Should SE scale high end content difficulty towards the usage of SIM ?

[BigCheez]

The problems with restrictions doesn't only come from the game's netcode or engine. There's also restrictions placed on the devs by players who complained about certain mechanics because of various reasons. It's why everything is just "place AoE here" or "spread/stack" in different formations.

We used to have very creative and unorthodox fight design in Alexander. While some of those things were kinda whack (A2S gobwalker thing for instance), but a lot of other stuff was just complained about because "muh uptime". It's no wonder we just have spreads and stacks in the game now when every time they try something different the parse brains shit on them for it. Players were complaining about the fights then, so SE fixed it, and players are still complaining. It got way worse in EW when tanks were just an easier DPS role that kitchen sinked or invulned every buster. And I hear healer wasn't much better.

I do agree they have kind of put themselves into a corner with the design. But I think there's more than just the general game design at fault.

There are a lot of limitations on the fight designers.

Some of them exist because of snapshotting and the game needing to be playable on up to 100ms or so, given some people's proximity to the nearest servers. Some of them exist because of modern job and role design.

It's less a case of "muh uptime" and more a case of "my rotation will be irrecoverably scuffed for the rest of the fight if you force me to miss more than 2 GCDs per 1 minute cycle". GNB was one of the best examples of this before they made double down only cost 1 cart. If you didn't generate 3 carts in time for your next no mercy window, either gnashing fang or double down had to drift, which would cause problems for the entire duration of the fight. Making damage rotations less rigid would open up a lot more creativity in terms of fight design.