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

[Velhart]

That and the problem is still an issue in the content that we have now. How do we know there have been appropriate changes to content if we haven't seen it yet? There is still wild speculation about what an standard difficulty Alexander would be like. Is it going to help address the divisiveness coil created?

2 months form now, please look forward to it.

[Iromi]

If they fix team jump rope I will be very pleasantly surprised :x

[Mugiawara]

Thats not really true, there is a lot of pie thrown at you in the entire game. Coils do not equal every single part of the game, lots of the game's mechanics are "You must do this, or something bad happens." I have done a lot of the extreme modes. They are really fun fights!

A lot of low level mechanics are the same.

Extreme Mode's are the same as normal dungeons and coil.
You're still dancing to the beat of the drums.
Walking contradiction here lol. I just don't think people here can handle random stuff, or
types of punishment because people try and exploit the system and bypass it.
I think...Allagan's Rot was something cool? Never met the thing. I'm all in for variety though.

If they fix team jump rope I will be very pleasantly surprised :x

Stupid question, but what is "Team Jump Rope"? I think I know but not too sure.
@Itaru: I thought so, thank you for the clarification!

[ItaruKarin]

Stupid question, but what is "Team Jump Rope"? I think I know but not too sure.

Basically, it means that if a single person fails, everyone fails. Just like jumping rope with other people, if one persons fails and grab the rope, everyone will fall.

[Viridiana]

Okay, so, seriously, all the people giving Nektulos crap, its easy for you to use every logical fallacy at your disposal but can you actually discount anything he says? So far i haven't seen any of you do that at all.

I dunno, I think he does a good job of dismantling his own arguments, since he seems to care more about getting a reaction than staying consistent. Same guy who wants the MSQ to be easier for new players also wants SoF to have a higher ilvl requirement. For example:

No, he wants the fights to actually not be the same fights every time. They are far too mechanics based and its true. Its a test, and if you get one score wrong on the test you fail.

Memorization isn't fun.

They should focus on more dynamic fights where you can do more then 1 thing to kill the boss, and not be locked in a room.

He wants fights to be more "Off the rails!" so to speak.

It doesn't matter if your the best player or gamer in the world, if you don't do the mechanics, or don't know them you fail.

That is not fun.

The game should be more focused on how well you can play your character and adapt to the battlefield rather then how well you can memorize a fight.

Nothing big here. Heck, I can almost agree with this, even though I think reacting when you're first learning stuff *is* fun. But, that's subjective, so I'll ignore that part. But then there's this:

Thats not really true, there is a lot of pie thrown at you in the entire game. Coils do not equal every single part of the game, lots of the game's mechanics are "You must do this, or something bad happens." I have done a lot of the extreme modes. They are really fun fights!

A lot of low level mechanics are the same.

Emphasis mine.

So, mechanics driven fights aren't fun, but Extreme modes are fun? There's only one set of "Extreme Modes," and those are the Primalas. Almost all of which are extremely scripted, pardon the pun. And they're all mechanics-driven. You mess up the Spiney Plume in GX, you die. You get hit by AOE in TX, you die. You ignore Searing Wind or Chains or Nails on IX, you die. You kill moogles too soon on Moggle, you die. You attack the wrong body part or don't CC the fear add in LX, you die. You mess up Chaotic Strike in RX, you die. You don't split the damage of Icebrand in SX, you die.

And yet, these fights "are really fun fights." Even though they're pure mechanics (though, LX has an enrage timer).

Fights you have to memorize are not fun.
These fights you have to memorize are really fun.

They can't both be true.

But, hey, maybe you care more about his Coil statements. Okay, let's talk about Coil. Let's go back to this quote again:

No, he wants the fights to actually not be the same fights every time. They are far too mechanics based and its true. Its a test, and if you get one score wrong on the test you fail.

Memorization isn't fun.

They should focus on more dynamic fights where you can do more then 1 thing to kill the boss, and not be locked in a room.

First, "do more than 1 thing to kill the boss" is vague as hell. I assume he means "more than one way to handle a mechanic." Since, y'know, killing the boss is always going to be a matter of getting his HP to zero. So, more than one way to kill the boss makes no sense. But more than one way to handle a mechanic is something we already have. Do you LOS Rafflesia, or do you hop in a briar patch? Do you feed the slugs or not? Do you keep 4 Renauds petrified, or do you only keep one? Do you split T9 meteors 3/3/2, spread out and watch, or do a counter-clockwise run across one side of the map? These are all things that change how the fight plays out. I can't speak for FCoB, but I know there's more than one way to skin a cat in SCoB. I could actually even argue that T2 lets you choose your own mechanics for the end.

But, then, maybe he does actually want more than one way to kill things. Like, say, Steps of Faith, where you have the options of burning adds with cannons, burning them with AOE spells, stunning their big attacks with cannons, stunning them with normal abilities, using that one strategy that has the tanks and a healer aggro everything way back at the starting area and the DPS and other healer focus boss while all adds go to the back. . .Only, wait, he wants to increase the ilvl requirement for that to 110. Even though he also wants to be able to play with his friend who would have to level through that as a new player.

Or let's take this quote:

What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss heals himself by 1-4%?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss gets damage reduction?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss deals more damage?
What about a buff where every time someone dies in the raid, the boss summons a minion that is strong?
What about knockbacks, he knock backs the tank if he gets stunned too much and throws him back?
What about randomly losing aggro and going after a random class?

If he weren't so focused on the dying part, he'd realize we have fights with mechanics like this in the game. Did you feed a slime to Caduceus with full HP (which, I'm fairly sure which panels light up is random, btw)? He just healed up a bit. Did you get hit by Lunar Dynamo? That hurt, and you just healed Nael. Did you go east in T2? Your tanks better be good at aggro. Did you go west instead? Hope all your DPS aren't melee, because that's gonna hurt their DPS. Did Rafflesia eat half your group? That's 4 stacks of damage up. Did someone Cursed Voice Melusine? That's a damage up, assuming they didn't just splat the tank. Did the DPS build up resistance on Ifrit? Hope they can dodge Eruptions! Did they Leg Sweep the fear add in LX? Someone's probably going off the edge, unless someone does a clutch knockback to interrupt the fear. And of course, we have a few enemies with no aggro table, including the last boss of SV HM. If you can predict everything that both bosses are going to do in that fight, you're much better at predictions than I.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm just some person on the forums with 2,800+ posts.

[Velhart]

Basically, it means that if a single person fails, everyone fails. Just like jumping rope with other people, if one persons fails and grab the rope, everyone will fall.

In all fairness, this is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Sure, we can argue that 2nd Coil had a lot of mechanics that took only one person to mess it all up. Final Coil however is the much lesser extent of that. The game should have it so that everyone has an understanding of the mechanics. If not, then we have an extreme on the other side of the fence, where the fights can become too forgiving and the value of the fight decreases.

[RiceisNice]

...

I think this was what the OP translation was pointing at; the fights in SCoB ended up being so mechanically focused, that theres really not much room for any players. Experienced players get bored at the tedium and the casuals get walled by it due to the amount of coordination they need with 7 other players. I mean at some points, I justl ook at some of the mechanics and some of them break my willing suspension of belief when it came to the fights (such as a renaud instantly one shotting you with an auto attack. Like literally it's an auto attack, not a named ability like Terminal Sting)

FCoB imo is how the fights should be. You have the mechanics, but you also have the high numbers where everyone needs to be spot on with their roles whether it be tanking (CD management and snap aggro), healing (topping everyone off and pre-emptive heals with mp management), dps (enrage timers and add spawns), and overall understanding of the fight (mechanics and reducing incoming damage). It also makes gear/echo meaningful because these sort of fights would become easier as you have more buffer room with hp/damage/mana.

T13 is a perfect example of this; If you're not topped off or have damage mitigation, dps will die to 6k megaflares. Tanks need to be spot on with their cooldowns or swapping for HG when dealing with akh morn. Huge dps check on phase 3 to make for a clean transition. Then you have mechanics to deal with such as managing the megaflares, the towers and flare stars. Got a bit of both worlds rather than being SCoB-esiqe and focusing entirely on the mechanics.

[Velhart]

snip

So wouldn't this mean that SE is going in the right direction? It does seem like a lot of the feedback given is making it's way to Heavenward.

[RiceisNice]

So wouldn't this mean that SE is going in the right direction? It does seem like a lot of the feedback given is making it's way to Heavenward.

IMO, I'd say so. The fights in FCoB are done in a way that it naturally gets easier as time passes without making drastic changes to it. I mean if you look at SCoB, the mechanics were what made the difficulty, not the number requirement. But because the actual difficulty was so hinged on those mechanics, the only way to make it easier was to change the mechanics itself (which becomes a problem of nutering it since that's really its only source of difficulty).

With FCoB, the difficulty is still there since it was mostly because it involved getting the numbers and having people be able to perform the role. The concept of the fight and its original mechanics (which is not so heavily focused this time around) is left intact, and infact you can simply disable echo or enforce your own ilvl restriction to maintain it.

[raelgun]

So wouldn't this mean that SE is going in the right direction? It does seem like a lot of the feedback given is making it's way to Heavenward.

It means the base fights have gotten easier, would you say gotten easier is the right direction?

The worst raiding tier was dragon soul in WOW and the main reason was because it was the easiest tier pretty much blizzard ever made and people just did not have fun very much.

End of the tier and expansion signalled the worst subscriber loss in its history.