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

[Anty]

i think it would be healthy for the community. All this "watch the fight, or know the fight" crap could be far less, since ppl cannot just rely on something they learned.
i really hope they change it in the future. No wonder people get so bored also of coils since this memorization bores you way too fast.

[Sapphic]

Well theres 4 bosses already with a random element. Shiva Ex on which weapon she uses, Last boss in Stone Vigil HM, turn 10 phase 4 if theres a tether or not before the charge and turn 11, stack or spread, could say on tethers also. Forgot, t13, 1 or 2 towers on phase 4.

Having minor random elements like those above do work, basing the whole fight on random behaiviour can be problematic.

[Joeymtl]

A lot of people talk like it's not possible to program rules to prevent some harder mechanics to happen too many times in a set period of time, or twice in a row, and make sure that they happen at least once, even in a "random" environment.

[silentwindfr]

it possible to create exeption in a program for avoid 2 command to overlap, i don't see how is not possible. it's ask more work that sure, but it's not impossible.
same you have a lot of people that say that more random will be either impossible or too easy because SE will tune down the fight. when it's both false....

like said what was asked for long, it's fight less scripted and a bit more random, not fully random, some people think that will drive people away from raiding too... it depend mostly on how SE will balance this and more important the learning curve that the raid will offer for make people able to be good enough for this sort of content.

....It makes content fun whilst still being beatable without the need for insane luck...

simply no, it's not more fun that not true, since when you have the scripte mastered the fight loose all challenge... it become boring and bland to do it anymore.... it will be dull and almost painfull to farm this sort of content.
by the way, if the fight can only be beaten by luck it's a bad fight! random is not always totally based on the luck! in all the raid i have done soo far only one time i have seen a random mechanic that was putting a looooot of difficulty into a fight. it's into World of Warcraft with the first encounter of Mogu'shan raid, where depending of the dog you did get, the fight was going of extremely easy to extremely hard. however this trouble is there because they have not take in account that some mechanic together was making the fight extremely hard for some static.

don't get me wrong you have always a part of script into a fight, indeed the target of the attack is random or the fight will be insanely dumb. every fight of raid soo far in most mmorg have script at some purcentage into it. like when the different phase of the boss begin. check even the old fight of warcraft, they always had a part of script, but they was smart enough for always put a lot of random in them fight for make sure people don't notice it. do it have make impossible to beat the different content they have offer? no. that the point, that a lot of people (me inclued) ask them to do, less script and more random, not no script and full random. it's dumb to even considerate a full random encounter.

a more random encounter will offer a certain replayability to the content, making the farming still enjoyable.

[Catwho]

One of the most difficult fights in FFXI 75 cap was "scripted" - Proto-Ultima in Limbus. You knew that Dissipation, a nasty ability was coming every 20% and you'd better have a BLM or RDM/DRK on point to stun it. You knew when someone was getting targeted by Citadel Buster and that you had about 30 seconds to GTFO (only element of randomnness was who got targeted. If they were a tank, they MIGHT live.)

And yet groups still struggled to clear this fight. We had an easier time with Omega, who was a lot more random, but whose abilities were a bit less totally-wipey.

[Kaisha]

One of the most difficult fights in FFXI 75 cap was "scripted" - Proto-Ultima in Limbus. You knew that Dissipation, a nasty ability was coming every 20% and you'd better have a BLM or RDM/DRK on point to stun it. You knew when someone was getting targeted by Citadel Buster and that you had about 30 seconds to GTFO (only element of randomnness was who got targeted. If they were a tank, they MIGHT live.)

It was an easy fight if people weren't being stupid.

The bigger problem were the stakes involved. You needed 6 items to go into that fight, and there was a 50k entry fee + 3 day wait between attempts, so you were looking at a minimum 18 days to get one Ultima pop set farmed unless you had a large LS which could split up and cover different Temenos areas on a given run and having the same person lot all the pop items since they weren't tradable back then.

Didn't help that Omega generally had the better drops and only needed 4 items (12 days) to proceed to fight.

Haven't read through the entire thread, but surely someone has mentioned the final boss of Stone Vigil HM. That fight is entirely reaction based. If you got hit by something, that was your own fault for not paying attention to the bosses movements.

It was also a clear indicator of how poor this game's handling of AoE hitboxes are, since you could be clearly out of the attack, but still get hit by the attack because your position was snapshotted before the animation for the attack went off.

[Cynfael]

Reaction-based mechanics are usually friendlier to casuals since they tend to involve less instant death and/or allow more time to recover from mistakes. It's the common trade-off for the possibility that the RNG might be unusually cruel.

And Dererk, grats on your clear, but even that situation is an example of responding to scripted mechanics. What you did was choose the most appropriate response; the only difference being that you were forced to use certain cooldowns because your party members failed to handle their scripted elements and got killed :P

[Catwho]

Players can reduce the UI problem in Titan by making a sharp turn after exiting the AOE ground area. This forces the client to tell the server that you are out of the AOE at the time of landing. That's how a friend of mine eventually beat Titan HM on PS3. He called it the "right angle trick." Get out of landslide, make a 90 degree turn and then run parallel to it for another second.

[Bishop81]

Players can reduce the UI problem in Titan by making a sharp turn after exiting the AOE ground area. This forces the client to tell the server that you are out of the AOE at the time of landing. That's how a friend of mine eventually beat Titan HM on PS3. He called it the "right angle trick." Get out of landslide, make a 90 degree turn and then run parallel to it for another second.

This is still a developer problem. Not the player's.

Maybe their servers should ask the clients where the players are before hitting them for all of their HP.

Just saying.

[Sove92]

This is still a developer problem. Not the player's.

Maybe their servers should ask the clients where the players are before hitting them for all of their HP.

Just saying.

Trusting the client is one of the worst design choices for a multiplayer game. And server already trusts the client too much when it comes to movement, the server makes no attempt to check if the movement done was possible.