SQE has the Worst boss design in history

[ApolloGenX]

Agreed. This is just how you balance multiplayer online content.

I think OP is really just complaining that FF XIV isn't an action RPG. Which ... although I would be intrigued to see what an "action RPG" style FFXIV would look like, it has pretty solidly dug itself into a "scripted DDR fights" trench. At this point I think it would be quite difficult for the devs to retrofit an action RPG playstyle into encounters.

It would be pretty funny if there was a fight that turned us into pixels and was turn based. No idea how they would do it, but I would lol.

[Lily_Skye]

Why is it that literally every new single boss encounter is a "this boss is insanely hard" until you simply know what the skill does, and then it turns into "this boss is a snooze fest", every single god forsaken boss, there's no skill based mechanics in this game at all, and what's worse is that the hardest content in this game is nothing more than a memory game as well with the difference being you pre-assign everyone to move to pre-determined specific spots to complete mechanics without being 1 shot.

agree thats why i dont raid in this game

lazy design imo

[SeverianLyonesse]

It would be pretty funny if there was a fight that turned us into pixels and was turn based. No idea how they would do it, but I would lol.

Would probably have to be a very limited phase of a boss fight so it wouldn't wear out its welcome. Like the Ikaruga phase of Puppet's Bunker.

[Jin-]

Welcome to scripted railroad combat design. There's your answer

[LisSquid]

Why is it that literally every new single boss encounter is a "this boss is insanely hard" until you simply know what the skill does

You just described all of Dark Souls.

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

Oh yeah like Dark Souls.

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.

Oh we're on the same page except it's also like Dark Souls where the invaders are PF randos and one of them doesn't know what a 3 marker means.

[Amon-ster]

Unfortunately due to the overall unresponsive nature of the netcode in XIV, making a more randomized, reactionary encounter wouldn't be possible. I think your complaint is that the fights are hard scripted with little-to-no variation in what can happen. In other games and even other MMOs, bosses have a list of abilities in their arsenal and they just pick which one they feel like doing, essentially. There are other things like phases that unlock new abilities/alter existing ones, and you just have to react to what's happening. However, XIV has a notoriously bad netcode with a three second server tick that basically prohibits any last second, reactionary skills. Classes are designed to have rather strict rotations, with only healers being exempt from that because their role requires them to naturally be more reactionary than every other role (and their trade off is that they don't have a "rotation" at all), so breaking that rotation to react to something would be detrimental to playing the class properly.

Overall, XIV simply isn't built to allow for less predictable encounters. They'd have to fix a lot of issues with the core gameplay in order to start designing things like that. I'm not a fan of it either, as once progression finishes it basically becomes a "turn your brain off" sort of ideal, but I think that's the point of XIV. To be a turn your brain off kind of game.

[SnowVix]

Example of how traversal skills could be used in PvE, there could be mechanics or skills that go off, a simple example being AoEs that can't be i-framed, but go off quickly and take a lot of damage, with one of the only ways to avoid it being reactions of the player to dodge with your traversal out of the way.

Example with i-frames could be the same thing but with either massive AoEs, big swipe skills that you couldn't use a traversal to avoid maybe, just spitballing ideas, but basically the idea is that it would be nice if SQE actually introduced more skill based PvE with things like this, just so when I'm doing these end-game dungeons and such for tokens to get gear, it doesn't feel like a boring slog because you know exactly what every skill does and how to casually walk out of it.

So you want them to completely revamp the game to be action-based instead of GCD-based? Because what you're asking for is impossible without completely gutting the engine and redoing it, and that'll take a lot longer than a single expansion patch cycle.

[Havenchild]

There is literally no single MMO or arguably game on the planet that doesn't suffer from the "know the encounter, win the fight", even in more reactive games like God of War, Dark Souls etc.
Dark Souls rolling nukes 90% of the games attacks that don't have weird ass back arcs. i-frames also fall apart and not consistent when a game has latency / server ticks etc (ie Dark Souls online)

Anyway, I'm not sure OP has the experience to comment on this using CE bosses in Bozja as a reference point. While it's true even in savage content, if everyone follows the rules, it's easy to down on reclears, there is alot of special people in PF that always make it "interesting".
Imagine PF in Savage with more "variety, action based, reactory gameplay". Mofos can't even memorize a pattern in P1S and rather take the damage down.

[Mapleine]

Opposite opinion, boss encounter design is fantastic, only annoying because I want more.

I'd run dungeons and raids every day if the game would supply a bit more and would allow multi-job lockouts. Instead, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's probably best to sub for a month or two every couple years and not play otherwise.

[Shiro--Tsubasa]

by this logic Dark Soul, a game franchise known and praised for boss design, has garbage boss design. lol