Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Shihen]

Why should 4 player content be the hardest? Cite specific reasons/examples/insight please.

Mechanic failure rates typically scale with player count because each player adds a potential point of failure. They can still make content that is extremely difficult to handle for large groups (e.g. ultimate), but the clear rates will be low and finding a group for it difficult because the target audience is a minority. It's not a terrible idea, but it won't have many players participating in it.

As player count scales down, the content difficulty can increase and still maintain the expected clear rate, while increasing player participation because it's easier to find a group. Theoretically, the most difficult content could be made for solo players but with the limited toolkit a single player has, there wouldn't be a lot for the designers to work with. The smallest party size seems like the sweet spot.

[Tridus]

While it literally pains me to defend Riyah - I am inclined to agree (IN THIS SPECIFIC instance only).

I don't see how you can design good engaging/challenging 4 man content within the current design constraints with respect to tanks/healers.

Using your example - translated to a 4 man savage O5S, if you needed to use a CD to cover a mistake, then you don't have a CD you need later for a tankbuster. If you can survive without a CD, then the mechanic doesn't matter. If you can Clemency the boss auto's to survive while healer is trapped, how do you offset/survive raidwide damage then? Can't clemency everyone, and you could vercure some, but it won't be enough. What if your comp (which contains 4 out of 15 now, instead of 8 out of 15) doesn't have one of those? What if it doesn't have either?

Well, the thing I was replying to was specifically the idea that in that case, if the healer gets put into a ghost then it's an automatic wipe. Which isn't true. People can do stuff. If it's tuned so high that there's no room for error than perhaps not, but there's a fairly wide gap between that and "it's literally impossible to fail this" that we had in 4.0 expert. I think there's plenty of room to close up the gap without it being "someone missed a thing, wipe it". Especially with the ghosts, where in a dungeon context you'd really just need to be able to buy time for the healer to get back and then carry on.

Tuning is always harder with less people because of the wider variables involved, but that's not really justification to say "everything has to be faceroll", which is what I was getting from Riyah.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

I wish I could describe specific mechanics without spending a page on each, but alas, there's little between full and concrete detail and scant formulaic summary.

I will attempt to do my best with the latter. If necessary, I'll then attempt the former, if I've time.

I don't see how you can design good engaging/challenging 4 man content within the current design constraints with respect to tanks/healers.

While those constraints pain me even more than the staleness of encounter design they might force, I do think those restrictions are a bit overstated.

Let's consider briefly what a mechanic is, at least in XIV:
- A cue that signals viability of movement, or window-closure that punishes excess of movement, along an enforced route or set of routes.
- (Currently where "cheeseable" only) a point of group decision.

That's really it.

None of that needs to disappear with a 4-man. Where complexity is lost over the reduction in n network of players positioning around each other (which tends to be overstated unless preparation for the mechanic or mechanic prior failed to some degree), the latter can be emphasized.

Let's take the quoted example for example:

Using your example - translated to a 4 man savage O5S, if you needed to use a CD to cover a mistake, then you don't have a CD you need later for a tankbuster. If you can survive without a CD, then the mechanic doesn't matter. If you can Clemency the boss auto's to survive while healer is trapped, how do you offset/survive raidwide damage then? Can't clemency everyone, and you could vercure some, but it won't be enough. What if your comp (which contains 4 out of 15 now, instead of 8 out of 15) doesn't have one of those? What if it doesn't have either?

What becomes necessary isn't actually one extreme of tuning or another, but rather that "third" option, whereby you can apply tuning over the fight -- such as from areas with cover that cost uptime (to everyone, ideally, not just melee), rather than merely over the one make-or-break moment. This is largely why strong DPS checks exist, especially where downtime has survival advantages; they give a huge variety of mechanical flexibility to work from as downtime becomes a gradual but very real form of danger in itself.

Rather than compromising the tuning towards either a true, unavoidable one-shot when lacking a given tool or negligible damage to compensate for that tool's likely absence, allowing a mechanic to be a one-shot avoidable by certain tools or by downtime when lacking those tools allows a wider array of compositions to contribute towards the fight without diminishing the overall difficulty.

Of course, here comes the anti-DPS-checks faction's torches and pitchforks... Because god forbid a mechanic not one-shot us outright or that we can actually stay focused on the fight whilst performing that mechanic correctly...

To attach some modicum of example, though, in major regards beyond party-wide mechanics...

Let's say you have a fight from which a given player may (or must) be snatched/separated, leaving the others to fend for themselves. Assuming a strong DPS check, this is of approximately equal risk overall, but the most notable examples will doubtless be the loss of healer or a tank. If you make each hit or frequent hard-hitting special instead a split AoE (iirc, there have been 3-4 examples of this in 8-mans already), then the party can survive the temporary loss of a tank and the impending chain-kills with proper heals on a "MT" dps and "OT" dps swaps, just as a party could survive the loss of healer if topped off prior through said swaps, and a party short of a DPS could pop an extra CD or two and go full tank/healer ham on the DPS check (which, as it is not the final enrage, is meant solely to force a point of decision and commitment thereto in order to add dynamics to the way the fight is handled, not in itself to test DPS throughput under normal conditions).

In summary, before I have to dash out the door, you keep mechanical threat high without destroying compositional choice or butchering a party for singular mistakes through:
- Mechanics which weigh survival vs. downtime (thus flexing the role of tank and healer)
- Core changes such as damage-splitting (further flexing the role of tank)
- Considering the space consumed by mechanics as a situational average of proportionate (e.g. the AoE splash radii around each of 4 players therefore being bigger than around each of 8, such that roughly the same portion of the room is covered) and the downtime and preemptive action required (e.g. the amount of (down)time necessary to move from to the safe area)

I'm not sure how good it can be without some sweeping changes to the core combat system (which I'm all for)

"Workable" is my assumption. Probably just as workable as currently seen in the 8-man environment, even. Though, they could certainly be a whole lot better with said sweeping changes...

[KaldeaSahaline]

Firstly - let me clarify one point. With respects to the OP yes - I agree 100% you can make content more difficult without it being Savage difficulty. I've posted a few times earlier in this post, and even cited an example of a boss fight changed to fit that paradigm. However, we ended up getting off topic thanks to Riyah. While what he said was OT with respect to the OP. I still stand by the defense of his statement.

The more players there are, the greater chance of mistakes being made, and the more likeliness of "dead weight" so to speak. In a 4-player dungeon, you should not be able to "dead weight" anyone

Agreed. I should have been more clear in my previous response. My intent was for you to identify why you personally think that making 4 man content the hardest content available (instead of their current decision of 8) would be better.

Realistically, the kind of "hard" mechanics you want to drop on a 4-player team are that which removes a player (eg fetters/gaol) from action if a major mechanic is ignored. eg fetter the tank, then the boss goes after the healer. Fetter the healer, tank can't free them, and the DPS has to free the healer. Fetter the DPS, the other DPS has to free them. If the tank or healer try to free a fettered DPS, then they neglect their roles, and create a failure situation. This is just one example of where the roles during a boss would need to be more rigidly enforced.

In your example - what is the "failed major mechanic" that spawns the fetter? An example would be helpful to understand your concept.

Why couldn't a tank help free a gaoled/fettered healer?

Mechanic failure rates typically scale with player count because each player adds a potential point of failure.

As player count scales down, the content difficulty can increase and still maintain the expected clear rate, while increasing player participation because it's easier to find a group. Theoretically, the most difficult content could be made for solo players but with the limited toolkit a single player has, there wouldn't be a lot for the designers to work with. The smallest party size seems like the sweet spot.

Agreed - I should have been more clear. See my response above to Kisa for more clarification.

That said - you actually kind of touched on something that further corroborates my statement. The limited toolkit significantly hampers the viability of "challenging/engaging" solo content. This parallels with my statement that 4 man suffers from the same issue (namely in the tank/healer department). This is why I mentioned earlier that I felt 8 man was the better choice than 4 man. What types of 4 man mechanics can you design that are engaging/fun to tanks/healers?

Examples would be helpful here.

Well, the thing I was replying to was specifically the idea that in that case, if the healer gets put into a ghost then it's an automatic wipe. Which isn't true. People can do stuff. If it's tuned so high that there's no room for error than perhaps not, but there's a fairly wide gap between that and "it's literally impossible to fail this" that we had in 4.0 expert. I think there's plenty of room to close up the gap without it being "someone missed a thing, wipe it". Especially with the ghosts, where in a dungeon context you'd really just need to be able to buy time for the healer to get back and then carry on.

Tuning is always harder with less people because of the wider variables involved, but that's not really justification to say "everything has to be faceroll", which is what I was getting from Riyah.

That's kind of our point though. As you lessen the ability to layer mechanics because of less available targets per responsibility it becomes more binary. Normally you'd offset this with a more robust toolkit/decision making and choice, but that isn't an option in the current design constraints. If it was an option I would agree with you 100%.

I touched on this above - I agree 100% that you can make things harder without being savage. You've even seen my Motherbit example that I think accomplishes that philosophy quite well. However, Riyah in all his ridiculous exaggeration went OT and that is what we were responding too.

I still agree with his assessment that given the games design, it really isn't that feasible to create a fun savage equivalent in 4 man content without considerable changes due to tank/healer design.

None of that needs to disappear with a 4-man. Where complexity is lost over the reduction in n network of players positioning around each other (which tends to be overstated unless preparation for the mechanic or mechanic prior failed to some degree), the latter can be emphasized.

What latter? I think you didn't finish your thought here.

Let's say you have a fight from which a given player may (or must) be snatched/separated, leaving the others to fend for themselves. Assuming a strong DPS check, this is of approximately equal risk overall, but the most notable examples will doubtless be the loss of healer or a tank. If you make each hit or frequent hard-hitting special instead a split AoE (iirc, there have been 3-4 examples of this in 8-mans already), then the party can survive the temporary loss of a tank and the impending chain-kills with proper heals on a "MT" dps and "OT" dps swaps, just as a party could survive the loss of healer if topped off prior through said swaps, and a party short of a DPS could pop an extra CD or two and go full tank/healer ham on the DPS check (which, as it is not the final enrage, is meant solely to force a point of decision and commitment thereto in order to add dynamics to the way the fight is handled, not in itself to test DPS throughput under normal conditions).

Your example mechanic is incredibly unclear (a result of your haste to get out the door I assume). I just don't think the jobs have the tools to do what you're entailing.

If a solo player gets grabbed what are they doing while they're detained? While a given player is detained what is happening elsewhere? How long is a player detained for? Does that impact change based on which role gets snagged?

DPS don't really have clean tools to swap threat, and if the damage is low enough that a healer can sustain it on them, how trivial would it be on the tank?

Control over DPS really doesn't exist in this game. It's very hard to conserve CDs, or pool resources.

I'd be interested if you could throw up a rough draft example encounter. As for guidelines - grab a random dungeon boss and make it into a savage equivalent encounter (yes I know this is OT). You can make a thread just for me I'll find/read it.

[Shurrikhan]

What latter? I think you didn't finish your thought here.

Your example mechanic is incredibly unclear (a result of your haste to get out the door I assume). I just don't think the jobs have the tools to do what you're entailing.

The "latter" referred to the second possible role of a mechanic, to create a point of decision, rather than signalling the start or end of a period enforcing uptime/movement. This is vacant from most mechanics, as most cannot be answered in multiple, strategically distinct ways, but would be necessary to allow for fights to be answerable in multiple ways (or, by every generally reasonable composition) when limited to such a small selection of the job roster while retaining their threat overall.

My haste then has a lot to do with the ambiguity, but it would also help if you could pick a few current Savage fight from which you'd like for me to try to create 4-man designs so I could work towards a concrete goal when crafting the example encounter.

In the meantime, I'll think over which dungeons or dungeon bosses I think would make reasonable candidates to be the first to throw Ex modes onto.

For clarification of the above, though (breaks between bullets for each line break):

• I've no idea what the snatched player will be doing; it didn't seem relevant to the idea of what must be adjusted or permitted to allow a light party to deal with party size reduction when each member accounts for 25% of the party (and potentially the whole of the given role) down from 12.5% (and half of said role). I'd assume surviving some manner of role-adapted mini-encounter, killing... a role-adapted ghost(?), or the like.
• In that example, the encounter, mostly as similar. Let's say for instance that TBs, severe raid damage, and DPS checks occur at predictable intervals, as does the chance of getting the player-loss mechanic, such that the light party must decide who they can do without for the upcoming mechanic. If the separation is meant to be purely a punishment, rather than a decision, then that changes things a bit.
• Impact changes only by nature of what's coming up; it's on the party to mitigate that impact by choice or through perfect mechanical execution (again, depending on if it's a decision or punishment).
  
  
• Which is why it's important that the boss damage be modified to split-damage (e.g. with minor flat defense and max HP down or the like), at which point positioning is enough to make up for a lack of tools.
• Again, if its split damage, that's far from a matter of "low enough that..." The initial or maximum eHP of two melee (or two melee and a Surecast healer at that) on average is higher than a tank outside of popped CDs. The issue is their sustainability -- especially if, say, naturally more affected by a given debuff than a tank would be. It needn't change the damage dealt from the strong initial levels at all, only HOW it is dealt.
  
  
• Fair enough, especially when facing a rigid final enrage without bonus damage phases (e.g. Doom chimneys*, Shin tails, Red Ravana, Titan hearts*). *Yes, not actually bonus damage, but it easily could be.
• That depends on the fight, imo. AoE timings, for instance, can be incredibly fight-specific, with noticeable DPS advantages for conserving or pooling certain resources.

Will be fairly busy tonight; rough draft should be up within a few days, though, here and then maybe on a new thread -- though I imagine the necessary depth would scare most away from that thread immediately.

[KisaiTenshi]

Agreed. I should have been more clear in my previous response. My intent was for you to identify why you personally think that making 4 man content the hardest content available (instead of their current decision of 8) would be better.



In your example - what is the "failed major mechanic" that spawns the fetter? An example would be helpful to understand your concept.

Why couldn't a tank help free a gaoled/fettered healer?

The current example I'm thinking of is the one with the Minotaur and the "bait" from The Fractal Continuum. One of the other players, eg the healer, would activate this, to interrupt an AOE with heavy damage, where the Minotaur goes after the bait add, and if it successfully eats it, recovers HP.

Re-apply this to a different scenario where the healer is 'gaol'-ed and if the tank goes to free the healer, the boss instead eats the healer if brought close (which is a mechanic like the meteors in T9, combined with the The Lost City of Amdapor when a player is "eaten", and if not freed, immediately ko'd mechanic) and recovers significant HP.

Now either the strategy would be "keep the boss away from the gaol'd healer", by which when the healer sees it coming, moves to the edge of the arena, and the tank keeps the boss on the other side. This buys the most time for the DPS to free the healer. The second "faster" strategy would be to let the healer die before the mechanic comes up, and the mechanic can thus be skipped, but is no fun for the healer, and would require players to self-heal for the entire fight. Hence a properly balanced version of the fight would not allow the second strategy to work even when over geared.

However the other type of fight I was thinking of was one where the healer is simply removed from the fight during phase 2 (eg boss at 60%) and has to do something like "heal a npc (like the magic pot)" to free themselves, that they are otherwise taking AOE damage in a separate room while the weaker DPS is paired with a weaker mini boss in a walled off arena, the stronger DPS is paired with a stronger miniboss in a walled off arena, and the tank keeps the main boss busy (but can do extra damage during this phase by dropping tank stance.) If the DPS fail their mechanics, then they are not available to be raised, as they are not returned to the main arena until the boss's HP is 50%. So the penalty to failing the dps requirement is that the DPS is not available to help speed up the fight. If the healer fails their mechanic (eg if the healable target dies, they're locked in the room until the main boss hits 50%. They can also die by not healing themselves and still not get returned to the main arena until the main boss is 50%.) At 50%, the boss "summons" all the players back into the arena if they're not there, and switches to a "pads!" type of mechanic that requires all 4 players to stand somewhere to toggle a shield, and if players are KO'd from failing their mechanics, then this mechanic fails, and whoever is remaining takes heavy damage going into phase three of the fight, potentially failing it here. If the tank manages to get the boss from 60% to 50% before the DPS kill their mini-bosses, then the mini-bosses are also pulled to the main arena, potentially knocking them off the "pads!" mechanic.

Like what I think needs to happen is that in, say V5.0 they make all the "easy" storyline dungeons 8-player exploratory content, while putting more actual things to do into those dungeons to split the party so they're a bit longer (put role checks in place where only the healer can walk through this door), while some "savage" tier content are 4-player fights with more rigidly defined roles with bosses that you can't eat mechanics on.

[Shihen]

Agreed - I should have been more clear. See my response above to Kisa for more clarification.

That said - you actually kind of touched on something that further corroborates my statement. The limited toolkit significantly hampers the viability of "challenging/engaging" solo content. This parallels with my statement that 4 man suffers from the same issue (namely in the tank/healer department). This is why I mentioned earlier that I felt 8 man was the better choice than 4 man. What types of 4 man mechanics can you design that are engaging/fun to tanks/healers?

Examples would be helpful here.

I'm picturing mechanics that wouldn't necessarily be complex or involve a lot of steps, just difficult to survive without strong role performance. e.g. The single tank strategy for Faust in A1S was straightforward, but intense. Tanks had to fight to keep aggro on the boss, while controlling the adds. Healers just had to go nuts on heals, and dps had to burst as hard as they could to clear the fight before the tank became unhealable. It wasn't difficult because the mechanics were rough, it just required strong performances from each role. Essentially, that's the type of intensity I want to see more of but in small group encounters. Mechanics that are easy to learn, but push roles their limits. I feel like savage mechanics currently are difficult to learn, but easy to execute and don't engage the player once they've become muscle memory.

And yet I know the combat system isn't quite there yet. It's difficult to create high intensity situations when there's a 2.5 second buffer between each step of the process. But I do think it's possible for that type of difficulty to exist in FFXIV in a lesser form. Encounters that punish under-performance through high incoming damage, mob-specific party-wiping mechanics that need be handled, time limits, basically a more difficult version of the uppermost floors of PoTD. I think the approach those floors take are exactly what we need to see more of in smaller content. The chimeras, for example, use mechanics that are nothing the party hasn't seen and dealt with before. They just occur much faster and instantly kill instantly if you fail them. Seeing one patrolling nearby scares people, it makes them pause and wait for it to be pulled or let it walk past, it makes fighting one nerve-wracking because although you know exactly what you have to do, what you still have to do requires focus and if you fail you'll die. I love that. After levels and levels of dungeons you can clear with Netflix up, this is content that actually forces you to engage with it. I can only speak for myself here, but I find taking on challenging tasks with that risk and fear attached to them tremendously fun. It just needs to be expanded into its own class of instance without the massive timesink PoTD requires.

I'd also like to see a 5 player party size just for this type of content, so that designers can make the content based on the assumption that the party will have access to all role skills.

[KaivaC]

Your idea to this in perpetuity, is to have persistent debuffs throughout an entire content form (so multiple dungeons, or whatever else 'savage' 4 man content ends up being by nerfing output and modifying incoming mob damage? That would probably feel more unintuitive and jarring than being synced down to Sastasha, not to mention is a pretty hamfisted implementation.

While I love FF9 and Ipsens castle, that type of gameplay would NOT translate well to an MMO at all.

Do you have some examples of what 4 man savage content could look like? Specific mechanics, etc.

Sorry, I was dealing with some personal situations over the last few days. I just came back to the forums today.

My example was just a gimmick dungeon. I've littered examples here and there of higher difficulty, but that being said...why would I have examples of 4man savage content? I'm not asking for Savage level stuff in 4mans. So...no, I don't have examples, and I would not want to theorycraft an example of one.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Sorry, I was dealing with some personal situations over the last few days. I just came back to the forums today.

My example was just a gimmick dungeon. I've littered examples here and there of higher difficulty, but that being said...why would I have examples of 4man savage content? I'm not asking for Savage level stuff in 4mans. So...no, I don't have examples, and I would not want to theorycraft an example of one.

???

I think what's being lost here is that the idea behind this post was to get 4mans to start pushing towards savage mechanics. Within the game system, you can introduce difficulty within doing savage stuff. Quite easily in fact. I'm saying this from a non raider perspective too. Again, within the game engine, the devs can easily make an entire dungeon nerf healing and tanking through persistent debuffs, just lower the damage that mobs do overall.

Your own words, unless I'm misunderstanding.

[KaivaC]

???



Your own words, unless I'm misunderstanding.

Oh, damn it. I typed that on mobile. Yeah, it's a typo on my end. That contradicts my original post badly. But no, I'm not asking for 4mans to have Savage-level difficulty.