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

[Velhart]

Was there a point bringing this back up? SE has already announced a lot of things the OP is complaining about and making adjustments towards some of it in the expansion. Why don't people wait and see what happens before bringing things like this back.

[Felis]

Was there a point bringing this back up? SE has already announced a lot of things the OP is complaining about and making adjustments towards some of it in the expansion. Why don't people wait and see what happens before bringing things like this back.

Because we can be Necromancers only in the forum ^^

[Kallera]

Because we can be Necromancers only in the forum ^^

That and the problem is still an issue in the content that we have now. How do we know there have been appropriate changes to content if we haven't seen it yet? There is still wild speculation about what an standard difficulty Alexander would be like. Is it going to help address the divisiveness coil created?

[Velhart]

That and the problem is still an issue in the content that we have now. How do we know there have been appropriate changes to content if we haven't seen it yet? There is still wild speculation about what an standard difficulty Alexander would be like. Is it going to help address the divisiveness coil created?

2 months form now, please look forward to it.

[Iromi]

If they fix team jump rope I will be very pleasantly surprised :x

[Viridiana]

Okay, so, seriously, all the people giving Nektulos crap, its easy for you to use every logical fallacy at your disposal but can you actually discount anything he says? So far i haven't seen any of you do that at all.

I dunno, I think he does a good job of dismantling his own arguments, since he seems to care more about getting a reaction than staying consistent. Same guy who wants the MSQ to be easier for new players also wants SoF to have a higher ilvl requirement. For example:

No, he wants the fights to actually not be the same fights every time. They are far too mechanics based and its true. Its a test, and if you get one score wrong on the test you fail.

Memorization isn't fun.

They should focus on more dynamic fights where you can do more then 1 thing to kill the boss, and not be locked in a room.

He wants fights to be more "Off the rails!" so to speak.

It doesn't matter if your the best player or gamer in the world, if you don't do the mechanics, or don't know them you fail.

That is not fun.

The game should be more focused on how well you can play your character and adapt to the battlefield rather then how well you can memorize a fight.

Nothing big here. Heck, I can almost agree with this, even though I think reacting when you're first learning stuff *is* fun. But, that's subjective, so I'll ignore that part. But then there's this:

Thats not really true, there is a lot of pie thrown at you in the entire game. Coils do not equal every single part of the game, lots of the game's mechanics are "You must do this, or something bad happens." I have done a lot of the extreme modes. They are really fun fights!

A lot of low level mechanics are the same.

Emphasis mine.

So, mechanics driven fights aren't fun, but Extreme modes are fun? There's only one set of "Extreme Modes," and those are the Primalas. Almost all of which are extremely scripted, pardon the pun. And they're all mechanics-driven. You mess up the Spiney Plume in GX, you die. You get hit by AOE in TX, you die. You ignore Searing Wind or Chains or Nails on IX, you die. You kill moogles too soon on Moggle, you die. You attack the wrong body part or don't CC the fear add in LX, you die. You mess up Chaotic Strike in RX, you die. You don't split the damage of Icebrand in SX, you die.

And yet, these fights "are really fun fights." Even though they're pure mechanics (though, LX has an enrage timer).

Fights you have to memorize are not fun.
These fights you have to memorize are really fun.

They can't both be true.

But, hey, maybe you care more about his Coil statements. Okay, let's talk about Coil. Let's go back to this quote again:

No, he wants the fights to actually not be the same fights every time. They are far too mechanics based and its true. Its a test, and if you get one score wrong on the test you fail.

Memorization isn't fun.

They should focus on more dynamic fights where you can do more then 1 thing to kill the boss, and not be locked in a room.

First, "do more than 1 thing to kill the boss" is vague as hell. I assume he means "more than one way to handle a mechanic." Since, y'know, killing the boss is always going to be a matter of getting his HP to zero. So, more than one way to kill the boss makes no sense. But more than one way to handle a mechanic is something we already have. Do you LOS Rafflesia, or do you hop in a briar patch? Do you feed the slugs or not? Do you keep 4 Renauds petrified, or do you only keep one? Do you split T9 meteors 3/3/2, spread out and watch, or do a counter-clockwise run across one side of the map? These are all things that change how the fight plays out. I can't speak for FCoB, but I know there's more than one way to skin a cat in SCoB. I could actually even argue that T2 lets you choose your own mechanics for the end.

But, then, maybe he does actually want more than one way to kill things. Like, say, Steps of Faith, where you have the options of burning adds with cannons, burning them with AOE spells, stunning their big attacks with cannons, stunning them with normal abilities, using that one strategy that has the tanks and a healer aggro everything way back at the starting area and the DPS and other healer focus boss while all adds go to the back. . .Only, wait, he wants to increase the ilvl requirement for that to 110. Even though he also wants to be able to play with his friend who would have to level through that as a new player.

Or let's take this quote:

What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss heals himself by 1-4%?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss gets damage reduction?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss deals more damage?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss summons a minion that is strong?
What about knockbacks, he knock backs the tank if he gets stunned too much and throws him back?
What about randomly losing aggro and going after a random class?

If he weren't so focused on the dying part, he'd realize we have fights with mechanics like this in the game. Did you feed a slime to Caduceus with full HP (which, I'm fairly sure which panels light up is random, btw)? He just healed up a bit. Did you get hit by Lunar Dynamo? That hurt, and you just healed Nael. Did you go east in T2? Your tanks better be good at aggro. Did you go west instead? Hope all your DPS aren't melee, because that's gonna hurt their DPS. Did Rafflesia eat half your group? That's 4 stacks of damage up. Did someone Cursed Voice Melusine? That's a damage up, assuming they didn't just splat the tank. Did the DPS build up resistance on Ifrit? Hope they can dodge Eruptions! Did they Leg Sweep the fear add in LX? Someone's probably going off the edge, unless someone does a clutch knockback to interrupt the fear. And of course, we have a few enemies with no aggro table, including the last boss of SV HM. If you can predict everything that both bosses are going to do in that fight, you're much better at predictions than I.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm just some person on the forums with 2,800+ posts.

[MageBlack]

I think the biggest part of the "problem" is going to be solved with 3.0 in the way they are doing Alexander with 2 modes. One mode is a normal mode for those wanting to just experience the story content then there will be a hard mode for the hardcore endgamers looking for BiS gear and a greater challenge. The reason there are so many "bad's" in coil is there are people just wanting to experience the story part of it but cant. I am one of them. I cant get a full premade static party to run this but I can do it bit by bit on my own, except players have no patience.

I do agree that for hard mode there should be fewer instakill mechanics, I wasnt on that side of the fence before but after doing the majority of the game now, I see why this is a kind of cop-out. They arent a terrible tactic but it shouldnt be the only thing in the bag of tricks. But they are growing the game and therefore I'm sure they will grow the bag of tricks.

EDIT:
Also, why necro this? Maybe I'll necro one of my complaint threads that is still vaguely valid.

[Ibi]

I think the biggest part of the "problem" is going to be solved with 3.0 in the way they are doing Alexander with 2 modes. One mode is a normal mode for those wanting to just experience the story content then there will be a hard mode for the hardcore endgamers looking for BiS gear and a greater challenge. The reason there are so many "bad's" in coil is there are people just wanting to experience the story part of it but cant. I am one of them. I cant get a full premade static party to run this but I can do it bit by bit on my own, except players have no patience.

Yoshi-P has said that the story version will be equivalent difficulty to Coil with echo.

There are huge swathes of the player base who still can't clear T5 or T9, even with 20% echo and gear 20-40 item levels above what was intended, so unless they also make some fundamental changes to their encounter design strategies, the volume of complaints may not decrease that much.

[kirk]

Yoshi-P has said that the story version will be equivalent difficulty to Coil with echo.

There are huge swathes of the player base who still can't clear T5 or T9, even with 20% echo and gear 20-40 item levels above what was intended, so unless they also make some fundamental changes to their encounter design strategies, the volume of complaints may not decrease that much.

Pretty much this even with Echo/ 3.0 Alexander nm people will stay say "it's to hard" please nerf it so maybe add in a I win button

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I hope they add some contested dungeons in the game with roaming mobs, bosses, and other interesting mechanics so people have to deal with other players and be social again. Having to take risks and not wait/sit back in little instances again would be refreshing, fighting for content has always been one of my favorite activities, but every game seems to have removed that.