Encounters aren't everything

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

It never ceases to amaze me that you people think going back to heavensward raid design is a good thing when it almost ruined the game.

[Saraide]

There are problems with both encounter and job design and they cant be entirely disconnected. For some roles the problems are more on the encounter design part. Sure there is samey-ness going on with the tanks but imo the major problem with tanking in EW was giant hitboxes and constant auto centering. If they go back on that then tanking is going to be a lot more fun again. But not everything is encounter design. Healers spending the majority of their time pressing the same button is not primarily an encounter problem.

[Rufalus]

I just got back here from playing Rebirth so I'm gonna tack on my general complaints to this thread. That game is the highest-rated FF since XII, and second only to IX on the all-time list (metacritic). It has some problems but it understands what FF should be. The little things really matter.

CBU3 games by comparison really lack the personal touches. Take for example the extravagant Leveilleur estate in Endwalker, home of the twins. The doors are just painted on, you can't go in any of the rooms. Likewise there's no Ironworks headquarters to explore, wherever Cid is based now. The spec for towns is too limited to make the world feel immersive.

Anyways Rebirth restored my faith in Final Fantasy. It has a nice world and nice card game Queen's Blood. I hope we get QB in XIV.

[Valence]

Ideally,I think the current situation would be okay if most, if not all, jobs had some sort of skill ceiling to aim for, like BLM does with their alternative lines of rotation to squeeze the best dps - you don't need that to clear content if everybody is pulling their weight, but it would be a nice goal. However, without an official way to gauge your dps performance, is hard to have fulfillment value out of that.

To be honest I do think that non standard BLM lines are way too galaxybrain and unreasonable, and probably at best interest a hundred of crazy players in the whole world. And even them, I doubt they can fully pull them right. But I do agree with you and think job ceilings should be more interesting, and again, I don't think that difficulty is the best metric for that anyway. Intricate would be closer to it? Intricacies increases difficulty somewhat indirectly sure, but it's not difficulty for the sake of it. When it becomes mathematical intricacy, I'm not sure it's still a good metric to go for most of the jobs. I don't exactly want to be required a phd in math to start dabbling into optimization.

It never ceases to amaze me that you people think going back to heavensward raid design is a good thing when it almost ruined the game.

It also saved the game later with Midas and confirmed it with Gordias, and the game was still running on the same battle system, so take that as you will...

( aka to spell it plainly, it was encounter design that was problematic, not battle design )

[LilimoLimomo]

Current class gameplay:

Here's 2 minutes worth of button presses, press them in this specific order at these specific times, and the more you can do this like a robot the better you're doing. Enjoy the occasional proc that maybe mixes that up a bit.

Current encounter gameplay:

Keep pressing your class buttons, broadly speaking we're not going to get in the way of that. Just stand in these places at these times and you'll be good.

Personally, I think the biggest problem with FF14's combat is that there is not enough interplay between class gameplay and encounter gameplay. Broadly speaking, they each tend to exist in their own realm. One hand dodges, the other hand rotations, and rarely do they ever meet.

When I think of other games with combat that I enjoy, at any given moment the player can generally be offensive or defensive, but not both. In such systems, being defensive risks lowering your damage output, while being offensive risks your well-being. This system of risk-vs-reward means the player is constantly making strategic choices of how much risk to take based on ever-changing context, and that's generally pretty engaging. In FF14 most classes are overwhelmingly able to be both offensive and defensive simultaneously, and I think this is a primary factor of what makes combat underwhelming.

Like in turn-based FF games, you can sometimes Guard, but if you're doing that you can't attack. Or you can switch to the back row, but that costs your action. And if you're attacking, you're not doing those other things, so hopefully you chose a good moment to do so.

I love the combat in Elden Ring. Even just with the basic soldiers at the beginning of the game, I have spent dozens of hours in that first enemy camp because the bread and butter combat is a joy. When I attack I'm taking a risk, and when I guard or evade I'm not progressing the encounter. There are times when it pays off to dodge instead of attack, there are times when it pays off to block instead attack, and there are of course times when it pays off to attack. But at any given moment I need to analyze the context of the fight to determine what feels like the best choice, and when my enemy acts I need to respond accordingly.

There are rare moments in FF14 when you can get greedy and find a way to take a risk that either does or doesn't pay off. But in my experience, the payoff is usually meager (you didn't slightly lower your DPS, congrats!) and generally only applies to a subset of classes. Overwhelmingly, enemies change where I stand, but not what I do.

And I think that's a shame. It would be nice to see enemies impact the player more, and the player impact the enemies. To have dances that are less scripted and more improvisational and reactive. I don't even think that requires that the game become more difficult, just more engaging. Give players meaningful opportunities to exploit, and those who want to will take them.

That would probably mean that both enemies and player kits would need to change, so maybe that's more than the dev team can do without alienating the player base. I don't know. But it's something I think about a lot.

[Vyrerus]

It never ceases to amaze me that you people think going back to heavensward raid design is a good thing when it almost ruined the game.

Heavensward raid design was considered enjoyable again by Creator Savage, and Midas was a step back from Gordias in terms of raw math and bad mechanics (Gavel not withstanding).

It was only Gordias that nearly killed the raiding scene and game. And this was largely due to coming out before adjustments to the undertuned DRK, AST, and MCH as well as people's unfamiliarity with harder fights/complex mechanics. They had to try it at some point, they just overtuned it a bit too much. And then honestly, mechanics like Digititis and Nisi suck donkey nuts.

But if you actually played back then, you would know that people coming to try FFXIV from WoW and other places wanted it to be hard. They were coming to see it for its purported difficulty. By assuming the identity of difficulty, it played off of the Dark Souls mania that was sweeping everywhere back then, and you'd have new streamers come in and say it was EASY because they did a 24 man, only to have to eat their words when they tried even just an Extreme.

And you don't just look at Savage fight design to know raid designs. Extreme fights count too, and Heavensward had some of the best. Chiefly, Thordan, Sephirot, and Ravana. Ain't getting through any of those with just a Dorito of Safety. And they were bad ass, awesome fights.

[Aravell]

Heavensward raid design was considered enjoyable again by Creator Savage, and Midas was a step back from Gordias in terms of raw math and bad mechanics (Gavel not withstanding).

It was only Gordias that nearly killed the raiding scene and game. And this was largely due to coming out before adjustments to the undertuned DRK, AST, and MCH as well as people's unfamiliarity with harder fights/complex mechanics. They had to try it at some point, they just overtuned it a bit too much. And then honestly, mechanics like Digititis and Nisi suck donkey nuts.

It really does feel like a lot of people parrot "Heavensward almost killed the game!" without actually thinking. The raiding scene was already recovering by Creator and everything was going well again by Stormblood. It certainly feels like a lot of people who claim Heavensward almost killed the game never actually experienced Heavensward.

I honestly don't get this bias against the old fight design when the old fight design actually did emphasise your role within the party. DPS had things to burst down, healers needed to heal and tanks needed to tank things, how is that a bad design?

[Absurdity]

There are problems with both encounter and job design and they cant be entirely disconnected. For some roles the problems are more on the encounter design part. Sure there is samey-ness going on with the tanks but imo the major problem with tanking in EW was giant hitboxes and constant auto centering. If they go back on that then tanking is going to be a lot more fun again. But not everything is encounter design. Healers spending the majority of their time pressing the same button is not primarily an encounter problem.

They should absolutely reduce hitbox sizes and make tanks responsible for boss positioning again, but that is not going to magically fix the problem.

I mainly focus on warrior because it was my main but Dark Knight and now Paladin as well have the problem that even if they made us move bosses again and, you know, do tank things, it would barely move the bar.
You'd still spend roughly 40 seconds out of every minute just spamming your 1-2-3 filler with barely a braincell involved.

Defensive cooldown usage would still be incredibly boring and boil down to rotating between invulns and kitchen sinking, or sometimes just rotating between your 30%+BW/TBN/HS/HoC and Rampart+BW/TBN/HS/HoC+whatever other minor mitigation your job has because they space out busters precisely for this to work.
Not to mention how boring our defensives themselves are.

And with bosses casting every damn 5 seconds, during which they stand still, having to move them is just going to annoy you very quickly, so that's gonna need fixing as well.

[Gemina]

I've always been the type of player where I want to master the controls asap so I can focus on the gameplay. I feel that if my attention is on the buttons I am pressing and what does what, then it is not where it needs to be in order to play the game well. Without question, I am at my worst in this game when I am focused on my rotation. I will get hit by the most tell tale telegraph a boss has to throw at me.

I much rather have good encounter design with interesting mechanics. This in itself will force me into a right/left brain dance where I still have to be mindful of my rotation while doing the mechanics. If either side slips, I will screw up. I could either totally botch my rotation, lose my place on the battlefield, or even lose where the boss is at in its mechanical rotation. A good example of this was in Seat of Sacrifice EX when I would forget which element the WoL had imbued his blade with, and Golbez's Gales 2 has been one of the most difficult mechanics for me to deal with because of how much he can mix things up. It is much easier for me to deal with that mechanic as a healer than it is a melee DPS. But the mechanics make such encounters a blast to do. I enjoy them a good deal.

That being said, learning a new job has always been really fun as well. Spending time getting the rotation down, and then putting it into practice in PvE has always been interesting and a bit nerve racking. A job like BLM can make casual content a lot of fun due to its style of gameplay. I honestly couldn't imagine taking that job into harder content, and give a lot of props to the players that do and do it well.

[Saraide]

They should absolutely reduce hitbox sizes and make tanks responsible for boss positioning again, but that is not going to magically fix the problem.

I mainly focus on warrior because it was my main but Dark Knight and now Paladin as well have the problem that even if they made us move bosses again and, you know, do tank things, it would barely move the bar.
You'd still spend roughly 40 seconds out of every minute just spamming your 1-2-3 filler with barely a braincell involved.

Defensive cooldown usage would still be incredibly boring and boil down to rotating between invulns and kitchen sinking, or sometimes just rotating between your 30%+BW/TBN/HS/HoC and Rampart+BW/TBN/HS/HoC+whatever other minor mitigation your job has because they space out busters precisely for this to work.
Not to mention how boring our defensives themselves are.

And with bosses casting every damn 5 seconds, during which they stand still, having to move them is just going to annoy you very quickly, so that's gonna need fixing as well.

I dont disagree with your assessment but for me personally the constant auto centering and giant hitboxes were a very big deal of what made tanking less fun in endwalker. Tankbusters became so braindead because bosses dont auto attack anymore so you have everything left for those few busters (which we invuln most of the time anyway). Savage bosses should only stop auto attacking if it becomes physically impossible to live if they didnt stop.