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

[gornotck]

I think it's good to know that the fact that mechanics driven combat events are driving away people is felt on all sides of the river, even if some members of society would like to deny it.

[ruskie]

While I agree to a point on mechanics/insta death/gimmicks/etc... the thing is those need to be in for variety. Some things would just be boring if just face rolled. With no matter how many people or compositions. Frankly you can have fun/challange in current dungeons - and I do plenty and often - as do others. Think outside the box. I and many others have run things with non standard party setups and had soo much fun. Tam tara with only 2 dds and a healer because tank left... cleared it.... sastasha 3 dds and a healer... copperbell 4 dds(with acn and blm having cross class heals). Had ppl done titan hm with titan egi tanking him with 7 person group because the tank left.

So yeah there is fun to be had in even the current system.

But yeah a bit of randmoness in rotations could be good.

I know Yoshi says that randomness wouldn't be good. But... not have it just be random attacks... just a random ordering of the same rotation... so Titan hm for example could instead of stomp -> plumse go plumes -> stomps and so on(no I don't know the entire rotation by heart... I adapt on the fly). Nothing wrong with randomizing the rotation... and do it on each rotation restart. Same for ifrit... why in then out then plumes then whole arena... maybe first whole arena then the others etc.... Randomize the order of a single rotation. True you could get 2 MBs back to back in this case... but that's still survivable if properly handled.

[Gardes]

Japanese players with Japanese servers cant react to titan ex's plume? What kind of ping do they even have? 20? 10? 5?

Huh.

[AmnesiaHaze]

i fully agree , there are lots of better ways howto create challenge than the current system , its not really a challenge just requires you to memorize simple patterns and practice em a bit and on the other hand it doesnt allow any mistake which leads towards hostility from more experienced players towards less experienced players

some randomized battle system with actual AI rather than preset patterns would make each fight unique and challenging in a more interesting way, of course it had to be more tolerant towards one-mistake but could compensate that by the randomness factor which would lead the team to more mistakes in total unless they good as opposed to well prepared by studying patterns on youtube , also would put people on a more equal level because it would be more about observing and adapting as quick as possible rather than learning preset patterns and praying not to get a lag spike or get distracted for a second to not wipe the whole party

[kog985]

I agree with the writer points. I have a time making small rpg game with this same mechanics. At first, I think it will be ok and fun for players, but things turn out different with what the orginal plan that I have think about. So with the current state of FFXIV battle system right now, I hope they will realize what is go wrong and make a chance to it.

[Yurihyuga]

Totally agree with everything.

A mechanics driven system eventually will only serve the hardcore players and some of the mainstream players. If they keep this up mainstream players who get frustrated enough will quit and most if not all the casual players will quit. Before people already jumped on the post saying all that guy wanted was easy-mode read it wrong.

What the guy wanted was a system where IF YOU KNOW YOUR JOB and HAVE ACTUAL SKILL NOT JUST A GOOD MEMORY you can clear content and he wanted content that will last not just a small end game system that relied on GIMMICKS.

Please get it right before you agree/disagree.

Thumbs up for blog poster and hopefully someday SE will agree.

[Ooshima]

IDK - the fact that each and every one of the fights in this game is pretty much scripted and yet there are so many players who can't clear it, you guys sure you want battles with high degree of randomness?

Don't tell me that some players who can't clear things like Titan is due to lag. It's not that I do not acknowledge that latency is an issue. Because it is an issue, no matter a scripted fight or a random fight it WILL still be an issue. If you can't dodge 1x WotL you can't dodge 4x WotL (if you are that bad luck to get 4 in succession due to RNG) consecutively. It doesn't really change a thing.

If you can't observe a preset, scripted battle it will be even tougher to do randomized battles. It demands higher sense of awareness and able to react and decide your actions and counter actions at the snap of a second. These are all the traits of a top end player gunning for world firsts/rankings.

And not to forget, it will even demand lesser latency and better connection than ever.

And sorry that I would disagree - because coil 2 is a significant test of skill and a step up from coil 1. I have seen players who could comfortably faceroll coil 1 before echo facing difficulties in coil 2. You need skill to be able to push more DPS on DPS checks and gear only can help you with very little. If you don't have the discipline to watch for debuffs T7 will tear your party apart. If you do not have everything to clear T6-T8 and learn from it, you won't be able to clear T9.. Comparing T5 with T9, T5 was way easier (not because of gear, I'm comparing first attempts).

[Yurihyuga]

IDK - the fact that each and every one of the fights in this game is pretty much scripted and yet there are so many players who can't clear it, you guys sure you want battles with high degree of randomness?

I can agree to your points but then we have to consider what is also fun. Wouldn't you have more fun having to make decisions on the go or those decisions being made for you by a mechanic driven system? This is the defining question most people don't watch videos and depend on luck to get past a script that can be read which has a rippling effect through the community.

[IzumiRaito]

I also feel that a gimmick-based fight is not the right to go (also its one of the reason of "watch the vid or dont join"), but the problem is that otherwise it becomes hard to create a high difficulty for all the roles in "tank & spank" fight. Especially if u can just "lvl up" or "throw more bodies".

In pre-ffxii offline jrpgs one player was responsible for managing both healing, dpsing and sometimes tanking/mitigating dmg, also with multiple characters. If u transform it to a multiplayer game, the responisbilities become divided and not much is left for particular player.

One solution could be AI-driven fights instead of scripted. An enemy that wants to target healers/top dps more often, ignoring the tank. An enemy that when for example blm starts slow-casting long skill, he instantly puts a heavy hitting aoe under him. Or enemy that uses some standard pvp strategies against players like cc'ing healers.

Another could be having more unique gear attributes like giving additional skills, adding traits, changing traits, changing skills, enabling to cross class skills that u normally cant. Or serious elemental or attack-type resists. Then adding some enemies that are subject to "elemental wheel", do attacks that are mitigated by having certain resistance. This would add a "preparation" phase for encounter, but may prevent players that dont have the "optimal" gear (havent completed the "preparation") setup from finding a party.

[Jaykos]

So this is what he wants I guess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p_wjSMtAbw