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

[Post]

Body checks didn't 'worm their way into Extremes', they've been there in some form since Thornmarch and Striking Tree Extreme at least.

They just deliberately tried to make them less punishing since Sephirot (the actual term the developers themselves used is "long-rope jumping" -- if someone else trips, it trips everyone).

I think the result is that they've kind of run out of ways to make the extremes feel different and that's why we're seeing a return of old fight design like more faced paced movement in Barb, Body checks in Golbez and phases based on %HP in the recent one.

Extremes are in no way now Savages. The hardest extreme trials have ever been was 3.1 thru 3.3, Thordan, Sephirot, Nidghogg, with honorable mention to Shinryu in 4.1. They've actually been made significantly easier overall starting with 3.4 and that was their stated goal. If anything, they're more casual today than their inception, as they were originally envisioned to be a difficulty beyond the original 3 'hard mode' trials, which is closer to what extremes are today if it weren't for the ridiculous amount of ilvl and action potency we have on top. Fights that will kill you and require some strategy and attempts to succeed, but easy to farm if you know what you're doing.

Original extremes were somewhere between t2 and t4 in difficulty, that is, a floor 1 and 2 of a savage when compared to today. In fact, their reward structure was also originally weekly instead of 'beat me 5 times for a weapon' or 50 times for a guaranteed mount.

I think this reward structure reflects the fact that their intended purpose has shifted to be more casual, only really there because of tradition and so people can get a shiny mount rather than being a fight for the battle designer's creativity's sake.

I think the worst outcome of this is that they've stopped being a bridge for the difficulty gap between normal and savage. Barring relatively easy first floor fights like o1s and e1s, the gap is a bit large now and I imagine it's daunting for someone interested in taking the plunge.

But there's also only so many ways they can make fights harder now, because you can't lose aggro, you can't misposition a boss, you can't attack the wrong target, you can't run out of TP and barely can run out of MP, you have tanks and dps that can heal the party, you can't miss a boss tell, you don't have to dispel anything, you can ignore every knockback, you never have your hp or defense reduced from death and you're never out of healing range.

Maybe all they can do is super complicated arbitrary bullshit like limit cuts and overlapping Aoes that all resolve at once leaving only the one safe spot, and that IS too hard compared with what made fights challenging before. If that's the case, then my sympathies, that's the game that we have now because all the RPG elements have been relegated to social Role Play, and more and more action and recognition elements are crammed and stacked into the battle content to compensate.

[Colt47]

But the solution proposed by the high end people is to just make casual content harder, with the assumption that will make better players, instead of realizing that mechanics are just far harder now and we need to break up high-end encounters into multiple difficulty tiers to make a more gradual ramp difficulty curve. Savages are now Ultimates. Ultimates are now Ultimates+. Half the Extremes are now Savages. But these things aren't marked that way, leading to confusion, frustration, and an increase in people just not wanting to bother with the content.

That's not what hardcore people are saying at all or even midcore people. The issue most have is that they do not have enough content that actually matters to the player. Be it not enough rewards or the only path to rewards is through a single outlet, the game has an issue in endwalker where there is a lack of fulfillment from doing things. And then with some rewards like savage feeling like the 120+ hours of fighting just doesn't give enough either, it's hard to blame them.

[Sebazy]

But the solution proposed by the high end people is to just make casual content harder, with the assumption that will make better players, instead of realizing that mechanics are just far harder now and we need to break up high-end encounters into multiple difficulty tiers to make a more gradual ramp difficulty curve.

Ah yes, Ren saying Ren things.

Lets break this down step by step:

The high end take is just to make content harder?

Uh, not really? The properly fleshed out takes specifically covering difficulty that I see are focused on correcting this games absolutely broken difficulty progression as you level. I've discussed it repeatedly over the years, Connor covered in a thread on the healer boards just recently and many more have pointed this out. So no, it's not 'just making content harder'. It's about making the game's difficulty make sense.

with the assumption that will make better players

Is it an assumption? I'd argue that we actually have prior history that clearly and demonstrably proves that a properly handled difficulty curve coupled with using earlier fights as a training ground to prepare players for what was to come works wonders. And that prior history is ARR's 2.0 launch lineup. Remember when dungeons taught you HM primal mechanics, demonstrated the importance of actually doing mechanics and even had a variety of enrages on offer? Remember when the following HM primals prepared you for Coil by teaching you the quirks and gimmicks you'd need to understand?

I do at least agree that there's a huge gulf between casual content such as 24 mans and Savage and it's very fair to say that Extremes do an awful job of plugging it as is. But to downplay the suggestions of high end players as 'lol just make stuff harder' is downright disrespectful and shows a lack of understanding of the game on your part TBH.

[ValkyrieL]

Remember this thread down the line, a savage fight turn 4 will be released with no body checks and week 1 groups will clear it in 3 pulls because of it..... why? Because people have asked for it. Completely taking away the enjoyment of players who desire to be challenged. It's okay if you can't clear a challenged fight, if week 1 clear in 2 days and you still hitting wall 5 months later with all mechanics already figured out...have you thought that maybe...just maybe your group is not skill enough to clear? And I'd you think you are than finding a group to your skill level maybe the best option.

[Colt47]

I mean it goes a little off topic, but before Shadowbringers end game was actually extremely niche content. Gear level didn't matter at all to the vast majority of people and I'm not even talking patch players as people generally favored glamour over gear score. When shadowbringers came out endgame hardmode content got popular because of the broken stat system and job overhaul making savage more accessible, so a lot of people ended up doing that content alongside the other content that normally existed at the time like foundation and bazja. The problem they got now is they amped the difficulty back up, people were used to being able to generally get max iLvL gear now in the mainstream, and now they've increased the commitment needed to do that, cannibalizing the other content because higher iLvL gear is objectively better than optional glamour items. The only thing that can sort of match it is time exclusive items like the pvp armor and mounts.

FFXIV is drinking some really bad coolaid going that direction because that is how just about every other MMO ended up going into the gutter. It's better to have an end where people can step away and return, then to keep people stuck in an endless grind and become bitter and discontent.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

Spicy take that's more on topic with the thread overall:

Progging Savage with a bang average midcore group that's all on side and in it for the fun is the best entertainment and is way more enjoyable than a sweaty spreadsheet enjoyer team that's going to optimise the fun out of the fight in a matter of a weeks or an ailing team that's getting finger pointy and angry over fails.

It's not a race for the overwhelming majority of us. The gear is going to go in the bin in a matter of months anyway so who really cares if you clear it week 2, month 2 or whatever. Learn to channel your inner schadenfreude and see the funny side in your cohorts going pop. Raiding will be all the better for it.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Remember this thread down the line, a savage fight turn 4 will be released with no body checks and week 1 groups will clear it in 3 pulls because of it..... why? Because people have asked for it. Completely taking away the enjoyment of players who desire to be challenged. It's okay if you can't clear a challenged fight, if week 1 clear in 2 days and you still hitting wall 5 months later with all mechanics already figured out...have you thought that maybe...just maybe your group is not skill enough to clear? And I'd you think you are than finding a group to your skill level maybe the best option.

Do body checks really add that much more challenge to a fight? No. They are just insta fails. Also, the vast majority of savage players don't give a crap about the WF race. I don't think I've ever watched one, and I've been doing savage since 2013. WF is over in a day anyway with Savage. Who cares? Put the body check mess in ultimate. Make every mechanic in ultimate a body check and prolong WF for weeks.



I don't mind challenging fights. But those fights need to be fun. I don't find P12S fun.


My group is usually a 2-3 month prog from start to finish of a tier. We're not hardcore raiders. We go 3 sessions a week for 2 and a half hours each. I've had no issues clearing fights in that time frame until this tier.

[Colt47]

Remember this thread down the line, a savage fight turn 4 will be released with no body checks and week 1 groups will clear it in 3 pulls because of it..... why? Because people have asked for it. Completely taking away the enjoyment of players who desire to be challenged. It's okay if you can't clear a challenged fight, if week 1 clear in 2 days and you still hitting wall 5 months later with all mechanics already figured out...have you thought that maybe...just maybe your group is not skill enough to clear? And I'd you think you are than finding a group to your skill level maybe the best option.

So an objectively better reality. A reality where everyone can get max iLvL and then people can choose what content they do instead of being stuck on a one path track linear grind mill to get max iLvL and BiS? I... want that so bad...

The concept of having hard content is great. Making the best item level progression path linked to specifically that kind of content is not. From a business standpoint I can see someone maybe thinking this is like an arcade scenario where keeping someone from completing the game nets more profit, so they build the levels to be extremely hard and require multiple lives, but it isn't justified with how this game has been designed and has a subscription model.

[Mcg55ss]

I think I'd rather see an increase in mechanic failure = instant death. Vuln stacks are worthless. All they really did was make things more forgiving.

Not syaing YOU but i wonder how many people claiming it is easy are also using addons to help them make the fights easier??? I mean lets not lie to ourselves there are probably a fair share of people claiming the fight is easy but also seriously struggle on fights patch day because addons aren't there to help them thus making the fights easier.

[Raven2014]

Do body checks really add that much more challenge to a fight? No. They are just insta fails. .

And does insta fail make it harder to reach the end? Yes. So it means it does add to the challenge and difficulty of the fight.

Like ... look, you can say you don't like it, you can say you don't think it's a good way to add more challenge to the fight. But to say it doesn't really add much to a fight is a such a backward and silly take. I don't know why people feel they need to make these weird illogical take to make the point, you don't need to. If anything, I dare say instant fail is probably one of the MAIN things that separate the difficulty between content. 24men, EX, savage, Ultimate all have stuffs that can kill you, the difference is how much allowance you have in the recovery process, which simply tighter as you go to the higher difficulty.


Do you know why some people are saying we're seeing Ultimate level mechanic in Savage? Because the majority of the mechanic in Ultimate isn't that much harder or complex than a savage fight, if you only look at them one at a time. Do you know what is the most difficult thing about Ultimate raiding? It's about not failing a mechanic that will wipe you 8, 9, 10 minutes in a 15 minutes fight. Seriously, if you took away all the instant fail from savage or even ultimate and make them all recoverable, they will simply become just a longer EX. I think that would take away one of the main attraction of those contents ... you know, the challenge?

I don't mind challenging fights. But those fights need to be fun. I don't find P12S fun.

On the other hand I find this is the best raid tier that I've ever had in the game. I find it insanely fun and would hope to welcome more in the future.