Anybody else got tired of scripted fights?

[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.

[MicahZerrshia]

Hm? There's even an MMO without scripted fights? All the things you mentioned appear in other MMOs too...

The thing that XIV would benefit, though are unique mechanics in the fights. In the end, all we got are variations of the same telegraphs... But then, there's the whole sphagetti code limitation that might or might not play a role in how homogenized the combat mechanics are.

My experience with various mmos is limited since I find one and tend to settle in, but FFXI still doesn't have scripted fights with even the new content they add. There are big attacks that happen when hp hits certain amounts for some bosses but that's the limit of them being scripted. Most bosses and regular enemies have a TP system like the player and a certain set of abilities to go along with them and after that its for the most part random as to what they use.

And ffxi is still surprisingly populated for a 20 year old mmo.

[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.

[RajNish]

Coming from WoW and SWTOR it's the same over there.

Do you remember "The Ravagers"? The idea of having an off-tank carrying barrels of alcohol to lure pirates into mine zones was just fine. Or Operator IX from "Terror From Beyond", when you worked with consoles to unlock the cores defense or Deletion Protocol phase in HM version? Or mechanic from "Eternity Vault", when you need to break the boss's shield by fragments of a falling columns, the trajectory of their fall was guessed only by the shadow on the floor. Or puzzle with Ancient Pylons?

FF 14 has similar mechanics in the some dungeons also, like mini game with Ichorous Ire in "Copperbell Mines" or Yeti from "Snowcloak" or Strix in "The Great Gubal Library" (Hard), Yojimbo in "Kugane Castle". I really enjoyed these fights and come back to them with pleasure no matter that they are low-lvl and simple. It would be great if the developers made such mini-games in boss fights again, especially in more complex content in future.

[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?

[NanaWiloh]

Do you remember "The Ravagers"? The idea of having an off-tank carrying barrels of alcohol to lure pirates into mine zones was just fine. Or Operator IX from "Terror From Beyond", when you worked with consoles to unlock the cores defense or Deletion Protocol phase in HM version? Or mechanic from "Eternity Vault", when you need to break the boss's shield by fragments of a falling columns, the trajectory of their fall was guessed only by the shadow on the floor. Or puzzle with Ancient Pylons?

FF 14 has similar mechanics in the some dungeons also, like mini game with Ichorous Ire in "Copperbell Mines" or Yeti from "Snowcloak" or Strix in "The Great Gubal Library" (Hard), Yojimbo in "Kugane Castle". I really enjoyed these fights and come back to them with pleasure no matter that they are low-lvl and simple. It would be great if the developers made such mini-games in boss fights again, especially in more complex content in future.

Funniest hardmoe trigger I have ever encountered was Mimirons hard mode trigger in world of warcraft. Giant red button behind him that you would push to trigger it and listen to Mimiron freak out over you pushing it. lol

[Limecat]

It would be more interesting if the AI ran off a tree chart instead of a linear script, and to compensate for the lack of predictability they removed things like insta-gib attacks(and otherwise changed things that often result in cascading failure states to things that can be recovered from reliably by a knowledgeable group).

[linayar]

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.

I don't really do any content in FFXIV often enough for muscle memory to drag me to the win or be annoyed at repeating it. And I don't mind scripted fights because I like to know more about a fight if I have to repeat it, especially since, with my schedule, I often play late at night when I'm already tired from work.

As for sense of achievement, I always get it on my first clear of a new content, and I don't really need it for subsequent clears, because it's replaced with a sense of knowing more about the content, until I forget due to time.

Like tonight, I was just reminded of how certain mechanics work in Innocence normal trial, and I got a good feeling about that while feeling silly at the same time as I knew about it last year.

Also, doing a fight with random players give enough level of variety for me that I can appreciate more often than not without needing the fight itself to be too random.