Combat system is beyond saving.

[Gokki]

Reducing the fun aspect for you maybe. I don't care about encounter mechanics that ask me to play DDR on repeat and pass body checks that I can't even help others through with my skills. I care however for intricate and fulfilling job designs, and the game currently fails spectacularly at this. Everything is extremely basic.

Note that I'm using intricate on purpose, not complex, because complexity for the sake of it is just intellectual wankery.

I'm afraid the game engine is too limited to design anything dramatically more intricate and complex. For example: there doesn't seem to be any channeled abilities other than... Flamethrower? There's no parry, dodge or reposition mechanics, there's no aiming, there's no rythm other than the dualweaving GCDs we got, there's no multiplayer abilities or spells (imagine two BLMs casting in tandem). There's a lot that can be done to make combat more interesting but is limited by an old engine, networking and outdated interface.

The problem is that Encounter Design does has way less 'shelf life' than job design because of how XIV structure is:

- Focus on the encounters: They are complex and engaging until you get your clear and suddenly they are braindead as long as everyone is on the same page. What remains is a bunch of boring jobs to go through those reclears until you don't need to reclear them anymore. Add to the aggravation the small quantity of High End content you're offered every major patch.

- Focus on the jobs: They are complex and engaging, and at some point you master their mechanics, but you still need to be on your toes and be doing decision making constantly. Shelf life is bigger because you need to apply that to different encounters, which lead to different variables. This is exactly why today BLM is the job with the most shelf life imo.

In a ideal world you'd have a neat balance between the two of them, but if I could choose just one to be the 'complex one' would be Jobs, not encounters.

I agree, but without the aforementioned examples while keeping the game balanced and working it's going to be difficult to break the status quo on game design.

[Supersnow845]

Yeah, that's encounter design problem, not combat system (they're closely linked of course). There are many variables in all of this and i feel it's more difficult than people realise.
It's just the devs designing encounters differently. I do agree that encounter design is stale because everything is in an arbitrary square or round platform and there's never any texture to it, like, why not design a fight on a train where the fight changes depending on which car we're on. A rudimentary version of this exists in the early Omega fights, but that is still basically a rectangle arena.

I just don’t buy the “it’s more difficult than people imagine it is” when we literally already have it………coils

If they could do it scraping the bottom of the barrel to not bankrupt the company after 1.0 I don’t really think “it’s too hard” is a valid excuse in this day and age

[Valence]

A rudimentary version of this exists in the early Omega fights, but that is still basically a rectangle arena.

I made a thread somewhere in that same forum about how Phantom Train is the best designed raid encounter by far, not for its mechanics or buffs, but for the whole unique scenery, changing platforms and phases, it's actually trying to tell a whole story saga, and that's to wonder why every other boss ever is a static dummy on a platform with no rails... I don't have the answer to this to that day.

I'm afraid the game engine is too limited to design anything dramatically more intricate and complex. For example: there doesn't seem to be any channeled abilities other than... Flamethrower? There's no parry, dodge or reposition mechanics, there's no aiming, there's no rythm other than the dualweaving GCDs we got, there's no multiplayer abilities or spells (imagine two BLMs casting in tandem). There's a lot that can be done to make combat more interesting but is limited by an old engine, networking and outdated interface.

I wouldn't mind having those, but if you have actually played before ShB, we had a lot of other facets to the game that have been axed, proper and simple. A lot of resource management, teamplay, etc. They had a lot more building blocks to build things upon, unlike today. They need to reintroduce things, whether it's inspired by what we had or your ideas.. This would help both in encounter design and job design.

[Supersnow845]

I made a thread somewhere in that same forum about how Phantom Train is the best designed raid encounter by far, not for its mechanics or buffs, but for the whole unique scenery, changing platforms and phases, it's actually trying to tell a whole story saga, and that's to wonder why every other boss ever is a static dummy on a platform with no rails... I don't have the answer to this to that day.



I wouldn't mind having those, but if you have actually played before ShB, we had a lot of other facets to the game that have been axed, proper and simple. A lot of resource management, teamplay, etc. They had a lot more building blocks to build things upon, unlike today. They need to reintroduce things, whether it's inspired by what we had or your ideas.. This would help both in encounter design and job design.

First coil is another example of a raid telling a story by locations

T3 is a joke but it does add a lot visually to how first coil feels like a single raid of a physical location split over 5 fights which I absolutely love

[tsuchii]

Time to quit and let others enjoy things.
Bye

[Valence]

Thank you for your productive contribution.

[Supersnow845]

Time to quit and let others enjoy things.
Bye

I’ll be sure to attend your departure party when the devs make a change you don’t like and you get told to kick rocks

[Yuella]

I agree. HW combat is the best although I kinda liked the TP removal in Stormblood. I absolutely adore having to turn on Cleric Stance to do damage as a healer because it gives you a sense of risk and danger. Removing aggro management is absolutely non-excusable. Tanks should be able to decide whether they want to do more damage at the risk of losing aggro. That's the fun part of playing tanks and allow skill expression.

[Zadood]

I agree. HW combat is the best although I kinda liked the TP removal in Stormblood. I absolutely adore having to turn on Cleric Stance to do damage as a healer because it gives you a sense of risk and danger. Removing aggro management is absolutely non-excusable. Tanks should be able to decide whether they want to do more damage at the risk of losing aggro. That's the fun part of playing tanks and allow skill expression.

Pardon me as I only start played FFXIV at the start of Shb, but judging from everyone review about HW's both job and raid design, it seems that HW is like reverse EW. EW has bad job design with okayish encounter, while HW has okayish job design with bad encounter.

A silly take, aye, but I for one is willing to learn more about job design in pre-Shb era.

[Valence]

I don't think HW had bad encounters at all. If anything it suffers from the stigma of A1 and A2 and their savage versions that were extremely underwhelming and essentially glorified dps checks. Rest of the alex raids are pretty great, they also still have more than just a boss to hit for each fight as well as a bigger care to their actual environment. Shadow of Mhach also suffered from a first tier that even YoshiP apologized for how much of a boredom it was, and then we got gems like Weeping City and Dun Scaith (bring back the the old gate boss and remove proto ultima or move it somewhere else please, the old one was hilarious and the casualties were great kthx).