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

[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?

[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.

[QiLymePye]

I kinda agree with OP. I feel like by accepting these type of mechanics, we are selling ourselves short. I like to think that almost everybody that plays this game could beat lots of endgame content without watching videos. I believe you all could. I think its because we live in this society that wants instant gratification and don't want to apply ourselves. Im 36 years old. Ive played games like Ninja Gaiden and mega man, etc. that relied on memory, but it was your own memory of what you saw during your time playing, not studying someone else's play. Thats what made games fun and challenging. Like the other person said, if I told you what my moves are and told you when they were coming, how is that more challenging than just knowing what they are? If there weren't videos online, how many can say they can pass those bosses? I think most of you can, just you don't want to take the time to figure it out, you want someone else to do the thinking for you. Stop selling yourselves short. You are smarter than that. You are capable.

Look at it like this, football players watch video film on other teams to learn what they run and what it looks like. Watching a vid of a fight in this game is akin to watching a football game a week before it happens, then going back in time to play in said game knowing exactly when and where play is going. Thats not "gettin gud" or "learning mechanics", thats called cheating. And the person giving away said info would be called names just as bad...think about it. Would what you do in this game to win was done anywhere else, would you be praised? Or condemned?

[Gallus]

The problem about this is that you can't have reflex based fights when the game itself has a natural delay of like half second... this is why they make very scripted fights where the key to succeeding is knowing what's coming to you beforehand.

People already die like no tomorrow to things like landslide and plumes in a fixed Titan rotation...and blame "lag" for it. Imagine those 2 attacks in a complete random rotation. The outrage lol.

[Khalithar]

People already die like no tomorrow to things like landslide and plumes in a fixed Titan rotation...and blame "lag" for it. Imagine those 2 attacks in a complete random rotation. The outrage lol.

For the record that titan hitbox on landslide is BS, there are plenty of times where I was out of it on my screen and the server disagreed. It's even better when he landslides in one direction, I'm out of it on my screen, and get hit in the opposite direction anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the damage on the telegraphs shouldn't be calculated until the actual animation goes off, as is, if you're in the telegraph when the cast finishes, you get hit once it goes off. Instead, you shouldn't take damage unless you're standing where it is when the attack actually goes off.