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

[AmiableApkallu]

I understand Mikey's point even if it comes across as a little pedantic. Sometimes a player isn't clear what they're issues are with a game, just like how sometimes someone at a restaurant isn't specific about what tastes bad about a dish, it just tastes bad to them. And I personally feel that it isn't the consumers job to specify the exact ingredients the chef should use to make the food taste better, but to each their own.

Correct, it's not up to the consumer to specify what ingredients should be used to fix their dish. But they do actually have to be able to articulate what's wrong in more detail than, "this tastes bad." What's the chef supposed to do with that? Randomly try things until they're told they can stop?

On the other hand,

• "Fights are too predictable" vs.
• "Fights feel like they're just a standard set of AoE dodges and stacks now" vs.
• "Fights throw out mechanics too quickly" vs.
• "Fights make me spend too much time running around"

are four separate problems, each of which at least hints at something concrete that the battle designers could try changing.

[Mawlzy]

Compare The Grand Cosmos to The Underkeep.

Which was more interesting?

[Kazuke_Miso]

Compare The Grand Cosmos to The Underkeep.

Which was more interesting?

Both are uninteresting. Underkeep was slightly worse because of the last pack of trash. But there's nothing interesting in the Grand Cosmos either other than the furniture fire mechanic (which is more of a visual flourish than actual substance).

[xbahax92]

You can probably predict everything that goes on in Coils as well... but I can't. Not in the same level that I can predict the primal fights.
T1, I forget the boss name but it's the snake that splits into 2 and needs to be fed slimes to keep its constant increasing of damage buffs in check. The sustained damage in there is crazy enough that some experienced healers still prefer to use mainly Cure 1 to keep some MP.
Everyone has a relatively simple job to do in regards to the fight itself. Tanks keep snakes apart, healers sometimes like to split their focus on one tank for each, ranged DPS run to flashing platforms to spawn slimes.
But when you start to consider the small details - slimes heal the snake depending on their HP so you want to bring its HP as low as possible before feeding but you don't want to kill it; the snakes have a baitable back attack that stops its auto attacks if just for a moment so you want melees to bait it as much as possible but you don't want them to get hit; tanks don't have as many mitigation buttons and the cleaves are untelegraphed mini busters so they want to space out through as long as possible (PLD is really strong in these raids because of Sheltron) - it makes for a unique experience and it's overall very hard to stick everything to a specific timeline. For me, anyways. It feels more like everyone has a job to do and less like everyone has a spot to stand on in specific times.

Reading this part brought fond memories back. Yeah, it wasn't fast paced content, but it definetly felt like a puzzle to play.

T2 - ADS Boss: You had to figure out which nodes to kill to disable certain buffs for the final boss.
A9 - Refurbisher 0: Kill enemies so they are not drained by the boss - adds have to melt by the lava puddle in each area
O5 - Phantom Train: Avoid Ghosts until a certain point. Get ported to avoid instant death. Every consumed Ghost increased the HP of the add in the train.
E5 - Ramuh: Consume a stack of Lightning orb to avoid instant death. Certain amount would overcap and result in higher damage taken.

And those are just the normal version raids. Savage had stuff on top of them.
Sad to see such good ideas gone and be replaced by DDR.

[Kazuke_Miso]

A9 - Refurbisher 0: Kill enemies so they are not drained by the boss - adds have to melt by the lava puddle in each area

Remember when tanks had actual TANKING mechanics? I don't remember the last time dragging adds or bosses to specific spots, you know something a TANK does in every other game, was featured in any content other than Criterion*.

There's also the TLC Amdapor HM sunshine mechanic down the last corridor, or dragging mobs under boulders in Xelphatol.

*Unironically I thought the trash packs in Criterion were way more interesting than the bosses, which are just advanced DDR.

[AmiableApkallu]

Compare The Grand Cosmos to The Underkeep.

Which was more interesting?

I'd say they're about the same, actually.

• Both adhere to the now formulaic "trash wall trash boss [repeat two more times]" structure and scripted boss fights.
• I recall nothing about Grand Cosmos's first boss, but I'll say that all the bosses here each have their singular gimmick.
• Underkeep gets a point, via Shale and (sadly invisible) Sphene, of having an actual reason for why there's exactly one path we walk. Grand Cosmos has us busting into someone's home, but there's conveniently exactly one unblocked path that we meander along, because that's exactly how you stop intruders
• Underkeep gets a point for giving a better sense of traversing structures and space, and telling us a little something about them. Grand Cosmos is supposed to be some grand palace, but it felt more like wandering through generic hallways and rooms, and a generic courtyard.
• Grand Gosmos gets a point for having bosses that are better thematically connected to the dungeon. The bosses of Underkeep feel like they're there because the formula required them to be there.

If you put only these two dungeons into Expert Roulette, I wouldn't care which one I get each day. In fact, in any roulette made up of exactly two dungeons, I wouldn't care which one I get each day.

Which points out the flaw in asking the question. It's not about whether picking up a seed and moving it somewhere is more or less "interesting" than watching a disappearing line to figure out where a cleave is going. If every boss's gimmick was "pick up object and move to better location," that'd get old just as quickly as if every boss's gimmick was "watch the disappearing line."

A sample size of two can't point out the real issue, which is variety. When the action needed to resolve every mechanic is the same, e.g., "stand in the correct spot", that puts incredible pressure on names and visuals and music — "theming", as it were — to making things feel different. But turning that around, if SE were to do a better job of really trying to "theme" encounters, they might actually find the inspiration to come up with mechanics that required more variety of actions to resolve.

[TaleraRistain]

I think for myself for the person I am now then XIV is scratching the itch for me and I enjoy these fights.

The person I was in 2014 when I moved from WoW to here enjoyed things back then, too. I've played and left so many MMOs over the past 26 years that I think at least for myself, I've become a sort of chameleon and I try to find something to enjoy even if things change.

Games will change on us and sometimes we'll like it and sometimes we won't like it. And if it's not scratching the itch anymore because we're not the target audience, it may be time to move on. It's always sad when you move on after dedicating so much of yourself. But it's necessary sometimes for your own happiness. Someday this game may not scratch the itch for me so I may move on to another or leave the genre entirely. Maybe I'll finally age out of it. I'll keep telling SE what I enjoy while I'm here and give feedback on things I may not quite be feeling.

If they did present me with a vision that I might not quite jive with, I might be a bit happy. They seem to sway so often with player opinion and I really wouldn't mind seeing a firmer idea from them of what they want to focus on and how they want the game to be. Then I could choose for myself if that was a path I wanted to continue to walk with them or not.

[AllenThyl]

Reading this I'm now pretty convinced that ShB+ players, with very few exceptions, will never be able to even comprehend the magnitude of what they never experienced. Talking with such people is an exercise in frustration because they just cannot relate.

Yeah, I heard that before with regards to the WoW Vanilla nostalgia. Was very entertaining to see how twisted and warped people's perception of the raiding reality was of that content, with buffs lasting mere 5 minutes, damage dealers like mages not actually participating in many fights by doing damage but rather constantly decursing everyone, paladins staying out of combat perpetually just to rezz people, 3 copies of the same spell of various spell levels on the hot bar because higher spell levels have worse damage / mana ratio of base damage but same spell damage scaling, many classes having one viable specc for raiding if they were lucky.

So yeah, you can try to convince yourself however much you want of your own perception of how this game was "back in the day". The validity of your assessments is certainly not boosted by your crass inability to correctly analyze the workings of this game as it currently is, most of your posts in terms of fight design being nothing but vague sound bites that romanticize the version of the game that you had the first contact with. A pattern all too common, really.

To everybody that can't see it, doesn't relate to it in any way, genuinely or not, then I'm genuinely happy for you if you enjoy the game as a result.

Isn't that the point of games? To have fun and enjoy the time? When you buy a new video game, do you buy the ones you expect to have the least fun playing? Because otherwise, it's hard to explain the constant whining that has been going on for years from certain members of this community. This is a subscription base game, every month you have to for over money just to be able to log in. Money you could have spent to do activities that .. you know, you actually enjoy. Instead, whining. Constant, incessant whining. About every single aspect of the game. It's fine to not like playing this game, it's fine to not like the direction it is going. But at some point, you do have to take responsibility for your own life choices. Because if you don't, no one else will.

I mean, do you know any sports or hobby forum full of people that whine as much as you and others here do, constantly trash talking the part of the player base that enjoys their time just to not face the fact that they have lost all control of their life? Of course not, it would be completely mental to whine in a badminton forum about playing badminton, since no one is forced to play badminton. Just go do something that is more enjoyable to you.

But alas, it will never come, will it? If there is one thing SE can count on, it's the non-stop whiners in this forum to never stop buying new expansions and subscriptions. They could introduce a forum pass for 50 bucks, and ya'll would happily pay it just to whine :>
This thread alone feature some "This was the last straw, I quit" posters that are back again.

[Mawlzy]

A sample size of two can't point out the real issue, which is variety. When the action needed to resolve every mechanic is the same, e.g., "stand in the correct spot", that puts incredible pressure on names and visuals and music — "theming", as it were — to making things feel different. But turning that around, if SE were to do a better job of really trying to "theme" encounters, they might actually find the inspiration to come up with mechanics that required more variety of actions to resolve.

Right. And when 98% of dungeons are dodgeball and a handful are "pick up and move stuff" and "interact with the arena to remove a de facto doom" - all the while coordinating with your party members - I think it's clear we add variety by having less DDR and more other stuff.

[Mawlzy]

I mean, do you know any sports or hobby forum full of people that whine as much as you and others here do, constantly trash talking the part of the player base that enjoys their time just to not face the fact that they have lost all control of their life? Of course not, it would be completely mental to whine in a badminton forum about playing badminton, since no one is forced to play badminton. Just go do something that is more enjoyable to you.

Since you asked, I can give two examples.

Many poker forums and Discords are dominated by people complaining how awful the game is because they just took a bad beat or are on a downswing, despite the fact that without variance they game would be dead. Stranger, there are many who assert online poker sites are rigged, while continuing to deposit money on them.

Second, soccer-related social media in the UK is dominated by "fans" explaining how lousy their team is, that the manager should be sacked, that the players should all be traded, and so on.

I'd suggest both the above are more futile and self-defeating than subscribers to a game asking for it to be improved. That said, I agree with you that the degree and nature of complaints on this forum from some contributors are troubling.