Quote Originally Posted by BlaiseArath View Post
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There are plenty of ways to create a raid boss outside of what is given to us now. Can look at WoW for example that a lot of their raid bosses go beyond the simple circular room with one boss in it. Things like the airship fight in Icecrown Citadel come to mind.

It is Game Design 101 if your main target audience is a broad one. If your base design is for the intent of the mechanics to be the challenge of the game, like Dungeons and Dragons or Magic The Gathering, then that is fine, but you can't expect your target audience to work with that. To this day I can't even really play either of them because the rule set and mechanics are so complex that I do not feel like dealing with them. Depth can be found in simplicity, you can look at Chess for example. Chess has a very basic rule set and only need to take a few minutes to learn what each piece does, but anyone knows it has much more depth to it. Super Mario Bros. itself, extremely simple in design, but how many have ever beaten The Lost Levels? Let the mechanics be simple, and let the depth of content do the work. WoW did not get to where it is today just because of the Warcraft name and marketing.

Things like "Critical Hit Damage +3%" is fine. I'm not against gear sets giving set bonuses like this because ultimately it does not affect how the system in place now works. The only issue is you have to consider how it is worked into the balance. If you have a piece of gear with "Fire Spell Potency +10", it can potentially break balance in both gear and abilities on BLM, then we face a situation where raids will only take BLM's in. Or how it is going to be compared to another full set of the same ilvl. So in that case, they would have to rework for example how Ironworks balances out with Dreadwyrm. This is why SE is so hesitant on creating this. Like I said, I am for it if it is done right, but like the devs, I ultimately care about balance, and if it is something that does not work, then don't bother.