Its ffxiv combat really so slow and boring?

[MicahZerrshia]

The slowness of combat has a lot to do with the combat itself, how static it is and how my artificial difficulty they put in. And by that I mean things like dps checks, this is not difficulty, this is artificial difficulty and it is used heavily in ffxiv. So, it does feel slow compared to other mmos and esp slow compared to single players.

Even ESO and GW2 feel super fast in comparison since they also incorporate roll dodging, blocking and what not. I find myself using only my mouse to battle sometimes unless I have to side step a red circle on the ground. And even then I can often eat chips with one hand because I know "Boss A just did this, I can now play using only my mouse til he does this is 2 minutes or he doesn't do anything that hurts bad enough to constitute a dodge" Can't do that in ESO or GW2, nor can I just sit and watch Netflix while only paying 25% of my attn to the game because of muscle memory and because I know there is nothing important to watch for. Even overworld mobs in other games have more dynamic combat systems than some bosses in ffxiv.

SE makes combat feel more difficult with procs, dmg buffs you need to upkeep and sometimes positioning, but these are all forms of artificial difficulty, esp when they are as excessive as they are in ffxiv. You should never spend a fight managing procs, you should spend it engaging an enemy. The more you need to stare at your hotbars the less complex combat is and the less engaging it feels. Again, the combat feels slower due to the way combat is designed moreso than actual time.

tldr
It feels slow because most the time you stand still, there is very little need for movement, too much time spent managing blinking lights and the GCD is a little longer so you add both these things up and you get combat that at least feels slower than it is.

[TalithaSolarien]

Even ESO and GW2 feel super fast in comparison since they also incorporate roll dodging, blocking and what not. I find myself using only my mouse to battle sometimes unless I have to side step a red circle on the ground. And even then I can often eat chips with one hand because I know "Boss A just did this, I can now play using only my mouse til he does this is 2 minutes or he doesn't do anything that hurts bad enough to constitute a dodge" Can't do that in ESO or GW2, nor can I just sit and watch Netflix while only paying 25% of my attn to the game because of muscle memory and because I know there is nothing important to watch for. Even overworld mobs in other games have more dynamic combat systems than some bosses in ffxiv.

I don't know about GW2 but ESOs boss fights are as scripted as they are in our game. They just appear more dynamics as the GCD and telegraph/cast/reaction times are way shorter then in FF14. These short reaction times (which were implemented more often in later content) were one of the reasons why I went over to this game.

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

[kikix12]

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

It's actually easier than you think. Final Fantasy single player games are an example of where it is done.

Instead of random "do any of these actions at % of chance" you have rounds. Every round there is % chance of doing one of selected few actions. That means that their POWER will not go overboard (no consecutive tank busters or consecutive hard-hitting room-wide AoE's), while the way to deal with them will vary.

Alternatively a fully random skill use CAN be used...by giving the monster skills a cooldown. Used a tank buster?! It's out of the equation for the next minute and a half, but it may be used then or a minute later.

Those two can be combined too.

Right now I think there are some battles where the first option is available and I think that full-on random with cooldowns is utilized for the Stone Vigil (Hard) boss (or whatever dungeon have that overgrown lizard that clones himself). At least I've never seen him use two of the harder hitters consecutively...I may be wrong though (either in its randomness or the cooldowns being there).

[Risvertasashi]

Alternatively a fully random skill use CAN be used...by giving the monster skills a cooldown. Used a tank buster?! It's out of the equation for the next minute and a half, but it may be used then or a minute later.

More or less how T5 worked. Same guy designed Ramuh EX and Mog EX. And apparently he'll be designing a few more fights for FF14 at some point so maybe we'll get a bit more of this.

[Kirsten_Rev]

I don't know about GW2 but ESOs boss fights are as scripted as they are in our game. They just appear more dynamics as the GCD and telegraph/cast/reaction times are way shorter then in FF14. These short reaction times (which were implemented more often in later content) were one of the reasons why I went over to this game.

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

As others have pointed out, there are ways this can be done. The vast majority of RPGs - including all the single-player FF titles that I've played - do not operate on 100% predetermine scripts. FFXI, for that matter, also featured unscripted monster attacks. Did that mean you sometimes had a Goblin dropping a suicide bomb at 90% HP, or a bee deciding to Final Sting at high HP? Sure. Them's the breaks. It lent value to Stun, and smart mages would keep a very close eye on the monster until it dropped below the 'danger zone' HP, just to make sure the move was interrupted.

I'd also point out that the goal of combat isn't so much to be fair or unfair - it's to be interesting. If interesting and dynamic combat comes at the expense of occasionally-nasty move sequences, it's still a trade worth making. Diablo 3 is a good example of this: because 'boss' packs of monsters are randomly generated, it's perfectly possible to run into 3-4 in a small space of time, and get ganged up on by multiple groups with nasty base monster types and horrific attributes. Were this to be eliminated, though, the game would become terribly predictable, and vastly less entertaining than it is now. Sometimes good experiences require events that make most players scream profanities into their monitor - and then pick up the controller and try again.

[Mizunoko]

The slowness of combat has a lot to do with the combat itself, how static it is and how my artificial difficulty they put in. And by that I mean things like dps checks, this is not difficulty, this is artificial difficulty and it is used heavily in ffxiv. So, it does feel slow compared to other mmos and esp slow compared to single players.

Even ESO and GW2 feel super fast in comparison since they also incorporate roll dodging, blocking and what not. I find myself using only my mouse to battle sometimes unless I have to side step a red circle on the ground. And even then I can often eat chips with one hand because I know "Boss A just did this, I can now play using only my mouse til he does this is 2 minutes or he doesn't do anything that hurts bad enough to constitute a dodge" Can't do that in ESO or GW2, nor can I just sit and watch Netflix while only paying 25% of my attn to the game because of muscle memory and because I know there is nothing important to watch for. Even overworld mobs in other games have more dynamic combat systems than some bosses in ffxiv.

SE makes combat feel more difficult with procs, dmg buffs you need to upkeep and sometimes positioning, but these are all forms of artificial difficulty, esp when they are as excessive as they are in ffxiv. You should never spend a fight managing procs, you should spend it engaging an enemy. The more you need to stare at your hotbars the less complex combat is and the less engaging it feels. Again, the combat feels slower due to the way combat is designed moreso than actual time.

tldr
It feels slow because most the time you stand still, there is very little need for movement, too much time spent managing blinking lights and the GCD is a little longer so you add both these things up and you get combat that at least feels slower than it is.

I don't think that just because ffxiv has its own original and unique way to add difficulty to mechanics/combat justifies you saying it's "artificial". You can say it is different, but what it isn't is artificial. Artificial implies that its not original and that it's a sort of fake or imitation, which it is not because there is no base way of doing things. Game's are supposed to be different, if every game out there was exactly the same why would we play other games. That is what is good about ffxiv anyway is that it's unique and not the same cut of the crop that almost every other mmorpg out there is.