Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Doki]

I do not have a problem with mechanics in fights. It was extremely rewarding the first time I cleared T7 after several nights worth of frustration. It's still sort of weird 1-shotting T6 now after having so much trouble the first few weeks. That being said, I do feel that the mechanics are a bit too unforgiving now. Between lag issues, and just "highway hypnosis" levels of repetition it's easy to mess up once or twice in a 11 minute fight. Messing up once shouldn't immediate make 7 other players annoyed at you.

Honestly the thing that is starting to bother me more, is that everything is immune to nearly all status ailments now. Can't stun, blind, silence, or skill lock bosses at all. Immediate 100% immunity is lame. Especially when a boss uses a skill with a name like voice or shriek.

It's just going to get worse. Just a few days ago I watched a raids preview for Wildstar, and thought to myself "That does not look like fun. It looks like hours upon hours of wipes."

[chococo]

It's just going to get worse. Just a few days ago I watched a raids preview for Wildstar, and thought to myself "That does not look like fun. It looks like hours upon hours of wipes."

That's the current definition of challenge in MMOs, unfortunately. I dun see people clearing HNMs in FFXI that easily at first even if it was tank and spank.

Also, people against OPs line of thoughts are arguing with the most extreme cases. There's always a middle ground. For e.g. if titan EX was more random with his abilities, the effects of its abilities would be toned down accordingly. This may or may not make fights harder.

[Songi]

I had to deal with enough insta kill mechanics in EQ2 to last me a lifetime. This game's itemization isn't really great either. The better your gear is the more painful the fight becomes (T6 - Honey Glaze/Bee, T7 - Cursed Voice/Renaud spawns) Honestly I hope the equipment system becomes more interesting later on because right now gear choices have no affect on any role except DPS.

Now, I don't want gear to totally trivialize the encounter but I'd definitely to see a significant increase in my character's performance from having said rewards from constantly crushing the top tier content. Right now as it stands the only way I'm able to tell my character is getting stronger is when I'm spamming Holy bombs in Mythflox.

[AeirTalies]

I agree with everything in this post.

[zeroumus]

i think summed up, the game relies too heavily on instanta death mechanics that can not be recovered from. ( knocked off the edge in titan ). The game is really doing a "perfection" check, you have to find 8 people that can avoid getting killed and it has to be perfect. the challenge its not that you need to be a super skilled player, the real challenge is finding 7 other people how are reasonably skilled at any given moment in time. Great if you role with a good static, not so good if do not.

as pointed out, this kinda of content does need to be in the game, there needs to be things for well tuned staitics to do

[Jyan91]

excellent post, was thinking something along these lines

[Hyrist]

I don't agree with all of it, especially the portions where he assumes to speak for the community on multiple levels, but it is well written and there are points that can be gleaned from this that I do agree with.

The parts I really agree with is the overuse of unforgiving mechanics, and the further discussion down the line of the auto-immunity to stats afflictions we give.

While I don't necessarily want it so players can simply power through or around the mechanics (like tier 2 enrage method) systems that are incredibly frustrating that instantly spell the dealth of the group can be toned down on the whole. Or at the very least, expand the endgame paths so that the difficulties are varied enough that we can more or less pick our poison.

[Tirocupidus]

simply watching others succeed/fail at a mechanic and being powerless to do anything about it

This. Tanking Titan HM is the ultimate example. I stood there countless times doing a job a monkey could do, watching the rest of the party die off one by one. There was satisfaction in defeating him, but the process wasn't fun. Raiding is the last thing in the game that appeals to me, and now people in my FC are leaving because even that isn't fun anymore. It's just frustration.

The latest frustration for us is Rafflesia, but more specifically Thorny Vines. One vine connecting two people is usually simple enough for people to handle, but occasionally people run the same direction, I suspect because latency issues cause each person to think they're in front of the other, so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course. With the worse vine configurations, one bad break can lead to a wipe, even if the rest of the run was flawless.One of the worst parts is that it's often difficult to determine who actually did something wrong, so how can we fix the problem? We attempt this fight twice per week, at most, and we've been doing it for months.

With frustrating raids and boring everything else, I'm about ready to quit. I would have quit after 2.2 if I didn't like my FC so much.

[Tiggy]

The latest frustration for us is Rafflesia, but more specifically Thorny Vines. One vine connecting two people is usually simple enough for people to handle, but occasionally people run the same direction, I suspect because latency issues cause each person to think they're in front of the other, so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course.

BOTH players must run away from each other. If they are expecting the other person to correct for them then you will run into this problem. It shouldn't be "so they keep running, expecting the other to reverse course." Fix that problem and you'll be fine. If you are tethered to another player move away from them. If you are tethered to two players move away from both. This needs to be done in the most direct path possible. The only time where this doesn't work is if one player is already against the wall. In those cases it is 100% on the other player to cover the rest of the distance.

For your example it isn't the game making you powerless. It's your players aren't doing the right thing so they are getting everyone killed.

[Tirocupidus]

BOTH players must run away from each other. . .

I'm well aware of how the mechanic works, you didn't understand what I said. Both players are running, but each sees themselves at a different point than the other sees them due to latency. This leads to one person thinking they're running the correct direction, with the other person following them. However, the other person sees that they are the one running the correct direction. Other players may see them running very close to each other. Each person thinks the other should change direction, and they're both right according to what they see. Usually this gets fixed soon enough by one of them changing, but sometimes they both change the same way or neither change, thinking the other will. Multiple vines compounds the problem. Most often we're fine, but like I said, a single bad break can bring the end.