And the slow death of the RPG based battlesystem

[Raikai]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty. I love the direction this game has been heading in personally, and can't really relate to those who want more complex rotations back.

Maybe it's because I refuse to use third party tools and actually have to figure out the mechanics on my own. It would make a lot of sense for people who are cheating at the game to find it boring. When rotations are the difficult component, mechanics have to be simplified and homogenized. Then boss fights have little to no identity or are extremely simplistic.

It's much better this way, the solution is to just uninstall all the third party tools(cheats) that most people complaining about the direction of rotations have installed.

Rotation based difficulty has much more shelf life than mechanic based difficulty.

XIV's High End fights (the few we get every patch) can have the most complex puzzle to figure or execute - once you master and clear the fight it become meaningless, however a job that gets you on your toes all the time, making decisions on the go and adapting will always be there to challenge the player regardless.

[Valence]

I don't think I've ever cheated in that game and certainly not back before ShB where cheats were not even really a thing like today to boot. Encounter mechanics weren't blander than today either, just less arbitrarily punishing like today as they make up for a lack of other failure states coming from the battle system.

One of the big advantages of failures states coming from the battle system is that they're usually more malleable to recovery from the team, and party members helping each other (not just through raise, but raising is one of the remaining examples), while current body check vomit is literally designed to wipe because someone did something wrong and you can't do anything about it.

[Raikai]

while current body check vomit is literally designed to wipe because someone did something wrong and you can't do anything about it.

Agree, and to note that this makes the whole RDM experience even more sour. If their greatest boon that allegedly 'justifies' unimpressive dps is the Verraise, then they get bamboozled in a way since what's even the point of this very handy raise when it's useless in many points of boss fights due to the strict body checks?

[Supersnow845]

The other problem of the EW raid design is fights literally having a single answer

Anyone remember T8. My static at the time had 5 preferred solutions to T8 depending on who was playing the BRD, who was playing the SCH and who was playing the PLD and we barely even scratched the surface of how many ways that fight could be solved

How have we doubled the number of jobs and yet somehow reduced the number of solutions down to one when more jobs should equal more flexibility

[Aravell]

The other problem of the EW raid design is fights literally having a single answer

Anyone remember T8. My static at the time had 5 preferred solutions to T8 depending on who was playing the BRD, who was playing the SCH and who was playing the PLD and we barely even scratched the surface of how many ways that fight could be solved

How have we doubled the number of jobs and yet somehow reduced the number of solutions down to one when more jobs should equal more flexibility

That's what happens when the developers decide that you can't be creative with solution.

"Nope, can't do that, you get a damage down now"
"You can't do that, you now get a debuff to prevent it"
"Haha, no, you can't do that, that kills you now"
"Nope, not allowed, you wipe the party doing that now"

[gumas]

that just how i see when a game trying to carter to everyone, ff14 obviously try to appeal everyone from casual, hardcore, min maxer, crafter, etc. compare to wow who (last time i heard) always carter endgame which i dont like.

iam already at the state of you cant have everything mindset, as long i can still enjoy the game, iam happy with it

[Valence]

It continuously boils down and goes back to how they're progressively removed every facet of the game that doesn't legitimize the damage oriented gameplay they've been after. If you remove all dimensions to the gameplay from the battle system, then it's to be expected that encounters will progressively be unable to be designed on multiple dimensions either and will have a hard time keeping multiple solutions to mechanics. It's the exact same thing with job design, where a lot of abilities completely lose an actual justification for even existing and they get weeded out as well.

If you're trying to build a lego set but the only thing that's remaining is planks of a certain length, then it's going to stay on a two dimensional plane, because you will have removed every type of other lego block that could have made it 3 dimensional (or more).

[MitsukiKimura]

The devs absolutely are not trying to remove fail from the game. Savage raids and ultimates are still extremely hard content. Normal raids and normal trials are still a fun challenge. If you want difficult content, do it. If you find it too easy with third party tools installed, uninstall them.

We'll see what the direction the devs take for dawntrail, and I'm not really concerned about what you all feel. I just don't want the devs to only hear negativity. People clearly are incapable of playing the game properly since they rely on third party addons that are against the tos. If they're not going to ban people for using them, they should continue to retune the game until people feel like they don't need them anymore. It really messes with the entire experience for people to be abusing addons and this is the real reason for the change in game direction. I think square enix is just tired of people cheating.

You are on high on Copium if you think Savage/Ultimates outside of Top/DSR are challenging content. Normal raids and normal trials put me to sleep. You can drag a dead person through the entirety of Ucob and still clear without issues. If you aren't concerned about what others think or voice their concerns then why are you even here to begin with? Only thing worse for the game is people with your sense of "Game is fine you're the problem" mentality.

[Kuroka]

That's what happens when the developers decide that you can't be creative with solution.

"Nope, can't do that, you get a damage down now"
"You can't do that, you now get a debuff to prevent it"
"Haha, no, you can't do that, that kills you now"
"Nope, not allowed, you wipe the party doing that now"

Thats my only real issue with the game... the constant body/dps checks that will kill you no matter what. Let us recover if we are able to! Let us drag that one member that struggles with that one mechanic but plays perfectly fine elsewhere. So many parties just break because one stupid mistake that prevents progress due a kill mechanic.
Only because you have to do the mechanic the way they intended or youll die.