want cast bars (no visual ques either) to these moments so it can be completely reactionary? Because if you can tell what it is then all you have to do is memorize the cast (or que) so you can prep and react to them then it doesn’t matter when those moves come out, because you have memorized those moves. Btw if you are a tank and there are no casts and you take a tb unmitigated you die. If you say well just stagger your CDs, you will run out of CDs. If it is truly random then getting 7 TB in short succession will kill the tanks, because they ran out of CDs. (Let’s say shared Tb’s) At this point what do you say to the tanks/party? RNG wiped us let’s go again. Sure that’s fine, but that doesn’t reflect player skill and while some may like that not everyone will. Is that the kind of raiding you are looking for?

[MeridaQ]

Snip

They actually already have this in Ex content. Prey mechanic (T10, A12S, etc) was a healing check. Digititus from A3S was a coordination check from everyone. T10 heat charge was a random pattern for tanks to react to. NeoExdeath has party debuffs assigned to roles during the grand crosses you have to position for and respond to. In V3S after animal farm she has random patterns to deal with. I have mostly tank/healed savage content so I am not as familiar with random DPS related checks.

The point being is they have had and still do have random mechanics in those fights, unending coil is their most recent rendition of this. IMO since Gordias (didn’t do Midan) they have moved farther away from using a lot of random mechanics. (A3S) This was a large part due to community backlash, see the response from unending coil having RNG thrown in during the later phases. They will keep adding random mechanics to the raids and fights, the extent is the Q.

[LunaChild]

It sound like what OP want is the fight like Shinryu EX?
it has randomness element (Hypernova/Levinbolt/Icestorm combo) and party can be overwhelmed (damage from his abilities are quite high).

If not, idk.

[Awha]

I do think it would be neat to have a varying degrees of encounters that focus on different ways to make it challenging. While personally I am not a huge fan of raid encounters that are low on mechanics and are simply target dummies or healing simulator, clearly other people do so maybe it is time SE varied up their encounter design to incorporate other ways to make certain raid encounters please different types of players.

Like one tier can have a boss that is honestly a dummy parse with a tight DPS check.

Another is a healing simulator massive raid wide DPS with a hard hitting auto attacks and frequent tank busters.

One that simply throws out a random mechanic every so often.

Idk I am not an encounter designer, but the general idea is not everyone enjoys the same thing while I personally enjoy mechanic heavy encounters, clearly not everyone feels the same. So why not have varying encounters so a wider range of players can find something they enjoy?

[LalaRu]

...I recently dipped my toes into Savage content and discovered it not to my liking...

[Reinha]

They actually already have this in Ex content. Prey mechanic (T10, A12S, etc) was a healing check. Digititus from A3S was a coordination check from everyone. T10 heat charge was a random pattern for tanks to react to. NeoExdeath has party debuffs assigned to roles during the grand crosses you have to position for and respond to. In V3S after animal farm she has random patterns to deal with. I have mostly tank/healed savage content so I am not as familiar with random DPS related checks.

The point being is they have had and still do have random mechanics in those fights, unending coil is their most recent rendition of this. IMO since Gordias (didn’t do Midan) they have moved farther away from using a lot of random mechanics. (A3S) This was a large part due to community backlash, see the response from unending coil having RNG thrown in during the later phases. They will keep adding random mechanics to the raids and fights, the extent is the Q.

The mechanics I marked with red are, to my understanding, something you resolve by moving or turning to a specific place or direction. If the mechanic is passed by using the WASD keys, that's dancing. The ones I marked with green I understood to be something you resolve with role-specific tools. Using Esuna, Provoke, enmity management, harder healing, aoe mitigation, single target mitigation, dps burst, targeting the correct enemy, stuns and other given combat abilities would not be a dance.

We agree on the point that both kinds of mechanics are already present in the game. Some people are just not happy with the ratio at which those mechanics are present. One healing check does not balance out the other 10-20 mechanics which are dance moves.

[RiyahArp]

I don't think it's a matter of not liking it only. Savage design affects a lot of other things in game.

Like FCs in this game are useless, in part because at cap, all the endgame content that you do more than once per week is either 4-8 players. The hardest content is difficult enough that trying to make a FC do it simply won't work; one of the easiest ways to break up a FC is it splitting up into cliques based on who does savage and who doesn't.

You also really don't see any economy in this game because the amount of people doing endgame where they need food and consummables is still really tiny. Savage also is pretty bad for burning out players and hard to recruit for because of difficulty; for all the complaints about Omega being easy, that easiness is what's preventing people from complaining about being unable to replace or recruit.

I really think we need a large scale endgame mode that is FC based and relatively easy, but the players here will complain about anything, and when they tried with Diadem (which wasn't the best but still) players shout it down.

[Sylvina]

How else would you make content harder without making it suck? Bigger damage and bigger HP isnt "difficulty" either, it's what you describe exactly which makes the difficulty and challenge without making it awful content. I like Omega Savage.

Also plenty of free companies don't even have 8 level 70 players interested in raiding. making more "FC" based content would kill small FCs.

[Awha]

How else would you make content harder without making it suck? Bigger damage and bigger HP isnt "difficulty" either, it's what you describe exactly which makes the difficulty and challenge without making it awful content. I like Omega Savage.

Think the OP simply wants a variety, while I agree personal just tweaking the numbers to make it so the boss hits harder and has more hp is not what I would consider difficult, does not take away from the fact that others may find that difficult and enjoy that style of encounter. FFXIV has room for different encounter designs that focus on the different perspectives as to what people find difficult.

I am not encounter designer but would it really be that hard to make different types of encounters that have different focus as to what makes them harder then say the normal version? Maybe make a version or a boss that is simply a tight dps / hps check with very few mechanics. I do not know, though while I do not agree with the OP over simplification, I do think SE could benefit from having encounters that are more random in nature, or simply large target dummies, if it gets more people to do endgame.

[Xerek]

Think the OP simply wants a variety, while I agree personal just tweaking the numbers to make it so the boss hits harder and has more hp is not what I would consider difficult, does not take away from the fact that others may find that difficult and enjoy that style of encounter. FFXIV has room for different encounter designs that focus on the different perspectives as to what people find difficult.

As I noted earlier, it's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of fun. I had little trouble with O1S and O2S. I...just really, really didn't find them fun. I haven't run O3S, not because it looked too hard, but because it looked mind-numbingly boring. Reinha summed it up perfectly a few replies above. Mechanics that are countered with WASD are dance steps, those are the ones I detest in the quantity Savage throws at you. I'd rather counter mechanics with abilities. It's a matter of...

"Okay, tankbuster coming in. I better precast a big heal, get a barrier on them. Alright...roomwide AoE, need to counter with AoE heal before the boss drops that special attack that causes a player to take <x> damage, where <x> is the amount they're currently under max HP. Anyone under half will be dead..."

Vs.

"It's just a jump to the left! And then a step to the riiiight. Put your hands on your hips. You bring your knees in tiiiight!"

It's not about difficulty. It's about fun. If I wanted to, I could study a number of historical tomes and become an expert on history by memorizing a vast number of historical events. The reason I don't has nothing to do with the difficulty of the task, and everything to do with the fact I wouldn't enjoy it one bit.

Or, maybe it will make more sense this way...more Twin Bolt, less Classical Elements.