Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, so the least reliable and most pointless way to compare fights, as I described above. Got it.

If it was the least reliable and most pointless way, then the playerbase wouldn't have stuck with it for all these years. You remind me of the people who said we should use V1-12 for Omega raids, because that's what the game called them. Well, until Sigmascape 1-2-3-4 came out and threw a wrench in the idea, but most people had already accepted just calling it O1-12 anyway because it makes sense. If Coils had come out nowadays, we'd likely call them B1-12 instead of T for Turns but that's kinda grandfathered in now

And yeh, patterns start somewhere, but until next expansion does the same thing, I would chalk it up to coincidence. And I say would, because I still don't see how Innocence is 'chaotic' in any definition of the word, it's about as on rails as it gets. Or Zodiark, yes the 'safe spot' is different based on the positioning of the snakes and behemoths and such, but the order of 'what is in this set' is the same every time. The fourth set is always snakes + diagonal behemoths + diagonal quetzalcoatls (example, idk exactly what it is for that one because ive not done it since finishing mount farm), just like how Hyadelyn decides that during the green line stuff on the floor with the balls, it's always ice there. Or during the DNC bit with the three fans of lines it's always water. Stuff 'looks' random, but there's always some kind of pattern if you look enough. And if your line in the sand of what is 'chaotic' versus not is just how many options it can be, of 'it can be A or B or C or D', how many is that critical number where it suddenly swaps from orderly to chaotic? If a mechanic has 4 potential safespots, and another has 8 potential safespots, is the one with 8 potential safespots 'more chaotic' because the number is bigger? It's incredibly bizarre logic to me

And if they have accidentally made EX trials be 'comparable to first savage fight difficulty', they could bump the normal mode of the trial up to be the stepping stone between normal raid and savage raid. Or normal trial > normal raid > EX trial > Savage 1 2 3 4 works too. Making the normal mode raids a little harder since they're 'optional' would probably be the better plan. And it's not like it's an alien idea since they did it in the past. Did you know O1 normal has a 13 minute enrage timer? Me either till someone in my FC said they hit it trying to solo it synced as BLU to learn Blaze. 13 minutes on something as empty of mechanics as O1 normal is pretty lenient but it's still something to ensure people have at least a certain level of skill. It's kinda sad that seeing the enrage in the 24man was a 'whoa enrage in casual content that's crazy' like it's some kind of revolutionary idea

And no, it does not matter to me. I call them EX1 and EX2, or just the name of the actual boss. Same as 99.9% of the playerbase does. It doesn't matter to me if someone calls it 'in' or 'dynamo' or 'the exact name on the castbar, for the fight we're currently in'. I know they mean 'get close to the boss now' in all cases. I don't go out of my way to go 'ackshually you don't mean in it is referred to as dynamo as a reference to Turn 9 of the Binding Coils of Bahamut where the boss Nael Van Darnus used Lunar Dynamo, creating a donut shaped AOE' because that's a ridiculous stance to take. Instead I go 'ah they said dynamo that means in' and then I go in

edit: asked some people, some responded with the same 'pairing based on scriptedness of where to stand', maybe it is a me problem after all

I love this game and have been playing since 2.0 launch but, the game just doesn't feel like the fun it was in the past.

The word you're looking for might be 'it feels sterile', like the color has been sucked out of it, maybe? Which, considering we spent 2 years with a story about how a massive part of a world was canvassed in 'sterile, blank perfection' resulting in it being inhospitable to life itself, is kinda ironic when you think about it