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

[SDaemon]

What's wrong with that? I love tank and spank. I have fun in tank and spank matches. I don't have fun when every 5 seconds some gigantic, unavoidable AOE blows everyones face off.

To each their own and I mean no offense to you by this, but how could nothing but tank and spank fights be fun? It doesn't challenge, engage or do much of anything really except fill your screen with flashy animations as you stand there spamming keys and hoping your gear beats whatever dps/hps/health check they might have attached, while you and the boss chill there awkwardly attacking each other....

[Luvbunny]

All they have to do is getting rid of the "one shot" and you die mechanic. Just make it so that you have low HP, so your healer can cure you FAST. Everything else can stay the same.

[Amberion]

To the 2 up top. I don't think that is the way he meant.

There is other way of making a fight then being a DDR. There could be status effects that need to be removed, or make it so you buff the bosses damage if you hit it while you have it.

Just a focus more on your characters skills/stats, rather then something that your character has no control over as it is now.

[SDaemon]

To the 2 up top. I don't think that is the way he meant.

There is other way of making a fight then being a DDR. There could be status effects that need to be removed, or make it so you buff the bosses damage if you hit it while you have it.

Just a focus more on your characters skills/stats, rather then something that your character has no control over as it is now.

And we have that in plenty. Tank swap debuffs, healing debuffs, add control etc etc. The reason you feel like you are playing ddr is because of the scripted nature of the fights, not because the fights aren't tank and spank.

[Amberion]

And we have that in plenty. Tank swap debuffs, healing debuffs, add control etc etc. The reason you feel like you are playing ddr is because of the scripted nature of the fights, not because the fights aren't tank and spank.

Yeah, those exist. But they are so very minor compared to the dance.

Take that fight you get doom on you and you have to walk to the circle. That has 0 influence on a characters skills or stats. Instead they should have made it more that it had to be removed by the healer. To me, the character should have more influence in things in a RPG.

That is more what i mean.

[Zyrusticae]

Yeah, those exist. But they are so very minor compared to the dance.

Take that fight you get doom on you and you have to walk to the circle. That has 0 influence on a characters skills or stats. Instead they should have made it more that it had to be removed by the healer. To me, the character should have more influence in things in a RPG.

That is more what i mean.

Bad example, better way would be to simply make Doom send someone to 1% HP at the end of it so the healer has a chance to save them but there's still a very strong incentive to move. That aside, Qarn is a very, very light example of the problem in question here. Titan EX and Turn 5 are much bigger issues and serve as huge roadblocks for regular players.

For Titan, for example, instead of Landslide automatically just throwing you off the ring, it could instead only throw you off if you were hit by a previous Landslide (which would apply a debuff to your character). WotL itself should probably be tuned down a bit - perhaps WotL itself can't kill you, but accumulating stacks of a debuff it applies would kill you when he spams Tumult down the line. That sort of thing is possible to recover from and isn't so ungodly punishing if one or two players just can't keep up with the rest.

Landslide itself is like the poster-child for overly punishing, unrecoverable mechanics, because getting hit by one takes you out of the fight instantly and makes it impossible to return to it. That's just completely insane, really. We need less of that. A LOT less of that.

[SDaemon]

Yeah, those exist. But they are so very minor compared to the dance.

Take that fight you get doom on you and you have to walk to the circle. That has 0 influence on a characters skills or stats. Instead they should have made it more that it had to be removed by the healer. To me, the character should have more influence in things in a RPG.

That is more what i mean.

Doing that for that fight would make it a dull tank and spank with 2 non issue bees that die in no time. Now instead of worrying, the healer and tank can stay rooted and spam keys to their hearts content.

I don't see any fights where the "dance" as you put it outweighs mechanics, mostly because with the script of the fight the two are interconnected.

[Amberion]

Doing that for that fight would make it a dull tank and spank with 2 non issue bees that die in no time. Now instead of worrying, the healer and tank can stay rooted and spam keys to their hearts content.

I don't see any fights where the "dance" as you put it outweighs mechanics, mostly because with the script of the fight the two are interconnected.

You are thinking people mean it would only change 1 thing. Other things would also have to be changed, added or removed.

People need to think more then just on/off.

And as for stay rooted.. Whats with peoples need to want to run around like headless chickens during fights? As long as you have things to do, why the need to have moment mechanics everywhere?

EDIT:

Bad example, better way would be to simply make Doom send someone to 1% HP at the end of it so the healer has a chance to save them but there's still a very strong incentive to move. That aside, Qarn is a very, very light example of the problem in question here. Titan EX and Turn 5 are much bigger issues and serve as huge roadblocks for regular players.

It was just the fight that came to mind for me.

[JustPlainLucas]

Pattern recognition needs to be thrown out of the window, but the mechanics need to stay. I think boss fights would be more thrilling if everything relied on twitch responses. Of course, that's a doubled edge sword, because the only way I was able to beat Titan HM back when I was still on PS3 was because I memorized his pattern and started to predict when Landslide and Weight of Land were about to happen.

[Colt47]

The bigger problem with the game at the moment is how the end game is shaping the community. Because the fights are tuned so that if one person fails, everyone does, it causes people to not want to bring along anyone new unless they are so far beyond the content that they can bypass the "no one may screw up" requirement. Combine this with the drive for efficiency in Duty Finder and the end game play space starts looking quite impenetrable.

I'm not saying the game is going to have players committing a mass exodus because of it, but the chances of retaining anyone new after they hit 50 is starting to look dismal. Ironic that trying to build EX content to please players is only making the community more fractured.

I mean, if shifting the fights away from being DPS focused to a tank/healer/controller trinity will help take the edge off of things I'm all for it. Right now it's turning into "get a static or get the heck out of my game!"