Less Memorization - More Reaction? (Trials/Raids/Bosses)

[Riepah]

Please, yes. I hate the "paint-by-numbers" approach. It's currently more important to know a fight by heart than to actually be a good player, and it certainly shouldn't be that way.

[Kinkoz]

It's currently more important to know a fight by heart than to actually be a good player, and it certainly shouldn't be that way.

You do realize there's a difference between knowing the mechanics of a fight and being able to deal with them, right?

Or are you saying that "gitting gud" is no longer a thing and that you have to already be good at something from the start to determine your individual skill as a player?

[Sylkis]

There is already luck in some fights where the boss flips a coin to decide what to do, and one of the options is usually easier. Did that have such an impact on world firsts? I think not. All the top raiders are about equal I would say, they should be able to deal with both easy and hard outcomes of the coin flip.

Flip the coin enough times, and there's no luck involved. Good parties will know how to react to any outcome, even if all the outcomes don't appear in the fight.



I did post this back then, not much interest though. Basic idea is that you put all the boss moves into a lottery and draw them without replacement so you still have to know how to react to everything (and that how bit is usually easy like moving away) but you can't memorize the order that they come in.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...threads/219760

[Chihaya]

I don't understand... there's a lot of people that can't even handle the mechanics while it's scripted in order ei: primal ex, t5, t9

Then you take the same mechanics... and randomize it, that probably make it even harder for them.

there should also be a flip side such as bosses having a bit less HP or a a few tenths of a second more to dodge abilities.

It's called a nerf, which happens to a lot of of old content already.

[Alex_Lenderson]

It's called a nerf, which happens to a lot of of old content already.

I'm sure the design team has the % chance of success data. The idea behind adding randomness isn't to decrease the % chance of success but to make it more interesting that is why there would be counter tweaks.

[Sylkis]

You can't prepare for attacks that have no charge time.

All boss attacks in the game that have any real impact on the fight have charge time, or a cooldown.

For cooldown abilities, they can be made random by not making the boss use it immediately as it comes off cooldown. You would think this would make the fight easier but it doesn't - having the AI play perfectly is easier to deal with since it's so predictable.

[Alex_Lenderson]

Flip coin is a binary chance. How about 6 abilities and randomized which one happens first? Again I'm not suggesting we do the hardest stuff first as a test but some of the mid-tier activities to collect some data. Personally I think it would make things a lot more interesting.

[Sylkis]

I don't understand... there's a lot of people that can't even handle the mechanics while it's scripted in order ei: primal ex, t5, t9

Then you take the same mechanics... and randomize it, that probably make it even harder for them.

I think that for those people, it still seems random to them. There's a lot to remember and you can't expect them to, so they are probably using reaction. If that's so, then it wouldnt make much difference to randomize it.

For the people who have memorized it whether they wanted to or not by doing the fights too much, it just gets boring.

[Sove92]

You still can't give bosses too much randomness, there needs to be a level of scripting. You don't want to have your damage buffs go to waste because RNG said so, causing you to potentially hit the enrage as well, this is bad RNG. Make hard hitting raid-AoE random and you can no longer reliably use Blood for Blood at any point in the fight.

T10 is a good example of a fight where randomness is done well and is a good base from where to improve.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Practice makes perfect as they say.