What era of design was your favorite?

[Dahlinea]

examples please. I was basically falling asleep between each mechanic. Explain how elevation or riding the spaceship was so different, to how the M5s dance lights or sneks in p8s were?

Because of perception. You say it's not reality but this game (or any game, for instance) is all about perception. You can break down any mechanic in any game as sets of rules that would be boring by themselves. The way you play, how these rules are implemented and the way you can resolve or fail them is what makes them interesting.

Take that Moonlit/Moonshadowed phase from Tsukiyomi, for example. Fundamentally, it's a DDR mechanic where if you stay on one side of the arena you die, not really different from the basic orange ground AoE that you move away from left to right to avoid getting hit. However, on Tsukuyomi you have much more control over it, and that makes it more interesting.

Of course, you can dislike it. At the end of the day, I can't convince you of anything because I can't make you play with the jobs how they were the old days, for you to see the difference. And that is not even my intention.

I will complain about job designs and battle mechanics because I saw how they declined over the years and want to see the battle system get better like before. I wouldn't be here complaining if I didn't like the game.

[Supersnow845]

Did the damn mechanics resolve the same way or not?

So, where is the amazing variety that people talk about, or the unique mechanics, a great portion of this forum is crying about, and which was lost?



examples please. I was basically falling asleep between each mechanic. Explain how elevation or riding the spaceship was so different, to how the M5s dance lights or sneks in p8s were?

How classes were is not even the main thing I am talking about, just strictly mechanical uniqueness, pace, complexity, and variety.

Some mechanics can resolve in a similar way but actually be vastly different in how they are perceived because of the difference in the job kits. Like for example the add in A3S (the other hand). That add required absolutely perfect play by the tanks because it had to picked up by the off tank incredibly quickly but couldn’t be picked up by the main tank otherwise everyone would die. But provoke functioned differently and shirk didn’t exist. So everyone played skills around not generating excessive agro in the phase the add would come out in. If the same mechanic came out today the OT would just provoke it and GG

Another example is T7, a gaze being LOS’ed by a tower isn’t a unique mechanic but having to create the tower by using the bosses own mechanics against an immortal add that was a danger to the party certainly was. Especially since it could only reasonably be controlled by a physical ranged but benefited from slow from the pet classes

Another example is levithan ex briny mirror. GCD healing debuffs aren’t uncommon. But the fact that the mirror reflected healing range and forced a healer swap due to the lack of oGCD’s is unique compared to today but you don’t get the whole story just from that since SCH could bypass healing down effects with lustrate, but it couldn’t bypass healing range down effects, but it’s a difference that affected play you would only pick up on if you played the old classes

Then there was just mechanical variety that doesn’t really exist anymore beyond the jobs. T2’s pick your patch, T8’s “you control when the mechanics go off” T11’s boss hitbox is a death wall was unique till DT trial 4 it was nice to see that come back. T4 and A2 are fully add based fights. A5 and A2 have an extra “role” that needs to be completed by the party, A6 is a boss rush, A11 you can control how quickly the boss enrages

There is just a lot of mechanical diversity

[Kohashi]

Perception this, perception that when it's a completely biased and personal experience backed by 0 factual data. The bottom line is that the mechanics back then were less complex and virtually the same as they are today.

However, if you want to argue that the jobs were different (better or worse), that's fair, but another point.

boss hitbox is a death wall was unique till DT trial 4

Also a spicy dot on the boss hitboss is also present in M3s as well. and is def not a death wall at all.https://images.app.goo.gl/W1jMYFN6zSe1wUZp7 It is annoying to heal? yes, is it a death wall? hell no.

[Dahlinea]

Perception this, perception that when it's a completely biased and personal experience backed by 0 factual data. The bottom line is that the mechanics back then were less complex and virtually the same as they are today.

However, if you want to argue that the jobs were different (better or worse), that's fair, but another point.

If you don't see the difference in how mechanics played before and now, then I can't see your issue with us complaining and asking for the game to have better mechanics and job designs like it did before, since we can see the difference. After all, won't make a difference for you.

[Valence]

Did the damn mechanics resolve the same way or not?

So, where is the amazing variety that people talk about, or the unique mechanics, a great portion of this forum is crying about, and which was lost?

If you seriously think that the add phase (with the 4 robots) is something that exists in today's fights, then I don't think it is even worth continuing that discussion because obviously we do speak different languages there. This phase is about dealing with multiple mechanics happening at the same time from the different adds, and there is some amount of choice of how you want to spread the damage between adds, depending on when some go invuln, or when some trigger their mechanics since it is HP based: the whole add sequence is literally about multitasking each add while carefully monitoring them triggering their mechanics one at a time, and there is multiple solutions depending on which add you choose to burn and how after getting rid of the first (Brawler). On top of this there is a lot of raid wide damage going off from different adds which unlike you constantly trying to reduce fights to encounter design only (I understand, you're from an era where it barely matters), resource management and scarcity was a real deal in the old battle system, unlike now. There is also a lot of tank responsibility with positioning each add and pulling them properly and again, the old battle system had actual aggro management you didn't want to fuck up and you had to manage unlike today. So yeah, no wonder half of those mechanics look like "whatever" when you're playing them today. That's the whole point and what you don't seem to be willing to accept. You missed the train and that's fine, but you cannot say that it's the same because it's not. You can't dissociate fight design and job design when half of those old mechanics specifically challenged things that have been removed since then. Of course they're gonna look shallow now since they don't challenge anything anymore nor they interact with any gameplay loop anymore.

There is literally nothing alike today, except perhaps M6S (3rd boss of Jeuno has safeguards to ensure this kind of tactics don't matter). If there is variety in this fight ultimately is up to your own judgement, but there is definitely a lot more than what we have today, and more importantly, we haven't seen this kind of design since... that era I think.


Edit: Or what Dahlinea and Supersnow said, I'm getting tired of explaining something to people that have decided they don't want to hear it anyway.

[Jeeqbit]

So, where is the amazing variety that people talk about, or the unique mechanics, a great portion of this forum is crying about, and which was lost?

The main examples I could give from Alex are:

• Different arenas. A rectangle (A10S), a gaunlet (A6S), prisons (A7S)
• Paint and entering vehicles (A5S/A2S/O6S)
• Adds and add areas (A4S, A12S, O5S, etc).

These sort of things are actually examples the developers gave themselves when explaining what they were going to bring back in Dawntrail. And it seems they have given it a try in the latest raid tier. They are trying not to do the same mechanics that make them fall asleep themselves, and to not veto ideas due to lack of uptime.

How classes were is not even the main thing I am talking about, just strictly mechanical uniqueness, pace, complexity, and variety.

To a degree though, a mechanic that would now just be "press heal button", would be a lot more complicated to deal with when we had less OGCDs, MP was harder to manage, damage dealing was harder to balance due to Cleric Stance, incoming damage to tanks was greater, and self-heals weren't as available on non-healers. So it has an effect on the complexity of the mechanics.

I can't begin to say how many healers couldn't handle A11S and often they were the only ones preventing us from getting anywhere. It was the same in Extreme trials such as Sophia. The unreal version of Sophia was a joke compared to the original version, because everyone in the fight had their own heals - Second Wind, Bloodbath, Shake It Off, Bloodwhetting... in Heavensward, if the healers weren't good it was a miserable experience. I stayed because I was polite but I was miserable with certain healers. But at least they mattered and their skill was important.

[flowerfairy]

I could see classes were different, however, the movement and how you resolved mechanics was exactly the same. So, yeah, I don't get it when people cry about the "old times" regarding the fights.

But that's the thing about the "old times". They were made keeping in mind the old game systems that old jobs had to deal with. Resource management, aggro, untelegraphed boss cleaves and in general bosses that the tanks had to move around to make it easier on the party, damage output overall being very hard to keep at a consistent rate as melees had more positionals and stricter combo timings. People can argue back and forth whether these were good game systems or not, but they did exist.

There was a balance in complexity between jobs and encounters, now there's heavy emphasis in encounters having extreme visual clutter, having to spin your camera around looking for symbols to see which side of the room the boss is gonna cleave, staring at the floor to find where the safe spots are.
Again, people can argue back and forth whether or not this is good encounter design. But the past gameplay, that I consider to be about attrition, is most definitely harder to find in the recent expansions and people who enjoyed that kind of gameplay are having smaller and smaller places in the game (hence, why I want old versions of jobs to be playable). I'm almost interested in gearing up my healers just to see what's so crazy about M6S, but thinking about healer kits and every other fight in the past couple of expansions just makes me throw that thought away.

[JohnConstantine]

I did watch MTQ guides from back then

I did watch MTQ guides from back then

I did watch MTQ guides from back then

Don't forget that this is a person who hasn't cleared a SINGLE Savage tier. His opinions are irrelevant.

[Roda]

Stormblood for me as well. That felt like peak summoner with all its plates spinning together. The raids were interesting (though I do like how DT's raids are shaping up!). Eureka wasn't for me, but it didn't have to be (still wish they would put "exploration content" into the open world). The alliance raid series had some teeth.

Though Special shout out to how ARR felt kind of charmingly jank, how it felt like they were feeling out the genre and anything was possible. I enjoyed how little consumables like spine/echo drops were useful. And I liked how the raid series actually had trash and places to navigate.

[anyax]

Stormblood, easily.