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

[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.

[Archulak]

The point was that a fight should not be
"Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > Mechanic > end of boss"
Or, to explain it better, these mechanics should not just come one after an other every 5 seconds with no room to do anything else. Coil2 is pretty much "Follow the path the devs have set or die" and I can't think of anything which can go out of this path. You still have the choice in your party set-up, but that's pretty much all.

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 inconvenience, so the player base learned what these things were and then how to force the easiest outcome.

And now for my second non-tangential point to the quote. I have literally watched vids of at least 4 different ways to do t6(briars, LoS, Super Slug, burn), 3 different ways to position the party in T7, 2 ways to handle the t7 ogres(stack, kite),6 different ways to push towers in T8, 5 different ways to drop meteors in 9, 3 different ways to handle the ghost during heavens fall and 2 ways to dodge the dive bombs. To say that there's 1 way to do everything in coil is insulting to players that come up with these strategies, and just sounds like ignorance coming from someone who has decided that the only proper way to do something is from whatever guide they read first.

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".

You could resize your focus target bar to be massive and stick it right in the middle of your screen if you fail to realize there's a bar casting that says twister, that shows it's exact cast time, that's not an imperfect indicator it's called a lack of awareness.

[Gormogon]

You could resize your focus target bar to be massive and stick it right in the middle of your screen if you fail to realize there's a bar casting that says twister, that shows it's exact cast time, that's not an imperfect indicator it's called a lack of awareness.

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

[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 ?)

[Archulak]

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

If I was a tank I'd go in with a macro that indicates twisters are being casted. There's many alternatives but a surefire way for a fight like this is VoIP since we don't have access to DBM in FFXIV.

This is not something you do in the middle of a fight you set it up before hand(Target bar and Focus Target bar are 2 separate hud icons that you can have at the same time)



You can clearly see that I have one mob targeted and another focus targeted and exactly when the one that is focused is casting a skill even though I'm not targeting it.

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 ?)

The timers arn't made so that there's an order to them, the order happens because that's the way the CD's are used. Sure it's "scripted", but you can make the fights hit harder and bring you to within an inch of your life because you know that it's not going to happen again for a while. If you just bring in a bunch of random atks then you end up with fights not being determined by skill but by luck in which RNG pattern you happen to get, you also need to make sure that it's actually possible to survive the combinations that can occur meaning that even your hardest hitting skill a boss can have can do NO MORE than half a players hp pool if it can happen twice in a row.

[Gormogon]

snip

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

[Archulak]

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

Every time I've been in a pug they have asked everyone to focus it, sure they might not listen but that doesn't change the fact that there's no real reason you can't have it up so you can see twister being cast. If that's not a reliable method to see it idk what is. You can also focus it when you're about to pull and just keep it up the whole fight there's not really any doing it in the middle of battle going on.

[Spellbinder]

I'll say it again, get the other >>>7<<< players in the party to use it.

I hate to interrupt your exchange, but what you said was.

Getting people to do that during the middle of a fight is pointless.

While not pointless, I do realize some people would forget to do it.

However, that's not an excuse as Archulak has pointed out. Before the party steps into the fight, why not take the initiative to say "Hey everyone, don't forget to turn on Focus Target before we start."?

[Gormogon]

snip

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.

[Spellbinder]

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.

Perhaps there's simply a difference with players on the Japanese data centers, but I've cleared Turn 5 in random parties before and after it was available for duty finder without a static. When I cleared it after, it was simply out of boredom. I'm not saying the battles aren't difficult, but it shouldn't be hard for people to press one or two buttons to Focus Target before a fight.

I find that much more "simplistic" than inviting 7 strangers into a voice chat.