My company is fairly laid-back compared to others. We're not that large, we have only two Coil groups running (a third in the planning stages) and we are slowly progressing. One of our Coil groups is on Turn 5, the other is on Turn 4. We raid a total of nine hours a week, spread across three days.

Nothing's bottlenecking is at this point. We're just starting Twintania, and progress is being made. We've gotten Garuda EX down to a science, and we'll start working on Titan EX next weekend.

I'm not upset about this. I'm upset that Square keeps designing lazy fights like Titan, and even to an extent, Garuda EX. These types of encounters rely upon being perfect for long stretches of time, and a loss of perfection by any one player can, at any time, cause the entire group to wipe. There are very little recovery points; they are not designed for an epic, drag-out, neck-and-neck battle, the type that have always been the most fun in other MMOs I've played. They're designed so that you will either clear it flawlessly or die with no in-between, largely due to the prevalence of "F you" mechanics and the imbalanced way in which they tax classes. Garuda is much easier for a party with all ranged DPS while Titan is brutal on offensive casters.

Fortunately most of the fights in Coil have been better designed than the primals, and Ultima HM is an exceptionally well-designed fight. I think SE is headed in the right direction, but they need to rethink their encounter design philosophy. Taking a fight and adding more instant-death moves doesn't make it harder; it makes it cheaper and more frustrating. These are the kinds of things game designers did in the 80s when coding arcade games. XIV doesn't need this; we don't have to put a quarter in every time we die.