Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[MoroMurasaki]

I enjoy how the title of the thread says "increasing the difficulty of casual content does not equal Savage" and yet people are getting into debates on how to bring Savage into 4man instances.

The point is that it doesn't have to be savage.

There is a bredth of potential contnet between faceroll and Savage. Aim there, not at Savage.

[Shurrikhan]

I enjoy how the title of the thread says "increasing the difficulty of casual content does not equal Savage" and yet people are getting into debates on how to bring Savage into 4man instances.

The point is that it doesn't have to be savage.

There is a bredth of potential contnet between faceroll and Savage. Aim there, not at Savage.

That said, figuring out whether the best way to reach such a difficulty is to aim at Savage and then proceed just part of the way and smooth out the edges vs. aiming for something inherently different is a very relevant point of discussion.

I'd argue that the best midcore difficulty is one that targets competence, awareness, engagement, and tactics insofar as positioning, CD-syncing, and focus-targeting (almost) equally to Savage (or perhaps, in some cases, even more, as repeat runs of an exact script actually devalues such things), but with greatly deemphasized memorization -- if any at all.

[Remedi]

I Remember first dungeons aoe to be nearly lethal as to that error did matter, kinda reminded me of cataclysm where standing in the [insert w/e fire/water/void zone you like] would mean death, it was fun and engaging, but they had to tone down because ppl simply kept complaining instead of manning up.

I mean I get it on release most mechanics were not as obvious, some even could be hidden by aoe effects, but they fixed that and yet still ppl complained. That said it wouldn't be such a problem here so why not? I like fractal hard, but the fact that flare star doesn't really need me moving to save myself is jarring

[FeliAiko]

SE should add the Battle Square from VII to the Gold Saucer. A 4-man gauntlet series of battles could be a decent foundation to provide more challenging content.

[Shurrikhan]

@Kaldea
Here is the Alte Roite fight adjusted for 4-man.

Summary:

Generally identical to the 8-man version, with the exception of Twin Bolt being modified to both allow and force rotary participation by non-tanks by reducing Twin Bolt's damage dealt (initial and total) to the secondary target enough to no longer quite one-shot DPS, but also afflicting the secondary target with a debuff which will detonate every 3 seconds for 9 seconds after being received and, separately, causing it to take increased damage (some 15 or 20%) from Twin Bolt, lasting for roughly 2.5 Twin Bolt rotations. With enough mitigation, this is not enough to necessarily one-shot an upper eHP DPS (such as a BLM with TBN, MW, and Benefic), but a second stack will. Note that stacks will not refresh duration, offering a bit of added flexibility if a composition is capable.

Elements with downward tuning (generally numeric):

• Tankbuster damage has been reduced and/or siphoned into a DoT (in the case of Twin Bolt secondary damage; see below) as not to depend upon healer-provided shielding for tank-busters, as this could be compositionally absent.
  
  
• Boss auto-attack and raid damage slightly decreased.
  
  
• Twin Bolt will now deal much-reduced damage to the second target, dealing the damage instead as a DoT that does not work off the global tick but instead comes at a consistent 3, 6, and 9 seconds of application. The initial damage will still nearly oneshot any topped-off ranged DPS at minimum ilvl. However, in place of the, admittedly mild, complexity of CD management by the OT, the party will now deal with a 15% vuln debuff applied to the secondary Twin Bolt target, forcing all three to cycle through unless one is appropriately shielded enough to take the added damage (such would require Reprisal, TBN, Benefic, etc.). This vulnerability will stack, but will not refresh.
  
  
• Ranged used as basis of comparison due to least eHP vs. spells.
  
  
• Damage of raid AoE following Charybdis has been decreased to what is managable with a single healer. At minimum ilvl, this will still require some form of prior mitigation or self-healing to survive, as spam AoE healing after Charybdis will no longer necessarily be sufficient. Charybdis will no longer reduce allies to 1 HP even through shields, but simply by <1+absorption> damage short of their maximum HP in true damage.

Elements with upward tuning (increased positional spread required):

• Blaze now requires even the tank to move in for a full 100% participation, as opposed to requiring only 6 or 7 of the 8 members to survive. With sufficient mitigation, players might barely, barely survive a 3 out of 4 stack.

Those are really the only things required. There's so much time after Roar that a single healer really can deal with it even if the numbers were left the same. Auto-attacks are similarly solo-healable. The only real cases by which the original fight wasn't already solo-healable by anyone but a WHM were the few mistakes that DPS might make that weren't immediately fatal near to other major damage taken events. While intensity could be increased even while allowing for greater mechanical mistakes, such is beyond the complexity of the original fight. (Which... probably shouldn't even be called Savage, honestly.)

I actually expected that I would have to enlarge AoE sizes or create a linking mechanic to force greater spread, but the central or outer ring of fireballs, especially in combination with fighting near he edge during certain mechanics, already does a sufficient job of limiting who can have melee uptime on the boss that little if any difficulty tightening is required. A double-melee composition could potentially, just barely and only with perfect positioning, keep up uptime on the boss along with the tank while the healer moves out, or the tank and a single melee could be spaced more loosely while a ranged and healer stand apart, with no significant loss to complexity.

For instance, an ideal return from the T-formation Fireball dodge into Levinbolt with double-melee would be something like the melee being slightly left or right, opposite each other, before Windburst, and then crossing to just slightly into the boss's hitbox and stay, while the tank and healer each separately follows one melee and then slide to the opposite side of the boss's hitbox to form a square without having to lose moving into the previous flame orb zone and then back into melee range.

So, what will be harder now:

If anyone slides away from Blaze without being Rescue-d back, you all die (unless you'd already popped all the things).

What will be easier now:

Levinbolt spread more intuitive, so you're less likely to be murdered by directionally-challenged party members.

Easy means for further tuning:

UPWARD. Have the out-flung (secondary) Fireballs following Windburst explode multiple times in quick succession, limiting the area in which players can move after returning from a safe zone lasting nearly into the Levinbolt explosions.

UPWARD. Have fireballs surround the entirity of the inner ring, to be flung out by Windburst. Rather than fireballs being absent from the safe zones, they will be of a visible different type, which will detonate later and only once, while all others will detonate the multiple times.

DOWNWARD. In turn, create a second window or "safe zone", at least 90 degrees away from the first, to allow room enough for a ranged or healer to hide without perfect to-the-yard square placement around the centered boss.

UPWARD. Anyone recently struck by Twin Bolt gets a proportionately (or at double the vulnerability proportion) increased Levinbolt AoE ring size.

UPWARD. Levinbolt AoE ring seems to grow and shrink, making you essentially think it will be bigger than it is until you're used to it.

FURTHER. It actually does get progressively bigger the more people you're nearby.

ALTERNATIVELY. It gets smaller the more people you're nearby, so that you may even want to stack up until nearly the last moment, and you really don't want to get anywhere near that healer or ranged after its had a chance to grow over the course of pre-positioning.

:: In truth, I wish I could have done far more to give more flexibility, urgency, and strategy to the fight, but it was Savage in category only from the start, so, there's not that much I can do with it without making it far harder (and far, far more interesting) than the 8-man version.

[Shurrikhan]

@Kaldea

Btw, I was just wondering if you've since furthered your thoughts on secondary stats and stat progression, i.e.

We have it with more than just tanks, but tanks are a felony level example. While I agree that a single case is problematic it's a pretty nuanced issue. I wish I had a good solution for it, but I don't.

I can tell you (as a PLD main), it FEELs so much worse in this game than it does WoW. I really don't like secondaries in either game. I really don't like secondaries at all. I think the goal of secondaries could probably be better used as functions/themes inside class abilities in both MMOs.

It seems like it'd have a subtle but significant part in eventual difficulty tuning and scalability design.

[KaldeaSahaline]

@Kaldea
Here is the Alte Roite fight adjusted for 4-man.

-snip-

Hey sorry for the delay. I got tied up with some work stuff all week. Mid year stuff.

So listen - while I appreciate you putting the effort in, what you described (again from a tank/healer perspective) sounds awful. It sounds boring and binary which is what my fear is for "savage" level 4 man content. I just don't see how to design tank mechanics/responsibility that is varied and engaging within the existing design constraints.

FURTHER. It actually does get progressively bigger the more people you're nearby.

I actually quite like this mechanic.

Btw, I was just wondering if you've since furthered your thoughts on secondary stats and stat progression

Not particularly. I'm kind of getting tired of gear in MMO's and one idea I've always had for my "dream MMO" was a design-a-skill concept. Rather than grow by way of gear vertically, you'd grow diagonally upwards via skill accrual/empowerment. As you get stronger you get access to more skills, but also access to improving existing skills by way of damage, resource cost, speed, utility, etc.

Let's say at level 1 you are forced to create a sampling of 5 skills. These skills could be defensive, utility, passives, and offensive. Any combination you desired.

For context - Let's say my Paladin archetype was my desired character.

• Divinity Barrier - Creates a holy bubble around you that blocks projectiles
• Angelfire - Launches a torrent of holy fire that detonates on impact
• Angelic Respite - for Xs channels angelic wings that enable a double jump
• Holy Shield - Passive - blocked attacks reflect X% of damage back
• Clemency - Heals for X% of HP

The idea would be that as you level up you'd accrue skill points. These could then be converted into new skills, or channeled into existing skills to improve their efficacy or effects.

An example might be investing skill points into Divinity Barrier to give it:

• Extra utility such as following you while moving rather than be stationary
• Have it act as a physical barrier to not just projectiles, but enemies as well until broken or ends
• Increased shield strength (takes x% more damage before breaking, or increased duration, effect size, etc.)

Another example might be having Holy Shield empowered to:

• Blind attackers for 1s when you successfully block an attack
• Knockback enemies after a successful block

Angelfire might be empowered to do:

• Increased missile speed
• Increase explosion radius
• Stuns enemies hit by main projectile
• Increased damage when used from the air
• Shorter CD, lower costs, faster startup/recovery

Improving abilities comes with detriments too,such as increasing cooldown, resource costs, lengthening the animation, etc. so you'd also invest skill points into keeping those things in check. To supplement this system enemies would be tough. You might encounter a rogue enemy who is fast on his feet, equipped with poisons to reduce your healing/movement, and maybe some stealth.

You'd want to make sure if you were adventuring in an area with enemies like this that you'd have tools (skills) to handle many different situations. Enemies would have AI that reacts and changes based on triggers. Stuff like running away, CCing you, enraging, calling for help, desperation attacks, etc.

Obviously MMO design probably isn't anywhere near this robust yet or even in the future, but it's an idea I wish for nonetheless.

[Shurrikhan]

Hey sorry for the delay. I got tied up with some work stuff all week. Mid year stuff.

So listen - while I appreciate you putting the effort in, what you described (again from a tank/healer perspective) sounds awful. It sounds boring and binary which is what my fear is for "savage" level 4 man content. I just don't see how to design tank mechanics/responsibility that is varied and engaging within the existing design constraints.

I'm just curious then what's been "lost" from the 8-man version? As I said, I can't really improve it past the 8-man version (which I personally thought to be boring and binary itself). Heck, at least you have all of 2 options more across the 4-man version than the 8-man permits, at the cost only of exchanging assigned cardinal/semicardinal positions for more general ones (left/right, close/far).

I'll fully agree that wouldn't be satisfying content (or at least, no more than the 8-man serpentine pushover gatekeeper to SB savage tier 1 was), but I don't think it shows any evidence of an inherent design weakness in low party numbers.

I'm kind of getting tired of gear in MMO's and one idea I've always had for my "dream MMO" was a design-a-skill concept. Rather than grow by way of gear vertically, you'd grow diagonally upwards via skill accrual/empowerment. As you get stronger you get access to more skills, but also access to improving existing skills by way of damage, resource cost, speed, utility, etc. <snip>

Well, I'm sold. I can't agree more with the desire for such challenges, and for the means to deal with them.

Though it was just part of the larger picture for me, I wanted something very, very similar through a revised leveling system tentatively called the Ability Sphere. [INDENT][INDENT]That said, it was meant to ultimately replace classes, aside from being able to sort of "partition" yourself through them, and rotate your starting area therein, so that you could swap out Ability Spheres (though not the whole of your progression, exactly) just by swapping out your weapon. By rotating the sphere, you still kept certain nodes (let's just call them the Layer 1 nodes), and any experience cost decreases nodes discovered or in progress of discovery on another class, but rotated all experience usage over to the new starting point. If you were to level everything, you'd technically have access on any class to every class's traits, although you wouldn't also have AP enough to adapt all of them

The idea there was that you, similar to above, discover new skills and traits through what you do, which is to say (a) what you fight, (b) how you fight it, and (c) who you fight alongside or learn from. Thus you can gain skills and traits from general play, the use of prior skills or traits, or facing or complementing others' skills or traits (enemy or allied, respectively), any of which can be further "adapted" later. (These adaptations are basically identical to what you've described, except that the options are acquired through learned traits and other skills, such that you're technically blending them, rather than being given a full arsenal of available upgrades from the start; the general emphasis across the revision was cohesion and immersion.)

The over-technical bits:

The sphere has a few different layers. The first is retained when swapping classes/weapons, and these include general traits such as those relating to stealth, perception, tenacity, acumen, and so forth, the things you'd expect that a level 70 would in no way suddenly lose just by changing weapons, though they won't benefit from the synergies between these nodes and the second layer's if class-changed to something that doesn't, itself, possess those synergies in its own way.
The second layer is your core stuff: your weaponskills, spells, abilities, and traits that would seemingly be discovered in a way specific to the weapon/magic type or style of combat intuitive thereto.
The third is stranger, and not quite a "layer" exactly, but holds the nodes for basically every enemy ability or trait in the game. Its through this layer that you are able to sort of reverse-engineer enemy's skills, almost identically to coming to understand others players' actions or traits as nested in the second layer.

The sphere is technically filled from the start, though its nodes are shrouded until lit by possessed nodes nearby, gradually revealing its role, some of its mechanics, and more before revealing the whole deal--name and function, the package entire. Your experience, which snakes through your already possessed nodes, both extends further towards these unseen nodes and, technically, reduces the experience required to discover them from any path (e.g. from the PoV of another class). If you've multiple skills that are both relevant to a unknown skill, it will be drawn towards their junction at twice the normal speed, decreasing the experience necessary to grab it and increasing the light available by which to reveal it. (Note that such similar skills were in turn drawn near each other and therefore tend to be quite close; their combined effect will then always work towards increased efficiency, rather than having a tug of war with each other than provides no net benefit. You can, at times, choose a node to focus on, but as not to encourage constant referral to one's Ability Sphere to an extent that would get in the way of normal play, these times will probably have to be limited, though I've not yet decided on the means.

Expending AP (Ability Points) on Adaptations (upgrading skills by adjustment through the lens of anther skill) or Mimicry (copying some ally's or enemy's skill without nodal access), however, is entirely manual. if you want to deepen Sword and Board's connection with Savage Blade, such that you can siphon the force of any blow made to glance past you by your blocks or parries into your Savage Blade (within a short, continuously depleting AP-boost window), so be it. If you want to copy a mob's Reis' Wind, however, you may only get an approximation based on what your class, given your nodes, is capable of. You may want to settle for just stealing a particular trait from it which made up its core mechanic, or just its method of dispersion.

In Mimicry, the more similarity the collection of your possessed nodes, the easier it is to reverse-engineer parts of the skill, traits within it, or the whole. Unless you are a class that specializes in such, however, this tends mostly to be a matter reserved for dungeons and raids, which gradually integrate player skills further into its themes. If a raid tier were filled with humanoid attackers, you'd start seeing far more practical anti-infantry techniques and if a raid tier were filled with diamond-hearted, sandstorm-calling mobs, there'd likely be something to that effect to both fight fire with fire or avoid its burn that players will pick up in a semi-regulated manner over the course of the tier. In this sense, it actually works a fair bit like gear abilities might if taken from FFIX, but rather than simply accruing experience wherever and however, so long as the given piece of gear is equipped, it depends on whom, where, or with what tools are gaining that experience. In most cases, these have to do not with conjuring a new element of magic, or the like, such that you'd be carrying over the aesthetics of one raid tier into the next, but simply an affinity for, and thereby the ability to manipulate some of, what's being used in that raid tier's aesthetics. (Of course, all this assumes a raid tier experience a bit more like WoW's, with cohesive themes and a more fleshed-out setting, even if not necessarily a single trash-pack, rather that a brief series of loosely connected square- or circular arena trials.)

I've actually been playing around recently with a couple more systems, though, that are actually stat-based.
:: Hiding these because they're not directly thread-relevant.

That said, it seems to me that in most cases stats are one of the least worthwhile places by which to attempt to generate additional variance in gameplay (one could even say gameplay meta-content), rather than theorycrafting meta-content. Critical Hit, for instance, has been purposely tuned down, in being made both crit chance and multiplier, from its previous gameplay differential on Bards (and what Monks now would have seen if not for the change). Healer MP restoration tools are too significant to Piety to seem so as well, and even if it did carry far greater significance, it likely wouldn't feel good, as a lack of it feels more restrictive than having it feels freeing. Determination and Direct Hit are about as banal as you can get. That leaves Speed the only real, consistent gameplay modifier, but even then -- only at its specific breakpoints.

What I would like to see then is to go in either or both of two ways: (1) simplify the stats' outputs such as to draw as close as possible to equal rDPS increase, but in more distinct ways, and/or (2) allow for flexible stat allotment towards chosen breakpoints.

(1) rDPS gap squished. Gameplay gap widened.
The goal here is that you can wear pretty much whatever secondaries you like, pretty well regardless of job (e.g. exempting Speed up to certain breakpoints, and still stacking Critical on a Bard or Monk).

Or, you can go the step further, and make it truly work evenly regardless of job.

For instance, to make all stats equally contribute to Repertoire or Deep Meditation, one need:

• Make each generate from any Critical Hit or Direct Hit.
• Have a generation chance based on the passive (stat-determined) damage modifier.
• Use a player-determined tick rate for DoTs, which scales with Speed. (The duration remainder past the final tick possible will deal proportionate damage upon the debuff's conclusion or replacement.)
• Have Speed affect oGCD damage.
• Have Critical Hit solely grant critical hit chance, while Determination supplies the bonus damage on CH/DH, doubly, on both the general damage, and the critical/direct modifier, stacking.
• Voila, all stats now contribute roughly equally towards Deep Meditation. (Or, so they could be tuned.)

But let's say we also want to see a larger difference from the stats. While I'm not normally a fan of pruning, I actually think Direct Hit, so long as its remains just a watered down version of Critical Strike, may as well be cut. The apparent issue is cutting without replacing, and the real: the lack of viable replacements. Accuracy, even if made a "real" stat (flexible, granular -- rather than bimodal, and capable of post-cap benefits, would be probably still want to be swapped about on a fight-by-fight basis. Anything which would accelerate Ability cooldown rates would affect gameplay greatly, but not necessarily for the best, as an optimal party composition would have to decide on a speed to sync to, and then continuously gear towards that while remaining wary of any slight discrepancies which may force a Trick Attack to go off too soon or too late for an optimal window, etc. The closest major adjuster I can imagine is something which would increase the durations of certain buffs, etc., as to at least create as much gameplay variance for some classes as Speed does, but it would also end up a redundancy, two sides to the same coin; if Speed offers relatively more time (GCDs, in this case) per buff, then offering more actual time is essentially irrelevant. It would seek only to fix "issues" like DoTs being forcibly clipped by optimal rotations (which actually has the benefit of offering freed time within the optimal rotation, and therefore probably shouldn't be seen as an "issue" so much as designated leniency), which, where an actual issue, had best be fixed in a more universal manner (such as a pandemic system, to borrow WoW's term).

So, what can we do?

A basic spread would include something like Rate, Modifier, and Chance Rate (optional: +Modifier). And to an extent, that can actually be interesting, but only chance and modifiers can still deliver notable breakpoints.

If it would normally take 10 hits (or 6.67 --> 7 crits) to trigger some damage-created effect, then by reducing that relative requirement to 9 (or 6 crits), you'd see an actual difference from something like Determination. And yet, we have no mechanics like that, neither universally (likely nested in our enemies through some mechanical interaction), nor within class toolkits (additional effects, or traits). Alternatively, if we were trying to guarantee a critical hit within x GCDs, there would have to be more to that than just chance, such as (as per WoW's Fire Mage or some FFXIV 1.x designs) increasing chance bonuses until the chance effect has been guaranteed. Short of that, you don't have a necessarily changed effect -- and that can be okay, but only if there's a counterpart that does offer the guaranteed event. That's probably the core issue. We can utilize chance, but only in gimmicky mechanic-by-mechanic way limited only to a couple jobs out of the whole lot, and only Speed offers us actual consistent breakpoint change (in this case, internal / rotational). If each of the basic spread were to offer something visible, significant, we'd probably feel far more impact from our stat choices.

But that still leaves one major issue, our constant numerical finagling over our gear in order to keep our breakpoints as near as possible to no excess. For some that metacontent may be interesting, but I strongly suspect the majority would prefer something a bit less demanding of time spent pouring over loot tables and replacing materia.

(2) That's where flexible stats come in.

Let's say you had, rather than fixed stats (which we can for now call Red, Yellow, and Blue), three half-way colors, Citrine, Emerald, and Amethyst, or vice versa. Gear still permits what stats you can take, but you can set those breakpoints directly from which to determine in what direction each stat is spent.

• Priority 1: Speed to 1200.
• Priority 2: Critical to 1660.
• Priority 3: Speed to 1750, if possible. (Skipped if not possible)
• Priority 4: Determination.

And with that, you hit well-rounded values at all times, though one must still pursue gear fit to their purposes.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I'm just curious then what's been "lost" from the 8-man version? As I said, I can't really improve it past the 8-man version (which I personally thought to be boring and binary itself). Heck, at least you have all of 2 options more across the 4-man version than the 8-man permits, at the cost only of exchanging assigned cardinal/semicardinal positions for more general ones (left/right, close/far).I'll fully agree that wouldn't be satisfying content (or at least, no more than the 8-man serpentine pushover gatekeeper to SB savage tier 1 was), but I don't think it shows any evidence of an inherent design weakness in low party numbers.

Yeah maybe O1S was a bad example. 1 tank with current job design restrictions just feels awful in my brain. Regardless of really any fight.

Well, I'm sold. I can't agree more with the desire for such challenges, and for the means to deal with them.

Though it was just part of the larger picture for me, I wanted something very, very similar through a revised leveling system tentatively called the Ability Sphere.

Reading the leveling sphere I definitely see vibes of my design. I just chose the more modern approach while you took the more immersive approach. Both valid though.

The idea behind mine would be that you wouldn't really know what kind of skill you needed until you starting having issues and said, you know I really need a way to get an enemy off of me. XYZ skill isn't cutting it alone. Then you present the player with options to facilitate that goal. Do I empower an existing skill with a new effect? Do I create a new one? Do I design it as an offensive skill? Utility? Defensive?

Your design even reminds of one of my favorite games. Mana Khemia. It had a AP board where you crafted items that unlocked slots on these boards. You then would unlock new abilities, stat increases etc for your team. You needed to have adjacent slots unlocked though and the system kept me crafting items nonstop. It was a great feedback loop. My concept actually draws a lot of inspiration from MK as a game. it doesn't hurt that the game has probably some of the best turn based combat to ever exist.

[Shurrikhan]

Reading the leveling sphere I definitely see vibes of my design. I just chose the more modern approach while you took the more immersive approach. Both valid though.

Was about to say the same, just in reverse.

For 95% of MMO designs, especially these days, I'd say your version would certainly have more appeal, which is why I ended up moving away from the Ability Sphere grid over time. Heck, originally it was even supposed to work in a way that everyone's sphere looked, literally, different based on their experiences (even the node placements), so that there was never a question of "Hey, what should I pick?", nothing to copy directly in place of an actual, personal understanding of one's needs and preferences.

Yeah maybe O1S was a bad example. 1 tank with current job design restrictions just feels awful in my brain. Regardless of really any fight.

I think I can create more satisfying designs of my own for light or flex parties, if you'd be willing to read over another shot at it. I won't be able to do a full write-up until next weekend, though, in all likelihood.

My preferred content design (short of the very highest tiers of content) tends to be one where every member feels in some way connected to nearly every task, and where the mechanics require tactics-minded responsiveness, but work from obvious indicators and intuitively identifiable mechanics (e.g. It's obvious that the mechanic will be a series of chasing AoEs, but rather than just dodging immediately, the party is expected to identify and create a future safety line to keep clear with those jukes, which in turn means taking note of and perhaps standardizing your spacing in a way easily done through nonvocal communication -- sometimes stacking AoEs, sometimes spreading them over given intuitive routes; the procedural is so tried and true it can almost be considered mere reflex, but it still offers depth in its optimization as, after surviving it with reasonable ease once, you notice just how many AoEs are set in total, and plan around that for uptime, etc.)
Things will do as they appear they ought to; the only memorization components are in fitting those visible pieces together: How do we set up this readily apparent AoE chain such that we all arrive at the adds for immediate uptime on them before they get their casts off? How do we make best use of the collision boxes left by the stalactite AoEs against the next AoEs? Anyone should be able to guess at some, if not most, of the short term goals; only the best possible combinations of those ought to require learning over time.

But, there are very few examples of that in XIV that aren't wholly basic. Byakko Ex, for instance, meets the criteria for obvious and intuitive mechanics that rely instead upon number and frequency, but it lacks the depth or cross-role concern I'd also like to see. So, to really push out a flex-party design, I'd probably have to come up with something original...