Do encounteres FEEL different now?

[Renathras]

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Agree with all that, too.

So it's not just me. Glad to know that, at least.

EDIT:

I think that's an interesting topic, fight have changed, they've become more streamlined and sterile and its clear they're trying to reduce the player friction among all the levels of play (massive hitboxes, damage downs in savage, bosses that reposition themselves or that are straight out immobile) but I don't think this discussion should be here. It fits more in the general discussion as its nothing healer related (more than saying how low X trial demands the healing and all that).

I did start thinking that, so I posted it there after posting it here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...35#post6246235

...however, it got exactly one reply, which the person then deleted for...I'm not really sure why, actually.

Feel free to go there and contribute to the discussion there, though. I think this is actually an important topic that never gets talked about. And I think Roe's right on it - the encounters felt less sterile and more steady. Less lots of dead space and spikes of activity, less body checks, more forgiving but also more consistent, etc. Basically what I said condensed.

[WaxSw]

I did start thinking that, so I posted it there after posting it here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...35#post6246235

...however, it got exactly one reply, which the person then deleted for...I'm not really sure why, actually.

Feel free to go there and contribute to the discussion there, though. I think this is actually an important topic that never gets talked about. And I think Roe's right on it - the encounters felt less sterile and more steady. Less lots of dead space and spikes of activity, less body checks, more forgiving but also more consistent, etc. Basically what I said condensed.

I see, nevermind then since it'll probably more active here.

Can't elaborate much due to time contrains but my point about Exs is that they've always been quite creative, however its clear that recently they're trying to sterilize them, especially when it comes to their main mechanics and the checks they propose.

For example lets compare them in a case by case with Shb so I can elaborate on what I say and kinda put in order my thoughts at the same time

EW Ex1 vs Titania and Ex vs Innoncence: None of them are particullary difficult but both fall under 1st Ex is the easy one while the 2nd is a bit harder but if you look at how they challenge the players you'll find several differences.

-Ex 1 vs Titania: Are both the "easy one" but if you look at Ex1, as you said, its danger dorito all the way basically because there is no party coordination involved more than a tankswap and stacking, meanwhile Titania already ask for light party stacks, tanks to be conscious of not cleaving the party with a cone tankbuster, add coordination while also proposing uptime challenges when the branches grow. I'm not saying X or Y are harder or not, I'd say they were both similar in difficulty but in that difficulty Ex1 removes player agency for a more automatic fight while Titania gives more control to the players and as such can create more friction.

-Ex 2 vs Innocence: First I want to rebute one point "Ex2 was a lot harder for people to figure out on sight since "hiding behind cyrstals" wasn't something non-Savage players were at all familiar with" this is not true, not only as you said crystal tower ask for that, but its a mechanic that is seen several times through the MSQ, a few examples that come to mind are "the burn" and "atiascope" the lv89 dungeon, but moving from that point. Ex2 and Inno like Ex1 and Zodiark are similar in challenge and their fight design are in fact much closer that Ex1 and Titania ,then, why I say that Ex2 is more sterile? Player responsibility. The main mechanics of Ex2 (basically the role attacks and the lightwaves) while being far more player involved than Ex1 are largely automatic and don't ask for any kind of individual responsibility more than self preservation and the ocassional tank movement/tankbuster meanwhile innocence is not afraid to make individual players choose where line aoes will hit but this goes all the way to even allowing the players to decide which safe spot to create in the latter parts of the fight. Once again both are similar in difficulty but its clear which of the two gives the least to the player to play with.

-Endsinger vs Hades: Honestly I don't think I need to elaborate on this one, Endsinger as an Ex is a dissapointing one while Hades is almost a savage level fight with much much more mechanics and overall things going on, but even if we leave that aside you'll find how player responsibility is much higher on Hades than in Endsinger with stuff like flamethrower-like proteans, group divisions to take the ascians, the tether mechanics, etc...

The rest of the fights follow similar trends and if we compare them to the Sb ones the amount of things left in the player hands increase even further. If I were to put it in a pharse would be that the more into EW we are the less the fight is a dance between players and the boss and the more is simply learning the boss choreography.

On a Savage+ level the difference has been much more clear as they tend to be not that experimental as with EXs but to be concise we're now seeing an increase in body checks and mit checks (which has devalued combat raises), the 2 min meta and the increase of the dps checks, removal of player agency and also an increase in the mobility requirements of the fights which is creating an imbalance in the caster role (to the point that in TOP P6 BLM is the job with the lowest rDPS of the game at the 95% percentile and its below MCH in aDPS) but that would take more time than I have now.

[Renathras]

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Oh, you can post in that thread - or both - I wouldn't mind trying to get that discussion going in there.

Ex1 should compare with Innocence - both are the personal action ones - while Ex2 compares with Titania. Most people in ShB also insisted Innocence was the easier one. The way my brain works, Titania (and HydEx) were easier, but that's because I can remember patterns and orders of things while Innocence and ZodEx require reacting to randomization more. And I stand by the light crystals thing. I genuinely couldn't think of any other fight besides Behemoth and Amon where you have to do something like that, and in BOTH CASES, the players choose where to make the rocks since they're targeted on the players AND they don't explode when interacted with another mechanic. I think the big problem there was how few people could tell that what happens is the crystals explode when struck by lightwaves. I honestly couldn't figure it out and had to watch a guide (Miztek's, I think) and was like "OOOoooh, THAT'S what's happening". Literally no one in any of the PFs I did in the first two weeks could figure it out. It's one of those things that's obvious once you know it, but a LARGE swath of the playerbase DID NOT figure it out on their own. Contrast Titania, whose mechancs were largely "stand in puddles" and "swap the teather" and "don't stand in the telegraphed AOEs" and "get out of the way of the spreading roots", all of which are both easy and intuitive. The water puddles had the timers on them so it was obvious they were ticking up to something, and in FFXIV, "tower" mechanics are so normal everyone gets the idea, not to mention the failure doesn't wipe all non-Tanks in the party instantly with a wave of damage, it spawns a big blue add and the puddle goes away so you can see why you needed to stand in them. Likewise, the fire stack mechanic doing less damage in water makes intuitive sense - water makes fire burn less. The only kind of tricky thing for hear early on is realizing which of the two Runes she's doing, the point blank AOE or the doughnut. [NOTE: You may be having more trouble with the comparison here since you're trying to compare it to Innocence instead...]

Innocence and Zodiark are largely the "self preservation", as neither fight requires party coordination other than stacking for the laser in Innocence and stacking for the multi-hit lasers in ZodEx. I think Innocence also had a forced Tank swap mechanic. Basically, Ex1 and Innocence are the parity here, with Ex2 and Titania, not the other way around. Talking in terms of mechanics, not necessarily difficulty. As I said in the OP, people in 6.0 frequently said HydEx was a Savage level fight, and honestly, I found Erik easier as long as you don't have THAT ONE party member that can't figure out Fourfold... <_< There's a lot less movement and tight specific actions in P1S than Ex2 I felt at the time, and still do.

I did also think it was neat that they made HydEx (goddess of order) a very structured fight and ZodEx (god of change) a more freeform one.

HadEx I do remember being intensely painful when it hit live. But it was MOSTLY more understandable outside of the add phase. Once people figured out the knockbak "take lethal damage" vs "be healed to full" business, it made a lot more sense and just relied on people not cleaving the Tanks while they were catching meteors (though I still wish the Healer in the cage could do SOMETHING other than go make a sandwich while waiting to be freed...). Ex3, on the other hand, to this day people still don't understand what's going on with the order and the music notes thing is totally random as far as I can tell and kind of hard to see since the trajectory angles can be weird on your screen.

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I'll defer to you on the Savages and Ultimates, though, for...obvious reasons.

[WaxSw]

Ex1 should compare with Innocence - both are the personal action ones - while Ex2 compares with Titania.

Sure thing, I think the comparision remains unchanged even if we do that. I'd say that the main difference between Ex1 and Inno in their randomization, is, once again player involvement. In Ex1 case while there are some randomized elements none of them ask for party coordination nor give any player any responsibility outside their own survival, this goes to the extent of the hitbox of the boss which being static and extremely big meaning that boss positioning is not a tank responsibility anymore, meanwhile Inno still demands coordination and individual responsibility from the players. The line aoes that follow 2 members, boss positioning to avoid the explosions, deciding which balls to break and which not, more elements of the fight are in the player's hands.

Ex2 vs Titania actually shows that lack of player responsibility once again. During the whole Ex2 players only have to be wary of stacking/not stacking and dodging their stuff while tanks move the boss and the light waves phase its a "follow the dorito" phase with the exception of the first one, which has cleaves, meanwhile Titania still had those boss repositioning elements but also had an actual threatening adds that demand individual actions from the tanks, tethers that demand player responsibility, light party stacks with an element of adjustment and even the tethers that bind players together as an element that ask for individual player responsibility.

I do not agree that any of those are Savage level precisely because of that lack of personal responsibility as well as how the mechanics barely demand for individual player solving (thats why the dorito was so common in both exs but died in savage), but I guess its ok to compare them to erik even tough that speaks more about erik's difficulty than both Ex's.

Ex3 and Hades is the same discussion as above tough, Hades demands more individually from the player while Ex3 is more scripted and general so its another "follow the dorito" fight. It's just that Hades is so much well designed and well tought fight when compared to Ex3 that there is very little point to compare them, in fact, I would say that the only fight that could be compared to the Shb big 2 (Hades Ex and WoL Ex) so far would be Barbariccia as it has more individual responsibility than any of the other EW Ex fights and what it may lack in mechanics and player freedom compared to the big 2 compensates with the cadence of the fight (which is extremely fitting considering it may give the sensation you're fighting inside the chaos of a tornado).

Overall I would say there is a shift from "Dancing with the boss" to "Dancing to the boss". It would be interesting to see how this, coupled with the job changes, have affected the longevity of the EW fights.