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

[Litre]

Some of these tough mechanics are recoverable thou. We've recovered from 1-2 deaths from kiters and healers in T7, dead DPS on Turn 8. I've seen many teams on Turn 9 having DPS die a couple of times and still cleared. Depends on the severity of the mistake - and of course, gear helps in here. When starting out in T9 with i95ish gears having your DPS die 1 or 2 time may result in you hitting the enraged timer, but as you gear up having your DPS die 1 or 2 times to divebombs or elemental attacks aren't too bad as your other geared DPS can cover for the loss. Gear is not that irrelevant, but only irrelevant when you make big ass mistakes such as firing your curse voice across the area and freezing almost everyone else.



With all these said, let us recall that most of the most punishing mechanics are either scripted or have some major indicator coming. One shouldn't be caught surprised by it. Say T5, Twintania disappears and you know it's time for divebombs so by the conventional strat, move your butt into the pit and get ready. There's really quite some time allowance there, it's not like DB indicators come 1s after Twinny disappears. The reason you can't make it in time is probably you are losing concentration. Cursed Voice from T7 have a timer ranging from 5s-9s - misfiring it is totally your fault (yes at times I lost concentration and misfire too).

Don't get me wrong thou. I won't say I am a hardcore elitist but I won't say I'm not one. But I will try to be fair whenever I can. In this case I can only say that if one have did their homework and after hours of practice and making the same mistake over and over again, either keep practicing and improve yourself, if not that player is really undeserving to clear.

Thanks for your well thought out post But I guess you can see your own bias, you do your homework and love the challenge and overcoming it, I do too. But all the recoveries from mistakes you mention happened in the end-game, you have good players already pushing through the hardest content. I think at that level things are fine as they are, it's new content, what we are saying is that even that content should be doable EVENTUALLY by players that are simply unable to dodge every mechanic.


Fixing this is as easy as, instead of this mechanic not being instant death, it does something like 6k damage! Pretty much death for anyone with current gear, but in 2 months even DPS might have 8-9k HP and be able to survive one of those. In this way gear is more relevant and becomes increasingly more relevant as time goes on and content becomes accessible to more people, simply because they have better gear.

Like it or not, there's plenty of players there that need that 25% echo boost to even stand a chance, I would argue that eventually maybe 3-4 months after content is released, it'd be possible to be 50% stronger than those who cleared it the first time, so echo 25% + gear 25%. Right now there's plenty of mechanics that even with 100% of a boost you cannot survive, Titan EX keeps coming up in this respect - give us 25% knockback resist with echo, that way if someone runs to the middle they might die but least not be knocked off etc...

This is what we mean by balancing the mechanics vs gear dependency, if it's 100% mechanics and 0% gear, then you either memorize the patterns or you'll never beat it. If it's 90% mechanics and 10% gear, it's unlikely to be possible for a group of unskilled players to beat it, but a couple or few may be able to beat it with others carrying them.

Frankly even an encounter at 70% mechanics/30% gear dependent will be very hard/unbeatable by some casual players, now put yourself in their shoes, you can't find a group of 8 that can dodge mechanics reliably for the life of you, higher levels don't care about you, nor can they help you much. And you've basically reached the end of the game, it's stonewalled and you're frustrated, some will keep practicing others will give up.

Now imagine if there were alternative paths to try to get better gear such as, quests, materia, buying better gear, this gives them something to strive for, they can get closer and closer to winning, you can't improve your ability to dodge, you're just not that skilled, but you have a way around this, and at least one day you know you can beat it, isn't that a lot more optimistic?

The hardcore can have their insta kill, 100% mechanic battles, knock yourselves out and you deserve the best gear for that, the casuals shouldn't have to face something so frustrating, unless they go off the beaten mainstream/casual path for a challenge, I'd be happy if they did, but not everyone's the same.