I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[VirusOnline]

I would like it if enrages (in savage+) were done away with and instead were designed with increasing periods of increasing soft enrages that are unique to the theme of each boss.

If I had my way, these soft enrages would go up on a base percent + a modifier scale based on a few things:
- iLvl
- boss current health
- the group's current succes:fail ratio (based on amount of nondeaths:deaths)
- perhaps even role-specific and overall group playstyle (challenge the roles based on performance)

If you think about it, if you're fighting IRL, your enemy is going to change its tactics based on these types of things and how it learns how you fight. So why not in a video game ?

I feel like fights these days are trivial damage that don't ask or assume anything about the players other than can you move to position x,y,z on the platform and you have x amount of minutes to down the boss. The soft enrage's growth in intensity will sooner do away with a poor performing group than an outright point blank.
Instead I would like if the soft enrage asked and did assume and to increase/change based on those factors.

[Jeeqbit]

If I had my way, these soft enrages would go up on a base percent + a modifier scale based on a few things:
- iLvl

In order for gear to matter, gear must make you more powerful. If attacks sync up to your item level, then the benefit of gear reduces significantly. This already happens enough with all the content we sync down to and current expansion content is the little content in the game we mostly don't sync in so our gear actually matters.

The gear could be useful for increasing DPS still, but the extra health is significant in helping you get through fights easier as well.

[Absurdity]

In order for gear to matter, gear must make you more powerful. If attacks sync up to your item level, then the benefit of gear reduces significantly. This already happens enough with all the content we sync down to and current expansion content is the little content in the game we mostly don't sync in so our gear actually matters.

The gear could be useful for increasing DPS still, but the extra health is significant in helping you get through fights easier as well.

Pretty much, getting better gear already hardly matters since all content in the game can be cleared in just crafted gear. So if incoming damage scaled with better gear there would be even less of a point in getting it... outside of chasing big numbers on fflogs and we can't count that as a game feature.

[Rolder50]

Pretty much, getting better gear already hardly matters since all content in the game can be cleared in just crafted gear. So if incoming damage scaled with better gear there would be even less of a point in getting it... outside of chasing big numbers on fflogs and we can't count that as a game feature.

All content in the game can be cleared in just crafted gear *if everyone in the party is highly skilled. Gear mainly helps weaker groups clear in a timely fashion.

And I'm not sure if ultimate can be cleared in crafted gear. Has anyone tried?

[Absurdity]

All content in the game can be cleared in just crafted gear *if everyone in the party is highly skilled. Gear mainly helps weaker groups clear in a timely fashion.

And I'm not sure if ultimate can be cleared in crafted gear. Has anyone tried?

Right now you can't. From the bit of DSR that I've experienced you would most likely just get oneshot even with mitigation, if damage however scales with ilvl you might be able to clear it with just crafted gear.

You don't even need a "highly" skilled party, just people who can press buttons when they need to but yes, better gear is supposed to make fights easier. So if better gear meant the boss just dealt more damage it would somewhat defeat that point.

[VirusOnline]

Understandable, but it could work if we think of the soft enrage (for the purposes of comparison alone) as a boss' "2m burst".

(It's late and I'm tired, so I hope this comes out as I see it in my mind lol keep in mind i'm not experienced in boss design, i'm just thinking to myself mostly)

We equate encounter difficulty as a boss upping his damage output or the intensity of mechanics.
The upping of his damage and the intensity of his mechanics should be a base assumption. It's an enrage, after all. In my head I think of it as a story, there are rise and falls, but the overall trend is and upward rise where each 2m boss burst is a step up from the last and build up over time either picking up with speed (2m to 1m to 30s) or severity or even both until the group can no longer over come it. This at least gives a group the ability to have some degree of control and on the go strategizing in a fight rather than a cheap smack that wipes everyone to zero (sudden hard enrage). You may be still fighting against a clock, but the degree of control has shifted to a middle ground: the 2m boss burst may undermine your gear a little bit but the group is still able to clear the fight faster due to higher iLvl.

What the boss' burst should do is make a group change their approach (things cannot stay the same ie healer relying on oGCDs and spamming glare the whole 10m).

These periods have the potential to do a few things:

- Pull healers out of relying on oGCDs and spamming one button damage, especially if these burst periods are subtly eased in. It would constantly have a healer evaluating risk vs. reward (should I throw up a GCD shield or dps?).

- It's hard to challenge dps even during an enrage other than say "outdps this". Job complexity has been gutted so that takes out even more ways to challenge dps. The only thing that could be a challenge for dps during a soft enrage is to challenge the 2m meta and instead place a dps check that falls far outside of the dps' ability to employ their 2m meta or even hold them (where holding them would not be worth it in the overall fight due to dps loss). I honestly don't see how this would play out, but it would be fun if a boss placed a dps challenge outside the reach of the a dps' burst.

- Tanks on the other hand are just ... a striking dummy for the boss during any type of mechanic really be it TB or standing in all the bad. Mitigating damage is a given as it is a healer's to heal damage. But we're tanks. We should be asked to cover damage. PLD has cover, WAR has heal, DRK bubble and they usually just use it on themselves or their cotank. In these soft enrages they should be invited to utilize these type of specific abilities less on themselves and more on their group. Off the top of my head say Tsuyu's Selomancy during burst phase stacks twice as fast and a member of the group fails it and is about to die. A PLD cover allows himself to assume the member's damage (including debuff damage) with the possibility of it KO'ing him. It adds another element of risk vs. reward and a degree of control.

@_@ man i'll probably be upset that i wrote this tired

[Ransu]

I'd rather keep the hard enrage and make gear matter again. Being able to clear all the savage fights in the first week with crafted gear is pretty dumb.

[4clubbedace]

This is not a bad thing. Figuring out what's best or building what's best for the type of content (there's more to xiv than savage!) is a thing in many rpg and mmorpgs.

itd be worthless in 14 since battle content all have the same endgoal: clear

whatever makes the clear easier/faster will always be the go to, and that will mean damage in the end. The only class that theres any distinction of build diff is healers with piety. the better your team is, the less you need it . having "sects" or paths is just a lower key way of having diff roles for one job, such as older wow where a pld can be set as dps, healer, tank

all this means is that these are three different jobs that need balancing. They tried it with arcanist dps and healer split, and the team found it a massive pain in the ass.

[Shurrikhan]

itd be worthless in 14 since battle content all have the same endgoal: clear

whatever makes the clear easier/faster will always be the go to, and that will mean damage in the end.

Ehhh... that is, not great way to frame it.

Yeah if you consider "Complete the objectives" to be an objective in itself, then all objectives will be that... but that's uselessly circular.

The problem isn't that we clear aim to clear content (What else would we possibly do?); the problem is that there are so few dangers of note outside of the "Enrage" that the only pace of throughput that particularly matters is "overall" and that kits have shallowed out to fit that context.

What makes a clear on average (i.e., when including the difference in chances for wipes) faster for Party A... needn't also make a clear faster on average for Parties B through Z (as might otherwise differ in terms of average/individual player skill levels, overall fight familiarity, how well mechanic A, B, or C click with them, what other utilities they may have, etc.).

The only reason the two priorities end up with the same answer is precisely because each role is so homogenized across its jobs and content so homogenized around only the single long-term, uncapped (short of clearing) check being relevant outside of Ultimate.

It's not that "whatever makes the clear easier/faster" is a bad goal. The problem is that XIV makes every question, every priority, give the same answer, because every kit is largely the same, because every fight is largely the same.

having "sects" or paths is just a lower key way of having diff roles for one job, such as older wow where a pld can be set as dps, healer, tank

all this means is that these are three different jobs that need balancing.

Yes, but with some (likely significant) portion of each of those jobs having already been balanced, especially if any whole capacities are transferred wholesale. And balancing is only a rather small part of the design work that goes into each new job.

The question is simply what level(s) of customization would have greater return on investment per time invested (more players finding the job that clicks for them / excites them enough to start/keep playing per up-front and periodic developer hour spent directly on and indirectly because of the additional build or job), and how intuitive the game wants its choices to be. (On one hand, all meaningful choice is on the same level -- one's job -- but gear class and sub-stats/Materia are a unimpactful yet bloated mess, so the design direction regarding how intuitive its choices should be... isn't terribly clear.)

[Anxin]

I'm gonna respond to the point I feel most strongly about. Criterion has given us dungeon mobs that are actuall threatening (I often joked how the tree mob at the start hits harder then the P7s tree). And still to me those parts were by far the least interesting bits of the dungeon. A combat system like ff14 shines with boss encounters, I'm fine with trash mobs being trash mobs that die quickly because it gives me quicker access to the parts of dungeons I find more fun.

I have the opposite view. I find trash mobs more engaging than the scripted boss encounters. More things can go wrong with trash because they are a little more random. But I respect your idea of fun. We need both modes. I would love to see complex dungeons without bosses. Just lots of interesting trash mobs...perhaps some that ignore tank mechanics and attack high dps players or even the healers.

Honestly, the game has changed to the point where I am not having fun. I dislike the scripted dancing nature of the game, but that is okay. Not every game is for every player.