Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[ForsakenRoe]

EX, Savage, UCOB UWU TEA, can't be bothered with DSR or TOP yet

Extremes seem to lean a lot more towards being puzzles to solve, moreso than execution. While some are more execution-based like Hyda or Barb, the majority so far (3/5) have been puzzlestyle to the point where you only need one person to know how to do 'the gimmick' and you just follow them (the 'dorito strat' as it were). I don't know how to do Rubi's circle thing, I just followed someone who did. In contrast, someone I know did not get how Endsinger's 5head phase worked, and I understood it pretty quickly and was able to solve it for them. This is fine in some regards, but if someone were to, for example, not learn how Zodi's spin works (just follows the dorito), not learn Endy's head thing (just follows the dorito) AND doesn't learn Rubi's circles (just follows the dorito) then Extreme is not doing it's job of being the stepping stone difficulty leading into Savage. The player is not learning or improving if they are just following someone else in every fight.

As for Savage, and whether it has 'moments to catch your breath', look at P6S, look at P7S. Even parts of P8S have nothing going on for a while. I'd argue that Barb EX is not 'like a Savage', because even Savage is not like that. I'd say it stands as a testament to what some have said in the past: the 'I play healer to HEAL' mentality players came across something that demanded they actually heal, and they crumbled under the pressure. I think the reason Savage raiders like Barb's design and 'EX is my endgame' players kinda don't so much, is because Savage players know when to drop damage and do more necessary healing, whereas the EX players, it catches them off guard. Unsurprising because nothing in the game prepared them for this sudden amount of constant damage incoming. It's why I don't think ramping HPS is 'the healer problem solution', because they'd hit level 91 dungeon and suddenly everything plays like Barb EX instead of what we currently have, and they'd get thrown off by the change.

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.

I do agree with this though. You could consider that Barb is our Thordan for the expansion, since Endsinger was so limp in comparison. And because we got it on an even patch, we could not outgear it as hard as we usually have done for Shin/Hades before it.


As for terminology discussions, people refer to certain things as 'Limit Cut' because it immediately conveys the important information: 'This mechanic, like Limit Cut, is going to do something to strike us in sequence'. Saying 'Rot', even if the mechanic doesn't blow you up if you fail to pass it like the original Rot, conveys the information of 'there is a debuff that we can pass via contact'. When I first saw 'Limit Cut' in Rubi, I immediately said 'Oh, Wormhole'. Not everyone's done Wormhole, or even seen it. But the gist of the info I was trying to convey to my team who HAD seen Wormhole was 'This mechanic has two parts, we are struck in sequence by something as dictated by the numbers, and a set of numbers offset from the ones currently being hit by the first part need to handle a second mechanic (probably via soaking something)'. So, just by saying 'Wormhole', the team understood pretty quickly that 1/2 take a cleave at a place safe from hitting the party, and a different pair of numbers (7/8 here, 5/6 in actual Wormhole) do the 'other bit', which here is tethers.

Also, funny thing, I've raided with several people who all have different names for 'cone on every player from boss'. Proteans, Flamethrowers, Shadowstreams, I've heard them all. In fact I even raided with someone who called it Waltz, after Queen's Waltz in O3S. It's almost like a measurement of which tier the player started raiding in. Though I do prefer to say 'in or out' instead of 'dynamo or chariot', I find it conveys the important info way faster that way, no need to mentally translate 'dynamo' into 'in' it's an extra unneeded step. If I read out a Nael quote and said Dynamo, Chariot, Stream, that'd potentially take someone an extra second to decipher. But if I said 'In, Out, Spread', those are clear simple instructions and require no extra mental load to decipher

[DixieBellOCE]

Also, funny thing, I've raided with several people who all have different names for 'cone on every player from boss'. Proteans, Flamethrowers, Shadowstreams, I've heard them all. In fact I even raided with someone who called it Waltz, after Queen's Waltz in O3S. It's almost like a measurement of which tier the player started raiding in. Though I do prefer to say 'in or out' instead of 'dynamo or chariot', I find it conveys the important info way faster that way, no need to mentally translate 'dynamo' into 'in' it's an extra unneeded step. If I read out a Nael quote and said Dynamo, Chariot, Stream, that'd potentially take someone an extra second to decipher. But if I said 'In, Out, Spread', those are clear simple instructions and require no extra mental load to decipher

This must be a datacenter differentiation, being Primarily from JP for years, the terminology was quite consistent across the games lifespan.

JP does have the raiding down pact to a very strict detail in comparison to other Regions though.

Each role (Tanks, healers, melee, caster and rphys) all have pre-assigned positions based on Proteans, So when you enter an 8man duty as a certain role, you know exactly where your spread spot is without having to discuss it for 5 minutes.
D3 MT D4
H1 B H2
D1 OT D2

D1/D2 being melee
D3 Rphys
D4 Caster
H1 Pure Heals
H2 Shield Heals
MT/OT whoever has tank stance on goes MT.


They also only have 3-4 people making the PF guides, so they end up settling on 1, maybe 2 different strategies for any fight, unlike NA's 400 different variations of the same strategy.

[Renathras]

That is like saying Sastasha is on the same level as Tower of Zot, your comparing an extreme from 9 years ago to a current expansion extreme fight.

It's not really at all like that. It's more like comparing Tower of Zot with Holminster Switch (a pretty valid comparison, actually...) or The Sirensong Sea (a decent comparison). I'm also not comparing to "9 years ago". I was literally comparing to ShB (the LAST AND MOST RECENT EXPANSION), which was 2-4 years ago, and SB, which was 4-6. Those comparisons are pretty valid.

Also, why on earth do people keep comparing Titania to Zodiark and Innocence to Hydaelyn? I get the "Ex1 Ex2" thing (based on when you encountered them in the story), but it doesn't even make sense - Titania and Hydaelyn are the "orderly" fights and Innocence and Zodiark the "yolo" fights; Titania and Hydaelyn gave you weapons while Innocence and Zodiark gave accessories...like, this comparison makes no sense.

Zodiark was harder (more wipes, anyway) than Innocence, though I think this was largely because of the way Snakes (Snakes IN PARTICULAR) rotated. Without a Danger Dorito, people died a lot on Zodiark. Hydaelyn was both harder to figure out (the Lightwaves/Crystals I discussed above) and harder to accomplish than Titania, and required more party coordination. It was closer to WoLEx in that respect - not in difficulty (as people have said, WoLEx was on par with Savage fights) but in coordinating light parties and role cleaves and such.

Endsinger was just a "what's going on?" fight. If you got it, it was easier than Hades, but if you didn't, it was total chaos. HadEx was another Savage level fight, though, which HAD been the pattern for the final boss Extreme X.1 fight up until Endsinger, anyway. It was true with Hades, Shinryu, and KotR.

Barbaricca was another Savage level fight.

No idea what they did with Rubicante. The fight isn't hard up until the final wave of mechanics, where it's Savage level, but only for about 60 seconds. If you kill it before then, you don't even see those mechanics. The maze has the same Zodiark problem, though, that some people just can't get it. You CAN Danger Dorito it, but it seems to be harder to a lot of people. I'm not sure anything is harder than WoLEx though; HadEx/ShinEx/ThorEx and BarbEx are the only real competitors.

Based on this, EW's 1, 2, and 4 have all been harder than ShB's.

EDIT:

I do agree with what Semi said, though:

I think it's a weird issue with making the mechanics more "complicated". They keep narrowing the solution for mechanics (think Rubi EX circles). But the problem here is, the narrower the possible solution, the more predictable they have to make it. If the room is going to be blasted except for this one tiny chessboard square, you also need to make the solution recognizable fast enough that players can solve it in time. So you design your mechanics in such a way they have easy shortcuts to their solutions, and you end up with mechanics that *look* spectacular and barf a lot of information at you, but in the end it has 3 variations so you just stand here here or here.

[DixieBellOCE]

It's not really at all like that. It's more like comparing Tower of Zot with Holminster Switch (a pretty valid comparison, actually...) or The Sirensong Sea (a decent comparison). I'm also not comparing to "9 years ago". I was literally comparing to ShB (the LAST AND MOST RECENT EXPANSION), which was 2-4 years ago, and SB, which was 4-6. Those comparisons are pretty valid.

Also, why on earth do people keep comparing Titania to Zodiark and Innocence to Hydaelyn? I get the "Ex1 Ex2" thing (based on when you encountered them in the story), but it doesn't even make sense - Titania and Hydaelyn are the "orderly" fights and Innocence and Zodiark the "yolo" fights; Titania and Hydaelyn gave you weapons while Innocence and Zodiark gave accessories...like, this comparison makes no sense.

Zodiark was harder (more wipes, anyway) than Innocence, though I think this was largely because of the way Snakes (Snakes IN PARTICULAR) rotated. Without a Danger Dorito, people died a lot on Zodiark. Hydaelyn was both harder to figure out (the Lightwaves/Crystals I discussed above) and harder to accomplish than Titania, and required more party coordination. It was closer to WoLEx in that respect - not in difficulty (as people have said, WoLEx was on par with Savage fights) but in coordinating light parties and role cleaves and such.

Endsinger was just a "what's going on?" fight. If you got it, it was easier than Hades, but if you didn't, it was total chaos. HadEx was another Savage level fight, though, which HAD been the pattern for the final boss Extreme X.1 fight up until Endsinger, anyway. It was true with Hades, Shinryu, and KotR.

Barbaricca was another Savage level fight.

No idea what they did with Rubicante. The fight isn't hard up until the final wave of mechanics, where it's Savage level, but only for about 60 seconds. If you kill it before then, you don't even see those mechanics. The maze has the same Zodiark problem, though, that some people just can't get it. You CAN Danger Dorito it, but it seems to be harder to a lot of people. I'm not sure anything is harder than WoLEx though; HadEx/ShinEx/ThorEx and BarbEx are the only real competitors.

Based on this, EW's 1, 2, and 4 have all been harder than ShB's.

EDIT:

I do agree with what Semi said, though:

I suppose it does just come down to personal skill with each fight.

Earlier you said you believe that Hydaelyn EX was harder then Titan EX, where as i would say Titan EX on release was MUCH harder (Maybe not mechanically, but for the skill level of players at that time, it was insanely hard).
I certainly didn't clear Titan EX until 2-3 months after release, where as Hydaelyn i cleared on the second day of Endwalker.

Player skill levels have risen quite a lot, that may be why the fights just seem a lot easier to me personally.

Ever since picking up Ultimate Raiding, even savages feel as if they are losing the 'difficulty' level associated with them.

[ForsakenRoe]

Also, why on earth do people keep comparing Titania to Zodiark and Innocence to Hydaelyn? I get the "Ex1 Ex2" thing (based on when you encountered them in the story), but it doesn't even make sense - Titania and Hydaelyn are the "orderly" fights and Innocence and Zodiark the "yolo" fights; Titania and Hydaelyn gave you weapons while Innocence and Zodiark gave accessories...like, this comparison makes no sense.

What part of Titania was 'more orderly' than Innocence? What part of Zodiark is 'less orderly' than Hyadelyn? I don't understand these random attempts to pair them up you've made, the only way to designate fights is the order you do them in the story, EX1 EX2. It sounds like you're trying to ascribe a design decision to Hyd/Zod based on their Light/Darkness lore thing, which is just weird.

To try and say that (from a lore perspective) Titania, king of pixies, who are known for playing tricks on people and being generally unpredictable in their behavior/temperament, is the 'orderly' fight? And Innocence, the 'literally a being made by the corrupting effect of a pure Order-aligned element (Light, in FFXIV lore)' is the 'not-orderly fight', is nothing more than a case of 'I struggled more with X than Y' in disguise, I think.

But putting the lore aside until the devs confirm at fanfest that 'Yes that was the intention actually', every fight has a certain static structure to it, it's just that some are more obvious than others about it. When you're learning the fight is obviously subjective, some people 'get it' faster than others for stuff, eg Rubi circles. But once you 'know' the fight, then they're always all super predictable and easy to read. Even 'Yolo-diark'

I suppose it does just come down to personal skill with each fight.

Earlier you said you believe that Hydaelyn EX was harder then Titan EX, where as i would say Titan EX on release was MUCH harder (Maybe not mechanically, but for the skill level of players at that time, it was insanely hard).
I certainly didn't clear Titan EX until 2-3 months after release, where as Hydaelyn i cleared on the second day of Endwalker.

Player skill levels have risen quite a lot, that may be why the fights just seem a lot easier to me personally.

Ever since picking up Ultimate Raiding, even savages feel as if they are losing the 'difficulty' level associated with them.

This is the biggest factor, it took me multiple parties to progress and learn Byakko EX, a very 'easy' EX by most people's standards, as I was still kind of new to 'harder content' at that point, and hadn't built the skill of 'see mechanic, interpret what to do' instinct. Fast Forward to SHB launch and after me and the group I did it with watched an overview guide on Titania EX's mechanics, we cleared on the first pull. Does this mean that Titania EX is a joke of an EX fight compared to Byakko? Not in the slightest, it means that over time, I had gotten better at the game (a bit)

It's like One Punch Man, if you do harder content enough, you get too strong for the weaker content and you start perceiving it all as just being a pushover. It'd be fine if it were a pushover that took several different kinds of attacks or techniques to beat, but I play WHM/SGE, all I have is the Glare-Dosis equivalent of 'Consecutive Normal Punches', to continue the analogy

[Jeeqbit]

The difference between Titania and Innocence, even according to the developers, was that Titania involved party responsibility and you could wipe the party by doing your mechanics wrong. In Innocence, you only really wiped yourself most of the time. That design choice for each of them was intended to differentiate them, they said.

To be honest, most mechanics in both Zodiark and Hydaelyn don't wipe the party if you die, but Zodiark had an Ahk Morn marker and if everyone wasn't in it, it could be a wipe. I made everyone survive by using Reprisal, Divine Veil and Passage of Arms all at once if people were down, but I didn't keep Passage up if everyone was alive. It was actually the difference between wipe or no wipe at release. I never had quite so much trouble with the stack at the end of Hydaelyn, but by the time of that stack, you could finish them off with people down or have tanks finish it.

it took me multiple parties to progress and learn Byakko EX, a very 'easy' EX by most people's standards, as I was still kind of new to 'harder content' at that point, and hadn't built the skill of 'see mechanic, interpret what to do' instinct. Fast Forward to SHB launch and after me and the group I did it with watched an overview guide on Titania EX's mechanics, we cleared on the first pull.

Reverse for me. I cleared Byakko at release after just a few pulls, the absolute easiest release ex I have ever done, although to be fair I watched a playthrough before doing it. Titania took prog because many people lacked the DPS for adds or had trouble with numerous other mechanics like knockbacks, tethers and not standing in their circles, or things like aggro on the giant adds that otherwise auto the party down. Many of these mechanics even got people in the normal version.

Even to this day, if I do Byakko min item level, there is a very high chance a party of sprouts will clear it but I agree there are sophisticated mechanics in it that get people if not understood, such as spacing out the growing aoes, not being baited by the boss or the add and then getting clipped by the aoe+donut each of them do, and casters soaking the orbs in the add phase. I feel that the DPS check used to be tougher with how the game used to be, but now you can use a rez mage and let everyone die to all these mechanics and still clear.

Oh I suppose innocence was easy as well, I forget how many pulls it took but I winged all the tank mechanics blind because I had a feeling the ex version of what I'd seen could not possibly be hard and the only thing I didn't guess first try was bowtie.

[Renathras]

I suppose it does just come down to personal skill with each fight.

Probably. Though with the addition I made at the very bottom of this post - skill AND mind.

Earlier you said you believe that Hydaelyn EX was harder then Titan EX,

Did I? That may be the source of the confusion - that was probably a typo for "TitaniaEx". I agree Titan Ex was beast on release, but as you say, it wasn't because the mechanics were harder, it was just players weren't as good (and that once KO'd, you were out of the fight)

Player skill levels have risen quite a lot, that may be why the fights just seem a lot easier to me personally.

The one problem with this is we have new players (who don't have that skill) joining the game all the time. As the skill of various brackets of content changes, it generates a problem where the barrier of entry for those players becomes increasingly higher. This is doubly a problem since there's no difficulty between Normal and Extremes that is generally accessible to players to serve as a bridge. That's always been a problem, but it's worse now. The bigger problem is that people who don't have reliable people to run content with (e.g. people without Statics) have more difficulty clearing content that requires party coordination. I can't tell you how many HydEx fights I did that ended with one of the Role players going to the wrong spot and cleaving everyone. It was...a lot. Even relatively simple coordination to a coordinated party is a crap shoot when doing parties with a bunch of randoms.

What part of Titania was 'more orderly' than Innocence? What part of Zodiark is 'less orderly' than Hyadelyn?

Innocence and Zodiark generally don't let one person wipe the party. Everyone is responsible for themselves, and there are no EXACT locations any players need to be for most mechanics. Where you bait the sword line/T doesn't matter as long as you don't run it through the party. Whether you go to the front or back of the field for Zodiark's diagonal rush generally doesn't matter. There are no mechanics with party spots, no in-out paired mechanics, no teather you have to swap between people, no light party stacks OR spreads. Zodiark requires the party to stack for the lasers and DEBATABLY the bait puddles super late in the fight, Innocence for the line laser which you also have to use at exactly one point to blow up a far star to create a safe spot. And I think both have a Tank swap. The big thing - the disorder - is that they aren't the same every tie. Innocence targets random players with the sword lines, and I'm not sure if he throws out the swords to the same spots around the arena (for the return trip) every time. The people in the later phase targed with the 3 prongged AOE lines are also random, as are the people targeted for the line AOE. Zodiark's mechanic sets come in patterns, but the rotation is random. His sweep across the field is random. The Snakes he summons with Akadia ground pounds are random (sometimes the front one is on the very front line, sometimes it's one space away from the front of the grid, so the party has to adjust), and the meteor patterns, while there are a few sets, are randomly chosen. That is, you can't just memorize the fight, as you have to adjust to the parameters adjusted, hence less orderly.

Contrast Titania and Hydaelyn. Each have some of the list of party coordination things I listed above. It's been literal years since I've done Titania, but offhand, it had water puddles, light party stacks (in puddles and possibly rotation), two sets of tether tradeoff mechanics, 3 adds where 2 required tanking and ideally focused fire to take them down quickly to reduce the number of overlapping mechanics, and her in/out runes that she'd use which also had to be worked out with the puddles, maybe a tank swap in there somewhere, too, I don't remember. Hydaelyn has stack, spread, and light party stack mechanics, and these repeat several times with other overlapping mechanics. She has in-out abilities, sometimes paired sometimes not. multiple cleaves by role, that require players to not only stack by role but also do so behind crystals to not get clipped by another mechanic. Chackrams requires both coordinated stacking and movement (people have to stack in two parties correctly in the initial safe spot and then yolo out of it), and the last phase also requires two sets of party stack, spread, and somewhere in there a light party stack. But both of these happen in VERY strict and set patterns, with only a little variance.

Titania's only variances are whether the party has to rotate clockwise for the light party stacks when the vines come out, who is targeted with the stack and which two with the spread markers in the add phases, who is targed first with the teather, and the order she does the in/our rune the second time. While that seems like a lot, the order is very structured and there aren't a lot of variations. Compare Titania Ex's puddle spawns (always the same spot) to P5S's (which are not). And her in/outs are paired. Hydaelyn does a similar thing with her three stances, and for much of the fight, the stances are always the same (like her always using the Tank stance after...I think it's after, been a few months...Chackrams, where she also uses spread/ice there; she also always uses Water [light party stacks] with Chackrams, never Earth [full party stack] or Ice [spreads]). In fact, a lot of the "random" stuff isn't. At several portions of the fight you might initially think she randomly uses a stance and element, she ALWAYS uses that stance and element at that point in the fight with those mechanics. I think she also always uses Water for the Lightwaves (first set) at the end after the spread + tank stack mechanic. In theory, they could have programmed her to use any of them...but they didn't.

The variations that those two fights have area also smaller, such as an in paired with an out, which is a bit different and easier to predict and react to than...Snakes with a random choice of spawn pattern and rotation.

As to why to pair them up - because it's the logical pair. Even the rewards (weapons vs accessories) are paired up that way. Finally, people wanting to compare them the other way to make the case that EW's aren't really harder/are less hard by comparison, leading to a faulty conclusion. There's nothing "random" about trying the MORE LOGICAL pairing.

If we went back to SB it gets weird, as Lakshmi was the more ordered (use of Vrill at specific points in the fight, specific ideal places to drop the AOEs) despite being the accessory one with Susano being a bit more random with targeting and such and dropping weapons, though both of those fights were more scripted owing to the way mechanics were designed back then.

the only way to designate fights is the order you do them in the story, EX1 EX2.

That makes ZERO sense. We're talking about mechanics, not narrative. Hell, even if you paired them up by "what reward drops" it would be Hyd/Tita and Zod/Inno.

It sounds like you're trying to ascribe a design decision to Hyd/Zod based on their Light/Darkness lore thing, which is just weird.

No, that's what you're doing with the Ex 1/2 thing based on when you encounter them in the story.

To try and say that (from a lore perspective) Titania, king of pixies, who are known for playing tricks on people and being generally unpredictable in their behavior/temperament, is the 'orderly' fight? And Innocence, the 'literally a being made by the corrupting effect of a pure Order-aligned element (Light, in FFXIV lore)' is the 'not-orderly fight', is nothing more than a case of 'I struggled more with X than Y' in disguise, I think.

Maybe you should have waited for my answer (above) before making this statement? As it seems to be pretty embarrassingly wrong now... <_<

As to the getting better...

My biggest problem with Titania (and Innocence...AND Hydaelyn...AND Zodiark...) was more PF. As you say for Titania, "me and the group I did it with watched an overview guide". I was teaching people mechanics in PF. I did that with Titania, Innocence, Diamond, and Warrior of Light (in that order) as well as Hydaelyn and Zodiark. Playing with randoms in PF gives you a MUCH different experience than playing with a Static or other skilled players. Heck, my PF P1S and P2S runs were often "Everyone gets it but 1 or 2 people...and they wipe the party."

The difference between Titania and Innocence, even according to the developers, was that Titania involved party responsibility and you could wipe the party by doing your mechanics wrong. In Innocence, you only really wiped yourself most of the time. That design choice for each of them was intended to differentiate them, they said.

This, exactly.

When I use the word "orderly" I mean a combination of three things - (1) party coordination required, (2) punishment for failure, (3) how constrained the randomness is/how consistent the mechanic order and execution is. More orderly fights tend to require more coordination, but are essentially the same, or very close to the same, every time you run them. Titania's only real variations are the in/out and which way the vines run and the party has to stack for the light party hits. The fight is pretty much "you know the dance steps, it's the same every time with minor variations". While every fight ultimately isn't TOTAL chaos - they can only be so random - some have more variations on the possible mechanics and the mechanics can be different levels of punishing. Zodiark's rotations being random is more significant and harder to react to than Titania's in/out being randomly chose (and in THAT case you know what the NEXT one will be because they're paired).

The biggest wipe causes I saw in Hydaelyn were (1) people not being in the right spots for the Role cleaves, (2) Chackrams killing too many people, (3) people forgetting they had ice and overlapping, killing themselves and their neighbor(s), (4) the first Lightwave phase people being out of position in some way and getting clipped by one or more of the explosions; if enough people or key people (Tanks/Healers) died it could be a wipe. Zodiark Wipes were generally too many people getting clipped by Meteors, too many people following the wrong person and getting destroyed by the rotating fire, too many people standing in the Snakes just before the multi-laser hit, or too many people running ahead of the party for the puddle baits, killing too many people to survive the following multi-hit laser THAT time (though that was often late enough in the fight the remaining members could finish his health bar...but not always)

Oh I suppose innocence was easy as well, I forget how many pulls it took but I winged all the tank mechanics blind because I had a feeling the ex version of what I'd seen could not possibly be hard and the only thing I didn't guess first try was bowtie.

I remember thinking at the time that it was interesting how people split on this. My FC was split roughly down the middle between people that thought Innocence was the easier one and those that thought Titania was. I was on the Titania half. Several things in Innocence weren't immediately apparent to me (like the sword return path after thrown out, took me a few attempts to realize they just take the same paths as before, and I'd still occasionally die to them since I'd forget about them while dealing with the mechanics in between the throw and return), but Titania I got down super fast. It's just a pattern of dance steps that repeat more or less identically every time, and the variation is pretty small. The problem I had getting my first clear was...apparently the majority of the PLAYERBASE (at least the playerbase in PF at the time) was in the Innocence half, lol So there were so many attempts and wipes because someone in the party didn't quite get how to do something and it could wipe the party if it was at a bad part (like someone not getting in their center puddle for the puddle + stack + vines phase, and then the vines would grow where we both had the ADD spawned AND no second safety puddle), stuff like that.

But I distinctly remember the playerbase of both PF people and friends and FC people I talked to about it coming down on one or the other side of that divide. It was pretty clear.

The same divide happened in EW with Hydaelyn (the Titania side) and Zodark (the Innocence side), which is why I feel confident in those pairings.

But yeah, that goes back to what Dixiebell said, with an added feature:

It comes down to both player skill AND what kind of mindset/brain people have.

[Jeeqbit]

In terms of how they aged, once Innocence was old, I could just hop into a blind party and 1 shot Innocence with them throughout Shadowbringers, even if the new person kept dying to the bait mechanic.

With Titania, it took until nearly the end of the expansion before most of the mechanics could be safely ignored by most of the party, with the worst obviously being the tether aoe mechanic. Once I could just say I'll take all of them, every single one, that was quite a big help. Sometimes I didn't intend to take all of them but their confusion led to me doing just that.

[Ath192]

In terms of how they aged, once Innocence was old, I could just hop into a blind party and 1 shot Innocence with them throughout Shadowbringers, even if the new person kept dying to the bait mechanic.

With Titania, it took until nearly the end of the expansion before most of the mechanics could be safely ignored by most of the party, with the worst obviously being the tether aoe mechanic. Once I could just say I'll take all of them, every single one, that was quite a big help. Sometimes I didn't intend to take all of them but their confusion led to me doing just that.

So in terms of which one you enjoyed better? Which would you pick? To me Titania was the far better fight imo.

[ForsakenRoe]

[hb]Innocence and Zodiark generally don't let one person wipe the party.

Contrast Titania and Hydaelyn.

Titania has randomness on whether you're NE or NW (as tank/healer) for the tether break in the add phase, or which of the puddles to stand in for the stack fists in phase 2, or where to stand to best dodge Shiva (if you're not just standing in it like everyone ended up doing). Hyadelyn has randomness on whether the NE or NW crystal is going to flare up first, which element she'll use (therefore which of stack/spread/LPs to do after the mechanic) and which corner is 'safe' for Flood of Light. Both of these are 'find the right spot to stand in' as much as Zodiark's rotation thing or his meteor shower. The only mechanic in Hydaelyn that comes to mind as 'one person can cause a wipe with their actions' is if a healer stacks with the wrong group for Water. If that's the criteria for what is considered an 'orderly fight design' we'll have to agree to disagree because I think that's ridiculous logic

Oh, and in Innocence, one person CAN wipe the party by aiming the stack laser wrong when there's all 4 balls (And you're meant to pop one with the laser to make a safespot), so, y'know. Not that it matters to me, I go by EX1 and EX2 based on 'when you encounter them while doing the story' as the playerbase has for like 8 years now. Funny that your 'pattern' falls apart at SB though, they say 'twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern', what about HW? Which is more 'orderly', Ravana the weapondropper or Bismarck the also-weapondropper? Or do they not count because neither drop accessories? At which point, how should we refer to the two of them, though even EX1/EX2 kinda falls apart admittedly, because you'd do EX2 first to get a weapon to tackle EX1 with, weird design back then