~Poll~ Longer fights <Do you want it?>

[Jocko]

For example. Castra Novum. A good number of the monsters there can be killed with ease, but if you sit and do so, you'll be trapped in a never ending battle with spawn rates wearing down your healers until you eventually succumb and die due to lack of fight control.

I agree, Castra is among my favorite pieces of content in the game, and I would really love to see more like it, but it's really not on topic. It's an endgame area, not part of the leveling process at all, which is what this thread is about

Imagine Garuda without her Plumes. Without the cannon fodder providing a constant threat to your protection from her 2hr, that fight would be just a 'tank and spank' which is actually more boring than fighting cannon fodder.

I wouldn't consider the plumes as cannon fodder at all, it's not their purpose. They're more like obstacles; extensions of Garuda herself, not individual mobs. Even if you were to consider them such, they still have more complexities than most enemy types found in the fields; They're highly magic resistant, have a planned movement pattern, and have the ticking time bomb mechanic. You can't really compare them to the average Dodo

Beyond that? Cannon Fodder is a sense of empowerment of your character.

This I can understand, but I don't see eye to eye with it. In my mind, empowerment should come from you, the player, being skilled enough to defeat a mob, not your avatar simply having the stats. Now, I know that is among one of the founding pillars of the RPG genre, but that's doesn't mean I have to agree with it. When playing jrpgs, I always find myself underleveled, as I intentionally avoid numerous encounters because I feel as if I'm breaking the game, and therefore removing the fun if I can simply overpower enemies and bosses with stats alone. Finding the enemy weaknesses, and formulating party compositions to make up for lacking statistics is where the enjoyment comes from, not seeing big numbers flash on the screen.

So no, your analogy is very far off the marker, really as there's a huge difference between describing the fights on paper and actually participating.

I don't really think so. In a standard exp party, I'm usually using 2 skills (Honestly, more like one considering that combat is currently based on combos. I honestly consider Thunder -> Thundara as 'one' skill at this point) If the standard battle was balanced around me having to use, say 5, or 6 skills to succeed, I'd find myself much more stimulated overall

[Hyrist]

I don't really think so. In a standard exp party, I'm usually using 2 skills (Honestly, more like one considering that combat is currently based on combos. I honestly consider Thunder -> Thundara as 'one' skill at this point) If the standard battle was balanced around me having to use, say 5, or 6 skills to succeed, I'd find myself much more stimulated overall

Lost me at "Thunder > Thundara"

You can't use Black Mages as the standard for the whole of the game. Your job simply IS Thunder > Thundara, and that's a flaw of the job design. Even in group battles, I as a Dragoon have a lot I have to handle, particularly if I'm competing against Black Mage's ridiculous damage output due to their collective lack of damage impairment.

Also, you're talking 'XP party' again, field monsters. That's a bad standard to have because you're dealing with conflicting interests. Bulk of players do not want a harder fight to gain XP with, they want a harder fight to have fun with, but then complain that the rewards are too poor for it.

To be completely honest, the concept of an 'XP party' is a dated one. At least in the sense you're trying to describe. Grinding the same monsters over and over again and expecting something other than boring is counterproductive. Ideally what they should do is make group specific Leves or some other sort of dynamic repeatable content that's easy to produce for the party that yields strong rewards. That way, during these group training regimens, they can throw a curve ball on occasion to keep you on your toes and keep you excited about the content.

There's no real group-based Leves currently in the game, and the Leves we have for single player don't quite have enough variance to them within each individual Leve itself. If they met both of these requirements then there really wouldn't be no room for complaints. Not to mention - you'd probably wind up with more players that are raid-ready on the onset of 50.