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

[Zantetsuken]

What I said (which btw is taken completely out of context): "Titan extreme punishes you for being a pathetic dodger". What this means to anyone that isn't trying sound smart quoting Extra Credits is that when you fail at Titan it's because you suck at dodging. It's simple, you cannot dodge = you get punished by it.
What the EC video talks about is the concept of "Punishing Difficulty", which is difficulty specifically designed to have a strong negative impact for failure. Let's talk about Titan Extreme now and think about this: what happens when you wipe at Titan Extreme? Simple, you recover instantly, the fight restarts and you can give it another shot. Yet another, another, another, another.
[...]

To quote the episode (@4:42):

"Often, the arbitrary unstoppable deaths occur right in the middle of a 20 minute long battle that you were otherwise winning. Which means, the player has 10 minutes of doing something they already succeeded at."

The standard time it takes to beat Titan is 9-12 minutes.


Furthermore, each example in that episode was of a SINGLE PLAYER experience, where your success or failure wasn't entirely dependent on 7 other players' performance.

So, even if you play perfectly, other players may die, and cause you to fail. The success/failure of your battle becomes arbitrary unless you have an 8-person static where each player is dedicated to spend the time needed get the win.

For a casual player (even with echo) every arbitrary death in the final phase results in ~7 minutes of iteration time.

Which means the player has: ~7 minutes of doing something they already succeeded at.


The result is:

You end up either in a static that breezes through everything, or, you end up wanting to throw your controller through the TV because someone in your 12th PF group that day messed up and yet another group disbanded despite you doing everything correctly according to script.

[Iriadysa]

To quote the episode (@4:42):



The standard time it takes to beat Titan is 9-12 minutes.

Even if you play perfectly, other players may die, and cause you to fail. The success/failure of your battle becomes arbitrary unless you have an 8-person static where each player is dedicated to spend the time needed get the win.

So, for a casual player (even with echo) every arbitrary death in the final phase results in ~7 minutes of iteration time.

Which means the player has: ~7 minutes of doing something they already succeeded at.

If I understand your argument, you are trying to point out that a failure at Titan forces you to retry about 7 minutes of a fight. I believe that it's important you understand that this was an example in their video. Examples are there to illustrate the problem, not to be followed exactly. There's nowhere in the EC video saying "if you are forced to repeat more than 10 minutes it's punishing". In fact, I believe you are doing them a disservice by understanding things like that, as what EC is trying is to educate people about game design, not create hard directives.

I feel the need to remind you that it was not me who brought the EC video into the conversation, I simply flipped the table to show the poster how wrong he was by trying to quote EC on this and how the OP was, in fact, violating the EC guidance in a worse way than the current design. In other words, if repeating 7 minutes of a fight is "high iteration times", imagine what having to farm spawn triggers for a single attempt is. Also, nothing in Titan is neither arbitrary nor unstoppable, but I understand this isn't what you were trying to say.

Now, about Titan Ex specifically: I'm not sure if you have actually beaten Titan Ex, but a single death in the last phase does not end on a wipe. In fact, I've beaten Titan Ex with as low as only 4 people alive. I've beaten Twintania with just a single tank alive (yeah, shit hit the fan on the fire pools phase... I don't know how).

And really... "other players may die, and cause you to fail". Yes, it can happen. It's an MMO. And that's exactly why you have to go with care when applying what EC says as most of their stuff is directed to single player games.

Edit:

There's many many things I don't like about FFXIV. One of them is the how easy everything is. There's new decisions I also dislike, like Atma, Animus and Novus quests or how little end game content there is and how everything is gated through some really annoying restrictions, etc. However, regardless of what my opinion on XIV is, I have to admit that this game does a really solid job on the overall design department. Watch all the EC videos (all of them, not kidding) and try to do a neutral analysis against FFXIV (saving the MMO/singe player stuff) and I'm sure many will notice how refined XIV actually is. Which is a miracle, considering how fast they released ARR.

[Darske]

I do have to agree with OSU about disbanding groups being incredibly frustrating. However, I feel like this is a problem that stems from the community more than it does the game design itself.

I mean, when you have 60 mins left, you've gotten really close a few times, and then the vote disband comes up after two or three attempts, it seems to me that it's a negative mindset a lot of players seem to get into. To raise a parallel to another game, it's sort of like how there are players in League of Legends where one or two things go wrong and they immediately begin spamming surrender because they have given up on victory, and feel it's a waste of time to even try once something goes wrong.

What this mindset stems from, I honestly couldn't say, but it both puzzles and vexes me every time I see it. It's like there's this huge chunk of gamers who just can't rise to a challenge.

[Rosy]

What I find unacceptable about FFXIV mechanics is that they have the most appalling servers I have ever had the displeasure to play an mmorpg on, yet the majority of mechanics require that you dodge stuff. In other games you dodge and you're out...you're OUT, in this game you may or may not be...all according to server lag, so what you see on your screen is not what is actually happening.

In fact it's the only game I've played where people see DIFFERENT things on their screen, we used to often laugh in CT when we're on TS, as one member would say "I'm in the lead!" as we raced to the next boss, whereas another member would say "no you're not you're sitting in 3rd"....minions...the wolf pup and coerl pup who interact with each other, everybody sees them doing something totally different on their screen. I'm not sure if this is something to do with server lag, but if you see you're out of something you have to dodge, I can bet that somebody would have seen you standing slap bang in the middle of it.

There is absolutely no way to 100% ensure you have dodged something unless you react in advance (and as many have said, learn the rotations) reaction to situations is irrelevant in this game, you have to know what's coming next and in all honesty that makes a game boring. Learning anything by rote is boring....something that should be left in school, not part of a game.

[Rosy]

snip.

Yup, nobody these days seems willing to stay on and try, try, try again, which is frustrating....unless of course you are fortunate enough to be in a static, which is another can of worms. It's the first game I've played where "statics" are almost required. I prefer to do things with guildies not strangers in a static.

[Cap75]

The main issue I find with nearly completely scripted fights is they feel less like fights and more a puzzle game. There feels like there's minimal player agency. We're always reacting but the thing you're fighting only reacts at prescribed moments in the fight.

In the best boss fights in recent games like the Soul series or Dragon's Dogma there's a risk/reward strategy in play. I know, these games are vastly different in design, but I think some of the mechanics could be borrowed. Even simple things: a ranged player is doing ungodly damage so the boss does a move that closes the gap. Against melee maybe it has a grab or a way to increase the gap. And maybe said moves leave it open to a different kind of attack. It would be cool if there were more proactive measures players could take rather than constantly reactive ones. The by product of which usually also means there ends up being more than one (okay, sometimes two) strategies to any given fight.

[Roris]

LOL, wut?!

You heard me, I like it because it's not a boring, strict, heavily scripted fight. Most fights in this game are like this, mostly a not as entirely accurate but still accurate enough Second Coil comparison:

In phase 1 A will always happen every 15 seconds, B will always happen at HP%, C will always spawn at HP% or time and you have to burn it really fast, when D happens at another HP% you always have to move to X or Y position.
In phase 2 E and F will happen at the same time every 30 seconds on top of previous mechanics, at a determinate time or HP% G will happen so you have to move to X or Y position
In phase 3 A and B will stop happening but H will start happening on top of previous mechanics, when I happens you have to move really quickly to Z position

Moogle EX is like this:

On phase 1, A and B can happen.
On phase 2 A, B, C, D and E can happen in any order and you have to act accordingly.
On phase 3 A, B, C, D, E, F and G can happen in any order, on phase 2 end it's better to move to X but not entirely necessary
On phase 4 A, B, C , D , E, F, G and H can happen in any order and you have to act accordingly, phase end is dictated by the players and you have to react accordingly.

Does the first example take more skill? I guess, but it sure is more mechanized and unfun. Should more fights in this game be more randomized? Not really but I wish, if they were as well or even better randomized. Keep the precious moving and dodging but don't make stuff always happen at the same time every time. Add more stun and silence opportunities to cancel certain attacks, even Pacification or Dispel if that was a real thing for most classes and not just a Monk ability that's only somewhat useful for PvP. Reacting to stuff as it goes is just more fun for me than following a set script, as long as give enough leeway and time to do it to compensate for the inherent latency of MMOs, like this game really doesn't.

Yeah yeah, "I'm good everyone else is bad so this would never work" or "well that's just like your opinion and I like the first example more so that's that", sure hope no one really uses that as an argument.

[kukurumei]

For all the blame, of lag, or whatever excuse, the sad fact is it's still 90% excecution. I see a lot of Titan EX fight that go "arrggh stupid lag" or whatever reason....is sadly stupid excuse to shift the blame trying to brute force dodging with reaction and fail miserably when it's excution problem.

example:
Most common wipe: Landslide row bombs

player eyes: blame lag for their wipe, flame the boards
My eyes: bad execution for not baiting landslide middle that forces players into a no-win tight dodge situation, their own fault for wiping

This is what usually happens in fights. Sure some mechanics are pretty brutal, but they are in fact many times player executed poorly and they just won't admit it.

Extremes are suppose to be EXTREME.

The one problem here is that ARR whether in lack of content, or unbalance in content, has turn into a community where everything is "easy", and then when people fail "easy" stuff, they decry it's not fun because it's not "easy".

This naming creep is bad, and perhaps too much community abuse problem. Not winning on an extreme, coil, etc, should be the normal. But people think they can walk in a few times with randoms and win, worse this whole echo thing expects them to steam roll.

again Extreme.

[Melithea]

Why do people always see the world in black or white ? Couldn't the alternative to "mechanics-driven battles" just be "battle with mechanics" ?

I want to take you more seriously, but your entire concept of acceptable mechanics appears to be adds and AOE attacks.

Are you just messing with me? Do you want another chance to come up with some better examples?

Wow.. using an award that shows the game is well designed so that disabled people can enjoy most of it to show how the endgame encounters are ridiculously easy

That's not what I did and I further explained the relevance in a follow-up. Shame on you for not having any reading comprehension.

And wrong, brutal coil is 2.3 don't correct people when you are the one who's wrong.

I had to go back and review the live letter because the information doesn't appear to be *anywhere else*, but I stand corrected on this. I didn't remember anything from the E3 special being slated for 2.3. So yay, there is actually going to be some difficult (recycled) content in 2.3 for people who actually enjoy a challenge.

[OSUBuckeye4]

This naming creep is bad, and perhaps too much community abuse problem. Not winning on an extreme, coil, etc, should be the normal. But people think they can walk in a few times with randoms and win, worse this whole echo thing expects them to steam roll.

again Extreme.

It's extreme, but, it's required for progression (to what many say is easier "extreme" content)...... that is a bit of a problem.

If a developer wants to put stuff with unforgiveable mechanics in, but make it brick wall content, I say that's fine. By brick wall, I mean that you get a title or minion or mount or something otherwise inconsequental for defeating it. I have no problem with that, and I bet others wouldn't either.

To put really difficult stuff out there, and then require people to beat it in order to view other storyline elements, is kind of ridiculous.

The brutal mode stuff that is coming up, I have no intentions of being able to defeat it. I'll probably give it a few tries when I'm bored, but, I will expect to fail. I'm not going to complain about that content, because, defeating it isn't required to progess towards additional content. I won't feel like I'm missing anything as I wipe over and over to it.


Titan EX is (at least it was) required to progess on to Ifrit/Moogle/Leviathian, that's kind of a problem. What happens is that you get a percentage of the playerbase that grinds away at the content, defeats it, and then never wants to run it again. That leaves another percentage of the population in the dust and a lot of people just end up quiting because they get the feeling they will never catch up. (I'm not quiting, but others in my FC have because they felt like they would never be able to find a static to progress through T5... let alone T6+)


Before I get completely flamed with QQ garbage... I'm really not trying to boo hoo hoo cry about this, just pointing out what I'm seeing on my server with my friends.

Personally, I'm a very patient person. I know that there is always something else in game that I could be doing. There's leves to be run, dailies to be done, roulettes to undertake, sub-classes to level up (I started after 2.1)... a lot of people don't have my level of patience though.

They see a "beat this in order to progess to the next big thing" sign and they fail 50 times (doing the same thing over and over) and say something along the lines of, "eff it I hate watching other people screw up, this is boring" and leave.

It's just poor game design on the part of SE to make something so difficult for such a large percentage of the server required for progression. And to make it the same scripted battle over and over again... it's just yuck.