Feedback regarding Boss encounters - Good vs. Poor design

[TheMathmagician]

Over the past few weeks, I've been attempting to defeat Titan Hard Mode with no luck. As a Scholar, the best I have been able to get him down to is about 20%, but this post is less about that fight in general, and more about Boss mechanics in general. Titan HM has simply forced me to think long and hard about WHY I continue to fail on this encounter. Sometimes it is me, sometimes it is my other party members, but never before have I felt so powerless to actually contribute to a win.

I believe this has to do with a combination of my and others latency, as well as fight mechanics. I'll explain more about this in a moment.

Full disclosure: I play on the Ultros server (NA), but I currently live in Japan. All of the people I play with live in the US, so simply changing to a Japanese server does not make sense. My tested ping is somewhere along the lines of 250ms, which typically is not an issue in other games (e.g. WoW, League of Legends, DotA 2, TF2).

[TheMathmagician]

With all that being said, here is my thoughts on various encounters with respect to their mechanics, and how well I feel they "test" a players ability. This may be more applicable to players with a higher ping.
--Good Fight Mechanics--
- Ifrit's Charge: You NEED to look, move to a safe spot
- Ifrit's Volcanoes: Even without the interrupts, there is enough time for a player to run and avoid damage even AFTER they see the initial spawn point
- Garuda's Mistral Song: The player has time to see, move, and avoid damage. I believe that even if she teleported to a random location rather than a scripted one, this would still be possible to avoid if the player is paying attention.
- Garuda's Whirlwinds: While the pattern of these are predictable, they limit the playing field and require the entire team to be mobile. Again, if if they were semi-random, I believe avoid and adjusting to them would be possible.

[TheMathmagician]

- Garuda's Satin and Razor plumes: Forces the team to identify and eliminate the threat. I think this could even be made more difficult by making the other adds actually do damage and give the team a reason to take out a few.
- Titan's Tumult: Unavoidable scaling damage which can be mitigated and healed through. Forces the dps to be high as well due to the Phase 5 ramp-up.
- Titan's Geocrush: Unavoidable damage that can be mitigated with proper placement. Even if players can get to the rest of the group in time (so as to be ready for aoe heals or a Scholar bubble), they will survive providing they can get near any edge.
- Aiatar (Brayflox boss): Many mechanics make this a great fight, and proper placement of the dps and healer is key to not getting acid pooled to death.
- Isgebind (Stone Vigil): AoEs that can be avoided (though white on white is tough to see), and a great "run around like crazy to avoid stuff" phase.

[TheMathmagician]

In my opinion, all of these are great mechanics because they require the player either see and react, or to think about proper positioning ahead of time, and adjust as the fight goes on.

--Undecided Fight Mechanics--
- Titan's Landslide: Personally, I don't might this ability, but I know many people have issues with it. I generally have time to see it, and move, but if I hesitate for ANY amount of time, I get cracked. Usually, I need to be aware that it is happening, and be moving to Titan's left or right, which, when trying to also heal the party up, wastes precious healing time. I feel like just extending the cast time about 0.25 - 0.50 sec would fix a lot of the hate with this ability.
- Ifrit's Plumes: I do not have any issues dodging these, but a static, memorized rotation, in my opinion, does not make a fight good. If you are expected to know the fight and rotation beforehand to be successful, this can be frustrating.

[TheMathmagician]

-Bad Fight Mechanics-
- Titan Plumes: They always spawn on a player, but the window of time from when you see it to when you will take damage from it is far too short. With a latency of 250ms, it is basically a 50/50 chance that I will get out or take damage from any given plume, assuming there is no one else near me to spawn more. I need to be moving prior to the plumes, but due to excessive number in P5, this is what contributes to 95% of my deaths. I see it, immediately stop what I am doing and move, and then I either take damage and survive, take damage from 2+ and die, or take no damage. When I get hit feels random (though I know it isn't). I feel like, as with landslide, just increasing the cast time by 0.25-0.50 seconds would fix a lot of the frustration involved with this skill. Either that, or disallow the plumes to stack on each other as heavily as they do. I wouldn't mind it if I at least knew I would not be killed if my latency decided to be a bit worse than usual.

[TheMathmagician]

In my opinion, this mechanic doesn't really test the players ability to play well, rather, they test how good your latency is. The thought behind the ability is fine, but when the player cannot see and react to dodge something consistently, I believe that ability should be looked at and adjusted in some way.

Sorry for the rant, and while I am probably just angry at the Titan fight at this point and the wipe after wipe, I'd like to see if any other players share my sentiment on the matter of boss encounters. Let it be said that I like the fact that Titan is a hard fight, but in its current incarnation, I don't think it is hard for the right reasons. Other fights present a challenge that is difficult at first, but the mechanics lend themselves to be adjusted to on the fly, something I feel is sorely lacking vs. Titan.

(Sorry for the many posts in a row, but it limited me to 1000 chars per post)

[renachi]

Yeah, any fight that is "hard" because of luck on when the server sees you when it is time to check if you are in the area is not fun. This game has a slow poll rate for when the server checks on character position. If you can get someone else to log into their account within sight of your computer and you can see them on your screen at the same time you see their screen and just have them move around you will see how bad it is. The server does not track characters well and if you are in the area or not is on the server end, not the client and the server doesnt check position before it checks for effects, so you get counted as the last place the server saw you before the effect triggers, not where you currently are. horrible design

[Awimboway]

I agree completely with what you've said here I also have to start moving in advance when Titan starts doing his WoLs fortunately though I've gotten through the fight a few times now (though as with you my first attempts were soul destroying). As Renachi said above the servers are pretty bad for checking where you are stood. A way that me and some of my FC friends came across to help this a bit and it may help you a bit, as soon as you are outside of the WoL area, or really any of those kind of abilities, cast a spell. When you cast a spell the server looks at where you are stood when you start casting it so it will know you are outside of the area of effect. However this can also be your downfall, as if you just started casting an ability and then the WoL is cast on you, even if you move out of it by yards the server will still think you are stood where you were when you started casting the spell.