Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[Akiudo]

Except, there's a little thing called how these mechanics interact. Especially in the scope of XIV.

In XIV, don't stand in the bad mechanics often result in death. Meaning healers use Swiftcast Raise. Irregardless of what the boss is doing (Otherwise, they often leave the person on the floor until Swiftcast is ready).

Otherwise, all Tanks and Healers are spamming DPS skills.

okay, to keep this simple, say there is a mechanic that targets all 4 dps, if a dps is down it randomly targets one of the tanks/healers in addition to the remaining 3 dps. these kind of mechanic exists in the game, in fact its nearly the baseline of "1 is death, jump over to the next person" if you now add a chance for the dps to die do to random damage you raised the chance that in fact 1 dps will be dead when the mechanic comes up, therefore you raised the chance of the group wiping do to this mechanic, ergo the difficulty of the encounter. you cant just say it doesn't effect this other mechanics, either it raises the difficulty of the encounter or these other mechanics (tankbusters, don't stand in the void, split up correctly etc....) mechanics need to be made easier or less frequent, therefore it directly effects them.

take an existing encounter, say ramuh. now make it so that from time to time ramuh sends a random bolt into the direction of a player taking out half its max life.if this is truly "random" and not another "ramuh hits a player every 30 seconds, throw a single heal and keep doing what you're doing" mechanic you would now need to keep everyone topped of, instead of pre planning and maximizing your cd usage where needed, which i wouldn't even call a positive, having to pre plan at least somewhat is not a bad thing per se. either way, now imagine the healer messes that up (because the damn healer failed, he is a freaking noob and simply didn't react in time, you know people make mistakes) and a person dies, shortly before i don't know, spears ? or chain lighning ? or it hits the off tank while that one is on low health because he just took the add tankbuster with low cooldowns because he has to use them otherwise and now that one drops dead. are you saying simply adding the possibility of these things happening while changing nothing on the other side of things (i.e. mechanics as they are now) would NOT make encounters more difficult ? because if it does increase the difficulty you would need to make fights easier elsewhere, in other words the kind of mechanics we have right now, however making these easier or less frequent would again, directly affect them.

[Kalise]

say there is a mechanic that targets all 4 dps, if a dps is down it randomly targets one of the tanks/healers in addition to the remaining 3 dps. these kind of mechanic exists in the game, in fact its nearly the baseline of "1 is death, jump over to the next person" if you now add a chance for the dps to die do to random damage you raised the chance that in fact 1 dps will be dead when the mechanic comes up, therefore you raised the chance of the group wiping do to this mechanic, ergo the difficulty of the encounter. you cant just say it doesn't effect this other mechanics, either it raises the difficulty of the encounter or these other mechanics (tankbusters, don't stand in the void, split up correctly etc....) mechanics need to be made easier or less frequent, therefore it directly effects them.

Though, at the same time, the suggestion increases mitigation for scripted mechanics, via putting more emphasis on Tanks having skills to mitigate the damage, meaning it can be less likely that those instances cause wipes (I.e. Decreased difficulty due to increased ability to affect them)

To say nothing about the very notion of "Giving DPS a chance to die due to random damage" - I've already mentioned in my OP about not making random damage too frequent. It shouldn't be possible to die due to random damage unless you're specifically trying to edge as a healer by letting just a single Medica II cast fully heal everyone over its duration after taking a big raid buster that put people down to 10% life (Which only really occurs in Savage+). Or in the case that this random damage has occurred, edge that target with simply a quick Regen cast when said mechanic that targets them is coming up.

take an existing encounter, say ramuh. now make it so that from time to time ramuh sends a random bolt into the direction of a player taking out half its max life.if this is truly "random" and not another "ramuh hits a player every 30 seconds, throw a single heal and keep doing what you're doing" mechanic you would now need to keep everyone topped of, instead of pre planning and maximizing your cd usage where needed, which i wouldn't even call a positive, having to pre plan at least somewhat is not a bad thing per se.

In this scenario, you don't need to keep everyone topped up. Only above 50% health, since that's as hard as this random damage will hit. (Healer basics 101. People only need as much health as to survive the biggest hit they will take. Any more is overhealing)

The instances where Ramuh does AoE that hits everyone, give plenty of time for you to spend a GCD or 2 healing that target from 50% up to a level where they can survive the Judgment Volts (Which can be decreased by having said person also pick up another stack of Surge Protection), he doesn't insta-cast Judgement Volts out of nowhere, he sits around going "IMMA GONNA CAST MUH SPELL" for a fair while.

Even with random damage sources, you still plan around the scripted stuff, since those are still going to be the lethal damage sources. You just also factor in random damage to maybe consider tossing a heal over to the person if you know one of the scripted events is going to occur soon.

Like, the above scenario where you mention, a player is hit down to 50% life from a random attack and lets say this for some reason happens right before a Judgment Volts cast and the Healers are both braindead and don't cast a GCD heal to bring that player up... Well, that's the scenario that oGCD's would be used. A buffer, panic button that enables you to still get some healing in, in a short period of time.

If the concern is something like random damage occuring say, during a Tankbuster/Raidbuster which causes an insta-gib of a player even when CD's are used, then it's simply a case of making it so that random damage events can only occur during set times. I.e. X seconds after a "Buster" mechanic up until X seconds before a "Buster" mechanic.

If the further concern is in normal mode having random damage plus a failed mechanic which doesn't outright one-shot, causes a one-shot, it's simple enough to tune the damage of the random damage in normal mode to not be too high, just like certain mechanics can be failed in normal mode and not be a concern due to their damage being tuned really low.

[Eli85]

Good thread. I don't agree with all of the items that you listed, but I'll bring up my primary issue with XIV encounter design, and it's specific to extreme trials and savage.

What I'm talking about is the myriad of mechanics where every player has to be assigned a particular area to stand in, and they must stand in that specific area, or bad things happen. I can't tell you how much I despise this mechanic for all 8 players in the raid. It's just needless coordination that makes the fights rely more on memorization than player skill. It's really the #1 mechanic that keeps me out of extremes and savage. I just don't want to deal with those kind of restrictive mechanics.

[Akiudo]

snip

exactly because "only enough so they survive" is healer 101 it would mean you would have to top everyone off in the proposed scenario, you want to maximize the value of your global cooldowns, if someone is at 40% life and i HAVE to use a global cooldown that means he will get the biggest heal i've got, if 2 people get hit and are now at 40% life it will than just be the biggest aoe heal i can reasonably use, so yes you would allways top people off, cause that what happens when you use cure 3 or medica 2 on someone with half life and than just let it tick, you wouldn't just "get them above 50%" because that would mean you would have to heal them a second time before the next group wide aoe or stack mechanic or whatever, unless that one gets toned down in damage, in which case again, it was directly affected by your proposed change. yes, the 50% random bolt was my idea , or rather one example this could take, but lets change this around, what else could it be ? a random "10% aoe ?" all that would do is force the whm/astro to keep their aoe hot up and be done, randomly selected damage even less than 50% of hp, say 30%? great, you ignore it till the next aoe comes up.oh you say "but what if it hits you 4 times in a row?" and i will come back to what you yourself said "don't make it happen for x seconds before and after a buster", at just 5 seconds before or after a buster/group wide aoe/allready existing scripted mechanic which at times even happen one after another, i.e group aoe->tank buster/ attack that "randomly" hits 1-2 players, the proposed "random" mechanic you want to add to the fight would happen about as randomly as every other mechanic in the fights we have right now.

but lets keep it even easier , even your own

Like, the above scenario where you mention, a player is hit down to 50% life from a random attack and lets say this for some reason happens right before a Judgment Volts cast and the Healers are both braindead and don't cast a GCD heal to bring that player up... Well, that's the scenario that oGCD's would be used. A buffer, panic button that enables you to still get some healing in, in a short period of time.

would mean i would have to use ogcds as panic buttons, in turn meaning i would again not have them ready where i want them (say a mechanic where randomly 2 people get targeted for attacks and need to be healed through them, or the next tankbuster, or as a general buffer for the tank/someone that messed up something else shortly before the next aoe.

Also, in even more general terms, the moment it can be screwed up even if this is do to complete failure on the players part it IS adding difficulty, currently if the "heal" misses a damage global cooldown the group at the end of the fight is out 15 dps, with your proposed change the moment the heal "forgets" to get someone up the group at the absolute best loses like 1000 dps+the mana to get the dps back up, at worst they simply wipe. which isn't even going into the possibility of mistakes small as they may be simply snowballing.

Also what about mechanics that go wrong but do to sheer luck or whatever only 2 dps+1 heal die, now this other heal has to get up 1 heal+2 dps, this shouldn't happen, but it can and does happen. now imagine you are in this situation, prepping your tank for the next tankbuster while throwing your instant to your other heal, great, your other heal takes over keeping the tank up while you hardcast a rezz to the next dps, oh look , the random bolt of death just hit one of the 2 remaining dps, not to worry, will only take 1 cast+1 instant to get him up for the aoe that does 90% group damage in 10 seconds, not like you had your hands full allready

heck, all of this is even ignoring that even "random" can't be too random unless you want fights to vary between "easiest run ever" and "holy shit, how many more random bolts of death will he send?", the scripted nature of the fights simply does not leave that much room to simply fill it with randomness, adding randomness means taking out scripted aspects ,which is fine, but if you do this than at this point its simply a worse "wow" experience because fights like in wow would be literally impossible with 0 addons, which they obviously won't allow at this point.



edit: and just to be clear on this, i mentioned it initially but once again, i AM in favor of giving heals more to heal, tanks more to actively mitigate damage and all, but denying that "simply adding this stuff" would make fights harder than they currently are is like denying that the sky is blue, therefore encounter design as we have now, heavy scripting and lots "you screwed up no we all die" mechanics would have to change based around it, therefore be in fact directly affected

[Barraind]

The issue here is that simply moving healing throughput to GCD's doesn't really achieve much.

The game will still mostly be just "Boss uses Tankbuster" Healer presses ST heal skill to heal tank to full. "Boss uses Raidbuster" Healer presses AoE heal skill to heal everyone to full. The rest of the time will simply be "Keep Regen on Tank and mash nukes".

Since the issue isn't how much healing oGCD's provide, but how frequently damage is done that needs healing. With it basically being limited to "Buster" skills, especially due to how lethal avoidable damage is.

You have to address both at the same time.

Bosses being dangerous once every 45 seconds (or slightly faster as you go up in difficulty) when they're landing one of the big 4; "die if you're stupid" badstuff circles, back to back AE's that require shielding before or healing during, Off the ledge knockbacks, tankbuster, is not exactly good encounter design, and allows for just pressing one ogcd every mechanic and not caring.

Boss melee and splash damage effects need to be deadly outside of telegraphed "someone has to do something now lol" mechanics, but for that to be a reality, healers have to work a bit differently too.



Look at how something like Guild Wars 1 or WAR handles healers. They had it figured out.

[Kalise]

exactly because "only enough so they survive" is healer 101 it would mean you would have to top everyone off in the proposed scenario, you want to maximize the value of your global cooldowns

That depends entirely on your kit and what you have to spend to top someone off.

if someone is at 40% life

Why would someone be at 40% life? When random damage does 50% damage, avoidable damage does 100% damage and Raidbusters do (Currently) 90% damage. Or if you're referring to normal, then avoidable damage does 40% life and Raidbusters do 50% life.

When would someone be at 40% life?

You might have to heal someone for 41% life, if they got hit by a random attack and the next mechanic is a Raidbuster for 90% life.

Now, in the theoretical scenario where someone was at 40% life for whatever reason, maybe as a healer you might decide you can use an oGCD on them to heal them up while you're doing mechanics/using a GCD on the Tank/nuking the boss during a raid buff window.

With less potent oGCD's this might not fully heal the person, but they would still be above the 50% threshold that would let them die to this random 50% life attack.

Would you then have to heal them again before the next raidbuster? Maybe. It depends on how much life they have, how much self sustain they have, how many incidental AoE heals they have received, how much healing they'll get from the application of a Succor/Aspected Benefic shield (Which will be applied before the damage thereby also applying the heal before the damage is done)

Not to mention, how much damage raidbusters do with Tanks having more tools to mitigate them.

you wouldn't just "get them above 50%" because that would mean you would have to heal them a second time before the next group wide aoe or stack mechanic or whatever

That entirely depends on when the next mechanic is coming and what the mechanic is.

If another target is going to be getting hit by damage (Such as a Tank receiving a Tankbuster) you can simply heal both targets with an AoE heal.

If there's time before the next AoE, you can toss a HoT on them and so long as they're above 50% life, they're going to be safe from this random 50% life damage and if not, well they should be relatively healthy by the time the AoE occurs.

would mean i would have to use ogcds as panic buttons

Only if you don't bother casting a GCD heal and literally need to panic and push something to bring someone's life up.

in turn meaning i would again not have them ready where i want them (say a mechanic where randomly 2 people get targeted for attacks and need to be healed through them, or the next tankbuster, or as a general buffer for the tank/someone that messed up something else shortly before the next aoe.

Well... There's a reason why I mentioned shifting healing throughput to GCD's and not keeping everything on oGCD's. Since, Healers will now have to actually use GCD heals to heal things.

It's a shocking practice I know, but there's plenty of time to do so. Given that XIV literally cannot pump out damage rapidly because AoE's take time to travel.

Also, in even more general terms, the moment it can be screwed up even if this is do to complete failure on the players part it IS adding difficulty

It's the same as if in the current easy mode Normal raids, both healers decide to never cast a single heal, oGCD or otherwise, and focus entirely on nuking the boss.

Is this creating difficulty because people can be idiots and not be able to press a heal button and thus cause wipes?

Also what about mechanics that go wrong but do to sheer luck or whatever only 2 dps+1 heal die, now this other heal has to get up 1 heal+2 dps, this shouldn't happen, but it can and does happen.

If this is Savage/Ultimate, you've already wiped because you're not going to beat the enrage timer.

If this is normal, this is what Healer LB3 is saved for, to Raise and Fully Heal everyone and give full MP.

heck, all of this is even ignoring that even "random" can't be too random unless you want fights to vary between "easiest run ever" and "holy shit, how many more random bolts of death will he send?"

Not really. Even in my OP I mentioned having limitations to the frequency of random damage spikes.

Which can be easily sorted via cooldowns on the random damage after which point it CAN be cast, but doesn't necessarily have to be cast.

the scripted nature of the fights simply does not leave that much room to simply fill it with randomness, adding randomness means taking out scripted aspects

Not really.

There's plenty of time between "Buster" attacks where all that is happening is DPSing the boss and running out of crap on the floor.

That can be filled with "Random" damage because there isn't any other damage happening other than fluff damage from boss AA's vs the tank and potentially failed mechanics which in most difficulties result in insta-death anyway.

You don't have to take out scripted events either. Since again, there's plenty of room between currently prominent scripted unavoidable damage and again, in most difficulties, avoidable damage doesn't care if you're at 100% health or not it'll just one-shot you.

[Akiudo]

That depends entirely on your kit and what you have to spend to top someone off.

that you "want to maximize the value of your global cooldowns" is not debetable, what this means exactly may differ, but it will in the end come down to "heal enough that you don't have to heal a second time"

Why would someone be at 40% life? When random damage does 50% damage, avoidable damage does 100% damage and Raidbusters do (Currently) 90% damage. Or if you're referring to normal, then avoidable damage does 40% life and Raidbusters do 50% life.
When would someone be at 40% life?

because believe it or not, some mechanics you can screw up AND survive, there are also times an unavoidable mechanic drops you down to wherever, but for one reason or another healing someone else (say the tank) is preferable in that situation

You might have to heal someone for 41% life, if they got hit by a random attack and the next mechanic is a Raidbuster for 90% life.

Now, in the theoretical scenario where someone was at 40% life for whatever reason, maybe as a healer you might decide you can use an oGCD on them to heal them up while you're doing mechanics/using a GCD on the Tank/nuking the boss during a raid buff window.

or i might screw up because whatever, it happened therefore this person goes down and now the group actually has a dead dps on hand, oh look, the fight suddenly got more difficult

With less potent oGCD's this might not fully heal the person, but they would still be above the 50% threshold that would let them die to this random 50% life attack.

Would you then have to heal them again before the next raidbuster? Maybe. It depends on how much life they have, how much self sustain they have, how many incidental AoE heals they have received, how much healing they'll get from the application of a Succor/Aspected Benefic shield (Which will be applied before the damage thereby also applying the heal before the damage is done)

exactly, maybe, and maybe, just maybe i wanted to save my ogcd heal for the next phase where i have to heal the tank while moving, fact of the matter is i would potentially be out one or more ogcds i could have used otherwise and which i can't necessarely replace with hardcasts at other times.

Not to mention, how much damage raidbusters do with Tanks having more tools to mitigate them.

unless they screw up? no, "than they simply have to not screw up" is not an argument cause the very base of this discussion was that adding things one can screw up without taking other things to screw up out adds difficulty.

That entirely depends on when the next mechanic is coming and what the mechanic is.

If another target is going to be getting hit by damage (Such as a Tank receiving a Tankbuster) you can simply heal both targets with an AoE heal.

great idea, the next time the boss decides to hit the tank for 80% of his life followed by another attack for 70% of his life i will simply use medica II and pray

If there's time before the next AoE, you can toss a HoT on them and so long as they're above 50% life, they're going to be safe from this random 50% life damage and if not, well they should be relatively healthy by the time the AoE occurs.

Well... There's a reason why I mentioned shifting healing throughput to GCD's and not keeping everything on oGCD's. Since, Healers will now have to actually use GCD heals to heal things.

great, so now i have to think even more how well my hot will do the job. or well, i can screw up and misjudge you know. your whole argument of getting healer classes to heal more demands healing at its core to get more difficult, that is fine, that is something you are totally free to argue for, especially as healing in itself is simply not difficult, which is why most heals are glorified dps, you are right on that. but you still argue to make something more difficult, which in turn would make fights as a whole more difficult unless you take out difficulty elsewhere. i really can't wrap my head around your inability to admit to that fact.

It's a shocking practice I know, but there's plenty of time to do so. Given that XIV literally cannot pump out damage rapidly because AoE's take time to travel.

but of course they are, maybe one has to define rapidly , but considering your global cooldown even with all the spellspeed in the world wouldn't go below 2 seconds of course they could send out an aoe pulse hitting the group for 70% every second and wish you well.

It's the same as if in the current easy mode Normal raids, both healers decide to never cast a single heal, oGCD or otherwise, and focus entirely on nuking the boss.

Is this creating difficulty because people can be idiots and not be able to press a heal button and thus cause wipes?

for one its fundamentally not the same as normal mode mechanics are designed so you survive screwing them up, which in savage is the exception and even than it will carry a heavy penalty like a damage down (which doesn't hold the same value in normal mode as there generally are no enrages, or way more lenient ones) , or well, costing your healer an ogcd or 2 to get you up before the next aoe, also as far as your core question goes, to put it bluntly, yes it is creating difficulty. i did not say it was artificial difficulty or whatever, but if you have 2 situations, one where only the tank needs heals and the rest of the group can be ignored and another one where you actually need to heal the group than the second one is undeniably more difficult

If this is Savage/Ultimate, you've already wiped because you're not going to beat the enrage timer.

not true, at least not necessarely if you got good dps.

If this is normal, this is what Healer LB3 is saved for, to Raise and Fully Heal everyone and give full MP.

please show me the datacenter where people in normal mode would even be coordinated enough to save heal lb3 if told beforehand to do so, please show it to me i really want to move there.

Not really. Even in my OP I mentioned having limitations to the frequency of random damage spikes.

Which can be easily sorted via cooldowns on the random damage after which point it CAN be cast, but doesn't necessarily have to be cast.

and if it can get casted every 15 seconds but may be casted never the difficulty every single pull would very wildly, if you make it so it gets cast anywhere in a range of 10-30 seconds but one cast will be done if all you do is make it so it cant happen 5 seconds before or after tankbuster/raidwides/mechanics that single out players and need them at full health (as the global cooldown in this game is pretty long as you know, and simply sacrificing ogcd's is a) not what you wanted and b) may fuck you over later) there actually isn't all that "plenty of time" left you seem to believe, in the end it would be the faintest of randomness, it would basically make it look random, but in the end still be "in the time from tankbuster 1-2 throw 3 global cooldown heals on a random player, timing on when to do may vary)

Not really.
There's plenty of time between "Buster" attacks where all that is happening is DPSing the boss and running out of crap on the floor.
That can be filled with "Random" damage because there isn't any other damage happening other than fluff damage from boss AA's vs the tank and potentially failed mechanics which in most difficulties result in insta-death anyway.

if there is but a 5% chance of surviving the failure to move out of the aoe, which often is the case with a bit more gear or a defensive cooldown the potential that such a person took the circle of death but now needs imediate healing otherwise they may die do to random lightning bolts or whatever you just made the encounter more difficult than it would have been without that.

You don't have to take out scripted events either. Since again, there's plenty of room between currently prominent scripted unavoidable damage and again, in most difficulties, avoidable damage doesn't care if you're at 100% health or not it'll just one-shot you.

just to prove you wrong, e5s and 6s only, if you got a spare orb but get hit by the lightning circle that comes up around another player, dunno the name but the stuff that first hits one half of the players than the others, you would survive this, you would also have taken avoidable damage, e6 with a bit of luck you can take one of garudas wind orbs, maybe the tank or heal knew you are too stupid and gave you a shield beforehand or whatever, you can also potentially survive a single eruption, still thats avoidable damage, so either no "random" damage around either of these mechanics or you risk people dying that wouldn't have died otherwise, again you just made the fight harder

i never said you had to take them out completly, but again you added difficulty where there was none before, things that people can screw up, situations that can now go haywire that couldn't before, if you keep everything else the same the fight just got harder and nothing else, and if you give players tools to mitigate this added difficulty that still assumes they will use these tools correctly, which isn't necessarely true.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Just curious, but have you even done any of the current extremes or savage fights?

Cuz it's super awkward to me to have people who haven't done the harder content saying things need to change cuz the game is too easy or there's not enough damage going out.

[Rufalus]

I think it could be interesting on a per fight basis, not necessarily a new rule for all encounters. Certain fights in certain content could have much harsher requirements on mitigation and healing, perhaps instead of complicated mechanics. Baldesion Arsenal was something like that, with the need to take adds between bosses more seriously and plan the use of buffs at least until you have some elemental stat gear to offset the damage.

[Aomine1992]

To me healing is the biggest problem, like even on AST I probably cast like 2 whole GCD aoe heals a whole savage run, and never cast a single target GCd heal at all besides aspected bene. It’s disgusting how many oGCD heals healers have that just disregards any need for healing.

Also the encounter designs don’t call for any kind of real healing to begin with like at all, I think Titan P3 was the first time I planned our healer stuff like ever!! Lol that’s sad

Also this is a draw back of the holy trinity with a lack of meaningful development but alas it is too late for SE to try to fix the games core issue but they can definitely prune some healer oGCDs or completely overhaul their savage/ultimate encounters but this is all my personal opinion...I may just go back to dps because I’m not a healer in a healer role to be honest, I’m just an extra dps body to do mechanics and hit the boss