Mao has question for everyones about DDR-style boss fights.

[Kazuke_Miso]

Now Mao knows DDR-style boss fights always been in game since beginnings.

But they have always tried to do more than DDR:

Back in Stormblood there was a Savage raid called O8S.

One of the mechanics was called Forsaken.

Forsaken 1 was probably the most interesting heal check they've ever put into this game and it was more than just walking to the correct spot.

Kefka starts by casting Heartless Archangel. This applies a debuff called Incurable that has something like...

- A 5 second incurable debuff if you are at max HP when Heartless Archangel lands.
- A 12 second incurable debuff if you are not at max HP when Heartless Archangel lands.

(Numbers could be wrong it's been like 7 years since I did that fight)

Incurable means any form of healing and shielding will not apply while you have the debuff.

Now Heartless Archangel also drops everyone down to 1 HP. So you're at 1 HP *and* you also cannot receive any heal? And right after HA the DPS also needs to soak damage immediately?

The solution was elegant: you have to pre-shield them enough so that they can survive some hits during Incurable. And 3 seconds after Incurable drops off, they also need to soak damage from the Kefka heads. That requires them to be healed right after Incurable. So timing is important here, where the healers have to let the heal land right as Incurable falls off, and heal enough in a short time so that the DPS can do their job. The DPS also has to pay attention to their health and pop the Kefka heads only when they are ready to soak a hit. The tankbusters will then happen, so after taking care of the DPS, the healers need to take care of healing the tank. Back then we didn't have OP heals like Macrocosmos, so it actually required multiple abilities and GCD healing. Knowing to choose the right heal - AoE or single target actually mattered for this mechanic.

And Heartless Archangel is then casted again in like 40 seconds or something, after a gauntlet of damage, tankbusters, and heavy-hitting raidwides. In fact I think it happened like 7 seconds after an Ultima, so you have to get everyone to max HP right after a very heavy-hitting raidwide.

Back then healers actually had to use Helios and Medica. The world top logs had 20+ casts of Aspected Benefic, Aspected Helios, and Helios.

There are several more examples like the CC in A6S (which had an encore in E8S), the kiting in T7S, etc....

O8S Forsaken 1

https://youtu.be/obJEyZpb1Vg?si=l2szDJcmvL6E3Iwg&t=70

A6S CC phase: https://youtu.be/04yIFeihEv0?si=XIW5Ee0BGXatP4sb&t=166

E8S add phase: https://youtu.be/ON7D3uqnjSw?si=Iavbm9sSshF2pgRB&t=246

T7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uFmPaPedE

Anyone telling you that this game has always just been DDR is LYING AND DECEIVING YOU.

As long as you keep eating up they will serve you more of the same. Some people who are out of real-life clout participation by default are happy to spend another 50 hrs of their one life learning a pattern to get the next meaningless glowing stick in a video game.

Honestly, I used to care about clearing Ultimates and getting respectable logs. But after clearing DSR I just can't do it anymore. It's so dreadfully boring, and the fact that people praise DSR as the best fight, it made me realize that there's no hope for this game moving forward because the current slate of players literally love eating this slop. If people want challenging gameplay that isn't just rehearsing the same dance again and again in front of your theater director, go play other games. Seriously. If you want strategic skill, modded XCOM provides that in spades and is far harder. If you want quick reaction, play any FPS. For action frenzy, go play Diablo or a Diablo clone. Even for "dance" type games, Soulslikes do it far better than FF14 (you are memorizing the boss's moves after all in Souls).

FF14 used to fill the niche, along with other MMOs, to reward cooperative play and learning how to play as a team. That doesn't exist anymore since everything is now DDR fights where one player failing the dance means everyone dies with no chance of recovery. There are no more organic moments in raids where you pull off a sick recovery because it's just a binary "did you do the dance?!? if yes -> continue; if no -> everyone dies". The only thing resembling that these days is going on tank and shielding someone with a vuln right before a raidwide. That's it LOL.

[Kandraxx]

But they have always tried to do more than DDR:



O8S Forsaken 1

https://youtu.be/obJEyZpb1Vg?si=l2szDJcmvL6E3Iwg&t=70

A6S CC phase: https://youtu.be/04yIFeihEv0?si=XIW5Ee0BGXatP4sb&t=166

E8S add phase: https://youtu.be/ON7D3uqnjSw?si=Iavbm9sSshF2pgRB&t=246

T7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uFmPaPedE

Anyone telling you that this game has always just been DDR is LYING AND DECEIVING YOU.



Honestly, I used to care about clearing Ultimates and getting respectable logs. But after clearing DSR I just can't do it anymore. It's so dreadfully boring, and the fact that people praise DSR as the best fight, it made me realize that there's no hope for this game moving forward because the current slate of players literally love eating this slop. If people want challenging gameplay that isn't just rehearsing the same dance again and again in front of your theater director, go play other games. Seriously. If you want strategic skill, modded XCOM provides that in spades and is far harder. If you want quick reaction, play any FPS. For action frenzy, go play Diablo or a Diablo clone. Even for "dance" type games, Soulslikes do it far better than FF14 (you are memorizing the boss's moves after all in Souls).

FF14 used to fill the niche, along with other MMOs, to reward cooperative play and learning how to play as a team. That doesn't exist anymore since everything is now DDR fights where one player failing the dance means everyone dies with no chance of recovery. There are no more organic moments in raids where you pull off a sick recovery because it's just a binary "did you do the dance?!? if yes -> continue; if no -> everyone dies". The only thing resembling that these days is going on tank and shielding someone with a vuln right before a raidwide. That's it LOL.

Exactly. There's no real 'cooperative' play or synergy. They're just picking a fight that, for a solo player, would be rather unimpressive and most likely be cleared within 30 min for a Savage fight, or 90-120 min for an Ultimate. But no, now they're coming in and just x8 the whole fight. That's called inflated difficulty. It's like picking the ER Malenia fight but you're always queuing up with 7 other people and every time someone dies all die and go back to the start. That is just so incredibly cheap game design.

[Kazuke_Miso]

There's no real 'cooperative' play or synergy.

It's so sad that they actually used to have it. Little moments like seeing the monk saying "thanks " in chat after I send him a goad made my day.

That's just completely gone these days.

The DDR raid design is honestly also just bad for actually playing together frankly. By Endwalker, I felt that raiding is just waiting for the slowest player to pick up the mechanic. It really breeds a toxic mindset because the game punishes you for other players' mistakes. In HW and SB I remember raiding feeling like trying to contribute to coordinate and play as a team. There's a lot more "wholesome" team gameplay with all the synergistic actions that jobs had. It felt like coming together to defeat a boss by helping each other. Body checks have honestly ruined raiding for me.

[Khutulun]

The DDR raid design is honestly also just bad for actually playing together frankly. By Endwalker, I felt that raiding is just waiting for the slowest player to pick up the mechanic. It really breeds a toxic mindset because the game punishes you for other players' mistakes. In HW and SB I remember raiding feeling like trying to contribute to coordinate and play as a team. There's a lot more "wholesome" team gameplay with all the synergistic actions that jobs had. It felt like coming together to defeat a boss by helping each other. Body checks have honestly ruined raiding for me.

Tbth, I can't move past my thought that the lack of toxicity in your earlier experiences was more due to the people around you than the difference of mechanics back then vs now. From my experience with other games and genres, ANYTHING that's functionally related to the concept of "team play" will breed toxicity. Now it's someone floor tanking and dragging down the party's damage dealing, back then it'd be someone un-optimally performing their rotations or using their buffs wrong and dragging down the party's damage dealing. Just more of the same, rudeness or cruelty come naturally.

Ofc, I don't mean to invalidate your experiences. Just making conversation. I wasn't playing FF14 in those times. This is more a personal thing that I can't parse your experience due to how I normally see people act.

[Jeeqbit]

It's so sad that they actually used to have it. Little moments like seeing the monk saying "thanks " in chat after I send him a goad made my day.

That's just completely gone these days.

The DDR raid design is honestly also just bad for actually playing together frankly. By Endwalker, I felt that raiding is just waiting for the slowest player to pick up the mechanic. It really breeds a toxic mindset because the game punishes you for other players' mistakes. In HW and SB I remember raiding feeling like trying to contribute to coordinate and play as a team. There's a lot more "wholesome" team gameplay with all the synergistic actions that jobs had. It felt like coming together to defeat a boss by helping each other. Body checks have honestly ruined raiding for me.

It's true for sure that in Stormblood, it was rampant to see people share MP, help manage aggro and regen TP for eachother, or affect others' GCD Speed (Astrologians). This happened in dungeons and roulettes constantly in Stormblood, and it felt good that you were all affecting eachother. And let's add to that, that healers actually mattered in dungeons and you still relied on them as a tank. It was for sure a thing that made normal roulettes actually fun then, because of those dynamic factors where everyone was buffing eachother. A big one was Mana Shift, where people lent their MP to rezzers to help recover from a near-wipe.

It had become such a big thing that SE obviously saw it as a problem and cracked right down on it, and hard, I assume "because a casual player might not understand how to do all that and find it too complex" and to make it easier to balance jobs be reducing external influences.

It's pretty true that almost all that's left of that is lending a tank buff to people to save them before a cast completes. Raid-wide mit or Reprisal is fun too, when the party survives with 1% HP and you know that decision saved them. Regardless though, it does still feel like we're all working to overcome a raid, since healers are doing their job healing/mitting, tanks are doing their's tanking/mitting, etc.

Personally for me, the biggest effect of them removing all that was making roulettes less fun. I always felt like raiding was waiting for the slowest person to pick up the mechs even back then. People joining my party when they weren't at the prog point I asked? They did that. People joining my party and being unable to heal well? They did that too.

But what helped make raids feel more synergistic then was also just having different responsibilities more of the time. I mean, if you have 8 towers and you all stand in them, you're all doing the same mechanic. Yet it was widly different from that in the past. Each role had a unique job and had to do it well.

A5S had MT handle the boss, OT handle the adds, and people assigned to monkey duty. A9S had people handle the adds, the alarum, dragging batteries to adds, the tank had to take the boss and aim it right, the OT had to take the add, and those autos hurt so keeping up the physical damage down helped. A10S had people assigned to passing preys, the MT taking the boss and the OT taking the add, someone on spike button duty.

In contrast, everyone's doing basically the same thing in M1S and M2S.

Actually I found it better these days, players seem to more calm. Compare to HW era, Alexander Savage

Gonna agree. I mean, there have always been lots of chill players, and there will always be toxicity, but my PF experience in Stormblood was "1-3 wipes disband". Now it's more often the case that if we wipe for an hour they are still there. Something just kinda shifted in Shadowbringers.

[Mikey_R]

It's true for sure that in Stormblood, it was rampant to see people share MP, help manage aggro and regen TP for eachother, or affect others' GCD Speed (Astrologians). This happened in dungeons and roulettes constantly in Stormblood, ..

No they didn't. Unless this is a stark difference between the EU playerbase and the NA playerbase that noone is aware of. Most jobs hates AST's Arrow as yo ujust ran out of resources faster, coupled with the fact noone used the party resource generators, made content feel incredibly bad when you just have to stop attacking due to no fault of your own.

As for the topic as a whole, I am still in the camp of all fights have been 'DDR', whatever that happens to mean, how people define it is so vague, it can apply to everything. At a set point in a fight, you do thing, welcome to everything ever. Let's have something that is a bit more descriptive to actually narrow down what the issues are, what mechanics in the past did not follow this 'DDR' format and why they do not count towards 'DDR'.

As for some things said in this topic, let's go through them, remembering all of them happen at the same point throughout a fight:

Forsaken 1 in O8S, the whole shielding before the debuff goes up to soak the meteors is not needed. If you have the correct number of players in each AoE, the meteors do ZERO damage. The reason for the pre-shielding is so that you can more quickly soak the damage from the tethered heads for more uptime, but you do technically have time between the meteors and the heads to sort it out. The pre-shielding is just an optimisation for the mechanic.

As for the other videos in that same post, that says nothing and doesn't prove or disprove a point either way. You need to explain why they are not classed as a 'DDR' mechanic so that an actual discussion can be had.

There was something fun about dealing with Chirada and Suparna in different groups, or fighting in Bahamut's giant hand and doing that weird Neurolink/Conflag mechanic. Always found some of those weird mechanics to be interesting and thematic. Not sure we'll have those again in the future.

But in the definition of 'DDR' that everyone uses, these things happen at set points and you deal with them the same way.

It was done moderately so far but I do feel that recently those have seen a wild resurgence, notably in Criterions like with Moko the Restless or Statice (those two bosses absolutely destroyed me, I am genuinely unable to follow which is something that has never happened to me before in challenging content), but also the new NM raids.

But isn't changing how things are telegraphed a good thing? By getting rid of environmental tells you are restricting how these things can be communicated. In a way, this would 'simplify' fights and make things feel samey. If you want things to be different, you need to mix things up. Even similar mechanics can feel different depending on how they are presented. Take M4 and the front/back laser memorisation and then take M5 with the 8 frogs on the edge. Both mechanics tell you what is happening before it goes off, the difference is, you have to memorise the canons but not the frogs, as the frogs stay around. They are still ultimately the same thing, stand either here or there, but I bet they do feel different to parse and execute because of the difference.

How about line AoEs that cross leaving safe squares between them, compared to, again, M5 where alternating squares on the dancefloor are the danger zones. With the line AoEs, you tend to want to go to the areas diagonally from your current safe square, with the dancefloor, it is the adjacent ones. Same concept, slightly different execution.

This also leads into something that bugs me a lot and that is the 'all fights are just mechanics X,Y Z etc.' Of course they are, those are the basic building blocks of any fight, it's like me complaining that all jobs are composed of GCDs and oGCDs and are therefore all the same. They aren't. They all use the tools in different ways and this has always been the case. As for some mechanics that don't get used often or at all in recent times, you have to ask why? Is it because they were bad mechanics, is it because the players didn't like having to stop their rotations to deal with it? (which would be a bigger issue in today's job profiles than it was back in HW).

TL;DR, Let's be more specific about what we actually mean when we say 'all fights are DDR', how and why, so that the actual issue can be addressed and not the vague sentiment that means nothing.

[Jeeqbit]

No they didn't. Unless this is a stark difference between the EU playerbase and the NA playerbase that noone is aware of.

Oh, well I am saying the NA experience. Maybe EU just didn't use their abilities much?

Most jobs hates AST's Arrow as yo ujust ran out of resources faster

I mean yes, but the point is you could use it and affect eachother and ASTs did use that stuff.

[Mikey_R]

I mean yes, but the point is you could use it and affect eachother and ASTs did use that stuff.

I think the thing to take away from increasing the GCD speed was that not everything was beneficial in all circumstances and in the case of Arrow, it depleted resources fast. If it didn't do that, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, though in todays metagame, it would misalign GCDs and make things not line up, making things feel bad that way. In my opinion there does need to be a massive shift in how they want to design jobs so that things like AST cards can come back, but making sure they are all a benefit in some way or another without a downside.

[Kazuke_Miso]

Forsaken 1 in O8S, the whole shielding before the debuff goes up to soak the meteors is not needed.

If you're going to spread misinformation you should at least have cleared the fight back then. The towers do very light damage.

And since you conveniently dismissed the whole post about DDR raids by laser focusing on a (non-existent) minor error, I will do the same to your idiotic post.

Most jobs hates AST's Arrow as you just ran out of resources faster, coupled with the fact noone used the party resource generators, made content feel incredibly bad when you just have to stop attacking due to no fault of your own.

This is a complete skill issue except on jobs like MCH. Fey wind and Arrows were optimal play and good players knew how to exploit them effectively.

Honestly I don't even understand why people who clearly have not done the content that people are discussing (O8S) chime in.

[Mikey_R]

If you're going to spread misinformation you should at least have cleared the fight back then. The towers do very light damage.

And since you conveniently dismissed the whole post about DDR raids by laser focusing on a (non-existent) minor error, I will do the same to your idiotic post.

Try again. I checked the mechanics by reviewing Mizzteq and Mr Happy. Mizzteq never says you have to shield before hand and Mr Happy specifically states that the meteors do no damage if you have enough party members in them:

https://youtu.be/pZD7pOd4Gzg?si=lH7yTGaII5hXZE3J&t=905

To further this, the guide you linked can be interpreted as the heads doing damage, but I'm not here for vague wording, conveniently, there is also a video attached, a Ninja PoV as it happens. Go to Forsaken 1, the only buffs on the Ninja are Protect and Plenary Indulgence, the Path of Light hits and it does ZERO damage. Here is that point in the video, starting at the point just before their HP reduces to 1.

In this case, I do believe I have provided enough evidence to say, without a doubt, The Path of Light does ZERO damage.

If you don't want to provide explanations as to why your other videos are not classed as DDR, I am just going to ignore them. Evidence without explanation is not evidence at all.

This is a complete skill issue except on jobs like MCH. Fey wind and Arrows were optimal play and good players knew how to exploit them effectively.

Honestly I don't even understand why people who clearly have not done the content that people are discussing (O8S) chime in.

The problem is, you are clearly looking at things from the point of view of a static group, where players know what they are doing. However, these things also need to work in a random group setting and being unable to attack because your TP regener didn't regen your TP, or you just did not get randomly matched with one, was a problem. This is only made worse by the fact random groups are, by their nature, going to do less damage than a static group, so fights take longer, which gives more chance for this to happen.