Anybody else got tired of scripted fights?

[Edax]

After 2-3 clears it feels less like I achieved something and more like I’m a circus monkey trained to do the same trick over and over for little to no reward. After 10 or so clears it all turns to a no-brainer, unless randoms are doing something wrong. But in a good group? You don’t even need to pay attention to what's happening, muscle memories will drag you to the win anyway. And so even the mechanics that looked interesting at first turns into an annoyance, nothing more. It is tiring.

You could say the same thing about Halo on Legendary. Once you know what to do, it's a no-brainer. But that's fair game design. If creating a game where if you do your homework and study your enemy and you perform no better than someone who goes into the fight blind, it would be considered unfair game design because the variables are outside of the player's control.

[Theodric]

Yes. Some of my favourite fights are those which have mechanics that can play out in different ways.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Not really, because when there is rng, people try their hardest to minimalize it as much as possible.

Look at wol ex, E8s.

Except, it doesn't look like you have done those so...

[Hatfright]

Look at wol ex, E8s.

Except, it doesn't look like you have done those so...

Not sure what that suppose to mean.

And, yeah, I know people always look for the easiest strat possible. I just wish there was more options to choose from.

[Derio]

WOL EX is probably the best fight in the whole game that caters to both casuals and hardcore.

[NanaWiloh]

Most MMO bosses are scripted in some form or fashion. You can find bosses who are completely Random like Ozma or a boss that has and ability they use at random. But even those bosses depending on the abilities have some scripting present to keep certain abilites from over lapping with other abilities.

[Genz]

Since around Titan.

But it's easier for the devs. Together with the overpowered healers and the fetishism on one-shots, it makes balancing easy.
FFXIV is exemplary in how it makes everything convenient for the devs.

[KageTokage]

I feel like just having more variance in the order of mechanics helps to spice things up; SoS EX being the most recent example.

Adrammelech was another interesting one in that his element combos differ on a fight to fight basis (Though he seems to always do a combo of water + fire/ice + wind/earth/lightning) and fundamentally alter how you execute the primary mechanic in the fight.

[Absurdity]

It's also an issue with how the game functions. WoW can get away with a random order of mechanics and split second movement because the hit detection updates basically in real time whereas in XIV you are heavily reliant on the server ticks, an invisible timer that determines whether or not you were standing in something by the time it updates.

Even within this system there is some kind of unreliability, let's call them "slow instances". Have you ever been in a fight you've done 10, 20, maybe 39 times but on the 40th you perform the exact same movements as before but suddenly get hit?

[Liam_Harper]

Have you ever been in a fight you've done 10, 20, maybe 39 times but on the 40th you perform the exact same movements as before but suddenly get hit?

Server ticks are frustrating.

Other things are animation times, like how in WoW you can press an interrupt ability or tank cd at literally 99% of the cast bar and it will work, but in FF you might use it at 80% and take the ability to the face. We all know the "but I pressed Benediction!" memes. Clipping is a big one, you don't really clip oGcds in WoW. There's also the way aoe heals and shields apply to party members 1 by 1, so 6 people might receive the heal and the last 2 die to the raidwide before it gets to them. And then the way Enix only likes to play the attack animation after the damage hit has been registered, so you've ran halfway across the room, appear to have dodged the blast and fall over dead.

I like FF14 but the combat is terribly clunky. Part of optimizing and high end play basically comes down to understanding how the system doesn't work and adjusting to it.