Content should be challenging to execute... Not challenging to learn

[Outfoxed]

Crystal Tower exists for guys like you, and now, Alexander normal mode.

Memorizing mechanics isn't a skill. If you know what a boss is going to do before he does it, how does that make you good at this game? if you dodge a mechanic that goes out before the boss does it how does that make you good? Challenging content should be content that requires the player to react and adapt. If your idea of challenging content is to dodge something before it's even thrown out then your idea of challenging content is memorizing everything.

Only an idiot would get hit by a car when they know exactly where it's going to be.

Get good buddy and hopefully they make the game actually take more skill than memorizing things so mediocre players can't just read an entire book on it

[Outfoxed]

Again, difficulty in an encounter stems from being proficient at your job while also executing numerous mechanics properly. You can dodge every mechanic in the world and still be useless if you aren't doing enough dps. It's not a one or the other deal.

Right and it's not an all or nothing deal either.

You can have mechanics that aren't stupidly unintuitive to figure out.

You can have mechanics that are hard to dodge without making them unintuitive.

Try again buddy

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I agree 100%, that is why coils and such were boring. They are more of a memory test then anything else, that is why I am glad to see things like the randomness in the new trials for example.

We need a mob that does different things each time you fight them. There should be random encounters that appear in random times.

Dark Souls type encounters would be a lot more fun, you should be able to avoid what the boss does, however you shouldn't be able to predict what he does.

[Kallera]

Memorizing mechanics isn't a skill. If you know what a boss is going to do before he does it, how does that make you good at this game? if you dodge a mechanic that goes out before the boss does it how does that make you good? Challenging content should be content that requires the player to react and adapt. If your idea of challenging content is to dodge something before it's even thrown out then your idea of challenging content is memorizing everything.

Only an idiot would get hit by a car when they know exactly where it's going to be.

Get good buddy and hopefully they make the game actually take more skill than memorizing things so mediocre players can't just read an entire book on it

Fight awareness is indeed a skill. One that I often see earning comms and boggling the minds of non mmo players that see it in action even during fates.

It certainly saves or dooms lives to know that while you are doing your perfect flawless rotation, things are happening to you and the party. Because you might be able to save someone from needless death.

[Outfoxed]

By using logic, There are meteor falling, you can see that you can't stack them, then golems pop out of meteors, if you kill them without letting them eat the meteors, then other meteors will pop and probably wipe the raid, then you should think : there might be a way to destroy the meteor, you will surely try things and discover that golems can eat meteors.

Also for Ice Fire and Thunder it's quite easy to understand, someone will automatically get hit by both and see that it cancel each others.

The only annoying part for T9 is the dives but after a few try and analyze of the situation you can see patterns and work on a reaction.

What?

Are you trying to tell me trial and error is intuitive?

By definition trial and error is NOT intuitive. Trial and error is throwing things at the wall until something sticks.

I would use the words "by your logic" like you but we both know there was no logic

[Higashikata]

What?

Are you trying to tell me trial and error is intuitive?

By definition trial and error is NOT intuitive. Trial and error is throwing things at the wall until something sticks.

I would use the words "by your logic" like you but we both know there was no logic

How would you design raid mechanics then? I'm actually curious on this.

[MisterLucie]

I'd like to hear an example of a mechanic that you think would be intuitive and challenging, then. The only example you've given so far has been Bismarck, which is an incredibly easy encounter as a whole and is entirely choreographed with a few slightly randomized mechanics. Nothing about it is new or intuitive or challenging, it simply requires people to perform acceptable dps and not stand in circles on the ground.

What exactly makes that fight a good model? It's everything you seem to be against. Can you give me an idea of what you're looking for?

And perhaps without the shitty sarcastic tone while we're trying to have a discussion?

[Luvbunny]

Dear OP, I don't know how to say this in the nicest way possible.... FF14 is EASY EASY EASY game with maybe only 10% of the content is reserved for "hardcore" gamer. There are countless videos (3 minutes long for each guide) to show you the bosses mechanic - and a short description on Wiki FF14 on what you should be doing. ALL of the level 15-50 dungeons teaches you the basic mechanic, you also have guildhest. The high levels 50 dungeons are also fairly straightforward and many players can give you quick tips on what to do on each bosses. Level 51-59 dungeons are rather easy to figure out as well. Bottom line, as harsh as this sound, just get better and use party finder to practice. Otherwise you can just do crafting, or if this is too hard, maybe this game is not for you.

[Nadirah]

Mechanics *aren't* unintuitive though.

Folks just aren't paying attention to the fight.

[Outfoxed]

What exactly makes that fight a good model? It's everything you seem to be against.

Sorry for the shitty sarcastic tone. Usually toss it out when people are saying things like "get good". If you actually want a discussion I'll be glad to do it.

First off, you'd have to separate the concepts of difficulty from design. Bismark Ex was an easy primal for sure, but that doesn't make bismarck an unintuitive primal. He was pretty straightforward and didn't require the player to do really weird things like feeding golems meteors. We can take Mario for example. Mario had pretty straightforward mechanics. Don't get hit by goombas and don't fall into holes. It's simple right? Yet Mario also has a level 1 and a level 6 or 7 or whatever. The difficulty in it wasn't from there being a bunch of new things every level. The difficulty from Mario really just came because things moved faster and the margin for error was smaller. All of a sudden the jumps were harder to make or the timings on it were a bit tougher. Anyone can figure out that fire = pain.

Right now, I find that dodging AoEs and keeping up DPS is a pretty good way to be difficult while also not being convoluted. It's not exactly hard to dodge an AoE. And it's not really too hard to DPS. But it's harder to do both at the same time. The game throws the difficulty at you but it's not difficulty from a game knowledge point of view.... It's difficult because you have to do two things at once.

So while I enjoy taking down difficult content... I don't enjoy putting in countless hours memorizing the completely unintuitive. I enjoyed fights like T11 where it wasn't super mechanically complex but you had to learn how to execute. First there was nerve gas... Simple enough. Then came missiles which also wasn't too bad though I wish stack/split was a bit more obvious. And then you had tethers. It was 3 mechanics for the entire fight. But the difficulty of dealing with tethers and missiles at the same time was a bit harder than each of them by themselves. And if Square had wanted to make it harder they could have shot more missiles and closer together. So all of a sudden you and the person you're tethered to have to dodge 5 or 6 missiles in a row all while maintaining your tether. Or they could have shot a constant stream of missiles and nerve clouds.

I mean sure, people might clear content faster.... But if the lifetime of your content relies on being obscure and unintuitive it's not really good content.... See T5 twisters aka "how the fuck did I randomly die".

Other examples of difficulty while being intuitive is positioning in LoL/Dota, skillshot accuracy, cooldown management.

Or what about mobility/positioning. Most bosses in XIV kinda just stay in one place which is kind of stupid. If bosses were constantly moving, ranged players would have to constantly be kiting and updating their position. If bosses were constantly moving around and then Square lowered the CD of mobility skills to like 15 to 20 seconds perhaps this game would be a bit better. I'm thinking about this in a LoL/Dota sort of way btw where you want to be constantly updating your position to the most favourable. Of course Square would need to lower their positional update from 0.5 seconds but then again... They should be doing that anyways.

See the thing that I found weird about FFXIV is that it's probably the only game I can think of where there was a mountain of mechanical knowledge required to clear it. Most games use the same mechanics but make it faster or give less room for error. When you got to level 2 of Mario, Bowser didn't suddenly pull out a pong paddle and force you to play a completely different game did he? He just made you have to dodge better and be more precise with your jumps. So how come Nael Deus Darnus decides that after playing Asteroid with you, he wants to play DDR? Almost every single game I've ever played has relied on teaching the player what to do and then cranking the difficulty up once the player got the hang of it. It was never play one game then throw everything out the window in phase 2.