SQE has the Worst boss design in history

[Crasherino]

I'm sorry, I might be misunderstanding. Are you asking why every boss is hard until you know what to do?

Because I'm seeing a fair amount of this, let me clarify, when I say bosses on this game are far too easy once you know what to do, I'm going to use Bozja as the example here since I'm still fairly new to it and go back to the Eale boss Critical Engagement, and while I'm at the "Metal Fox Chaos" engagement as well. While I was doing Bozja for a good while, these 2 boss encounters really tripped me up essentially, after both encounters I watched a youtube guide to understand what on earth was going on, after that, when I happened to do them both again, they were a complete cake walk.

So it's not just a matter of "Am I asking why every boss is hard until I know what to do", I'm asking how it's possible for SQE to design bosses that are so simplistic by design in where there is almost no challenge once you know, simply because there is no real skill based mechanics, just a cast bar and a "oh, guess I better walk over here" mechanic, nothing really tests a players skill outside of the memory game.

edit: and to use games like Dark souls which others are using, you can watch a youtube guide on Dark Souls and still get smashed in repeatedly by that same boss, you have to practice those bosses over and over till you can understand it, that's not the case with this game even slightly.

[Garnix]

So, to summarize: "The bosses are too hard, so I have to watch a guide, and then they are too easy".
So, basically you skip the whole concept of XIV's boss design (which is basically figuring out what the boss is doing), and judge them without even trying to figure them out.
+ people have been farming Bozja for over a year, so yeah, obviously it's a cake walk now. You should have seen the chobobo CE when it launched.

As other said, your problem is not the boss design, it's the gameplay, which is not your typical action game.

I would suggest you join a static and try to tackle the next savage tier when it comes out without using guides, and come back to comment on your experience.

[kaynide]

edit: and to use games like Dark souls which others are using, you can watch a youtube guide on Dark Souls and still get smashed in repeatedly by that same boss, you have to practice those bosses over and over till you can understand it, that's not the case with this game even slightly.

That’s the point though. For some people learning how to do the fight is a big source of fun. Just watching a guide negates a lot of work you would otherwise have to do. It’s like asking why Sudoku or crosswords are fun when you just skip to the solution.

Otherwise the argument doesn’t make sense. Anything casual should become relatively easy to do once you have good skill/understanding in it. We’re talking “going to cousins birthday party at the skating rink, hope I don’t fall down”, not the Olympics where only the best of the best can clear it.

[SenorPatty]

Because I'm seeing a fair amount of this, let me clarify, when I say bosses on this game are far too easy once you know what to do, I'm going to use Bozja as the example here since I'm still fairly new to it and go back to the Eale boss Critical Engagement, and while I'm at the "Metal Fox Chaos" engagement as well. While I was doing Bozja for a good while, these 2 boss encounters really tripped me up essentially, after both encounters I watched a youtube guide to understand what on earth was going on, after that, when I happened to do them both again, they were a complete cake walk.

So it's not just a matter of "Am I asking why every boss is hard until I know what to do", I'm asking how it's possible for SQE to design bosses that are so simplistic by design in where there is almost no challenge once you know, simply because there is no real skill based mechanics, just a cast bar and a "oh, guess I better walk over here" mechanic, nothing really tests a players skill outside of the memory game.

edit: and to use games like Dark souls which others are using, you can watch a youtube guide on Dark Souls and still get smashed in repeatedly by that same boss, you have to practice those bosses over and over till you can understand it, that's not the case with this game even slightly.

I think the question is "what do you want bosses to do when you know their attack sequence?"

-Go into a phase where attacks are rng? You would just end up studying what possible attacks the rng phase has and you'd react to them.

-Hit harder? Already happens in some boss fights, nothing healers can't get through.

Encounter designs are gonna have their limits, that's just not to FF14 but really any game. Even super/secret bosses can become laughably easy as long as you memorize them. That's just how all video games work. I don't know if you mean something else but that's how most people in this thread are interpreting your question.

[Yeol]

Just because the fights are scripted, it doesn't make them easy.
Just because you memorize mechanics, doesn't mean you will never fail them.

The chains of mechanics happening back to back, sometimes even if you know what to do, you might not react fast enough for them.

A fight can be 80% easy and breeze, but the remaining 20% where 1 or 2 mechanics require a lot of concentration and quick-reaction can easily hold you back. These types of mechanics are present in high-end content.

If you watch streams of high-rank players' or top statics aiming for the perfect run (no mistakes), you will still see them fail/wipe a lot in high-end content. And these are arguably the best players at the game.

[Semirhage]

Why is it when people say "skill" with respect to video games, what they always actually mean is "remove all of the strategy and replace it with action combat twitch reflexes and dodge rolling"? Memorizing something complex and executing it: not skill. Figuring out combinations on the fly before an attack goes off: not skill. Determining the best gear setup for clearing a particular area: not skill. Not as applicable to FFXIV, but learning status weaknesses or determining which abilities you need to use to counter your opponent's carefully-constructed series of attacks on your party: not skill. Dodge rolling on the correct frame: there you go, finally, that's skill. Thank god, the medium is saved.

[Alaray]

gonna say:

every boss in every game becomes pretty easy once you know what to do to win. There isn't an outlier I can think of. Everything operates off patterns, sure they might come in slightly different orders, but there's always a tell in basically every title where you can learn "means this pattern" and then do what you need to win.

bosses are designed to be killed, after all.

action games aren't separated out of this, either. more you do the fights, more you know what the boss is gonna do, can do, will do, more time spent on it means more muscle memory built, more muscle memory built leads to doing things like, say, parrying, without much effort.

it's like anything, if you want to extrapolate difficulty. nothing made to be surmounted is insurmountable.

[Waliel]

As you brought Dark Souls up, the bosses become incredibly easy after you learn their movesets, and depending on your build, you could probably win most of them first try blind by just playing very defensive. I don't find Souls games exactly mechanically hard.

[Krotoan]

Ya'll want unpredictable and unforgiving boss battles with RNG elements and "skill" based encounters?

I highly suggest the monster hunter series.

You can get kind of a taste of it in the MH quest we have.. but it's limited by the engine and ping mismatch of FFXIV.

[GrizzlyTank]

- The only reason GW2 "feel" challenge is because it has no trinity, so there is no role specific mechanic. Difficulty wise it's even more shallow than FF14 'cause since every attack is "mild", you just have to remember more of them.

This has been wrong since Heart of Thorns. There might not be clear tank/healer role indicators, but a players who stack themselves with toughness will generate more aggro than others effectively making them the tank, while there are multiple specs that have dedicated healer builds such as Ranger->Druid, Revenant->Ventari, Elementalist->Tempest, along with 3 other specs with strong burst heals/barrier (Guardian, Necromancer, Engineer).

However for tanks, because of the buff heavy nature of the game the tank roles ends up being given to mostly support roles, rather than the typical sword and shield specs.