Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[ty_taurus]

Aye, you raise a lot of accurate point.

Sigh... in the end, we are still back to the square one of "Encounter Design vs Class Design".

Now I realise that, the current healer kit is not part of the game's problem.
But rather, it's one of the symptoms of current FFXIV's bigger problems, "Encounter vs Class Design",
with other symptoms being boring gear progression, class homogenization, class simplification, overly reliance of reward to keep content relevant, raid parsing with 3rd party tool, boring dungeon, and etc etc.

Can't really solve healer issue, if CBU3 haven't found an idea what to do with current "Encounter vs Class Design" problem.

On the OGCD part, it would at the very least make a bit more sense if OGCD heals were what costed MP and GCD ones didn’t. Because GCD heals already have a cost—two costs generally: DPS and Mobilty.

[Rozeee]

Aye, you raise a lot of accurate point.

Sigh... in the end, we are still back to the square one of "Encounter Design vs Class Design".

Now I realise that, the current healer kit is not part of the game's problem.
But rather, it's one of the symptoms of current FFXIV's bigger problems, "Encounter vs Class Design",
with other symptoms being boring gear progression, class homogenization, class simplification, overly reliance of reward to keep content relevant, raid parsing with 3rd party tool, boring dungeon, and etc etc.

Can't really solve healer issue, if CBU3 haven't found an idea what to do with current "Encounter vs Class Design" problem.

IMO it's an issue of perception more than anything. If I'm a new player and i join a job-based game i would never expect 90% of the difficulty to come from the encounters. After all, what's the point of having one character that can play every job, but you flatten their identity so bad they feel the same (tanks and healers specifically)? It should never be encounter vs. class design, we had both in the past and it was called Stormblood. People can disagree on whether SE should focus on encounter/jobs, but the reality is that right now, encounter-focused design is poisoning the rest of the game. Level sync content? Your already lackluster kit is even thinner. Normal content? Almost 0 difficulty since the jobs are so easy. Nobody asked for this design direction. I didn't come to FFXIV to only play savage.

[Moqi]

that right now, encounter-focused design is poisoning the rest of the game. Level sync content? Your already lackluster kit is even thinner. Normal content? Almost 0 difficulty since the jobs are so easy.

Yep, there is no defending "encounter design" when most of the game is casual content that is purposely made braindead easy. You know DT won't suddenly have a difficulty spike after 10 years of smoothing any minor inconvenience might come your way. I'm susprised ice sprites are still in Stone Vigil.

[Maltothoris]

Indeed, I don't think they realized the humongous task ahead of them with trying to make all encounters more engaging when you realize how much there are. Following the trend in SHB, that's 12 dungeons and that would be 39 bosses and the respective mobs in all of them. Then we have the standard 12 raids, normal and savage. Then we have the 7 trials and then the 7 extreme trials as well. Then we have the alliance raids of 4 bosses each that's another 12 fights there too. Then we have either 1 or 2 ultimates. Then we have the miscellaneous content like variants or criterions and in that case that's another 7 fights as well at least one set, the 4 that are always in it and then the ones at the end of each path. That is a lot of encounters and they'd have to make sure that each one is fun according to their own statement.

[Aravell]

Indeed, I don't think they realized the humongous task ahead of them with trying to make all encounters more engaging when you realize how much there are. Following the trend in SHB, that's 12 dungeons and that would be 39 bosses and the respective mobs in all of them. Then we have the standard 12 raids, normal and savage. Then we have the 7 trials and then the 7 extreme trials as well. Then we have the alliance raids of 4 bosses each that's another 12 fights there too. Then we have either 1 or 2 ultimates. Then we have the miscellaneous content like variants or criterions and in that case that's another 7 fights as well at least one set, the 4 that are always in it and then the ones at the end of each path. That is a lot of encounters and they'd have to make sure that each one is fun according to their own statement.

If their idea of "engaging content" remains as "Were going to shove so many body checks into this fight you wouldn't believe it!", then I wouldn't call that engaging, the more appropriate word would be frustrating.

[Roda]

If their idea of "engaging content" remains as "Were going to shove so many body checks into this fight you wouldn't believe it!", then I wouldn't call that engaging, the more appropriate word would be frustrating.

Also debuff salad, don't forget debuff salad.

[Supersnow845]

Also debuff salad, don't forget debuff salad.

So sorry guys we can’t add back interesting DOT’s because too many debuffs

(Pls ignore the 8 deaths designs currently on the boss)

[Zadood]

IMO it's an issue of perception more than anything. If I'm a new player and i join a job-based game i would never expect 90% of the difficulty to come from the encounters. After all, what's the point of having one character that can play every job, but you flatten their identity so bad they feel the same (tanks and healers specifically)? It should never be encounter vs. class design, we had both in the past and it was called Stormblood. People can disagree on whether SE should focus on encounter/jobs, but the reality is that right now, encounter-focused design is poisoning the rest of the game. Level sync content? Your already lackluster kit is even thinner. Normal content? Almost 0 difficulty since the jobs are so easy. Nobody asked for this design direction. I didn't come to FFXIV to only play savage.

A travesty that I couldn't like/upvote your post more than one lol. As this post gave a lot info I have been missing.

Now, that you mention it, a lot of difficulty in this game does really come from encounter side alone.

I used to felt somewhat disconnected when a lot raider claim raiding is like a dance, and raider even outright claims that some savage is braindead easy, and could finish it with eye closed, yet when I try, I actually legit struggle and can barely finish the said braindead easy savage raid, much less so in consistency way.

Now, I has some clarity about it after you mention it.
It seems that if a player trying to solve raid mechanic "reactively", player might actually sabotage themselves, while the raid veterans usually "intergrate" their job action as "part of the mechanic".

For example how GCDs skill can fit in after raid mechanic X and before raid mechanic Y, and what OGCD skiill is ready to use after mechanc Y is resolved, etc etc

Of course some Savage Raid is going to be braindead easy if players raid like playing a Rhythm games.

[ty_taurus]

If their idea of "engaging content" remains as "Were going to shove so many body checks into this fight you wouldn't believe it!", then I wouldn't call that engaging, the more appropriate word would be frustrating.

They're all about erasing stress from every job slowly but surely, but when it comes to boss mechanics, they're more than happy to inject artificial stress, sometimes in very unintuitive ways that could be far more effectively accomplished in other ways.

[Aravell]

They're all about erasing stress from every job slowly but surely, but when it comes to boss mechanics, they're more than happy to inject artificial stress, sometimes in very unintuitive ways that could be far more effectively accomplished in other ways.

I really don't get the argument about "erasing stress" that they make, it's not like a real job, you don't get fired for underperforming and you have infinite retries, what's there to stress about? I think it's weird if someone is so stressed about being able to perform optimally that they require every job to be optimal performance in 4 buttons.