Boss encounters from other MMOs

[Alberel]

One thing FFXIV doesn't have that a lot of other MMOs do is mobile danger zones. In FFXIV the stuff you need to dodge is ALWAYS static. It appears on the ground and you just dodge it... Why can't we have danger zones that actually move and force players to constantly readjust rather than just dodge and forget? The closest we have is the tornadoes in Garuda HM and that one boss fight in Stone Vigil...

[Kikosho]

Shandra Manaya (Hard) and Kelsaik (Hard) in TERA were some of my favorite fights. The debuff swapping, the DPS checks and the randomness of their AI made for fun fights, especially when we didn't overgear the encounters. Shandra was especially unforgiving during the last 8% when she basically ate steroids and all her attacks came out 3x as fast and hit 3x as hard.

[Subucnimorning]

Overlord Mata Muram - EQ1
Sendaii the Hive Queen - EQ1
Vishmitar the Fallen - EQ1
Rallos Zek the Warlord - EQ1
The Cliknar Queen - EQ1
Laethys - Rift
Akylios - Rift

Those were some of my favorites. All of them have one thing in common, they have a very hectic mechanic at low hp that push you, my least favorite fights are ones that don't get progressively more difficult as you go I find it boring if they are the same throughout.

[bokchoykn]

The vast majority of end-game experience I have is from World of Warcraft, mainly Vanilla and TBC. I was in a high-end guild (World Firsts, NA Firsts, etc...)

The biggest noticeable difference to me:

WoW bosses had a lot more random elements and variance than FFXIV. FFXIV fights are more heavily scripted.

The extent of randomization in Final Fantasy XIV basically boils down to WHOM the boss targets with certain randomly targeted abilities, and a few other small things like the orientation of Titan's line bombs. That's it. Everything else is 100% scripted and predictable. Bosses' behaviors are goverened by time, specific order and his HP totals. There is very little randomness or variance.

In WoW, the degree of randomness and variance depends from boss to boss. Some bosses are entirely scripted and can be beaten with memorization, like FFXIV. Other bosses have many random elements and tests your ability to adapt on the fly. There is a much wider variety of boss fights. I loved this about WoW.

An example of a boss with high variance:

Nefarian was the final boss of a raid dungeon called Blackwing Lair. For starters, the fight starts with a bunch of adds spawning. There are five different types of adds that can spawn, each with unique abilities and different ways to deal with them. Each week, you get TWO of those five types of adds chosen at random. You are stuck with those two adds for the entire week. If you're struggling because you got the hard adds and you don't know how to properly deal with them, you either have to learn or fail to beat him that week.

Once you've beaten the adds and you start to fight Nefarian himself, he has a move where he chooses one class at random and does something to all members of that particular class. Some class callouts are extremely dangerous (Mind-controlled Shamans were huge trouble) and some not so dangerous . When he's about to cast this spell, you have to be prepared for all eight possibilities and react accordingly. The way to deal with each variation are wildly different depending on class.

This was a boss in Vanilla Wow, in the second raid dungeon they created. This was when the game was starting to mature and before the raid content started to get good.

[Naunet]

Shandra Manaya (Hard) and Kelsaik (Hard) in TERA were some of my favorite fights. The debuff swapping, the DPS checks and the randomness of their AI made for fun fights, especially when we didn't overgear the encounters. Shandra was especially unforgiving during the last 8% when she basically ate steroids and all her attacks came out 3x as fast and hit 3x as hard.

Yes, those fights were wonderfully fun! But, just, not the tank phase of Manaya. Gawd that phase was boring. x.x I guess at least the healer got to do fun stuff.

[dejavutwo]

Shandra Manaya (Hard Mode) from Tera - The mechanic I liked was the debuff swapping. The boss would do an aoe right below her, one mid range, then one far range. Each debuff would give a color white->green->red. Each debuff needed to be present on at least one person when she finished the attack. If the debuff expired you died. To remove it safely you need to get hit by the next one in line (white->green) (green->red) (red->white).

Lady Vashj from WoW - She would hide in a shield with 4 generators. you would have to kill an add and loot a tainted core. While this was in your inventory you were rooted, but you could throw it to another player so you had to pass the core from player to player so that someone could place the core in the generator.

[Ryios]

Can't dodge stuff... World of warcraft had a fight in naxxaramas that required the entire 25 man group to dance... Literally. Lava shot up from the floor and the safe spot moved left to right and you had to dance left while dpsing to not die then back right again. And at some point the entire room had lava and you had to get on the stage. Actually is was more like green acid.

Then there was the four horsemen where they had to be tanked in four separate corners of the room.

Then there was grobbulus where he dropped a poison trail and you had to kite him around the room as to ensure you didn't fill the whole room with poison and had a safe palce to stay.

Those are just 3 bosses from one raid during wotlk.... There were many many raids, ICC had 12 bosses.

[tymora]

1. Unscripted moves.
They got it right in Ifrit Extreme 1.0...
- Ifrit only has 3 moves it will use in each phase. But the combination is random. That was extreme because your group can get crap combos like triple eruptions...haha

2. Unmarked AOE areas
Granted, if they do this, CT last boss will be impossible to beat for regular groups...

I guess the most important thing has to be...EVERY fight with the SAME boss should not be/feel the same. (for re-playability)

[Shakarlyn]

Overlord Mata Muram - EQ1
Sendaii the Hive Queen - EQ1
Vishmitar the Fallen - EQ1
Rallos Zek the Warlord - EQ1
The Cliknar Queen - EQ1
Laethys - Rift
Akylios - Rift

Those were some of my favorites. All of them have one thing in common, they have a very hectic mechanic at low hp that push you, my least favorite fights are ones that don't get progressively more difficult as you go I find it boring if they are the same throughout.

I'm with you on all the EQ ones, I never played Rift though.

OMM and his biiiig grand entrance. I loved that expansion. :/ Even all the crazy encounters in Anguish :/

[snakey77]

would i be wrong in saying prob one of the reasons they are heavily scripted is because of the crappy laggy servers and the obvious latency problems while its fine for some and I'm sure the random would make for good fun with a decent group with good low latency .. the majority of players df or randoms with latency and lag issues it would just become a absolute and down right a pain in the arse more so than it already is!! at least this way its kinda catering to more ppl