AOE Spam Fest <Please remove it>

[Alhanelem]

Why yes, intricate party battles are indeed more fun than mindless cannon fodder. I'm glad you understand

Intricate != long. A fight with a common enemy should not take a long time. You can have satisfying combat without it taking ages to kill something.

needing an army of people to kill a thug is stupid and unrealistic (even in a fantasy game context), and the majority of players are not going to be keen on the forced grouping that would result.

[DeadRiser]

Intricate != long. A fight with a common enemy should not take a long time. You can have satisfying combat without it taking ages to kill something.

needing an army of people to kill a thug is stupid and unrealistic (even in a fantasy game context), and the majority of players are not going to be keen on the forced grouping that would result.

Hmm let me think about that.

Realistic = killing mobs in about 2 AoE hits and no strategy whatsoever.

Unrealistic = killing mobs with strategy and focusing on one mob while sleeping or CC the adds.

Hmmm, I think I'll choose the "unrealistic" one.

[Nephera]

Well on one hand in most FF games i ended up spamming magic on entire groups of enemies every encounter when walking between towns or grinding for the next area so it's not like its un-ff to do that in xiv to me. It's certainly always been an option.

On the other hand that's a little silly and mindless.


on the other other hand 20 people beating on one goblin doesn't feel very heroic at all.

on the other other other hand 20 people beating on one DRAGON feels fine.


When it comes down to it, enemies should probably be designed in a way that you have to think about how you fight them, if it's a horde of small enemies they should probably move around the battlefield in a way that prevent AOE from dominating.

and one strong enemy should always feel like it's a really strong enemy rather than just a goblin with a ton of HP.


what i'm saying is that they should probably do game design.

[Alhanelem]

Hmm let me think about that.

Realistic = killing mobs in about 2 AoE hits and no strategy whatsoever.

Unrealistic = killing mobs with strategy and focusing on one mob while sleeping or CC the adds.

Hmmm, I think I'll choose the "unrealistic" one.

Realistic = kililng mobs within a reasonable time frame. Can still be strategic/interesting
Unrealistic = taking several minutes to kill a mook enemy. No real strategy involved.

Wild exaggerations for the lose.

You didn't need strategy to kill common enemies in FFXI. It simply took 345 swings of your sword or terrible nuke to do the job. Longer doesn't automatically mean more intricate, and shorter doesn't automatically mean less intricate. Long fights can be just as mindless and simple as short ones.

Thus, what we should be advocating here is depth in combat, not an arbitrary length of time that fights should last.

IMO, if you can use AoEs to kill stuff without dying, than you should. If however it is likely to get you killed, then you shouldn't do it. The simple remedy here is to make enemies of a given level a bit more dangerous, so that using AoE is greater risk, greater reward, while CC and focus fire 1 target at a time is much more safe and reliable.

I hated how in in the early-mid days of FFXI, you had tons of AoE spells and effects, but you basically never used them because it was almost always a death sentence. Here in FFXIV, we've shifted a bit too far towards the other extreme of it far to often being the safest, fastest answer. Can't we find a happy medium here? Frankly I think the current situation is good in that people still form parties for XP. In WoW this never happened. You always leveled up to the max solo and only grouped for dungeons quests etc.

Tell me, in what other FF game besides XI did anything other than bosses take a long time to kill? There isn't one.

Leveling is not boring if there is at least some kind of challenge.

Leveling isn't supposed to be a challenge. Leveling is a pacing device designed to extend the time required to experience all the content in a game. Leveling is just the beginning of your MMO journey.

[Jocko]

Thus, what we should be advocating here is depth in combat, not an arbitrary length of time that fights should last.

That's what I've been doing, you seem to be the only one throwing this inane '300' sword hits around.

[Alhanelem]

That's what I've been doing, you seem to be the only one throwing this inane '300' sword hits around.

Well, FFXI must be inane then, because that's what happened in the early days of that game and yet it's what you seem to want. Or did you never XP in the dunes and run into people taking 3-4 minutes or more to kill a single crab? There was no strategy, it was just long because people were using crap weapons or weak nukes or whatever and the crabs just have high defense and the warriors were missing like 50% of the time.

I see a few people demanding "longer" fights, when what people should really be asking for is more elaborate fights. Complexity doesn't dictate length.

I really don't think FFXI's combat is particularly defective. Yeah, EXP parties aren't that interesting, but EXP grinding is rarely the selling point of a game. Except on bosses, FFXIV does not use massive enemy HP inflation to draw out fights unlike most MMOs. The best thing I think they could do short of yet another combat system from-the-ground-up revamp is add "elite" versions of mobs as some other games do, which are statistically set for a party of people at the same level as itself, rather than a single person of the same level of itself. These enemies would be typically found in open world dungeons and instance raids. I don't like stat inflation but it would be a reasonably effective way to address the issue.

[Jocko]

Well, FFXI must be inane then, because that's what happened in the early days of that game and yet it's what you seem to want. Or did you never XP in the dunes and run into people taking 3-4 minutes or more to kill a single crab? There was no strategy, it was just long because people were using crap weapons or weak nukes or whatever and the crabs just have high defense and the warriors were missing like 50% of the time.

I don't believe I've mentioned XI in a single one of my posts. Everything I've mentioned in the thread has been asking for more complexity, but the time which battles take does have a relation to that. How much can you really do when working with less than 10 seconds? No one is asking for longer fights for the hell of it, we just want them to take a bit more time so complexity and strategy have a chance to develop. To be fair, XIV has a few elements of this currently. Level 30 parties fighting Raptors is a good example. If the tank is competent, he'll force the raptors to face away from the party, and then maneuver behind/use shield bash to avoid the flame breath, and he has a chance and reason to even do this because the fights last long enough for that to become a factor. That's what I want more of.

Yeah, EXP parties aren't that interesting, but EXP grinding is rarely the selling point of a game.

You're right, but they also constitute a rather large portion of game time invested, whether it's exp grinding, item farming, or even card collecting (eh, eh?). If a large portion of time is going to be spend fighting random mobs on the field, can't they at least provide a little stimulation?

[Alhanelem]

I find as far as MMO's go I've enjoyed group vs singular oponent combat to be much more stimulating than group vs group combat.

This is what things like Ifrit and Garuda are for, not mooks.

Well it sure isn't doing a good job at "pacing" the game now is it?

It depends entirely on how you go about it. if you enjoy the leveling experience, you're probably not going to choose to be power leveled, and you'll either level up solo/with a friend or two using leves and enemies close to your level or with an ordinary party of people not employing a PL. They do exist, you know.

[Jynx]

Leveling isn't supposed to be a challenge.

Well it sure isn't doing a good job at "pacing" the game now is it?

Tell me, in what other FF game besides XI did anything other than bosses take a long time to kill?

Let's see.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a prime example, as well as Tactics advanced 1/2/reverant wings

Most Final Fantasy games unless you were grinding your levels fights actually took a decent ammount of time even in the open-world of course depending on what mobs you rolled in a encounter. Tonberries have been notoriously long fights in the series even when placed as a standard monster.

I'm not sure why you are trying to draw a parallel between MMO's and RPG's though because your fighting a loosing battle for one. You would be better of citing other MMO's that faceroll their "Fodder" mobs as well. The term in itself should have no place in this game.

We shouldn't be fighting enemies to just fight groups of enemies. I don't see why it's a big deal that a group of 8 level 50 people have a hard time fighting a single level 65 monster. Does the whole level thing just pass over your head or are you ignoring it entirely when you keep spewing out.

"It shouldn't take forever to kill a goblin thug! NO THUG SHOULD BE HARD!" Do you ever think back and remember that once you are max level the same thug is a mere pimp slap away from death in your cold blood soaked hands. Sure perhaps at the end of the game there are monsters who are still of the same race but much stronger...why is that a issue.

I have no beef with having weaker groups of enemies who act dyanmically, but AOE damage just makes most attempts to make large groups of weaker enemies any sort of "Challenge" is slapped in the face by people wanting a easy-out. Players will find the path of least resistance and the flaws in the design of AI groups.

I find as far as MMO's go I've enjoyed group vs singular oponent combat to be much more stimulating than group vs group combat.

It's not like in a MMO you see many groups of monsters gun for the weakest link (Mages) Like we as players do, in itself makes group vs group combat fairly stagnant. Hell if they did such crazy things people would be up in arms that the enemies use the same strategies that they do.

Unless you gave monsters provoke and had them have tank classes you had to fight before attacking the mages....and at that point combat is more orchestrated by invisible hands than it should be. I don't see how PC Group vs AI group combat will ever pan out as balanced.