What exactly did the improved encounter design do?

[Wyssahtyn]

felt like i've been getting gaslit this whole expac with how much people keep cheering on this supposed improved encounter design, ngl.

[Supersnow845]

I think we’ve reached a critical mass of people who simply didn’t play anything before ShB and even didn’t engage with that much high end content in ShB so to them “best ever” simply means “better than EW” which is a low low low bar to clear

ShB was spotty especially towards its back end but DT IS collectively better than EW and for so many people that’s all they have ever experienced

[Bru_Tus]

The dimension stuff from M12 almost felt like the kind of thing FRU was missing. Having to figure out a puzzle between different "timelines" instead of "don't kill this crystal" could have made a real difference, but in M12 the clones were a great touch, but the dimension thing was kind of out of left field and didn't feel like it fit as well there.

The problem with these mechanics that they design them in a way that you can PF-macro through them, i.e., there's no coordination required, everyone just learns what their "role" is (defam left 2, south tower left) and go to the right spot. It's the same thing as a hello world-style mechanic once you peel back the layers. They don't dare to make it anymore out of the norm than that. If it can't be cleared by PF with a JP macro it won't be put in the game.

It's the same reason why dungeons are so homogenized now. If it can't be cleared by a Trust, it is not in the game. Even benign things like the crystal veil in Dzemael Darkhold got stripped away.

[Bru_Tus]

felt like i've been getting gaslit this whole expac with how much people keep cheering on this supposed improved encounter design, ngl.

On top of what Supersnow said, I think so many people have quit at this point that the only people still on the forums and on social media are the people happy with this design even if it continues on for 20 years.

We have genuinely reached a point where Square Enix really has no avenue for out-of-sample feedback anymore.

(Even this forum has far, far lower activity than 2022-2023.)

[Bru_Tus]

It just doesn't particularly bother me the way they do it now, because I still come out of them having had fun and enjoyed the fights. If the differences are an illusion, then whatever they do seems to work on me and the people who've continued doing them who've not lapsed their subscriptions the last few expansions.

The player count is at abysmal levels right now, they will just keep dropping if they stick to the same script for the next 10 years (and I seriously doubt they would suddenly try something new anyways, even if they had the resources.)

[Oizen]

The biggest change I saw is that dungeon bosses stopped doing that bit where they blast their attacks into uninhabited corners of the map to show you what they do first.
Go back to Endwalker's dungeons and count how many bosses do this, its a lot, Dawntrail's are a bit more lively.

Extremes on upward I think its a bit harder to nail down. I personally like the Dawntrail Extremes a lot more than Endwalkers, Barbaricca is the only fight I really liked from that pool while Zoraal Ja,Valigarmanda, and Doom Train were all highlights. As a whole I'd say they're a lot more energetic. A lot less sleeper fights like Zodiark, Rubicante, and Zeromus thats for sure.

Savage wise, Thats a tough one.
Asphodelos was definitely better than the first tier of Arcadion, those fights were dealt a very bad had by questionable balance decisions around Pictomancer that made week 1 mechanic skips kinda easy to achieve. M3 is also cut from the exact same cloth of boring Endwalker fights that are heavy on tutorial with one big mech at the end thats the wall (like P6 and P7).

Cruiserweight mops the floor with Abyssos which had two dud fights previously mentioned. I think all of this tier is high quality content. Much more creative fights compared to last expansion, probably will go down as one of the best tiers in the game's lifespan. I definately feel the fights trying to be more cinematic and flashy here, I love fights that change arenas so M7S and M8S are both great to me.

Heavyweight vs Anabaseios is a lot harder to gauge. P9 was shit, P11 is an extreme fight. But then M9 is an extreme fight, and M11 is shit. I guess I have to say Anabaseios stuck with me more because Lindwurm is a significantly easier and less creative fight than Athena (M12S even has a much babier version of Superchain in P2 for some reason). Though I want to say that M10S is probably my favorite savage fight of all time, min-maxing cleave damage is a fun thing to do and this fight fully lets you do it.

TL;DR is its been a very mixed bag. The improvements aren't some grand spectacle but just small steps in the right direction, sometimes. At least we didn't get a dorito fight like Zodiark I guess.

[Valence]

Thank you for making this thread. No notes from me.

[Voidmage]

Epic Fates: Yes, this is great content at this point. We still only get two each expansion which is the main issue here. Epic overworld bosses should be a major focus in Evercold, specifically those Giants we saw, we need at least one for each zone in Evercold.

I more or less agree with your points but want to address this one in particular.
I really hope that those Fates will be made better in EC.
In my personal opinion (and I know I won't have much support in this one) hunt trains need to be nuked away for Fates to truly shine.
This whole content has basically been reduced to rushing through with a Linkshell / Discord group outside the super fates and those are so rare they are barely worth mentioning.
What I'd like is more scaling boss fates that truly bring the community together like Odin back then.
As clunky as it was, it was a highlight in the over world.

Other than that, I can see the improved encounter design but just like the jobs, it only shines in higher content.
That's imo the biggest problem of this game right now content like dungeons or normal trials is really nothing special.
No reason for example to not have the Valigarmanda tank buster in easier function in normal content.

[Coolyy]

The epic fates this expansion, Mica the Magical Mu and that disaster Snake in Shaaloani are genuinely two of the best designed bosses of the entire expansion. Like they are genuinely very fun and engaging normal content. They were catching an insane amount of bodies during 7.0, but zero casuals complained since they were so rare due to the egregious 72h respawn time. They really should make these epic fates spawn once a day instead of 72h. This is also genuinely the largest scale battle content in the game due to the overworld zone limit being like 300 players or something.

I really hope we get an Epic Fate in every zone for Evercold. Then make all six happen every day at random intervals assuming six zones. I'm hoping we get more than six overworld zones and I do think that's a real possibility due to the Nine Realms inspiration. We absolutely need more fates like Odin and this is the easiest solution. They can also have a special Mega-Fate that spawns daily after completing all Six fates as that would be an awesome incentive for an individual server. This could be a Fate that features an actual Giant like they showed at Fanfest, it needs to be epic and interactive. It would be easy to tie the next Relic to this content also without pissing people off.

I don't think Hunt Trains necessarily need to be killed, but they need to be expanded on since the current formula is awful and repetitive. Right now the content is awful and like you need to use Sonar (iykyk) to stay in the loop. A plugin should not be this much of an advantage for normal content, lol.

They are planning to address all these things, so I assume we'll get serious updates at Berlin or Tokyo. I do think they are serious about fixing the overworld since Yoshida has been talking about this for a long time now, I only hope that this same quality can be applied to older zones also. Specifically ARR-Stormblood zones which need to feel more alive.

[Myotis]

At first it was supposed to be coming in 7.0, then that got corrected to mean that it is supposed to be coming in 7.2.

We now have half an expansion's worth of "improved encounter design", but genuinely, how the hell is this any different than before? Take the latest extreme trial for example. Nothing in that fight is novel, other than arguably yet another round of dynamo vs chariot, but you add a wild charge to it. And the rest of the fight is genuinely not even worth mentioning. It's 2026 and we still can't move beyond the pair/light-party read-the-mechanic-name-to-resolve-correctly paradigm. In Stormblood, the devs actually tried new things out, like Byakko's orb dodges, even if it was gimmicky.

The newest dungeon is even worse. It's almost like we have regressed since 7.0. Compare the 7.5 dungeon to Tender Valley. Tender Valley actually dared to stack multiple mechanics together (for example, bombs through pipes + spreads) and is faster-paced than whatever snoozefest there was in 7.5 -- puppet manipulation is a literal 11-second cast.

As for the Savages, I see we have just completely given up on anything other than "figure out what debuffs you have, then go to the assigned spot for your role/debuff". It was first novel in A8S and O4S, maybe O12S, but it's like we literally cannot design anything other than memorize-the-spot/use-a-second-monitor Hello World-style mechanics for the last turn. Well, I guess this time it has the barest of camouflage, in that instead of the debuffs appearing on your status bar, you have a clone storing your "debuff". *clap*

So when I see people being hyped by 8.0, I really have to wonder what the hell SE has done in the last two expansions to deserve any benefit of the doubt? Don't get me wrong, the evolved job concept can in principle be the shakeup that FF14 needs, and this time it actually looks meatier than all of the 'promises' they gave in the last two expansions. But we have, at this point, a decade of "shakeups" that pan out to be nothing consequential.

After all this time those fights feel the same just the pattern of insta death is diffrent. I wish we had an actual clash with the bosses since re-learning patterns over and over again does feel like a job and has nothing to do with skill more of having certain level of patience.