Anybody else got tired of scripted fights?

[Hatfright]

Video Games in general is about learning patterns.

I don't doubt that, but Absurdity here gives a good point about it:

I think what most people mean with scripted fights in XIV are the fights where you can determine exactly at which minute/second into the pull the boss is gonna do xy mechanic and it will always do this mechanic at the exact same time.

And this is exactly my issue with it. This and almost every mechanic being about positioning. There is position mechanics that I like, Tsuky moon stacks are my favorite, but for the most part it's "don't stay here, you either die yourself or/and drag your whole party with you". And there's no way around it at all, you just have to dance with all those aoes. But how much more fun it would've been if there was a way to stop that aoe dance and to replace it with something else, like healcheck or something, idk. I wish we got more players responsibilities beyond just moving ourselfs from place to place. I wish we could deny bosses their abilities not by just burning their hp down.

[linayar]

But how much more fun it would've been if there was a way to stop that aoe dance and to replace it with something else, like healcheck or something, idk. I wish we got more players responsibilities beyond just moving ourselfs from place to place.

As a non-healer, a heal check is a non-mechanic for me. That's not more player responsibility, just shifting of responsibility.

I wish we could deny bosses their abilities not by just burning their hp down.

We already do, by doing mechanics: stacking, spreading, dodging, mitigating, healing, etc.

[Hatfright]

As a non-healer, a heal check is a non-mechanic for me. That's not more player responsibility, just shifting of responsibility.

We already do, by doing mechanics: stacking, spreading, dodging, mitigating, healing, etc.

That's why there's "idk" as I coudn't think of more examples. I shoud've been more presice in that, I guess.
You know what's my favorite normal raid so far?
A9, the one where you need to ressurect the mobs and kill em in different spot so they melt and boss can't use their parts for himself. I love OT it, it's way more fun than running around being blue dps. It also pushes a bigger pressure on healers if people don't stand behind cover on raidwide, tho I think if you messed up, you should be the one getting punished, not your healers. And it requares for dps not midlessly beat one target and one target only, you need to pay attention to what you kill and where.
Granted, I never done this raid in HW, as I started playing mid-SB, and don't know how hard it was at the release, but given how even now people wipe there due to their need to not switch targets or hold on to dps a little bit, so tank can position Faust and tanks properly... Something like this should appear more often. Dps can drop scraps whenever they want, it doesn't need to be at the exact predetermined spot, it just needs to provide cover. MT have to dcd enough, cuz boss still punches pretty hard. OT have their own minigame with adds. And heals have to be on point, you can't really go yolo here and push all resposibility to co-healer. I'd imagine people wiped less in here if they were prepared by something similar earlier in the game in one form or another.

[linayar]

That's why there's "idk" as I coudn't think of more examples. I shoud've been more presice in that, I guess.
You know what's my favorite normal raid so far?
A9, the one where you need to ressurect the mobs and kill em in different spot so they melt and boss can't use their parts for himself. I love OT it, it's way more fun than running around being blue dps. It also pushes a bigger pressure on healers if people don't stand behind cover on raidwide, tho I think if you messed up, you should be the one getting punished, not your healers. And it requares for dps not midlessly beat one target and one target only, you need to pay attention to what you kill and where.
Granted, I never done this raid in HW, as I started playing mid-SB, and don't know how hard it was at the release, but given how even now people wipe there due to their need to not switch targets or hold on to dps a little bit, so tank can position Faust and tanks properly... Something like this should appear more often. Dps can drop scraps whenever they want, it doesn't need to be at the exact predetermined spot, it just needs to provide cover. MT have to dcd enough, cuz boss still punches pretty hard. OT have their own minigame with adds. And heals have to be on point, you can't really go yolo here and push all resposibility to co-healer. I'd imagine people wiped less in here if they were prepared by something similar earlier in the game in one form or another.

Uh, so you do know that A9 is essentially about positioning and burning things down, right? I don't mind it myself, but I prefer A5 as an OT, though it suffers from too much DPS, causing more skipped mechanics from what I can tell in the last few runs I've had of it.

[Raikai]

I don't doubt that, but Absurdity here gives a good point about it:

And this is exactly my issue with it. This and almost every mechanic being about positioning. There is position mechanics that I like, Tsuky moon stacks are my favorite, but for the most part it's "don't stay here, you either die yourself or/and drag your whole party with you". And there's no way around it at all, you just have to dance with all those aoes. But how much more fun it would've been if there was a way to stop that aoe dance and to replace it with something else, like healcheck or something, idk. I wish we got more players responsibilities beyond just moving ourselfs from place to place. I wish we could deny bosses their abilities not by just burning their hp down.

Sometimes I wonder if the combat mechanics that are always Positionals / Kill X before bar fills are because of an actual decision of them not to risk the combat design out of their "comfort zone" or it's because of the old sphagetti code structure...

[Hatfright]

Sometimes I wonder if the combat mechanics that are always Positionals / Kill X before bar fills are because of an actual decision of them not to risk the combat design out of their "comfort zone" or it's because of the old sphagetti code structure...

Could be both tho.

Uh, so you do know that A9 is essentially about positioning and burning things down, right? I don't mind it myself, but I prefer A5 as an OT, though it suffers from too much DPS, causing more skipped mechanics from what I can tell in the last few runs I've had of it.

Essentially, yes. But much more fun for me than "you can stand here and here only, otherwise you're all dead".
And yes, A5 is fun too, too bad there's no need for tank swap anymore. And, well, skipping mechanics cuz of too much DPS is a problem for way too many fights today.

[Genz]

Sometimes I wonder if the combat mechanics that are always Positionals / Kill X before bar fills are because of an actual decision of them not to risk the combat design out of their "comfort zone" or it's because of the old sphagetti code structure...

Rule of thumb : every question "Is it because of old spaghetti code that [...]?", the answer is no.

[Dyvid]

And this is exactly my issue with it. This and almost every mechanic being about positioning. There is position mechanics that I like, Tsuky moon stacks are my favorite, but for the most part it's "don't stay here, you either die yourself or/and drag your whole party with you". And there's no way around it at all, you just have to dance with all those aoes. But how much more fun it would've been if there was a way to stop that aoe dance and to replace it with something else, like healcheck or something, idk. I wish we got more players responsibilities beyond just moving ourselfs from place to place. I wish we could deny bosses their abilities not by just burning their hp down.

But that is FFXIV gameplay, dodging. We've had certain dungeon boss fight that just did random but it never really caught on.

Bosses used to be more complex in termes of strategy in ARR (one only needs to go in some <50 dungeons to notice it). The problem with current bosses is that they ve been heavily streamlined since heavensward and a lot of mechanics are being recycled from one boss to another since HW.

Very true but unfortunately the majority of the community couldn't do it. Labyrinth of the Ancients was very mechanic heavy for example. Steps of Faith was another one people couldn't do.

[Cilia]

Element of randomness in WoW fights? I don't see it, at all... The fights are scripted, that's why they have DBM over there that shows you the timer of all of boss actions. The thing that can add a lot of variables to the fights are not the randomness, but the fact that most fights can be done in different ways, and DPS there have a lot more responsibility than in XIV, which is basically just predict the telegraphs and react to AoE marks accordingly. Basically very linear fights. WoW's bosses also never follow a specific rule, so it's usually harder to be intuitive on what to do, and that I would also think it's an element that make their fights feel less "scripted".

But still yeah, WoW has that over XIV - those elements tend to make the fights more interesting. The downside is that they are much harder to balance, and often a content patch goes through a lot of hotfixes and adjustments.

I don't use mods, but even if I did, I'm thinking specifically of the Unbound Abomination - final boss of the Underrot in BfA. This guy can't be conventionally damaged - you have to beat on him until a secondary "blood gauge" fills up, spawning adds you kill to actually damage him. He also puts a persistent, stacking DoT onto the party which a helper NPC will periodically cleanse in an AoE around a random party member, and also puts down randomly placed, persistent AoE patches around his boss room that will very quickly kill you if you stand in them. That's just on normal. Hard mode (Mythic difficulty) has those AoE patches turn into mobs that track players, which when killed put their patch back down until they get up again.

This is a 5-man dungeon boss. Admittedly the most difficult one in the expansion, but there's nothing of comparable difficulty in XIV beyond some high-level 2.0 dungeons (Dzmael Darkhold and Aurum Vale). Everything here is learning the boss's telegraphs and dodging, stacking, or spacing as necessary. It's certainly easier, and more convenient, but less fulfilling.

[Raikai]

I don't use mods, but even if I did, I'm thinking specifically of the Unbound Abomination - final boss of the Underrot in BfA. This guy can't be conventionally damaged - you have to beat on him until a secondary "blood gauge" fills up, spawning adds you kill to actually damage him. He also puts a persistent, stacking DoT onto the party which a helper NPC will periodically cleanse in an AoE around a random party member, and also puts down randomly placed, persistent AoE patches around his boss room that will very quickly kill you if you stand in them. That's just on normal. Hard mode (Mythic difficulty) has those AoE patches turn into mobs that track players, which when killed put their patch back down until they get up again.

This is a 5-man dungeon boss. Admittedly the most difficult one in the expansion, but there's nothing of comparable difficulty in XIV beyond some high-level 2.0 dungeons (Dzmael Darkhold and Aurum Vale). Everything here is learning the boss's telegraphs and dodging, stacking, or spacing as necessary. It's certainly easier, and more convenient, but less fulfilling.

Yeah, I get your point tho... WoW bosses actions are scripted yeah - after all, they don't execute things out of random - the thing is that there are variables out there that aren't exactly random, but they add several more layers of complexity. I truly wish XIV had this, to make DPS life a bit more spicy.