The XIV encounter recipe in a nutshell

[Valence]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new mechanics.

But just changing the animations and using them in new combinations/orders doesn't bother me. That's how it's been for most of the game's existence. I almost struggle to understand how people made it through 10 years of this if they didn't like it.

I reflected long and hard on why I actually went with it for 10 years (9 in my case so far). Which in reality is probably not even half of it because I enjoyed it up to ShB and onward, which, you guessed it, we always go back to. The great shift that shattered the community in two. But the question remains legitimate though, how did I make it through those 4-5 years if I didn't like it?

Well first there is the slowly boiling frog analogy. Water gets hotted and hotter but slow enough that you keep up with it right? Until at some point you notice you're seriously having problems and that's what happened to me in EW and it outright exploded now in DT as a revelation. I may have not been happy with things like job design, the systematic deletion of many other things I enjoyed, but it took time to actually put words over things and exactly nail the causes of dissatisfaction.

And then, there is also sheer stubbornness combined with false promises, either on the dev's side, or on my own side: the little fairy that keeps telling you to hope for changes and bad things to be addressed on a constant basis, and you keep telling yourself that yes, eventually it's gonna get better, but it doesn't, until you realize that what the devs are doing goes against what you personally like, and that it's not about a universally problematic low in design, but an actual disagreement between you and the altered product you're being served. For instance, people complained about the state of job design in EW already, and we were told to eat it and wait for 8.0 when DT wasn't even released yet. 8.0 is in 2 years at best. This is how long things can stretch just because of their rigid development schedule. If anything, some of us complaining here are absolute fans of the game (or have been), to have stuck for so long in spite of it.

With how MMOs can literally occupy a huge part of people's life depending on who you ask, and the amount of personal investment that can go into it, one doesn't just get rid of that attachment in a snap of your fingers, so I do believe that understandably, those things can indeed stretch over a long time. Obviously, I can only talk about my own experience there.

I think from their perspective, things like out and in AoEs, raid-wides, stacks, spreads, tethers, are just the tools (nuts and bolts) with which to build fights with. Unless you zoom out to see how they are being combined or utilized, you're never gonna appreciate them.

There's also the telegraphing issue. They like to be consistent with them across the game, but this has the effect of making it more obvious a mechanic is being reused.

Again, I'm for new mechanics and their promised new direction, but I just don't have a problem with how it has been, especially in high-end content where they are just using these "nuts and bolts" to build fights that, clearly, still wipe people.

The lego set is one thing, but comparing the type of gameplay we're getting nowadays to what we were getting when I started playing, and you'll see the immediate difference. It's not just about encounter lego and bricks, it goes way beyond this. It encompasses the battle system, the game direction and feel, and what as a player you're being asked to do in any fight encounter. But perhaps the crux of the problem is that I'd be satisfied with a relatively unchanging formula if it was HW's formula, yes, and maybe I've been misdirected by Yoshida's promises on new things there.

You'll admit though, that encounters didn't use to be stack, pairs, spread, chariot, dynamo all the time either. They had more unique flavors to them all, and the whole game battle content as a whole has been getting poorer and poorer, more barebones with a single model of boss encounters (trial bosses), a single model of instances, and a single model of mechanics (DDR), with no more model of battle system.

[Jeeqbit]

Well first there is the slowly boiling frog analogy. Water gets hotted and hotter but slow enough that you keep up with it right? Until at some point you notice you're seriously having problems and that's what happened to me in EW

That makes sense if the issues started in ShB for you. I just remember as far back as Heavensward people saying to me "it's just in, out, reused mechs" arguments and so I thought "if it's been like that since HW, then what actually changed now?"

I suppose other things can keep people occupied in the game through that time though - such as the social aspects (RP, venues, BA/DRS, FC events, statics, hunt communities).

I think there are two especially notable things that made this issue more obvious in Endwalker:

• The giant hitboxes and re-centering thing forced them even more into the "in, out" thing and made it even more obvious, since you couldn't realistically drag the boss around for mechanics anymore. The solution to that was mostly to have mini versions of the boss do mechs instead or have arena-based mechanics. This is one of the things they are supposed to be backtracking on but I'll leave it to everyone to decide if they have - it's still a bit early in the expansion.
• Expert roulette only having the same 2 dungeons, one of which has always been in it for 8 months. If you do this daily for 8 months you get so used to the script that, no matter how difficult or complicated or fresh the mechanics, they become absolutely braindead to execute and then all you see seared in your mind is more of the in, out, left, right stuff. This is a consequence of no longer making sidequest dungeons and they'd really just benefit from merging Expert and Level 100 Roulette together to increase variety. For example, the last MSQ dungeon beat me up at first on Viper but after months of doing it, it's absolutely braindead. In the past, it was always 2 new dungeons in that roulette every 3.5 months.

It's not just about encounter lego and bricks, it goes way beyond this. It encompasses the battle system, the game direction and feel, and what as a player you're being asked to do in any fight encounter.

True, there have been a lot of other changes (aka removals) that take away things that potentially distracted from how it had in, out, stack, spread before, so maybe it's easier to notice due to everything else being streamlined.

You'll admit though, that encounters didn't use to be stack, pairs, spread, chariot, dynamo all the time either.

It didn't in ARR for sure, although a lot of ARR dungeons actually seem to predate ARR and were ported from 1.0, with certain changes. They were a lot of different things in HW too, like both the Hullbreaker Isles from ARR/HW respectively. Based on what they said, this is the design they want to return to (with hindsight of what doesn't work), and I can see they have at least tried in the new dungeons.

If they haven't returned to that design enough then we can hope that they try harder with it. I think Dawntrail is meant to be about getting the battle content to the right place again and they may not have meant they'd succeed right off the bat. So perhaps the best place for us to start is to give reviews of the new Dawntrail dungeons specifically and what is good and what isn't (Dawntrail raids and trials too, depending on ones' interests).

I have seen many wipe on the first boss

I've done it for months and not seen a single wipe, but I've seen it come very close. But y'know, nothing can kill a Warrior, so I'm bias.