SE, love the fight design but tone down the instant deaths a touch?

[Renathras]

They don't have much in the way of instant party wipes in Extreme. The result? Everyone claims they are too easy; they can sacrifice themselves to solve a mechanic and get carried through it.

So who should they listen to. You? Or the people saying that doing that makes them too easy?

Which Extremes?

ZodEx and HydEx aside:

Endsinger Ex has a mech that tends to kill people then a towers body check right after that: Wipe.

Barbarecca Ex didn't have any other than 2x Tank flares + party stack, which it does twice. If a Tank is dead, it's a wipe. If 2+ party members are dead, it's probably a wipe. Though you could push 1 dead non-tank (and non-healer) party member with enough mitigation. This fight was good since the otherwise body checks later in the fight (Mario Kart) scales down based on currently alive players. So it's the glaring exception.

Rubicante Ex has almost no mechanics for most of the fight, but then on the back end does the expanding cross pattern with 4x spreads and a 4 person stack that can quickly wipe the party. This is immediately followed up by an arena cleave (that easily kills people) and either party spreads or a full party stack, the former of those being fairly easily destructive to party members (if the cleave nicks someone, they die; if your friend isn't in the right place with you, you die; etc), and the latter of which kills people if too many are dead or got caught in the cleave. This is THEN followed up by Limit Cut, which is a hard body check if your group managed to limp through the former mechanics but have anyone dead. Rubi Ex was horrible for a lot of reasons, but the back-to-back-to-back either outright or near-body checks, culminating in a total body check, is awful.

Golbex Ex is the worst body-check fest in the entire game that I've ever played. Ultimates are probably worse, but this fight has, depending on how you count, 6-10 body checks...and maybe more. 2 man stack circles are used frequently, meaning if one partner is down, someone else is dying. While this alone isn't a body check, these mechanics are almost always (if not ALWAYS) followed up by one. The line meteors + 2 partner stacks are followed by flare/knockback/meteors, a hard body check. This hard body check is also repeated later. The in/out mechanics have either spreads or light party stacks, which CAN wipe the party if more than one person is dead or a key person (Healers) are dead and the parties don't readjust quickly. This also happens later with the ice walls where you have to go to one corner and form two light party stacks, making that a hard body check. Gales 2 is a hard body check, with two hard body checks within it (the stack and the 2 man circles). If a healer survives that, they can LB3, but that won't save the party if the party fails Gales 3 later since you won't have LB3 again by then. There is also another meteor/flare/knockback and another line meteors + 2 man stacks as well. Those are a LOT of mechanics that will either outright wipe the party if someone is dead or out of position OR can cause enough damage the party might limp through it, but likely will get wiped by the snowballing of things out of control over the next mechanic or two, and if they somehow manage to recover, the party will likely fail the Enrage anyway. Horribly badly designed fight. This should have been a Savage, not an Extreme.

Zeromus Ex is Barb if movement is decreased a bit. There IS a sorta body check, but it's more a positioning check (meteors). But this mechanic only happens once, I think. Everything else the party can deal with with one or even two people down, and the mechanics are usually fairly generous about giving you time to get into position and having enough time between mechanics after damage hits for the party to heal up and prepare for the next mechanic. Probably the best Extreme in the expansion in terms of pacing, damage, complexity of mechanics, and overall feel. It's a little hot, but fair.

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So I think it depends on (a) who you ask (some people think anything easier than P4/8/12S is "braindead") and (b) which Extreme we're talking about (GolbEx on the one end and probably ZodEx on the other). For my part, there are too many body checks overall, and there shouldn't be ANY in Extremes. If there are, it should be one mechanic done once relatively early in the encounter (unlike Rubi) so people can practice it and once they have it down, reliably see the rest of the fight.

If they want to cut down body checks, they probably have to remove non-healer raises and increase the cost of raising in general.

This makes no sense. We didn't have these rampant body checks in the past and we've had SMN Raises since ARR. Not sure how well to compare Raising's cost back then (before we had the static MP pools), but it wasn't an issue back then. Clearly we don't need this in order to not have them now.