Why telling people to unsub is a horrible defense of the game.

[Aword3213]

This man is smoking Yoshi P's copium to the max. Seek help, Go to rehab.

Good thing rehab nowadays have free WIFI. How do you think I can post on official fourm?

[Noumenon]

The content doesn't change a lot when repeating it, but that's how the game is designed. Fights are a dance and it feels good to master the dance while everyone around you can't. What makes the experience different every time is what goes wrong each time, but maybe the experience isn't very different if you don't pug.

I am reminded of this post because I was thinking of replayability and saw this reply.

Sorry, I refuse to buy into the dominant narrative among raiders today that memorizing a strict dance script by repeating it over a thousand times, straight down to each GCD and weave window, would be enjoyable to the vast majority of the gaming audience. Literally no other game is designed this way other than rhythm games, and rhythm games are niche at best.

80% of the reason why people are complaining about the lack of replayable content is, I believe, because the content itself is a script that you repeat over and over again, with zero variation. The only content with extremely high levels of non-reward-motivated replayability in the community is PvP - something that is exactly the opposite of the "dance". And personally, even with all the flaws and the garbage netcode of FF14 PvP, I enjoy it far, far more than PvE.

I am also tired of people debating replayability from the perspective of rewards (or even worse, pointless achievements like collecting 20,000 Accursed Hoards). To me, the problem lies almost exclusively with the inherent/innate un-replayability of the content.

Even if you're determined to keep the dance design philosophy:

I was a pianist for a while and I found it enjoyable. I stopped, however, when I got to the level where mastering a single Liszt etude will take months, and require constant repetition... for months. At the same time, mastering a basic Beethoven sonata (most of them) took only a few hours and playing them again and again beyond those few hours is unenjoyable too.

The same issue lies with FF14, you either have Ultimates where it literally feels like a grind, repeating the same etude again and again. Or you have dungeons where you can master them after literally the first time you've done it and it becomes very tedious doing it again and again.

For almost all players of all skill levels, there is probably an individual sweet spot where the dance takes some time to master - but not an entire month or even multiple months, like Ultimates - and feels relatively rewarding to execute again and again for a while - at least enough for the patch. But then 80% of the content would lie outside of that sweet spot, making only 20% just right for that player.

So if you really decide to stick with this, in my honest opinion, horrible design philosophy, you need to massively expand the amount of midcore content to hit the sweet spot for people who don't want to do Ultimates or Savage but find dungeons extremely tedious. Frankly, I think they failed to hit the sweet spot for probably over half of the playerbase.

Then again, this problem would be far easier to solve if you just abandoned the dance design philosophy.

[Boblawblah]

I wish there was a tag system you could attach to users like reddit does, it's hard to keep track of all the alts.

[Aword3213]

I am reminded of this post because I was thinking of replayability and saw this reply.

Sorry, I refuse to buy into the dominant narrative among raiders today that memorizing a strict dance script by repeating it over a thousand times, straight down to each GCD and weave window, would be enjoyable to the vast majority of the gaming audience. Literally no other game is designed this way other than rhythm games, and rhythm games are niche at best.

80% of the reason why people are complaining about the lack of replayable content is, I believe, because the content itself is a script that you repeat over and over again, with zero variation. The only content with extremely high levels of non-reward-motivated replayability is PvP - something that is exactly the opposite of the "dance".

I honestly think most player can't even manage unscripted fight combined with mechanics we have now.

Imagine random 8 man stack/split or after the math quiz during contruct 7 fight

Imagine savage Eden titan gives random colors with random elevated platforms combined with proximity damage markers.

[MisterNublet]

I honestly think most player can't even manage unscripted fight combined with mechanics we have now.

Imagine random 8 man stack/split or after the math quiz during contruct 7 fight

Imagine savage Eden titan gives random colors with random elevated platforms combined with proximity damage markers.

Please don't tease me with a good time.

[Jeeqbit]

Sorry, I refuse to buy into the dominant narrative among raiders today that memorizing a strict dance script by repeating it over a thousand times, straight down to each GCD and weave window, would be enjoyable to the vast majority of the gaming audience. Literally no other game is designed this way other than rhythm games

I see. You make a fair argument and perhaps if it was all random then the content would be more replayable because you don't know what will happen next, or if two mechanics will come one after another and be really tight.

I think part of it is that when you start playing, you assume it will be random, but then it starts to become clear it's a script and it feels unique that they do it this way somehow and it makes you wonder are there benefits to this?

Over the years when I've seen people look at what benefits there are to this it seems to come to that it gives you a start to the progression (learning the dance) and an end (learned the dance and mastered it, like playing an instrument or doing a dance from memory) and thereby makes you feel good at it and like you "have it on farm". Which you could feel with RNG when you really, truly understand every mechanic and not just a script, but there's more likely to be that lingering doubt with RNG if you get an unfortunate order of mechanics that developers didn't necessarily think about.

I think another thing is the spectacle. I didn't expect that either. I expected them to be like traditional MMORPG enemies where they just cast a bunch of random things, you ignore it and DPS it down. But instead they were these fights with arena-wide animations, phase changes, alignment to the music and even cutscenes midway to transition it.

Fights working this uniquely could make one a bit protective of it when not every game does it. But I do wonder what it would be like if they just made it all pure random. At the very least, they could do that for content like dungeons to help turn it into a content that doesn't feel boring to repeat.

Imagine savage Eden titan gives random colors with random elevated platforms combined with proximity damage markers.

I think the point isn't to say give a random amount of markers such that the puzzle cannot be completed, but rather to put the puzzles in a random order, such as having uplift as the first mechanic in the fight sometimes, but having it as the 10th mechanic in another pull.

[Noumenon]

Which you could feel with RNG when you really, truly understand every mechanic and not just a script, but there's more likely to be that lingering doubt with RNG if you get an unfortunate order of mechanics that developers didn't necessarily think about.

It's frankly quite sad that a lot of raiders don't even prize understanding the mechanic. People just memorize a toolbox and not understand why it works.

We desperately need raids to be designed so that it rewards players understanding the mechanics.

To me, the true essence of FF14 raids is not memorizing scripts but to have fights that are like small bite-sized puzzles. E7S's portals and P12S's Classical 2 are mechanics I really enjoyed during prog. However, it's sad that because the mechanics are designed in such a static way, you don't actually need to understand the mechanic to solve it. For P12S's Classical 2, instead of rotating the map 180 degrees in your head, you use a macro version of this picture instead:



And E7S boils down to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...in_dead_strat/

If the first beams from the side portals are going into the same color i.e. Red into Red, you will swap tiles/portals EVERY TIME, if its going into opposite colors i.e. Red into Blue, you will be standing on the SAME TILE EVERY TIME.

These complete defeat the purpose of the mechanic. You're not actually solving the puzzle now, you're just relying on mnemonics and brute force memorizing it (or have a second monitor with the diagram on) to solve it.

If these mechanics were sufficiently random that forces you to resolve the mechanic by actually solving the puzzle in your head rather than memorizing what spot you should go to if you get X, that would be a good start.

(Though that will probably cause a lot of players to get upset, since I think the community is now full of raiders who are incapable of solving puzzles in their head and just rely on brute force memorization - P12S really opened my eyes.)

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It's frankly quite sad that a lot of raiders don't even prize understanding the mechanic. People just memorize a toolbox and not understand why it works.

We desperately need raids to be designed so that it rewards players understanding the mechanics.

To me, the true essence of FF14 raids is not memorizing scripts but to have fights that are like small bite-sized puzzles. E7S's portals and P12S's Classical 2 are mechanics I really enjoyed during prog. However, it's sad that because the mechanics are designed in such a static way, you don't actually need to understand the mechanic to solve it. For P12S's Classical 2, instead of rotating the map 180 degrees in your head, you use a macro version of this picture instead:



And E7S boils down to this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...in_dead_strat/



These complete defeat the purpose of the mechanic. You're not actually solving the puzzle now, you're just relying on mnemonics and brute force memorizing it (or have a second monitor with the diagram on) to solve it.

If these mechanics were sufficiently random that forces you to resolve the mechanic by actually solving the puzzle in your head rather than memorizing what spot you should go to if you get X, that would be a good start.

(Though that will probably cause a lot of players to get upset, since I think the community is now full of raiders who are incapable of solving puzzles in their head and just rely on brute force memorization - P12S really opened my eyes.)

The problem is fights resolve mechanics far too quickly to solve complex puzzles mid fight while keeping up your rotation.




Maybe for world proggers this isn't an issue, but try looking at raids from the view of the less skilled but still clearing crowd.



As in, people still working on clearing p12s.

[Noumenon]

The problem is fights resolve mechanics far too quickly to solve complex puzzles mid fight while keeping up your rotation.




Maybe for world proggers this isn't an issue, but try looking at raids from the view of the less skilled but still clearing crowd.



As in, people still working on clearing p12s.

So? Those people shouldn't be clearing. It's savage not MSQ.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

So? Those people shouldn't be clearing. It's savage not MSQ.

Ah, right. If you aren't week 1, don't bother. Got it.


Also, msq and savage difficulty isn't even close to being equal. Just because it takes some groups longer doesn't mean they are bad. Learning speeds differ. If the only people who cleared savage were week 1 raiders the content would be deader than anything and SE would stop making it.



Even ultimates have casual groups clear it after long periods of time.

Also, anyone else find it funny that the forum troll is mad that a reddit is overrun with trolls?