What would the game be life if everythign was single target?

[Pognar]

Death is what i think would happen

[TheMightyMollusk]

Sounds really boring.

[tdb]

There would be no point in pulling more than one pack at a time because the DPS would have to kill mobs one by one anyway. It wouldn't change the survivability of mass pulls, provided that the DPS and the tank coordinate on picking mobs to attack, but pulling more than the absolute minimum would mean the healer would have to heal more and DPS less, so things would take longer to kill. More competence would be required from tanks because of healer aggro; some rotating between mobs would be necessary to keep them off the healer. On the other hand, if everything else was left as it is, there might be very little need for heals. Dungeon runs would take longer, maybe 30-40 minutes instead of the current 15-20 minutes.

[StriderShinryu]

I think it could work if the game was designed around it. As is, sure it wouldn't work very well, but if the design encouraged smaller pulls by reducing the GCD and upping single target damage on both players and enemies it wouldn't be all that bad. In fact, it could make the combat more dynamic and fun. Force players to pick and choose the most dangerous targets. Force use of CC moves. Force tanks to concentrate more on gaining and holding aggro on multiple targets. Force the party to cooperate on target selection. Etc.

[Aldora]

If I recall correctly there wasn't plans to have AoE spells when they first redesigned Ff14 but added them later in development. If you notice it wasn't until later expansions we got proper AoE toolkits.

During 1.0 (before the jobs were introduced) we didn't have any spells specifically for AoE damage or healing. We had spells with which could toggle between "Single Target" or "Area of Effect". You would have to select the spell you wanted to use and toggle between the desired effects before you would conform the spell cast. This would only be available for certain spells, not all of them.

AOE Visual Overlay and AOE Toggle Improvements (sample pic)
Here's another quick UI suggestion, this time to improve the AOE mechanic in the game.

Visual mockup HERE:



Problems with the current AOE toggle:

It's cumbersome to use since the only time it shows up is right before you cast a spell.

The actual "area" of effect is oftentimes hard to discern.

Solutions:

Have the AOE toggle button be present all the time, so that no matter what you are doing, pressing the 'z' hotkey toggles AOE on or off. This would help to prevent confusion.

Have a subtle graphical overlay showing the actual area of your spell.

Have additional subtargets show you clearly which other mobs are going to be hit with your AOE spell.

Since the introduction of the Job system in 1.21 the toggle button was removed and we received specific spells for Single Target or Area of Effect usage. From that moment on, these were always in their design but there weren't that many of them at the start of 2.x. This resulted in mostly spamming 1 or 2 buttons and applying a DoT here and there. It was only with later expansion packs where they added more AoE abilities / spells, condensed them with the battle changes of a new expansion pack and finally "reintroducing" / expanding on them with Shadowbringers.

[Liam_Harper]

Dungeon runs would take longer, maybe 30-40 minutes instead of the current 15-20 minutes.

I think this is an exaggeration personally. Judging from Offensive Mastery Squadrons, which rarely aoe but can shred through Aurum Vale or Sohm Ahl in 12 minutes, a decent group could clear a dungeon in reasonable time, maybe losing 5-10 minutes or so. 40 minute groups with players who don't aoe are usually because those players are just awful in general and not putting out single target burst either.

DoT's would probably see use, tanks would have to rotate through each mob in the pack for aggro, maybe marking an initial focus target and healers could go all out on dps. Overall probably a bit more boring, but there would be room for designing danger mobs and requiring CC.

Healing has interesting aspects in raids. You'd certainly need to heal more since a raidwide could demand up to 8 single target heals. You'd want to communicate with your co-heal, such as assigning a tank and 2 dps each. Mitigation would gain major importance and Bloodbath, Second Wind, Addle and tank raid defensives would make a very noticeable difference. There are merits to reducing the aoe toolkit, currently aoe heals are ridiculously strong to the point that just spamming Medica II blindly is getting many inexperienced players Savage tier clears.

[Videra]

I'll pass.

[Absurdity]

I think this is an exaggeration personally. Judging from Offensive Mastery Squadrons, which rarely aoe but can shred through Aurum Vale or Sohm Ahl in 12 minutes, a decent group could clear a dungeon in reasonable time, maybe losing 5-10 minutes or so. 40 minute groups with players who don't aoe are usually because those players are just awful in general and not putting out single target burst either.

Keep in mind that Squadrons with fully maxed Offensive Mastery deal significantly more damage than players would do at lower levels and have access to skills that players do not.

[Jojoya]

Keep in mind that Squadrons with fully maxed Offensive Mastery deal significantly more damage than players would do at lower levels and have access to skills that players do not.

They're also able to ignore most AoEs as they take greatly reduced damage. They don't lose DPS trying to dodge mechanics unless the player instructs them to withdraw.

On the other hand, they don't really think for themselves. They target the first enemy to hit their enmity table even if that's not the best one to kill first - and that's not always the same enemy for all of them. They lack the coordination an alert group of players would have.

I doubt dungeons would take as long as people fear, especially since dungeons would get redesigned around the lack of AoE. If someone wants the challenge of clearing dungeons in their current design without AoE, they can always form a party with like-minded players and remove all their AoE actions from their hotbars and keybinds to see what the result would be