Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Zebraoracle]

Mitigation plan is definitely not the same for P8S phase 1, it changes depending on if you get dog first or snake first. Starting from SB you gotta admit FF14 has been trying to add and widen the deviation of the fights.

I mean, his point still stands though. The vast majority of fights in this game are completely scripted, savage raiding/ultimate raiding are learning the steps to a dance and then performing it. A boss might have a bit of randomness in some aspects (P8S wall boss switching between forms at the start for example), but that's far and away the deviation and not the norm. Most fights follow an exact timeline that doesn't change at all, far moreso than WoW's. WoW raid bosses are a lot more chaotic and are definitely not learning the steps to a dance and then performing it. Just because there are a few outliers doesn't mean they are the norm.

Let's look at TEA, an ultimate fight. It has a static timeline that happens without fail every time. The only deviation here is who gets what mechanic put on them for certain things. Living Liquid will always spam ground slap, BJCC will always make your party rotate nisi passes, Alexander will always make you do wormhole, etc, at the same exact time without fail.

[Raven2014]

Let's look at TEA, an ultimate fight. It has a static timeline that happens without fail every time. The only deviation here is who gets what mechanic put on them for certain things. Living Liquid will always spam ground slap, BJCC will always make your party rotate nisi passes, Alexander will always make you do wormhole, etc, at the same exact time without fail.

And I can present you DSR, where it may be the same mechanic (enum) but since you have random execution, it still requires you to adjust pretty much every time. That's why it was a wall during prog, and a group can't pass it reliably unless every member had mastered every permutation. The point is I didn't say FF14 had a lot, I'm saying getting more and more and there is a marked improvement each tier.

And don't forget, when they tried to push the envelop a bit too hard (Midgasorm), the feedback they received was not a positive one. The FF14 community is not as raid centric as the WoW community. This goes back to my point about having the right expectation for the game you play.


- GW2: freeform design. The game designed so that you can win without needing any one particular ability as long as your reflex is good enough. Your abilities is there as a safety margin, but not as a requirement. This means the boss can do w/e they want any time.
- WoW: the reason it can "afford" to be more dynamic because the fight also designed with a much bigger safety margin. The larger raid also give room to adjust for more error.
- FF14: you have a smaller raid, and also extreme punishing for mistake. Before you start over-gearing the content: someone make a mistake: wipe. Someone forgot to pop a mit: wipe. The tank pop their CD too early? Wipe. When you already operate on such a thin margin, there isn't a lot of room to flex. And like I said, even with that there have been a clear effort from the FF14 team to make the fights more dynamic.


If GW2 is designed like a Ninja Gaiden game, FF14 is designed like a DDR game. It's up to you to say which one you prefer, but the infrastructure behind them are different even if the presentation look similar at first glance.