Skill based fights..

[Doo]

I don't have fun, haven't had fun for the past couple of weeks, which is why I'm not logging in that much anymore.

Yeah end game is frustrating for most. In other games even if you have one or two that can't do it perfectly, the team can still win. FFXIV is extremely unforgiving when it comes to someone not knowing how the battle goes 100 percent. Then comes the finger pointing, the rage quitting, etc. It's totally non casual friendly for a casual friendly game.

[Miiu]

First of all I agree that most fights in this game feel flat in terms of mechanics. But since FFXI was mentioned (played that since the start of NA release so around 2 years after the japanese release) and I'm really not remembering any fights at that point which did stuff differently. Sure we had no real dodge mechanics like we have here at the moment but for the most part the fights played out the same way if not a bit more limited.

Please don't understand that remark as me saying: No FFXIV:ARR is perfect the way it is. It is not. I'd love to have some of the stuff mentioned in this thread and I really hope that with the coming updates and addons we will get that sort of stuff. But how skill based can they go for if the current "easy mode" can't be completed by a large amount of the playerbase?

[Doo]

First of all I agree that most fights in this game feel flat in terms of mechanics. But since FFXI was mentioned (played that since the start of NA release so around 2 years after the japanese release) and I'm really not remembering any fights at that point which did stuff differently. Sure we had no real dodge mechanics like we have here at the moment but for the most part the fights played out the same way if not a bit more limited.

Divine might
Kings
Sky Gods
COP wyrms
NMS/BCNMS
Dynamis

etc

so many different types of fights rather than the same ol mechanics that FFXIV uses.

[TrystWildkey]

Everyone please remember this is just the first year of the game. They have to leave themselves somewhere to go in the future. Maybe they are doing the memorization fights now and the random fights come out later. I am not trying to be a fanboy or defend the game but you have to remember that this game is going to run a long time and they have to have some direction to move into...right?.

I understand your sentiment, but no matter how much content they add, I'm afraid that with the way they structured the fundamentals of the battle system, nothing will change.

The battle system is done in such a way that all fights are going to be about fast reaction times and a single, most effective skill rotation.

I don't even have my first relic weapon, there are LOADS of content that I haven't done yet. But I still have no desire to log in to this game anymore. The last few times I did log in, I sat around in Uldah going through my journal and the duty finder screens to see what I could do. My options were: instanced and level capped dungeon, leves that can only be done solo, quests that can only be done solo, or instanced and level capped dungeons.

For me, at least, it's not a lack of content that I'm dissatisfied with, it's the fundamental design of the game that I'm dissatisfied with. And that, unfortunately, is not something that can/will be changed with the next patch or even expansion.

[Yashnaheen]

Honest question and hope to get an honest answer. Why are you playing FFXIV (new school mechanics) instead of FFXI (old school tactics).

I'll also take this one.

Most of those who liked XI and moved on did so due to Abyssea. It pretty much changed XI in to ARR in principal, so for us there is no XI to 'go back to'.

A lot of people who stuck with it loved 1.2x. It was a great game. Would have been better with the ARR engine (lesser in some respects, but got rid of the 1.x issues at least). We had hopes 2.0 would follow what we had in the 2 previous SE MMOs. Like or hate it, it was unique and there were those who loved it. Most of us in this category don't appreciate the gear treadmill and don't want to hop games between content patches.

I'm spoiled. I reupped my XI sub for a month after v1 went down to hang out with old friends. As great as it was in its day I couldn't take the clunky controls, graphics, pace and so on. It has aged.

[Mardel]

Divine might
Kings
Sky Gods
COP wyrms
NMS/BCNMS
Dynamis

etc

so many different types of fights rather than the same ol mechanics that FFXIV uses.

Hate to burst your bubble but the same arguement can be used for those. Each fight had a "gimmick", "order", or "strat" attached to it. The fights were kited, tank/spank, "burn", or range only. I mean, every RPG pretty much implements kill monster don't die strat lol. FF11 is not the holy grail of skill-based fights as people clouded by nostalgia think it to be.

Also what you have pointed out in your list was more like... a variety of enemies. The game will have more enemies sure, but due to the mentality and way the game is design it will never have moments where people only bring blunt damage or piercing due to it being the "best." SE doesn't want people excluded from fights and when a game is designed that way, the sacrifice is that the fight will be based more on dodge mechanics, timing, and knowing when to push/hold dps. This is why the game feels... repetitive, boss fight wise


Aside (not to person I quoted):
This will sound elitest, but if people aren't capable of clearing EX primals/T5 easily each and every week (farm mode) then they can't really complain too much. They are part of the reason why boss mechanics don't get more complicated. I.E. if a larger percentage had T5 clears it might raise alarms at SE that content is beyond too easy. Thus we can't really blame the dev team for the majority of the community just being... bad, thus catering to them.

[Shurrikhan]

Please don't understand that remark as me saying: No FFXIV:ARR is perfect the way it is. It is not. I'd love to have some of the stuff mentioned in this thread and I really hope that with the coming updates and addons we will get that sort of stuff. But how skill based can they go for if the current "easy mode" can't be completed by a large amount of the playerbase?

Sometimes even being stupidly simple or, in ARR's case, scripted, can still be challenging in that it just doesn't meet the attention or playstyle of some. Moreover, the punishment of scripted fights, par for their course, is fairly strict.

That said, even at endgame, it does feel like we're playing with about the complexity of most MMO's half-game. We use dodge, add (kill order), and swap-mechanics, and... that's about it. There's little kiting, little defensive potential from dps classes, and relatively little class interplay except at a dull, unreactive, and/or compositional level. Even from a general aesthetic standpoint, the animations of large-scale battle in ARR, perhaps largely due to a lack of projectile or casts-in-movement animations, tend not to look as appealing as in other MMOs, such as WoW (though particular examples may be no better). It feels more like a melee mass and scattered or clumped ranged, with no artwork of casts or shots bridging or enwrapping the two. Boss movement and animation as well looks traditionally clunky or worse. In that field, ARR stands, but does nothing more. It has visibly learned nothing, and innovated nothing. And the sad thing is that there are already lively, and even FF-specific, concepts available to move us into something new.

For such to happen though, combat itself will likely need to be fundamentally revised. And that's not just about making available more to combat than just combo-cycling, but also allowing every player in a fight to more interestingly influence interplayable factors through underlying mechanics. AI improvements would also likely be important.

[ulti_19]

Beating a boss over and over and over 1000 times isn't skill. once you beat him, you know how to fight him and therefore the endgame becomes rather tedious. Every PvE encounter will be like this. Come over to PvP, where you fight other players. Being schooled by veteran groups will for sure make you think there are challenging aspects for final fantasy which you had no idea about before probably. Pc's don't change and adapt, players do.

Monster hunter - once you beat a boss, even though unscripted and random, said boss is easy, you know his moves, and how to dodge etc.
Mega man, Zelda, Mario, almost every mmo ever created, etc, all the pve bosses are jokes once you beat them a few times. Come PvP, and force SE to expand greatly on it^^

[Doo]

Hate to burst your bubble but the same arguement can be used for those. Each fight had a "gimmick", "order", or "strat" attached to it. The fights were kited, tank/spank, "burn", or range only. I mean, every RPG pretty much implements kill monster don't die strat lol. FF11 is not the holy grail of skill-based fights as people clouded by nostalgia think it to be.

Doesn't burst my bubble, I just find them more fun then rotation/phases memorization where one person messes up it's most likely a wipe.

[Yashnaheen]

Aside (not to person I quoted):
This will sound elitest, but if people aren't capable of clearing EX primals/T5 easily each and every week (farm mode) then they can't really complain too much. They are part of the reason why boss mechanics don't get more complicated. I.E. if a larger percentage had T5 clears it might raise alarms at SE that content is beyond too easy. Thus we can't really blame the dev team for the majority of the community just being... bad, thus catering to them.

A couple of points here.. Not a personal attack just a couple of things that highly annoy me.

First yes he can complain all he wants. Valid points are valid points.

Second farming T5 is about having a consistent static, not individual skill.

And lastly we already had a far higher % of players beating T5 before 2.1 than Yoshi estimated. There were more than 100 on my server that cleared T5 before 2.1, let alone the entire game. The response was to make everything easier. Yay.