Too much dancing

[Hiroradius]

Too much dancing?

When they make a fight that doesn't have the "dance" people cry it's too hard, when they put in the fight with the dance, people cry that they have to stop dpsing and move.

MMO's use to be around strategy and gear checks, but when they went that route, it took a LONG time to get the gear.. a LONG TIME. People complained that it was too hard to get the needed gear for these fights and didn't want to play. So to keep making money, keep the games going longer, the developers had to make it easier to get gear, and people still complained because they couldn't get the gear.. and then it was made easier, and complaints, and easier, and complain... see the pattern?

People expect and want their ideal game from every single mmo, and complain when it's not.

People complain about moving out of circles, YET in Final Fantasy 11 there wasn't circles to move, you just stood there and focused on your tp, mp, and timing, BUT people found that boring because they don't need to worry about what they were doing (in that game people didn't understand tank mechanics very well, so when a dark knight came along and did one of their combos and pulled hate or a thief SATA and wiped the group, it was the tanks fault, EVEN THOUGH they were the one's who went all out and killed the group), so to combat the boringness of just standing there waiting to do an ability, and try and add a bit of skill to the players so it isn't just outgear the fight and your done, games like WoW started adding fights you had to move around, you are still waiting on cooldowns while moving, but now just not standing there. It was a great idea, now you need not just gear but skill to play and dungeon and raid, but people who lacked the skill complained because they couldn't do it, so after a while to increase revenue to get those people who complained and were quitting, they started giving gear to allow you to overcome the skill. And that is where we are now in the mmo community.

Raid and boss battles that require skill, but that skill can be overcome by gear. Yes there are some fights that the gear check is there, but again look at turn 2 for example.. it is a skill check fight, but people who didn't have the skill to transfer a buff around, found a way to make it a tank n spank fight that required no skill whatsoever, just gear.. now you need gear alone to overcome the fight.. some people say it is a skill check.. ONLY ON HEALER, not on anyone else. Turn 1 was a skill fight with the slimes and position and dps control, but gear again turned it into an almost simple fight. DPS burns, off tank (or rare case bard) makes a slime and feeds until split, then you burn the boss.. the only skill that is still needed is making sure they die at same time.

Pharos is a skill fight, but people are so overgeared for it that it makes it harder because the try and tank n spank knowing they overgeared it.. and look what happenend? Pharos is the most hated dungeon there is.. why? Boss 1, boss 2, and boss 4 all required skill, gear doesn't overcome that, so people have to actually LEARN the boss mechanics and follow them. Boss 1, hit boss and then stop hitting boss and kill dogs otherwise dogs kill healer and group dies. What happenend when people first went in, burn boss, ignore adds, helaer dies "WTF you stupid healer why you die" or "WTF stupid tank, get adds", rinse and repeat.. nobody understood the fight they just figured their i70+ gear would let them overpower the dungeon with a gear check of i57. Boss 2, kill eggs too fast, boss enrages you go splat, kill eggs to slow you get overrun by adds. So first try was destroy eggs, boss kills, 2nd try don't kill eggs and got overrun by adds, 3rd try kill highlighted eggs boss enrages we go splat.. people give up. 3rd boss is just too weak so burn strat works. 4th boss was about add control, healing, positioning during her teleport, and interuppts.. yet most people STILL can't beat that boss, becasue either adds are ignored they grab healer healer can't heal we wipe, or people stand in center and get killed by Siren's attack, or tank doesn't interuppt and everyone takes major damage and a healing debuff that the healer panics because everyone is about to die and doesn't remove while healing at only 30% effective... those are strategy mechanic fights and most people can't do it.

[Sibyll]

Too much dancing?.....

I hope they just increase the rewards for Pharos instead of nerfing it. I understand people skip it because it's not worth the effort when Copperbell/Haukke HM give the same reward for significantly less effort, but I think it'd be better to give motivation for skilled players to get more bang for their buck.

The irritating thing about gear overcoming skill checks is that groups almost entirely go for the gear check method, ADS for example, making it insanely difficult to find a group that's willing to do the skill method or raising the gear expectations for groups looking to do the gear check method. The 2-split vs the 3-split method on Garuda Ex is another example. Try doing the 2-split method with tanks that are at i65-i70 and see how well that goes. Yet another fight where it's almost impossible to do it in the manner it was intended because people can't be bothered to learn simple mechanics or improve.

[Simaril]

Too much dancing?

When they make a fight that doesn't have the "dance" people cry it's too hard, when they put in the fight with the dance, people cry that they have to stop dpsing and move.

MMO's use to be around strategy and gear checks, but when they went that route, it took a LONG time to get the gear.. a LONG TIME. People complained that it was too hard to get the needed gear for these fights and didn't want to play. So to keep making money, keep the games going longer, the developers had to make it easier to get gear, and people still complained because they couldn't get the gear.. and then it was made easier, and complaints, and easier, and complain... see the pattern?

People expect and want their ideal game from every single mmo, and complain when it's not.

I like what you’re getting at here… Right now it seems like dancing is the only “check” in the game. I would prefer more variety. Perhaps Titan could be an individual avoidance check, Garuda could be a coordinated movement check, and Ifrit could be a gear check. That kind of almost seems like what they were going for, but instead it feels like they’re all 100% dance checks. Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil. Also, other classic mmo mechanics seem to be absent: threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

ill give my two cents on this one, I have always felt that they tried to mix oldschool tank and spank mechanics, with "true action combat" and it doesn't work. As it becomes less about positioning and knowing when to use certain skill in your chain and how many buttons can i spam till i have to move, especially as playing as a black mage.

Totally agree! “how many buttons can I spam before I move” reminds me of old school Street Fighter, or some lame FPS.

[Viridiana]

Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil.

You do realize that the vast majority of players, unlike you, do not level all of their crafting classes to 50 before getting their first combat class to 50, right? That is to say, most people's first level 50 will not be decked out in full ilvl 70 upon reaching 50.

[Kajidourden]

threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

10000000000x This.

[Sibyll]

Gear taking an insanely long time seems like a relic of the past… but getting all ilv 70 before level 50, and LONG before you need it has removed any feeling of gear check. There are gear checks... but the gear is readily available to anyone with crafting and/or gil. Also, other classic mmo mechanics seem to be absent: threat is pretty trivial on most fights, mana is only a problem for healers when people fail at dancing...

The only thing I can agree on is the ease of obtaining gear. When you overgear the content the difficulty is going to be reduced to the simplest mechanics because your gear is trivializing the rest.

Take Titan HM for example. It has a hard DPS check that is trivialized by over gearing or building up limit break, a healing check that is trivialized by over gearing, and a personal awareness check that is reduced by over gearing. However, based on your logic this entire fight is just "don't stand in fire".

You realize that nearly every fight can be reduced to tank and spank or avoid AoE when you over gear the encounter enough right? Try running the encounters with a party in ilvl appropriate gear and see if the entire fight is just avoiding AoEs.

[Simaril]

The only thing I can agree on is the ease of obtaining gear. When you overgear the content the difficulty is going to be reduced to the simplest mechanics because your gear is trivializing the rest.

Take Titan HM for example. It has a hard DPS check that is trivialized by over gearing or building up limit break, a healing check that is trivialized by over gearing, and a personal awareness check that is reduced by over gearing. However, based on your logic this entire fight is just "don't stand in fire".

You realize that nearly every fight can be reduced to tank and spank or avoid AoE when you over gear the encounter enough right? Try running the encounters with a party in ilvl appropriate gear and see if the entire fight is just avoiding AoEs .

You can have ilv 70 before you get to lv50 (I did). Gear should trivialize older content, it shouldn't trivialize content before you can even access it... SE trivialized any gearcheck by designing the game that you can so easily outgear content before you reach it. By doing that, SE has (as you say) "reduced this game to the simplest mechanics." If you're not too lazy or stupid to get the right gear, (or if you have the skill such that you don't need it) this has made the game revolve around dancing, and nothing else.


In your Titan HM example, you can't quite over gear the personal awareness check - at least not with gear that's available before you clear Titan. In ilv 70, you do outgear all other aspects of gear check, but not the dance check. Go to DF and I bet you'll have very little success; often players in full ilv 70+ fail just as hard as anyone else.

[Viridiana]

You can have ilv 70 before you get to lv50 (I did). Gear should trivialize older content, it shouldn't trivialize content before you can even access it... SE trivialized any gearcheck by designing the game that you can so easily outgear content before you reach it. By doing that, SE has (as you say) "reduced this game to the simplest mechanics." If you're not too lazy or stupid to get the right gear, (or if you have the skill such that you don't need it) this has made the game revolve around dancing, and nothing else.

Again, most people don't do what you did and max out every single crafting class before hitting 50 on a combat class. Quit whining that you outgear content when you went several hours out of your way to gear yourself up before you could even use the gear. . .