The unbalanced reliance on fight design to make combat interesting

[pikalovr]

snip

wow it's almost as if trial and error is a thing, and having unique markers to force players to think about the potential ways to solve the marker is a good thing cause it actually promotes working together weird that huh in a MMORPG? you might not have realized what was needed there but someone else might've and they can speak up. i'm sorry if forgetting a mechanic is annoying to you then we might as well get rid of number mechanics and just explain every single mechanic as they're casted. you will forget mechanics you will have periods of trial and error there's absolutely no reason to get rid of unique markers or indicators you can make them easier to see (ram out, dragon in being a good example of something that could be shown better). but you don't remove them hence why i said what you call this a game built on revisions and "evolution", i call a game built on binning anything too hard to deal with (both on their side and the players side) and devolves. you wanna know what actual evolution in this game is? stuff like bozja the lost actions ADD onto our abilities and allow us to experiment and see what we can do. it added another form of skill expression that people can and did ignore anyways.

i've already explained why this AOE indicator works in another post above this

it would be a great indicator (pun not intended) that there will be unique indicators and you will have to learn what they do through trial and error sometimes and thats 100% ok. not every marker should be universal, throw in the occasional odd ball to really throw players for a loop. like the numbered mechanics they're typically different depending on the mechanic and you have to learn what the numbers are for and thats 100% ok. most of the time you wipe once or twice and understand at least what the mechanic does. so no the "standardize" change argument doesn't hold up cause it's a good oddball and even has an AOE around it. which already narrows down it's intended mechanics spread from the parties or stack with the parties and doing either or you'll see you were right or wrong without costing the entire AR a wipe cause the little hill still appears even if everyone on the AOE dies even if all three players huddle on top of each other you'll still have people who will think it's a stay away and stay out and potentially save the raid

and i'll say this once again

wiping to learn mechanics is ok and i don't get people have this phobia of wiping in game it's perfectly normal you wipe you go over what you need to or what you learned you come up with a plan you repull repeat. thats literally what MMORPGs are supposed to be about COMMUNICATION and PLAYER INTERACTIONS not just 8 guys silently repulling the boss cause maybe one guy messed up a keep away mechanic and they just assume he'll get it right this time

[Brightamethyst]

Like I said before, trial and error only works once. Once you figure something out it's not a puzzle anymore. And while yes, it's still new for new players even if you've done a fight a hundred times, if you then tell them about the mechanic ahead of time it's no longer trial and error for them either. All you've done is make more work for the sake of making more work. It's not more fun or engaging.

And there most definitely are non-standard mechanics. They're just tied to higher tier content where taking the time to fail and learn is the intended design. People expect to wipe a lot while figuring out new mechanics in EX/savage fights. Not so in random dungeons or alliance raids.

[Ransu]

The "dance" is one of the main reasons I enjoy end game here. A lot of MMO's end game raids are basically just kill trash > fight target dummy, kill trash, fight target dummy with 1 or 2 mechanics, kill trash, fighting a boss with somewhat meaningful mechanics.

FFXIV removed the annoying trash clearing and the long walks of shame after every wipe and found a way to create mechanics that involves the entire party. Does it suck to wipe because 1 person screwed up? Sure, it can get annoying sometimes, but that's part of the fun. I guess if you pugged all the fights then ya that would be horrible, but with a static its great.

There's also only so much you can do in a game with such a slow GCD. Movement heavy mechanics fills in that gap.

[pikalovr]

don't even know why i try to change people who want to face roll content with no opposition or thinking at this point

except once AGAIN it's impossible to wipe that mechanic as it still produced the hill regardless of deaths, and like i said unless all three people stacked ontop of eachother and everyone else as well you were not wiping that raid. so tell me why it had to be removed? or is wiping not the only annoyance here? in which case i could argue that any fight that forces you out of uptime is "annoying". and should be taken away oh wait they already heard that people hate not having uptime on melee so they made 100% uptime on savage fights easier. instead of potentially having to do some wacky things for uptime or risk wiping/doing mechanics wrong to achieve it. also they instead of sticking to their guns and giving phys ranged jobs a reason to have a "ranged/movement" tax at all (which they still haven't addressed just fyi MCH, BRD, DNC are still extremely low especially MCH for being a selfish DPS) . they caved into players not wanting to have any opposition which is what is really the problem here you don't want to deal with thinking or wiping even once to remember a mechanic you just want to roll your face on the keyboard and clear the content. sure there can be general markers for mechanics that's perfectly fine but you have no good argument for removing what unique markers/indicators are left like people want the chimera in cutters cry changed. despite it not being necessary for MSQ to begin with. should we change it then? and why stop there? just make everything standard so you no longer have to think.

if nothing else i'd argue this game is too lenient of tells/markrers/groundeffects. almost everything has a cast bar a ground preview AOE or a marker WITH a ground preview AOE if it's AOE on the target the only time we really see them break this mold is with stuff like savages. let's take P1s for example with intemperence instead of the game sitting there holding your hand if you get something wrong you get a party wide damage down and risk wiping the party (emphasis on risk not a guaranteed wipe unless you mess up twice) and they throw in a purple crystal (thunder) that will throw people for a loop. but according to you we should just never see something like that in normal gameplay an EVOLUTION to a mechanic. cause it can be "annoying" to die to that simple change of the purple crystal. which is more annoying dying to a mechanic that basically gets told to you that you still messed up or one that you had to actually learn through trial and error and mess up again cause you forgot?

you want a recent example? newest dungeon in 6.1 (mandatory for MSQ mind you) has the final boss call down two sets of colored threads and he'll tether to one set of them a mechanic that you will learn from through trial and error cause you have a 50/50 here either something will happen to the tethered or untethered threads and it'll prolly be an AOe so you have a 50/50 on ti being a small donut AOE or a small AOE around the thread. so you're already at a 1/4 chance of guessing correctly if you're new or forgot the mechanic, and when i mess it up again running through it again i don't get annoyed or frustrated i go "oh yeah thats how it works" and do it the next time correctly. but no we can't ahve that get rid of it and just turn into a ground AOE with a 4 second delay before it comes out according to your logic cause dying to the current mechanic is "annoying"

it's not people being annoyed by mechanics it's people being annoyed they can't do everything perfectly 100% of the time. and it's why i'll die on this hill of bringing back more unique mechanics/indicators/markers/etc... and the game actually EVOLVES on those mechanics in all forms of content even the thread mechanic while not as game changing as having to do say in and out chains under intemperence. it's still evolves on the mechanics the game has taught you (tethers and AOEs). cause if you want a game that you can just faceroll the keyboard and get angry at literally the tiniest mistake. there's plenty of alternatives that allow you to feel that way and will baby you through everything.

so lets call it what it really is people being against any form of opposition or thinking.

[MintnHoney]

Like I said before, trial and error only works once. Once you figure something out it's not a puzzle anymore.

Apparently it is, considering what you had previously said about players being unable to comprehend how to handle those purple markers, despite everything.