Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Acidblood]

No, it doesn't. It would make no difference except that the dps check would now arrive anywhere between some 7 and 10 minutes based on how sparingly your healers used MP. Healers afking between damage intake would be not only viable but often required. (And I've no idea what to say to you if you could possibly think that a system which requires you to spend significant time doing nothing or almost only ever using the most modest and MP-efficient mini-heals is somehow a good thing.)

You'll have moved the enrage, in all likelihood, earlier, while demanding less activity or clarity of purpose from players. "Should I sacrifice uptime to further reduce damage taken from these flare mechanics?" "Well, how good are your healers and tanks, and did you forget to bring PLD-DRK and WHM-WHM to extend healer MP for as long as possible?" "I, uh, don't know, and we have AST-SCH." "Well, I guess enrage will be around 8 minutes if they're good?"

Who said healers would be AFKing? Damage spells don't have to cost MP, and as I noted it would require a change in Healer design and the rate of outgoing damage.

Also, players will always value damage, the game does not need to do that for them, what it does need to do is give them a reason to value other things like mitigation (beyond the binary 'will it kill us'), resource management / regen, non-damage buffs and debuffs (again beyond the binary), and damage applied at the right time.

As for your example, that is for individual groups to work out, and sure there may be a few wipes while they do, but how is that really any different to now... except of course if people’s expectations of 'high-end' content is to go in, place some markers, play to a script, roll on loot, gg. (which at this point it probably is).

[Shurrikhan]

...

1. Tenacity and Piety

Tenacity being a subpar stat is due to lack of granular damage. Against the instances of damage we actually receive, there is virtually no chance that Tenacity can save a heal or protect against what would otherwise kill you. Not dying is as much a "test of the tank's ability to survive" without Tenacity as it is with. The stat is simply of inappropriate design in the context of XIV's damage in raid settings. Piety, similarly, suffers from the oversight that (1) MP regeneration is overabundant because most players don't want to be over-dependent on any given stat just to be able to perform actions and (2) it has no other use than the usually superfluous niche of MP regeneration. Turn it into a hidden resource system that is consumed based on %HP damage that would otherwise have been taken and restored over time (while offering proportionately less of its passive mitigation as it recharges) and voila, you'd have a stat that can actually do something. Though, you'd either then be crippling dependent on it or will have simply traded out SCH/AST shields and/or a single CD mistake for it.

2. DPS checks only as short burst mechanics, and never with an impact across multiple mechanics.

Removing any lasting impact of how well a party handles a given mechanic, as to have continued consequence over the mechanics to come, only leads to haphazard design and incongruity.

• Mechanic Type 1: Quality of performance only partly matters in this first mechanic because one need only dodge; they can just as optimally touch no keys except WASD and Duty Action.
• Mechanic Type 2: Quality of performance only partly matters in the next mechanic because one need only damage; you can stand in as many AoEs as you need in order to focus on your rotation.
• Mechanic Type 3: Quality of performance actually matters to this last mechanic because it has both damage and survival requirements. You must dodge or you will almost certainly die hereafter and you must deal damage or all will die at the end of the mechanic.

Hard enrages simply allow any mechanic to be a soft Type 3, allowing consequences to be carried over and recovered against without entirely removing said consequence. Took an unnecessary vulnerability stack? Well, now a healer is going to have to shield you specifically so you can survive the next mechanic. That in turn will cost healer DPS, which in turn means your requirements just got higher.

I don't understand how people keep mistaking that for some sort of flawed system only to then ask for the very things hard enrages already provide and which the removal of hard enrages would in turn remove. Hard enrages encourage survival. Hard enrages encourage damage. They just allow you to perfect your performance over time without smashing your head against one particular mechanic at a time, all while ensuring that by the time you can complete the fight, you feel like you deserved it, i.e. that you had a decent handle on the mechanics involved.

3. Alleged terrain-based issues with Twister as precedent for removing any and all raid environments that aren't flat circles or rectangles.

The Twisters issues were due to an entirely separate and well documented bug. No one dealt with Twisters while standing on the palm heel. The heel was only used to exploit the firepatches. Bug aside, the combination of the two mechanics was technically easier before they flattened out the map.

4. Renaud adds allegedly necessitating Ranged dps as precendent for removing all kiting and similar special mechanics from fights.

Across ARR, Ranged were already considered necessary for their access to Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon, so I don't see why such a requirement would suddenly have broken the camel's back here. That being said, I don't believe it was necessary. I'd cleared several times before the Echo buffs in a DRG, MNK, MNK, BLM party. We just had the boss move clockwise or counterclockwise as the Renaud approached and had the SCH Aetherial Manipulation taxi the BLM. Stone handled the rest with ease. The other MNK and I didn't even lose GL over the Shriek mechanic. It required some creative thinking compared to simply having the Bard take it and Shadowbind, but it was entirely doable. And I liked the fight more for that very fact. Could we please stop pretending that something is critically flawed just because it variably asks a bit more ingenuity for the playerbase?

[Dzian]

The game had a fair number of uniquely shaped boss arenas with varied terrain. In fact the game's most difficult fight on release was set on the palm of a gigantic dragon's hand. These irregular arenas while cool had their fair share of problems; things like ranged classes being able to avoid a mechanic because they could stand on top of a pile of sand and players failing to dodge a fight's mechanics because the irregular terrain prevented them from moving away fast enough. From the second update cycle and on the designers ended up changing to flat arenas to prevent these problems.

As someone else pointed out the problem here isn't really one of arena design but more down to the lack of a proper Z-Axis tied to mechanics. It's a problem visible in pretty much every area of the game. Even in places like aurum vale where you can jump over poison puddles and still get the debuff. or you can be 30-40ft in the air and still get hit by a wolfs bites.

a proper working Z axis would make for very interesting possibilities within encounter designs arenas where you could stand on rocks to avoid floods or hide behind them to avoid gusts or fireballs. or even just have varying ledges that allow for different approaches. down low to smasha bosses legs. up higher to crack his skull.... a decent Z-Axis would open up many options

[Ultimatecalibur]

No, it doesn't. It would make no difference except that the dps check would now arrive anywhere between some 7 and 10 minutes based on how sparingly your healers used MP. Healers afking between damage intake would be not only viable but often required. (And I've no idea what to say to you if you could possibly think that a system which requires you to spend significant time doing nothing or almost only ever using the most modest and MP-efficient mini-heals is somehow a good thing.)

I wouldn't say it would force healer AFKing. It would more force them to get more piety so that they can cast longer combined with Tanks getting more Tenacity so that they can take less damage and have better heals. It might also make tanks focus on using their protect other and protect party abilities more.

As someone else pointed out the problem here isn't really one of arena design but more down to the lack of a proper Z-Axis tied to mechanics. It's a problem visible in pretty much every area of the game. Even in places like aurum vale where you can jump over poison puddles and still get the debuff. or you can be 30-40ft in the air and still get hit by a wolfs bites.

a proper working Z axis would make for very interesting possibilities within encounter designs arenas where you could stand on rocks to avoid floods or hide behind them to avoid gusts or fireballs. or even just have varying ledges that allow for different approaches. down low to smasha bosses legs. up higher to crack his skull.... a decent Z-Axis would open up many options

This isn't a Z-axis problem. In both cases Z-axis was functioning. The AoEs were actually Spheres not cylinders and people knew that they could dodge certain AoEs because they were outside the AoE sphere. One of the ways they fixed this was by switching to cylinder shaped AoEs which reach to the top of the zone. This actually led to a few cases in places such as Syrcus Tower where you could be hit by AoEs from the bosses above you.

[CapricaLangley]

I don't know if anyone else addressed this point yet, but I'm going to since I'm starting to see a lot of people bring this up: Having every DPS class deal approximately the same damage (i.e. balancing) is NOT homogenization. Period.

Except this definition is incorrect and doesn't apply to the matter: homogenisation happens through giving every class similar tools to achieve the same results. All tanks learning a -30% at level 38 (Vengeance, Nebula, Shadow Wall and Sentinel) is a perfect example of how the homogenisation process works in a MMO. It has nothing to do with the actual rotations, those will (hopefuly) always retain their (small) differences. Homogenisation resides in the loss of enmity control skills, in ranged DPS having a damage reduction CD which doesn't stack (Trobadour, Tactician, Shield Samba), it's hidden in every melee DPS focusing on sustained damage instead of burst windows, in healers having basically the same cooldown set. Homogenisation has a lot to do with the balancing process: in fact, it's a (IMHO dangerous) tool used to pursue balance.

[Acidblood]

I don't understand how people keep mistaking that for some sort of flawed system only to then ask for the very things hard enrages already provide and which the removal of hard enrages would in turn remove. Hard enrages encourage survival. Hard enrages encourage damage. They just allow you to perfect your performance over time without smashing your head against one particular mechanic at a time, all while ensuring that by the time you can complete the fight, you feel like you deserved it, i.e. that you had a decent handle on the mechanics involved.

Because in reality hard enrages do not encourage survival, they make it binary; either you can survive until the end (hard enrage) or you can't, any boost to 'survival' beyond that is wasted (especially if it comes at the expense of damage). And since failure isn't allowed by default*, and all combinations of jobs must to be viable**, survival stats and abilties generally aren't even a consideration to begin with (expect perhaps at the start of prog where you are just trying to see as much of the fight as possible).

* And even if failure was allowed by default; i.e. you couldn't beat encounter A without X Tenacity, people would just get X+1 Tenacity and dump the rest into damage stats, which is same issue Accuracy had.

** If Job-X had a survival ability that was 'required' (or perceived to be required) to beat encounter A then everyone else of that role would complain. However; if that ability is not required and Job-X sacrifices damage just to have that ability (used or not) then Job-X will be seen as less valuable, or even 'useless', compared to another job of the same role that brings more damage; enter homogenisation, the systematic removal of anything that isn't 'damage', and the death of job identity.

[linay]

enter homogenisation, the systematic removal of anything that isn't 'damage', and the death of job identity.

If job identity causes one tank to deliberately sacrifice all but 1 hp, then let it die.

Otherwise, this tank uses a gunblade, that tank uses a sword and shield. This ranged DPS shoots arrows, that ranged DPS dances. This caster summons egis, that caster attacks from near and far. All these melee DPS use positionals differently.

Those differences are sufficient for job identity.

[Shurrikhan]

Because in reality hard enrages do not encourage survival, they make it binary; either you can survive until the end (hard enrage) or you can't, any boost to 'survival' beyond that is wasted (especially if it comes at the expense of damage). And since failure isn't allowed by default*, and all combinations of jobs must to be viable**, survival stats and abilties generally aren't even a consideration to begin with (expect perhaps at the start of prog where you are just trying to see as much of the fight as possible).

* And even if failure was allowed by default; i.e. you couldn't beat encounter A without X Tenacity, people would just get X+1 Tenacity and dump the rest into damage stats, which is same issue Accuracy had.

** If Job-X had a survival ability that was 'required' (or perceived to be required) to beat encounter A then everyone else of that role would complain. However; if that ability is not required and Job-X sacrifices damage just to have that ability (used or not) then Job-X will be seen as less valuable, or even 'useless', compared to another job of the same role that brings more damage; enter homogenisation, the systematic removal of anything that isn't 'damage', and the death of job identity.

When you remove the hard enrage you remove any reason to perform any mechanic except to the extent that you survive that mechanic and that mechanic alone. There is no interconnectedness. There is no lingering consequence. Survival in each mechanic becomes even MORE binary. There are no degrees of risk-reward. There is no need to find a balance between the two.

A hard enrage is precisely what makes it so you don't need only to survive to the end (hard enrage) or not. Running around like headless chickens simply will not get you through mechanics. You can have a party that's bad at one mechanic or two and have to completely divert their focus for it or come up with strategies that favor mitigating risk (survival) over facilitating reward (uptime) and a hard enrage will allow for that leniency on those few mechanics so long as you can perform the others sufficiently well.

Neither gameplay with or without a hard enrage will ever reward you for overhealing or overmitigation. Ever. You would need to incorporate a gimmick 'deep damage' mechanic or the like whereby players are temporarily crippled if reduced to critical HP or whatnot. The only difference you'll get from removing hard enrages is the ability to average out your performance check over multiple mechanics, to recover over the course of other mechanics what you struggle with on one or few particular mechanics.

[Barraind]

14 hurts itself badly by using 4 person groups and 8 person raids.

It loses a massive amount of design space by that size, even compared to Wow's 10mans. You're locked out of entire raid concepts because you have to balance around a number of people that cant logistically handle things.

Similarly, a lot of group design theory dies even going from 6 people to 5, let alone going to 4.

Its one reason tanks and healers HAVE to be blue and green dps, you cant design functional encounters around requiring those classes to be in full tank and heal mode without being able to cheese the hell out of it with competent dps and 1 tank 1 healer'ing it.


In terms of class homogenization, with everything using potency, 14 is in one fo the easiest positions to get damage numbers similar while keeping classes mechanically different.

That it takes as long as it does for even minor potency tweaks in situations where its an obvious necessity, and we instead watch classes lose more and more of their identity, is a massive warning sign about the core competencies of the design team.

[Xatsh]

Hard Enrages are one of the main issues with this game when it comes to endgame to be honest. Why everyone only cares about DPS. Just pure stupid game design.

Should make them soft enrages. 10mins or whatever hits. Bosses get a stack of dmg taken -10% and damage dealt +10% then an additional stack for each 30secs - minute after that, to the point where it is impossible to kill.

Not the oh well you are at 5% guess what though... you had a Ast, nin, and rdm in your party so you timed out. Do not worry though you can wait 3 weeks longer then groups of equal skill to clear it or play the meta jobs.