Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[Wrothgar77]

Difficulty is an interesting one. The gap between Normal and Savage/Extreme is immense. For example, you could queue Shinryu unprepared in bad quest gear in a pug, have deaths all over the place and muddle through first try, but wipe all evening in a prepared FC group on Shinryu extreme. As a casual player myself, I admit I'd like more of a middle ground than first try faceroll or high end raider.



The 24 mans are interesting too. I always felt they mixed those up a bit. Rabanastre for example, trying to read and remember all the mechanics of all 4 bosses is a headache. You have 4 bosses in a row, that's a lot to prepare for first time, lots of things that can hurt the group and you have 24 random players. It's not really that hard, but groups do struggle.

Then something like Sigma Normal. Kefka for example is one single boss with a handful of mechanics that most don't even kill you outright. Easy to read up on, easy 5 minute one-shot. I'm surprised they didn't make 24 man the easier one and add a bit more mechanical complexity to the 8 mans, since they're in single-boss bites.

I don't want to bring up WoW again, because FF isn't WoW, but it's hard not to wish we had something like their flexible raid system. Moderately challenging, flexible group size that you don't queue for and encourages FC's.

Agree. I've felt that mid-tier has been missing for a long time.

I'd love if 24 man raids had 2 (or even 3) difficulties. Let there be a faceroll 24 man. It's fun to join something that's not over in 15 minutes (all the 8 man stuff that's not savage). FFXIV is severely lacking here. Anyone who played wow and remembers trial of the crusader hated it. It went down in infamy - why? Cause all it was was one boss fight after another. No trash, no exploration. I feel like that's what these current 8 mans are.

There's room for that AND 24 man style content. We just need more difficulties.

[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.

[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.

[KaldeaSahaline]

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.

****ing Mobile man. Rookie mistake. I kid. We're all good then.

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.

Ah ok - I didn't see that in the text. That's why I was confused.

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.

How about Alte Roite (O1S) and Guardian (O7S)?

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).

It's relevant because I'm trying to measure engagement (notably tank/healer since they're isolated in 4 man). If a mechanic removes 25% of the party. It directly impacts what they're during during this mechanic. It then also directly impacts what can happen during this forced downtime.

If something just removes you for x seconds, that's not fun for the player. Sitting there isn't enjoyable or challenging, even if it was punishment for a failed mechanic.

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).

You then mention that the party must decide which of the 4 it can do without. I.e. if big raidwide damage is incoming -> need healer, can lose someone else. If TB is upcoming, need tank, can lose DPS, if DPS check is incoming, can lose healer/tank.

That's extremely binary, more so than existing design. Which is my exact fear and why I don't think 4 man savage level is a good idea (without sweeping changes).

If the player snatch mechanic occurs predictably alongside other mechanics, doesn't it stand to reason that it's likely to either be too punishing (i.e. unable to survive/complete follow up mechanics) due to lack of bodies, or it's trivial. How do you handle it within the existing design constraints?

For example - if healer gets grabbed - how much eHP does the tank take while the healer is trapped? 20%? 50%? 120%? How about the rest of the party?

What ends up happening (I think) is that the healer failed the mechanic and people weren't healed enough to survive while they're gone -> wipe. If the healer did, comes out, they have x amount of seconds to top the party up. Easy.

DPS don't have defensives so you can't do more than 100% eHP. That's what I mean it's usually either trivial, or too punishing. There's not much room for dynamic design with existing toolkits, especially with only 4 players.

I'm struggling with that piece with respect to 4 man savage level content.

[*]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.

I need practical examples of this 'split damage' idea you keep mentioning. I don't understand it. If tank is eaten, how does it deal split damage? Current design handles that with stack markers. How are you proposing it happen?

Do you simply mean that a boss's auto attacks are all passive cleaves in that anyone in front splits the damage (a la Rav EX Blinding Blade TB?). If so - then are you proposing this as a shared design element across all content forms, or strictly this '4 man savage' iteration? Speaking plainly - I think undermechanics like that are bad design UNLESS they're consistent. I am not opposed to the concept at all though.

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.

Good examples. I think I understand your POV. However, these examples are very binary, which is what I am afraid savage 4 man content will look like. There's no choice. It's simply do the mechanic this one way or else. This isn't an issue with your ideas, but the core design of the game, which is only managed moderately well in larger party sizes due to mechanical overlap/dynamic gameplay.

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.)

Looking at this in a vacuum - this sounds ridiculously boring and how would the game identify which dps is weaker/stronger? Killing a random mob with no real mechanics or effects or simply dodging telegraphs while executing your ST rotation isn't engaging on its own, CERTAINLY not for a tank

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.

This still suffers from binary gameplay though. Which sure, works, but it wouldn't be engaging (especially for a tank), which is where I think most of the problems lie. It's that tanks and healers by themselves aren't robust enough without the overlap of mechanics that a larger party size adds.

[KisaiTenshi]

Looking at this in a vacuum - this sounds ridiculously boring and how would the game identify which dps is weaker/stronger? Killing a random mob with no real mechanics or effects or simply dodging telegraphs while executing your ST rotation isn't engaging on its own, CERTAINLY not for a tank

The game can track this from how much collective damage was done by the players up to that point on the trash mobs.

Like, yes, in a vacuum, it's probably boring, but you have to consider the difference between doing this one-at-a-time, versus how it's done in existing dungeons like "The Sunken Temple of Qarn", or WoD, where ignoring the mechanic is catastrophic. Like in Qarn, you don't want the healer to get walled off. In Void Ark, Cetus pulls one team away and walls them off. In other games, these kinds of mechanics tend to be done one-at-a-time, thus allowing those outside the arena unable to do anything except maybe use a player-centered casted aoe (eg holy) against the wall of the arena for splash damage. Though there's other ways of finding emergent game play with a wall, if the wall can be used to chain a lightning-like cast, or set the wall on fire that creates a burning field AOE.

The issue with the 4-player content is that the roles are not rigidly defined, so the tank and healer's roles are diminished with gear creep. You can't split the party up into 4 combat situations because the role of the tank and healer is not to cause damage. In 8-player content, it's harder to balance since you can sideline one tank and one healer once gear creep lets them. Like one way of making "8-player" content harder without becoming savage tier content is by splitting the arena (See Hullbreaker Isle) or Hraesvelgr's fight in Sohr Khai and making it so that the tanks have to fight bosses on either side of the arena (eg a reverse "pads" mechanic), but the healers have to stay in the center of the arena to be able to heal both of them and keep the land the tank is on from collapsing.

[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.

[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.