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

[RyuDragnier]

This is a very good blog post. I would thank the original poster (and you) but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a feedback/comment section on the blog.

I liked the "Team rope jumping" analogy, so I will continue to use it here.

The boss is rotating the jump rope and every boss does it differently. Gear, along with some knowledge of tanking, healing and DPSing is only a minimum requirement to enter the rope jump game. If someone is said to be a good player, it means that they can get past every rope that comes because they have memorised the pattern for each boss, but not necessarily good at their job.

You may be good at high jumps, long jumps or whatever jumps but they are not recognised because being able to jump is only a minimum requirement and doing "good jumps" simply count as a pass. The outcome of a person jumping can only be a pass or fail. At the current endgame, each player is given say 10 jumps and the only way to pass is for the whole team to get 80/80 jumps. If anyone fails a jump, the rope stops completely its a wipe. The current endgame requires perfection of getting past the rope rather than having players excel at jumping (their job).

Now, what if instead the outcome of a jump is not just 1 or 0 (pass/fail), but can be anything depending on how well the person jumps? As the OP has noted, Turn 4 is an example of this. A good tank will be able to mitigate more damage and a healer heal more efficiently, allowing them to score more than 1 for doing a fancy jump. What if someone is better at high jumps than long jumps? In Turn 8 you can choose what kind of jumps you want to do (to some extent). In addition, your gear will increase the score you get for a jump.

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So what if you still don't make the required score to pass?

The encounter is broken into multiple phases and the score is evaluated at the end of each phase. In the current system, if someone fails a jump then the rope stops. What should happen is that the rope continues, and even if you don't make the required score you should be able to enter the next phase. In the next phase, you will be required to get a higher score than normal. If you have failed constantly in the previous phases then it will be impossible achieve the required score for the last phase. Again, this is shown in Turn 4 where if you did not do well, instead of wiping, the next wave is brought down and you still have a chance to clear (through the use of LB or whatever).

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How to implement this?

-Change instant wipes as a result of a failed DPS check or a failed "rope jump" by a single person to some sort of resource drain or detrimental effect for the party, and/or buff for the boss
--Examples
--If Titan heart is not broken, then empty everyone's MP and the limit bar
--Rot should kill the one person who had it only and buff the boss etc

-Change unrecoverable deaths so that it is possible to get back into the game
--Examples
--If you fall of the edge in titan/leviathan, you have to take time to climb/swim back up (which may cause a failed DPS check and make everyone's job harder)
--If you have weakness then you might not be able to survive. Change it so that weakness reduces your capability to do your job well rather than reduce HP.


Make it only possible to come back if members excel at their job (e.g. solo heal/tank for a while).


Additional:

Everything here is exactly how I feel about the system and what needs to be done with this. I've given up on Coil after 4 months because I've never cleared T5 due to a SINGLE PERSON causing a wipe every single time. The worst part about this is that there's actual important story gated behind these Turns. I've read the spoilers, it's amazing story and twists, and yet I will never see it just due to these mechanic driven fights requiring such perfection from everybody. That's the main thing that irritates me about these mechanic driven fight barriers, that there's important story behind those barriers.