Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[Renathras]

EDIT3: In advance - if you'd be so kind, if you reply, could you lead your post with the highest level of content you've done/do? E.g. "[Ultimate]", "[Savage]", "[Extreme]", or the like? Would kind of help see if it's partly seen differently by people that do different kinds of content. Thank you in advance, friend. o/

In my case:

[ Extremes only (HW-ShB), just a few Savage at level in EW (P1S, P2s, and P5S) but mostly Extreme still ]

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As much as everyone says that the game and encounter design have always been this way, I got to thinking...they don't.

I don't know about Savage since I haven't played it at level before EW, but people have said a lot of Savage fights are easier, more wall bosses, body check mechanics, etc. But I have played Extremes as my end-game content since SB (technically REALLY late HW), and collectively, they feel different to me.

Go back and play through the SB Extremes. They largely feel more technical, methodical. There's not the same emphasis on coordinated dancing, exactly, but the fights seem more structured somehow. Susano and Lakshmi, even later in the expansion with Suzaku. There were often large periods of transition and intermission in the fights, calm phases interspersed with them, and far less twitch reflex mechanics. Suzaku's "Simon Says" phase is clearly telegraphed and immediately understandable, and easy to execute on sight. Byakko's falling phase takes up a decent chunk of the fight and doesn't require any direct combat at all.

Even in ShB, fully in the "modern FFXIV paradigm", the fights were pretty different. The standard two X.0 fights featured one technical dance (Titania) and one more free-form encounter (Innocence), but the only really tight mechanics on them were Titania's add phase (largely due to a single 3-5 part attack that you had to manage while under the boughs of trees that would obstruction good portions of your view), and in Innocence's case, the tricky mechanic was where you HAD to blow up one of the stars correctly and it was a single point of failure if the person targeted didn't get the mechanic. Well, that and plyers sending their sword lines through the party. The last fight of the set, Diamond WEAPON, wasn't really HARD, just the damage output was somewhat high if players were in the wrong places. The only pass/fail mechanic was Limit Cut into Towers (I can't remember if towers adjusted for if you had less than 8 people alive when the mechanic started, but I THINK it did? Making it more forgiving). And during the Limit Cut section, LITERALLY nothing else is happening, allowing players to fully focus on the mechanic and executing it. Yes, people still mucked it up, but the pace of the fight was slow enough to allow for this.

Now then, we get into EW.

EW started standard enough; the two starting fights were one technical dance (Hydaelyn, this time) and one free-form fight (Zodiark), but they were...different. Hydaelyn 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. Generally, things on the field don't do much unless the players have control over placement (such as the rocks before Behemoth uses Meteor in Labyrinth of the Ancients). I remember many of my first runs, the entire party being completely confused why they were dying in those sections. Hydaelyn is also teleporting around quite a bit and there is a lot of running around by the party, including the two most wipe causing mechanics after the first Lightwave phase, Chackrams being a big offender (6.0 Expedience was amazing for this, though), and the final phase doing two sets of stack/spread during Lightwaves. And this was the more technical of the fights, which is typically the one with less movement.

Conversely, Zodiark...was Danger Dorito. A lot of people had trouble with the rotation mechanics, particularly the Snakes, but if you had a good Dorito, everyone could just hug their butt for the entire fight (other than the tankbuster/swap mechanic) and be fine. For the less technical fight, it required a relatively low amount of movement and pretty much zero coordination, which is why it was solo healed (and solo tanked) extremely early in the expansion's lifecycle.

But things just got weirder from there.

Patch 6.1 saw the introduction of the time traveling, multi-ring head insanity that seemed to catch a lot of people off guard. While HadEx and SeyuEx were both pretty challenging, the pace of the attacks along with the mechanics for this one was again a step up that seemed to throw a lot of people off, and the mechanics again seemed more confusing than anything, with guide creators writing various "cheat sheet" ways to remember that the ring arrangements meant and how they should be handled. Something we'll see again in Ex5. Overall, I only ran this a few times because...well, no one really WANTED to run it much after getting clears.

BarbEx was completely different again. While RubyEx had a fair amount of movement, the mechanics were mostly straightforward and there were large periods of time to attack the boss, as well as a checkpoint (which Emerald would also inherit). But BarbEx was different. The damage spikes and mechanics being thrown out were high pace and high intensity compared to the norms for Extremes. It was more akin to a Savage fight, and consequently, Savage raiders loved it, but it seemed far less methodical or technical than Extremes typically are, and had several points of failure and body checks, despite having a somewhat lax Enrage. It ultimately wasn't so much hard as it was an endurance fight of just dealing with a constant wave of unending attacks for 10 minutes straight with a few transitions to briefly catch your breath while also not being able to do anything.

Then we have RubiEx. This fight is just weird in every way possible. There are EXTREMELY long periods of downtime with no unavoidable damage coming out, yet the damage that does come out is often lethal if you DON'T avoid it. The maze game is much less understandable than things like Suzaku's field mechanic, which by contrast is super easy to identify and understand, and combines several annoying things together: (1) it's a slow mechanic in one way, since it takes so long to happen and the boss is doing LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE while it's happening, (2) it's extremely fast once it DOES happen, giving you little time once the platforms are actually all in place to determine the safe spot (again leading to guide creator "cheat sheets" like the M trick), (3) it repeats the rotating weirdness that seemed to throw people so hard in ZodEx, (4) but because so much of his fight is this one mechanic, much of the REST of the fight seems somewhat boring by comparison.

His only other big mechanic is all back-loaded where he does the expanding + attack (which doesn't even look like a plus once it opens into a box, throwing people off on trying to identify the safe spots as there's no kind of telegraph or normal mode equivalent) combined with stack and spread (which are only indicated by small debuffs -again, normal for Savage fights, but a-typical in Extremes which normally have more obvious markers on party members like BarbEx having the stack on a party member and 2x flare markers on the tanks), followed by a alternating stack or spread mechanic which is ALSO paired with the boss doing one of two attack patterns depending on a tell on his model (also something typical of Savage fights but less so of Extremes, though this isn't AS unheard of, like Titania's Rune attack, though in that case she always does one then the other so you always know what at least one of them will be), which he follows up with a body check mechanic (now that everyone's dead - hope you have a Healer up and saved the LB3..!) combination Limit Cut DOUBLE tether swap. As far as I'm aware, this is the most difficult version of Limit Cut in the game's history, but definitely the most difficult one ever in an Extreme, and it comes right after a body check.

Collectively, during this series of mechanics, RubiEx does the vast majority of the ENTIRE FIGHT'S damage and pass/fail mechanic checks, after about 6-7 minutes of standing around with a thumb so far up his butt that this fight has already been solo-healed WITH NO TANKS because a DPSer can "tank" his general mechanics as his damage output against his primary target is so low to render a Tank meaningless, and unlike BarbEx or even ZodEx doesn't seem to have any mechanics forcing a Tank swap or high mitigation.

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One of the distinctions in the past between Savages and Extremes was that Savages generally require people to die a bunch to piece together the mechanics while Extremes are more intuitive, and that Savages are more about proper and precise execution of the dance while meeting Enrage DPS requirements while Extremes are more about execution of slower paced, more understandable mechanics. While Savages often require twich reflexes and precise positioning, Extremes tend to be more technical and forgiving, and while Savages have long had mechanics that require full party coordination and single point failures (one person messing up likely causing a wipe and two messing up guaranteeing one), Extremes often have it where if you mess up, it kills you but GENERALLY not the entire party, with a few exceptions.

Extremes also tend to have smoother damage curves on the party, with less damage stacked all at once outside of some specific mechanic (Miztek often calls those the "whombo combo" of the fight, like the multiple tree attacks in Titania) that generally consist of 3 or so mechanics going off together, while Savages have this more frequently through fights in general.

But these Extremes often have multiple "whombo combos" throughout them, sometimes repeated several times, and even the non-combo mechanics often kill players and wipe parties, sometimes with and sometimes without these odd "dead" periods between them when nothing is happening. Further, the "body check" point of failure and collective party coordination has edged into Extremes. One can argue why this would be good (teamwork makes the dream work, and it's an MMO!) or bad (many people who don't have Statics run Extremes as their endgame - they don't have Statics, so they don't have that level of coordination accessible to them as they're dependent on what PF has "blessed" them with that day), but it IS a change. The pace of mechanics is either higher (all except Ex5) OR the mechanic sets up slowly but then executes all at once rapidly/faster (Ex5 in particular).

Finally, the biggest change seems to be that the mechanics are far less visually apparent/intuitive - something that USED to be a big distinction between Extremes and Savages. When the party needs to stack to catch the thrown tank in Byakko, there's a very clear stack marker. When the party needs to stack in RubiEx, there's not, just a small debuff on one player and small spread marker debuffs on 4 others.

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I dunno, there are a lot of words here, but the short version is:

Extremes FEEL different to me now than they did in ShB and SB. They feel almost like they're made for Savage raiders to do when they're bored, which is a different audience than the mid-core non-Static-having PF hero of expansions past.

It's almost like they tried to bridge the "difficulty gap" between Extremes and Savages by just making the Extremes harder like Savages and making the first boss of Savages basically the same difficulty. The entire reason I dipped my toe in Savage and did P1S (and then P2S, and two patches later, P5S) [...other than my OCD being annoyed I always had one ring slot lower ilevel than the rest of my gear] was because of friends telling me if I could do HydEx, ErikSav was the same difficulty rather than the customary Savage boss being a step up.

...but that hasn't made the situation better, it's just made it worse by making Extremes more of a chore.

And it also shows: While normally Extremes are PFed through the entire patch they're current, and often even in the next patch, now, after a few weeks of the patch coming out, people just aren't running these anymore in PF. You might see a few PF adverts, but it's 1-3 or so, often 0, where in the past, you'd see dozens and they'd fill and launch and new ones would pop up. It just seems like less people want to do the content, and people are just doing them for the clear/achievement and then MAYBE a couple more times for the weapon (up through Barb; with the Relics now no one needs to do Extremes anymore, especially since the Relics are essentially free), and people seem to have the mindset of "I'll farm the mount later when we overgear the content so it's less annoying to run."

Collectively, something just SEEMS different. I can't entirely put my finger on it (though the above is my attempt to try), but something just feels...different, I guess?

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Agree or disagree with my assessment on the changes themselves: Does anyone else feel this way? That something HAS changed in Extreme design?

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EDIT2: For those interested, also discussing this in the Healer area, but thought this is a more general topic, so cross-posted it here for more discussion as well as there: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-different-now

[Jeeqbit]

The developers have explained their logic with making extremes before. They just try to make them different. To give you an example, they said they made Titania a party-responsibility fight and Innocence a personal-responsibility fight to differentiate them. Obviously, they are also fitting the mechanics to the lore as well and lore can be a pretty good inspiration for mechanic ideas.

Go back and play through the SB Extremes. They largely feel more technical, methodical.

Through Heavensward, they did start moving away from bosses not casting things like tank busters. If you look at Shiva's stance changes and compare them to EX2, you see how the switch is far more obvious and the mechanics related to it properly cast. Bosses also stopped auto-attacking as much as they began structuring the fights instead of just having them do conal aoes and things like that. But again, not everyone could knockback immune, mitigate, self-heal or gap close then, so these basic attacks were harder to handle.

Through Stormblood, the fights were pretty structured and we had more tools to deal with simpler mechanics including more heals and KB immunity. Then in Shadowbringers absolutely all melee jobs had gap closers too so they could let the bosses jump around a lot more. Then in Endwalker the bosses don't necessarily jump around so much because their hitbox is too big! Tanks can also just fill in for healers sometimes at this point.

What should also be noted is how some rotations have got simpler. In Stormblood we got job gauges so we don't track buffs so much, then Shadowbringers into Endwalker began making them less distracting, which allows for the fights themselves to be more distracting and faster-paced. Unfortunate for some jobs that didn't change a lot, like BLM!

They might also just try to give each expansion a new style. In Shadowbringers they started doing the "left, then right" type mechanic a lot where in previous expansion you just dodged once, whereas I haven't seen it much in this expansion. They also made them faster-paced in Shadowbringers.

[Post]

I think it's likely we'll all disagree on what we feel that's different.

I don't think anyone paying attention would reasonably say that the encounters today are the same as they always were. Maybe in certain regards, but by and large, no. They're designed very differently now.

It's worth noting that there's a huge, deliberate shift by the developers in 3.4. YoshiP specifically stated that they felt that Gordias and Midas were too hard, and made an effort to make both the trials and savage raids easier with Creator.

This is reflected in Sophia: beginning in 3.4 and every fight afterwards, including dungeons, falling off a cliff no longer meant that you could not be rezzed without releasing to the entrance. The design team talks about Sophia in advance as having its difficulty designed around "memory and puzzles" (it has short-term memory mechanics and addition equations with the scales) and not "long-rope jumping" (so-called from Sephirot where if one player died during color phase, at least 1 other person would die but generally it could easily lead to a wipe or an unrecoverable state).

They apologized to the teams that enjoyed the previous difficulty level, but felt that those players were in the minority and intended to make more difficult content for them down the line. Gordias and Midas savage may not be too difficult in a vacuum, but certainly with how much more difficult the jobs were to play in HW compared with ARR and how tightly tuned they encounters were, the overall difficulty was such that much of the playerbase could not keep up with the sudden difficulty spike and many players flocked to certain servers, killing the raiding scene on many others. After Creator, YoshiP says they're satisfied with the engagement and progression of players in Creator, and that they intend to keep the savage difficulty around that level from there on.

I personally think that they attacked the difficulty on too many fronts simultaneously and they've swung well far into the other direction. I think jobs could stand to have a little more complexity added to their ceilings and fights could stand to be a little more challenging without being so difficult that they're off-putting. Forcing every job to work in a 2 minute window kind of pigeonholes their design a bit. And I think Gordias' #1 sin was that it was boring, not that it was too hard; the difficulty can be forgiven if it's also fun.

Responding to the above poster, tankbusters and group wides were homogenized starting in StB. During Heavensward, except for Thordan Ex and Zurvan Ex (whose tankbuster is unique anyways), all tankbusters and group-wides are telegraphed visually instead of cast bars. Even then those two had mid-busters without telegraphs. The auto attacks began to stop simultaneously in Stormblood Exs, and have been gone from raids since ShB, as have auto attacks critting, which, fine, they got rid of Awareness, tank's old crit immunity tool, anyways.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I didn't really care for this expansion extreme fights. I found them annoying, not difficult. I'm not a fan of the mounts either this time around. While I have completed them all, I did not bother farming them at all, I think I only have 10 clears at most of one or two of them.


In terms of fight design, I think HW or ShB had my favorite EX fights.


I'm not big on this expansions raid tiers either. My favorite is still Coil, and likely always will be, but I think Sigmascape was my next favorite of the tiers.

[Jeeqbit]

This is reflected in Sophia: beginning in 3.4 and every fight afterwards, including dungeons, falling off a cliff no longer meant that you could not be rezzed without releasing to the entrance. The design team talks about Sophia in advance as having its difficulty designed around "memory and puzzles" (it has short-term memory mechanics and addition equations with the scales) and not "long-rope jumping" (so-called from Sephirot where if one player died during color phase, at least 1 other person would die but generally it could easily lead to a wipe or an unrecoverable state).

Yes, Yoshi-P mentioned this specifically in advance of Sophia Unreal and how the design change then.

Responding to the above poster, tankbusters and group wides were homogenized starting in StB. During Heavensward, except for Thordan Ex and Zurvan Ex (whose tankbuster is unique anyways), all tankbusters and group-wides are telegraphed visually instead of cast bars.

As is obvious in Sophia, the tank buster isn't really cast directly, but there is more in the way of casts generally starting to occur compared even to Sephirot, Bismarck, Leviathan and Titan who you had to watch for animations. Sophia groups up a lot of things into a Quasar cast, including a raid-wide and a tank swap. Everything in Zurvan seems cast, so it seemed all part of the general 3.4 shift where we also started to see stack markers in normal content. I can think of Susano as a possible Stormblood exception who just did some attacks suddenly but this design was really going away at that point.

[Ath192]

As much as everyone says that the game and encounter design have always been this way, I got to thinking...they don't.

Extremes feel easier now, and less fun. just my two cents. Sophia unreal is a blast to me, much better/fun fight than any recent EX

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Extremes feel easier now, and less fun. just my two cents. Sophia unreal is a blast to me, much better/fun fight than any recent EX

I don't think they are especially easier, I think we just got better. Like, Thordan was "hard", but not mechanically. It was more to do with gear and us still being terrible with HW jobs. Zurvan was regarded as one of the easiest EX fights ever. Sephirot wasn't even that difficult mechanically.


Most of the difficulty came from us, to be quite frank, sucking.

[Ath192]

I don't think they are especially easier, I think we just got better. Like, Thordan was "hard", but not mechanically. It was more to do with gear and us still being terrible with HW jobs. Zurvan was regarded as one of the easiest EX fights ever. Sephirot wasn't even that difficult mechanically.


Most of the difficulty came from us, to be quite frank, sucking.

The hitboxes are too big, and quite honestly the way the arena is used is way more interesting in Sophia, Byakko, Seiryu, Suzaku..... Like, they used to have more charm rather than some crappy puzzles in Zodi and Rubi.

Barbariccia is the only standout so far imo this expac, being decently fun. if I had to choose a second place it would be Hyda.

[Jeeqbit]

I don't think they are especially easier, I think we just got better. Like, Thordan was "hard", but not mechanically. It was more to do with gear and us still being terrible with HW jobs. Zurvan was regarded as one of the easiest EX fights ever. Sephirot wasn't even that difficult mechanically.

Most of the difficulty came from us, to be quite frank, sucking.

Really just this. Back in Heavensward, Sophia was harder because you couldn't just use Shake it Off as a Warrior and heal the party. If the healers sucked, then the party was dead. And healers had less heals, so there was a higher chance of needing to use the GCD and manage MP.

There wasn't even Reprisal then except on DRK if they got a proc. You also couldn't use Knockback Immunity except on certain jobs like Paladin. Tanks didn't have a trait giving 20% damage reduction, so if they did use their DPS stance, all the worse for them. And now Warriors can get a free Knockback Immunity every 60 seconds as well. Oh, we also didn't have Shirk.

As an added difficulty, we didn't have cross-world party finder, so I would direct queue and constantly meet tanks that didn't know what a tank swap was and left me to die.

[Tsumdere]

I do not think fights got easier. The player base has gotten better. I think if they introduced fights like Barbariccia, E8S, and P3/P8S in HW/SB it would have decimated the community the same way Gordias almost did.

I think that "feel" you might have is just from the EW extremes being kinda standard? Outside of Barbariccia there hasn't been one with the WOW factor yet. We're missing our Thordan/Shinryu/Hades equivalent because they fxxked up Endsinger so bad. This leaves it feeling kind of empty, although the other three EXs aren't that much different than what we got in the past.

Also Byakko's intermission was absolutely terrible. Also, I hope to never see an unskippable cutscene/mini game in an EX ever again. Leave that crap in normal mode.