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

[Gormogon]

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.

It's also a fact that is does happen. People do stream and others do record their gameplay and upload it. This http://youtu.be/OUVdRFGracY?t=30s does happen to player. I don't know why you act like it's some made up excuse. Especially when a fight like Titan has WotL and Landslide go off constantly throughout the fight which only increases the chances of that happening to players even though they can react yet it doesn't register.

Putting up with that kinda bs with any 1 shot mechanic is pretty frustrating for players because it's not their lack of skill that's in question but having to deal with latency issues.

[Vahlnir]

-snip-

I agree with you on this, though I believe problems stemming from a lack of coordination or experience (possibly skill depending on the player) are much more common than the lag issues. Don't get me wrong, there are people who genuinely have issues with their connection and it's understandable. It does make it harder on the player experiencing the lag as well as the people they are grouped with. But in my experience the bigger problem is people lacking raid awareness.

[Gormogon]

I agree with you on this, though I believe problems stemming from a lack of coordination or experience (possibly skill depending on the player) are much more common than the lag issues. Don't get me wrong, there are people who genuinely have issues with their connection and it's understandable. It does make it harder on the player experiencing the lag as well as the people they are grouped with. But in my experience the bigger problem is people lacking raid awareness.

I prefer to call it situational awareness. Yet I agree I see it happen a lot in MOBA's where someone's going across the screen despite there being wards they can't react to it. Some times those players react to that visual awareness, but others rely on pings, texts, or over VoIP to realize what's happening around them.

Yet as far as the fights in FFXIV I time VoiP is really needed is with Twintania's Twisters since there's no focus target where you can keep track of what Twintania is casting. The rest of the VoIP chat regarding the rotation coming up is mainly there to help players be aware that it's gonna happen within the next few seconds and to move accordingly.

[Vahlnir]

I prefer to call it situational awareness.

Situational...that was the word I was looking for which eluded me. Didn't really think of it this way either but again I agree that everyone handles various situations differently, all we can really do though is give them options. What they do with them is a different story. Not really a fan of voice chats because it isn't all that necessary, but there are times when it helps a lot.

[Nero]

VoiP is really needed is with Twintania's Twisters since there's no focus target where you can keep track of what Twintania is casting.

/focustarget

You are welcome.

[Iriadysa]

It's also a fact that is does happen. People do stream and others do record their gameplay and upload it. This http://youtu.be/OUVdRFGracY?t=30s does happen to player. I don't know why you act like it's some made up excuse. Especially when a fight like Titan has WotL and Landslide go off constantly throughout the fight which only increases the chances of that happening to players even though they can react yet it doesn't register.

Putting up with that kinda bs with any 1 shot mechanic is pretty frustrating for players because it's not their lack of skill that's in question but having to deal with latency issues.

Who would've thought that if your connection has high latency it would be harder to move away from danger. Who would've thought that given too high latency it would become impossible.

I'm starting to suspect many of the people that complain about "lag" don't understand the physical reason of the phenomenon. I could sit down right now and record a video of me having lag and dying to mechanics when it looks like I'm outside, because that's exactly how the game reacts when your connection is poor. All I need to do is turn on a torrent, get in the game and off we go!

The whole point is you shouldn't expect to have a good time playing online if you have a poor connection.

Yet as far as the fights in FFXIV I time VoiP is really needed is with Twintania's Twisters since there's no focus target where you can keep track of what Twintania is casting. The rest of the VoIP chat regarding the rotation coming up is mainly there to help players be aware that it's gonna happen within the next few seconds and to move accordingly.

Holy shit... no wonder you complain so much about this game. Do you really not know about focus target? Do you really think you need VoIP for Twintania?

All, I repeat absolutely all of my Twintania kills have been with PF pugs and not a single time have I bothered to even ask if they had VoIP. Done it as SCH, MNK and WAR. All of which are of equal difficulty.

Rather than that, if you have a pool of attacks, like :
- strong unavoidable hit on tank *3
- room medium AoE *2
- one shot mechanic *1
- hard hitting AoE *2

and if the boss picks randomly 4 attacks from the pool then repeat, you'll have a fight overall more fun, and while better groups can win every mechanics, less skilled groups can hope to have an easier time on that phase. (more fun because it wouldn't be always the same fight)

Skipping the rest of the stuff that, honestly, interest me very little, I want to bring this into the light. If fights were to be legitimately hard in the sense that the abilities used by the monster would be truly hard to deal with, your proposal would make for exponentially harder fights. Your little bit there about "less skilled groups hoping to have an easier time" is really wishful thinking.

I'm having a hard time understanding how you cannot see that having a fixed rotation is one of the reasons why the fights in this game are so easy. Everything is predictable. If you know how to react, you don't need to memorize. If you suck at reacting, you can memorize.

If you suck at both, perhaps play a turn based game instead.

[Gormogon]

The whole point is you shouldn't expect to have a good time playing online if you have a poor connection.

That's funny so the whole point isn't defending difficulty now? Make up that mind of yours.

If it was bad connection or the players would've disconnected or weight of the land would've just appeared out of no where and killed him.

Holy shit... no wonder

There you go with that exaggerated tone and assumptions.

Sorry to burst your bubble but FFXIV focus target is not a perfect indicator for Twintania during that phase since it happens when you're forced to focus on add dps. Which is why I said, "VoIP is really needed".

I really wish I was a horrible player so you can sleep well at night. Yet no I know exactly what the issue is that you choose to ignore constantly to soothe that elitist attitude you have. I'm glad that a Lead Design of a very successful online multiplayer shares that philosophy.

1.) Your own fun can't come at a huge WTF expense to others.
2.) Depth in design doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge to do basic functions.
3.) Create unique and memorable experiences not unintuitive designs that reek only of elitism just for the sake of having confusing and convoluted patterns.
4.) Complexity and confusions are costs; never goals. Designs can be made to be memorable experiences you want without making it so that only you and x amount of your friends can enjoy.

He also mentioned why those designs you defend only house such a small player base.

[Iriadysa]

That's funny so the whole point isn't defending difficulty now? Make up that mind of yours.

If it was bad connection or the players would've disconnected or weight of the land would've just appeared out of no where and killed him.

You clearly have no idea how this game handles network data. Here, I'm going to try to educate you, even though I'm sure you'll just come with a victimist rhetoric instead of actually going out and trying it yourself.

Your client will try to hide lag from you as much as possible. What the client does is accept your input as if everything was working correctly without actually waiting for the server to reply and acknowledge all of your moves. It will literally act as if everything was going ok.

You can cast and finish spells, then start new spells, without the client even waiting for confirmation of the effect of those spells. The client simply tries to give you an experience as smooth as possible in an attempt to mask latency fluctuations. This is really easy to try for yourself.

However, that the client makes you believe something doesn't mean it's actually happening. Sure, you finished casting that spell and were able to start another but it's very possible the packets for that action were lost or arrived late so the effect of your action may not even show at all.

With movement the problem is exactly the same. While the client will lie to you so that your experience is smoothed out there's a point where the lie is exposed if your connection keeps on acting like a POS instead of just having a hickup. The lie is revealed when the server sends your client information that does not match what your client predicted should've been. In other words, your latency didn't allow you to send the information to the server in time and the server replied "you've been hit". The reason you keep seeing people complain "but I was outside mommy, I shouldn't get hit!" is simply because of what I've already explained: the client lies to you in order to try to smooth the experience and mask latency fluctuations.

And it works. As long as your connection isn't a constant 400ms POS.

Just go out there and cap your upload speed then try to play. You'll see everything I've described and more.

Stop being ignorant if you are seriously going to try to discuss this.

There you go with that exaggerated tone and assumptions.

Sorry to burst your bubble but FFXIV focus target is not a perfect indicator for Twintania during that phase since it happens when you're forced to focus on add dps. Which is why I said, "VoIP is really needed".

I really wish I was a horrible player so you can sleep well at night. Yet no I know exactly what the issue is that you choose to ignore constantly to soothe that elitist attitude you have. I'm glad that a Lead Design of a very successful online multiplayer shares that philosophy.

1.) Your own fun can't come at a huge WTF expense to others.
2.) Depth in design doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge to do basic functions.
3.) Create unique and memorable experiences not unintuitive designs that reek only of elitism just for the sake of having confusing and convoluted patterns.
4.) Complexity and confusions are costs; never goals. Designs can be made to be memorable experiences you want without making it so that only you and x amount of your friends can enjoy.

He also mentioned why those designs you defend only house such a small player base.

What on earth are you babbling about? Do you even understand what focus target is?


Look, I've done this as a SCH I assure you I never target Twintania at all. I only target the adds if for some reason a DD derped, to help kill them. Focus target is absolutely a perfect indicator of when she's casting Twisters. This doesn't even make sense, I'm seriously thinking you have never even tried twintania! I've done this as DPS (as MNK, specifically) and I can assure you that Focus Target works perfectly. I don't need to guess at all. As soon as I see the cast bar, I know it's time to maybe think that I should be moving (yes, you actually have a huge window to start moving!)

How can you even dare to criticize game design when you don't even know how it works?

I find it funny you think I'm being an elitist. I have most likely helped more random strangers to learn and beat Titan Extreme and TT than you have, considering it's pretty obvious you can't get past the mechanics correctly.

I'm not an elitist, you are just a really bad player with a very big nack for complaining.

If enough of those casuals and mainstream players quit because they can't do what they want to, or they stop having fun, this game will eventually die and there will be no more game for you to play. If you're too stupid/blind/ignorant/retarded to understand that, there is no hope for you. I'm sorry.

And if the "casuals" in this thread get exactly what they want (i.e. the OP), the game would already be dead for some of us.

Do you understand?

This game has many problems that should be solved. The OP shows none of the right ones.

Edit: I skipped a page by accident! I see you got educated about Focus Target now, while you tried to dodge the bullet and save face as much as possible. I loved it, when you were shown you could see the cast bar using focus target you switched to "in the middle of the fight" and then when you were shown you could do it at the start you said:

Well you go ahead and rely on players outside a static to do so. I wouldn't especially when I've gone through countless experiences where players don't feel the need to do such things for 1 fight and try and get by without it.

Which again, VoIP is a simplistic solution to something like twisters over all other methods and expectations followed by macros.

This is gold. And you call me an elitist when you are clearly diminishing your fellow players, complaining that you are too good to be partying with other players that are not at your level and that's why you keep failing.

You probably missed it so I'm gonna say it again: all of my Twintania kills are with PUGs. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. I even have a SCH book from TT!
And in fact, all of my Titan Ex kills have been with half pugs too, because I don't run in a static.

And really, trying to pass "focus target now please" at the start of a fight as something hard to do for a PUG... Yeah, who's the elitist here, I wonder.

[Kuwagami]

If fights were to be legitimately hard in the sense that the abilities used by the monster would be truly hard to deal with, your proposal would make for exponentially harder fights. Your little bit there about "less skilled groups hoping to have an easier time" is really wishful thinking.

I'm having a hard time understanding how you cannot see that having a fixed rotation is one of the reasons why the fights in this game are so easy. Everything is predictable. If you know how to react, you don't need to memorize. If you suck at reacting, you can memorize.

If you suck at both, perhaps play a turn based game instead.

As he progression in FFxiv is linear, hard hitting/hard to deal with "cuz randomness included" fights would not create such an exponential increase. It would if stats were the same than back in solo FF, when your damage/HP skyrocket after some stat tiers. In FFxiv it would give fight with gradual increase in difficulty. As opposed to the spikey difficulty increase we have now.

I'd say that current difficulty increase is big step, slow decreasing exponential, back to standard (in Coil). You get ravaged by insta kills, you learn them, they never hit anymore.
If we are being honest, when we master dives and twisters and play with 7 consistent players, T5 is relatively easy : damage spike every 30 seconds, a few adds to deal with and it's done.

Gradual increase in difficulty may not work on every fight (it would not work at all in T5 considering twintania has only 1 attack besides her mechanics), but you could save the spike for the last boss (T5, T9, T13 ?) while proposing a "close to linear" increase in difficulty. The slope can be adapted to fit the challenge too.


As for the fixed rotation, they are only an excuse to justify the overuse of instant kill mechanics. Of course randomized pattern would be disastrous in a fight where 90% of the attacks kill you on the spot. But if it was only 10% of these attacks ? You'd get a "randomisable" fight. And not necessarily easier (you acknowledged it yourself)

So first off I think that most people have some misunderstanding of how the bosses in coil work they're all basically the same as players and they have CD's on all their skills the reason that the fights happen the same way all the time is that the AI uses every skill as soon as the CD is up. The reason that twin can be hard if you push at the wrong time is that as soon as it hits an hp threshold the CD for it's new mechanics starts ticking and twin always uses whatever comes up first, like delaying fireballs cause it needs to plummet or use DS. It's not about it being mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic (in coil, titan is a different story) it's just an AI using whatever is available. Btw no combination of atk's in this game can't be overcome by understanding the fight and knowing what's actually going on, though some of them can be quite incontinent, so the player base learned what these things were and then how to force the easiest outcome.

When the timers are made so that every skill comes out in a precise order, that's called a rotation (hence the mechanic > mechanic > mechanic > mechanic ). T5 is a bit particular because all the mechanics are timer based and overwrite themselves, it the order DK stun > plummet > DS > whatever else. In T6 (for example), I have never seen mechanics overwriting others. Nor in T2 (except phase changes, but it seems normal right ?)