Encounter Design needs to be overhauled at a fundamental level

[AdamFyi]

I see “random” being used in the OP, and I honestly don’t think that’s what people want. Look no further than Urth’s Fount as the epitome of how complete randomness would work in FFXIV. You might get four tank busters in a row to the face, or Odin could randomly decide to lock out melees for 15 seconds. Heck, we even have one example of a somewhat random mechanic that’s current that has been met with a lot of distaste: E8S’s Light Rampant.

The problem with wanting to add pure randomness is that it’s just fluff with the possibility of breaking a lot of things. That’s why the current encounter design has randomness set to specific mechanics — it allows more predictability without potentially breaking things. Random raidwides has the potential to break things significantly. What if it happens during a strong proximity aoe? What about during a heavy hitting stack marker? The current battle system just does not allow for these snap judgements. There’s also just not enough MP sustain to accommodate for it either. It would require a massive overhaul of the entire battle system for it to even remotely work.

[KageTokage]

XIV's encounters being static and the mechanics largely predictable or controllable is good in that it keeps the difficulty consistent.

Several encounters in WoW's earlier days had mechanics that could be easy or completely awful depending on how they decided to play out, as they originally did not have restrictions/rules in play to prevent scenarios like, say, all of your healers being temporarily forced to stop healing because of a mechanic targeting them while the tanks are getting pulverized.

[Daniolaut]

Overhaul the game!

No.

Square-Enix literally just ---removed---- a lot of the mechanics core to tanking, and have been doing so steadily over the years, because people fail to perform their tasks as a tank, and constantly encourage your meme nonsense "blue dps."

Look at some famous youtube/twitch users who claim "man mode" to be wise, while the community at large fails.

Meanwhile in Japan, clear rates are higher, as they do not encourage "speed/damage", but encourage party play, and success.

Healers are now failing to perform their healing roles letting tanks and dps die to mechanics they are not failing to perform. When literally they have only 2 single target damage spells..... healing is so simple and they still let tanks and dps die to mechanics they perform correctly. Or in other words, tanks dying to auto attacks or dps dying to raid wide attacks, because healer refuse to cast healing spells.


The more responsibility Square-Enix places on tanks and healers, the more the English community fails.

What they need to do is remove all dps spells from healers entirely and make the damage come from casting heals or off globals. Or conversely make damage spells also heal the party.....



Stop asking for changes when people are failing to perform and have success at large.

People need to realize their failures, accept wipes as learning experiences and ----stop---- failing to perform their role functions and trying to ignore mechanics.

[Shurrikhan]

...

None of this has anything to do with the OP except in that it's asking for a higher difficulty that makes responsibilities a clearer and more frontal issue, rather than something (that appears able) to be glossed over and you're saying that the NA/EU playerbases are, what, forever incapable of doing mechanics, even if they didn't seem so negligible or outweighed by the need for output that people ignore them?

[Boa-Noah]

What they need to do is remove all dps spells from healers entirely and make the damage come from casting heals or off globals.

That's a very bad idea, back when the game first came out Healers had basically no DPS and were very hard to level up or play at all without being in group content, they had to change things to give healers DPS and even then had to further incentive people to play a Healer class with mounts and achievements. Same for Tanks though less so, they still had to implement draws so more people would play Tanks including those nifty mounts again.

Personally I don't want to go back to those days.

[Jandor]

That's a very bad idea, back when the game first came out Healers had basically no DPS and were very hard to level up or play at all without being in group content, they had to change things to give healers DPS and even then had to further incentive people to play a Healer class with mounts and achievements. Same for Tanks though less so, they still had to implement draws so more people would play Tanks including those nifty mounts again.

Personally I don't want to go back to those days.

The healer level 30 mount was because the game was new and Conjurer is the only healing class. People can spec into Scholar at level 30, but that's no good when nearly everyone is a fresh level 1 and the first duty is level 15.

Also, I'm pretty sure healers had more damage skills back in 2.0 compared to today. What they did have significantly less of though, is instant heals and huge amounts of healing oGCDs.
There was also cleric stance to complicate things, if you wanted to DPS you had to be fairly confident no healing would be required for the next 10+ seconds (can't remember exact cleric stance CD, long enough to make you sweat if you buggered up the timing though.)

[Boa-Noah]

The healer level 30 mount was because the game was new and Conjurer is the only healing class. People can spec into Scholar at level 30, but that's no good when nearly everyone is a fresh level 1 and the first duty is level 15.

Also, I'm pretty sure healers had more damage skills back in 2.0 compared to today.

Well then my memory is wrong, I remember more than a few times that I'd come on the forums or see in-game chat from friends about how terrible being a healer was, I recall it being an absolute slog to get leveled up and a lot of people just straight up didn't want to level a healer because of it. Now I'm just wondering why the hell I remember that if Healers actually had DPS, it's probably because my friends were idiots now that I think about it, they did all jump servers and leave my ass behind so it's not that unlikely they weren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

[Shurrikhan]

Well then my memory is wrong, I remember more than a few times that I'd come on the forums or see in-game chat from friends about how terrible being a healer was, I recall it being an absolute slog to get leveled up and a lot of people just straight up didn't want to level a healer because of it. Now I'm just wondering why the hell I remember that if Healers actually had DPS, it's probably because my friends were idiots now that I think about it, they did all jump servers and leave my ass behind so it's not that unlikely they weren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

Even in ARR, CNJ->WHM had Stone*, Stone II, Aero I, Aero II, Fluid Aura, Cleric Stance, and later Holy as damage-related buttons. ACN/SCH had Ruin, Ruin II, Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II, Bane, Energy Drain, and Cleric Stance.

WHM now has Glare, Dia, Holy, Assize, and Afflatus Misery. SCH has Broil III, Biolysis, Art of War, and Energy Drain. In both cases, the level 50 kit was at least slightly larger. The level 60 kits were considerably larger.

Healers' relative damage, i.e. the percentage of a DPS's dps in a dummy fight, is relatively unchanged from back then.

[Billythepancake]

nonsense

Healers will ALWAYS need DPS abilities. Even outside of savage,there are solo story instances where DPSing is required. My class has been ruined enough this expansion, I don't need it thrown any further.down the hole, thanks.

Also, what's with this idea that "people are bad at the class so we need to dumb the class down to where a caveman could play it" I never see this suggestion for DPS, only tanks and healers. So what, if people can't pass a DPS check that's all fine and dandy, but if a tank forgets to CD once or a healer forgets to use a heal, God forbid that can't be a mistake or just a bad player, ruin the entire role.

Anyhow I have no issue with encounter design, I think it's fine enough. What I don't think is fine is that you have 2 roles that aren't designed for it, especially the green role. I would prefer them to design healers that both work and are fun in current content them to try and redesign the entire game.

[QooEr]

There seems to be a misconception about what unpredictable damage entails. Damage can be unpredictable even in scripted fights. Take living liquid in TEA for example, the damage the party takes during jagd dolls can vary depending on how fast players feed their doll and how much hp the doll had. This can be, of course, optimized, but the fact that the damage taken is unpredictable remains.

Back when boss autos could crit, the damage a tank took was unpredictable. Think about the fausts in alex savage or the autos from a9s at min ilv... The fight was easy but the healer had to actually pay attention about tanks hp, rather ignoring autoattacks like we always do now.

if more fights had mechanics where damage varied in frequency and/or intensity, that would make healing more interesting even if the fights are still scripted.