Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[QooEr]

I agree with OP but this all really started being a problem in Stormblood. Back in HW/ARR encounter design was pretty much the same as it is now, but healing felt more engaging by several orders of magnitude. This is cuz healers design was changed but encounter design did not.

- In ARR and HW healers had more complex dps rotations (even AST's barebones rotation got even more barebones in stormblood when we lost combust ii as an extra, casted dot).

- Dpsing as a healer carried a risk because of Cleric Stance, even if it was a mostly subjective risk (once you learn a fight there was virtually no risk of using CS). People were more understanding of less experienced healers not dpsing because of this perceived risk. Regardless of experience or the encounter's difficulty, cleric stance added an actual decision making factor into healing even when doing casual content. With it gone healer dps got even easier.

-There were way less ogcd healing skills, which meant all healers had to cast gcd heals a lot more often, despite the encounter design being the same as it is today. WHM had pretty much the same skills bar lilies. SCH only had lustrate, indom and whispering dawn. AST only had CU and ED.

- Precasting heals for incoming damage, be it tankbusters or raidwide aoe, was an actual skill you had to have as a healer. Not in all content and for all damage, but without so many ogcds to supplement gcd healing, it was possible to not have enough time to top everyone off for the next mechanic if damage was frequent and you were healing reactively (i sure remember a12s almost holies...).
Now even in ultimates we just spam the same dps button, wait for damage to go off, press an ogcd heal, and keep spamming the same button. Healing as a healer also got a lot easier and mindless.


So in the end, i agree that there is a problem with encounter design, but its moreso a healer design problem. We used to have more to do during downtime, and we also had less downtime. They made healers jobs easier, healing and dps, without giving any complexity back in return. As expansions continue and healer dps gets even more dumbed down and they get even more superfluous healing tools this problem is going to worsen. Encounters would need to do ridiculous amount of continuous, unpredictable damage for us to cast heals even half as much as we did in the past.

I think what i miss the most from old healing was cleric stance just cuz it made optimizing fights and squeezing dps more engaging. Even running stuff like dungeons was not completely brainless like it is now just because you had to actually pay attention of when you were healing the tank, rather than weaving heals into dps spells, but i dont think theyre ever going to add anything that looks remotely similar to it again.

[grinkdaboy]

i always thought it would be interesting if there were some kind of debuff for tanks that would make it difficult for them to hold aggro for failing mechanics, or for healers one that would increase MP consumption and ogcd cooldown. vuln up and damage down are just so boring

[yukiiyuki]

The game mechanics always will be just a dance, nothing more than a positionals. But people love it, they don't need random in their battles, boss kiting,adds phases for second tank to manage, obstacles to jump around, mind controls from boss or even changing boss arenas. SE have their formula that work and they know how to balance it, so don't except them to try something new, if this works fine, especially since not much people do savages anyway.

[Flay_wind]

The game mechanics always will be just a dance, nothing more than a positionals. But people love it, they don't need random in their battles, boss kiting,adds phases for second tank to manage, obstacles to jump around, mind controls from boss or even changing boss arenas.

And then they say the game is boring and predictable. Whooops.

[Kraniel]

Well, people still pay their subscription though, so that doesn't give much leverage to the rest of the community who wants to see encounters reworked/improved. It's a lot of work for SE and unless people massively complain about it and stop paying their sub, they'd rather focus on delivering new content faster.

I'm all for more complex encounters. I'm having fun with the current ones but as others have said, all of them are just like a dance, basically. Once you understand the placements and the order in which the boss will use a given ability, you're pretty much never going to be surprised by it anymore.
I don't need a Dark Souls-level of smart where the AI will adapt its attacks depending on the distance of the players, etc ... but i would certainly appreciate a bit of randomness, and variety in the debuffs.

On a side note i still think that tanks and healers have been badly designed/reworked overall. SE needs to get some people who have enjoyed playing healers for a long time on older MMOs. Support players like to be busy playing support, it's as simple as that. If we want to DPS, we play DPS. We're not looking for a dumbed down half-support/half-dps type of class.

[Shurrikhan]

The game mechanics always will be just a dance, nothing more than a positionals. But people love it, they don't need random in their battles, boss kiting,adds phases for second tank to manage, obstacles to jump around, mind controls from boss or even changing boss arenas. SE have their formula that work and they know how to balance it, so don't except them to try something new, if this works fine, especially since not much people do savages anyway.

That those interested in hard content would rather have the hard content we have than nothing does not mean also that would prefer all other possible versions, let alone keeping much of the same elements of difficulty but augmenting them with further elements of gameplay.

[linay]

And then they say the game is boring and predictable. Whooops.

Obviously not the same people. And, honestly, if you start wanting to change encounter design at a "fundamental" level, maybe it's time to look for another game, especially when acknowledging that's how the game is for the past 6+ years of it being alive (rather successfully). There is something to be said about picking up FFXIV and knowing though its combat that this is FFXIV and not some other game. It may not appeal to everyone, and that's ok. It doesn't mean there can't be quality of life changes or other improvements, but there's a fine line between that and changing the game at a "fundamental" level.

[Saefinn]

while you bring up some interesting and completely valid new possible additions, ultra-mega-supra-level3saiyajin-avatarmode-tripleenrage-SSS modes are the content made for people who don't find challenge in the basics. If you make the normal encounters like this, the inclusiveness to all levels of players ramps down extremely quickly. Considering the amount of PuGs I get who cannot deal with the basics I am gunshy of raising the floor.

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But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

[linay]

.

But my argument is that how the game is designed is supposed to ease people into higher difficulty levels so they can learn and get used to playing the job and the mechanics so by the point they hit level cap to do endgame content they're prepared to deal with more complicated mechanics rather than throw them in the deepens.

But maybe it could be resolvable with 2 or 3 difficulty levels on each bit of content with different rewards? It worked in SW:TOR and it is sort of a thing in FFXI endgame.

We kinda have it with Normal and Savage raids. Normal and Extreme.

If we are cutting down dungeons, maybe it's room for the same dungeon with two different versions, normal and challenging. Challenging adds more mechanics but gives greater rewards, normal is what we have now.

Though personally I think 3 modes are better than two because you can do normal, hard and savage/extreme/challenge. Because there are people who sit in the middle who want a challenge but not to be a progression kind of challenge.

The more difficulty level, the more item level variance. People are already complaining about old content being too easy with higher item level. There is also a matter of cannibalizing certain content. Some content will just be regarded as irrelevant unless you make it mandatory to gear through one difficulty level to go clear the next. I think it would just be too much.

[Saefinn]

The more difficulty level, the more item level variance. People are already complaining about old content being too easy with higher item level. There is also a matter of cannibalizing certain content. Some content will just be regarded as irrelevant unless you make it mandatory to gear through one difficulty level to go clear the next. I think it would just be too much.

I'm not even saying to retroactively do it in my suggestion, except possibly for ShB content. I could be a "moving forward" thing because I know retroactively doing it would be a lot of work.

But that said roulettes can get dull, running content over and over can get dull and when there's little challenge to it, it can get dull (especially as a healer, where it gets dull pretty quick because on content stuff is often quite easy for a healer) ...and I don't see why old content has to be viewed as dull and irrelevant. Maybe it's because I come from a background where SE in FFXI were like "Dynamis is old, let's revitalise it" and more relevant now "Walk of Echoes is old, let's revitalise it", same for Nyzul and a lot of the BCNM's have high end versions with difficulty tiers to make them useful and relevant. This means going back to old content without it being dull and a cake walk. Yes, FFXI is at the end of its life but to me it just seems odd to have loads of content but only a handful of it be relevant or interesting...because it ends up feeling like you have less content, when in reality we have a butt load.

The limited job system also presents an opportunity to revitalise that old content too, I had a blast on my BLU trying some of Coils again.

It just seems a waste of content otherwise.