Do encounteres FEEL different now?

[Renathras]

I think it was more variable, but the difficulty was different. Generally speaking, the big X.0 fight in Ex form (Tordain, Shinryu, Hades) are typically beastmode "Ultimate-lite", but the rest of the Extremes are often...not, though the difficulty can vary a lot like you said.

But looking at the launch Extremes as an example, Bismark/Ravana, Susano/Lakshmi, Titania/Innocence, Hydaelyn/Zodiark; there are some pretty different changes. Hydaelyn is probably the hardest at level of the bunch both to figure out and do at level and gear that it came out in. Bismark I don't remember being hard, though that was a LONG time ago, so much as it's just a long fight. Susano was the first Extreme I farmed at level for the mount from (Bismark's I got later in the expansion when PF was doing stuff like hard farming stuff for achievement Tank mounts and Ex mounts and such), oddly, I felt Lakshmi was harder than Susano. Huh. Zodiark is a matter of if someone in the party gets it or not. If no one does, it's borderline impossible since it's total luck if the party meanders to a safe spot or not, but if even one person does, then the Dorito saves the party.

I guess I just feel the older fights were more of a "steady strain" of sustained decent play, while the newer ones are tighter on the in the moment responses to big comboes of "throwing the kitchen sink" at the party, complete with badly telegraphed moves (no telegraphs is supposed to be a Savage thing, not an Extreme thing), then a body check to fail if someone messed up, but then have these odd downtimes where nothing happens and everyone gets bored trying to pump out max DPS to meet the Enrage.

Contrast that with something like Bismark or the ARR Extremes that often didn't even have Enrage to speak of in the modern sense and it's just...quite different.

Again, Extremes seem more like Savages now (and Savages...a bit less like Savages, oddly), but there's now a content semi-gap as a result.

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I think what I didn't like about BarbEx is there's just so much going on at once - Savage people love this, but there's no chill. Contrast with Rubiex or Byakko that were just much more...chill, I guess? A more steady pace. There are places in BarbEx where there are something like 5-7 mechanics overlapping in short sequence and a lot of forced movement. Part of this is toolkit evolution - HW had FAR less movement tools, so fights could be a lot more turret-friendly, and indeed, had to be - but I feel like that was better and more enjoyable in a lot of ways.

I'd love to see a poll of this to see what people overall feel, but as I said in the OP, it's striking how much less people seem to be running Extremes this expansion vs the past two.

[Post]

I guess the discussion's happening here too, but they certainly have a habit of putting in cheat solutions for newer fights with interesting puzzles. I'd argue this starts in StB when almost every extreme or savage mechanic would target you based on your job role and not on other, non 'meta' parameters.

I'm sure this is fine for designers, especially when it comes to making content that can be approached and cleared by anyone without much trial and error, but it feels lame when it's used as a cop-out for why you have to adhere to the standard party comp, and straight ass when you're trying to clear a fight using a team of BLUs.

My least favorite fight for this design paradigm was e7s. That fight had so much goddamn puzzle potential when I ran it on normal, and then it ended up having only 2 permutations in savage. What a letdown!

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't know that there has ever been a 'puzzle' in a fight that hasn't had some cheat solution. The first one I can think of is Sophia Ex and her Quasar comets always drop for a weak push if the sides are odd/even, and the odd side always has a blue (worth 3 reds). I get that they couldn't make the even side have a blue in a 4/3 split, but like, they never bothered to have 4 red 3 red or 4 red 2 red or even 1 blue 4 red or whatever. They even mentioned something about having more patterns in the Unreal, but she's exactly the same right down to the cheat solution.

Hidden for sorta meandering complaining about some extremes:

I for one am running less extremes in the current expansion because overall they're less fun. I can't quantify that, but just in general, beating the boss is less fun. The last Extreme I beat until I had all the weapons for (never cared about the mount) was in StB and was Byakko, and that was a chore because of the inordinately long interphase that wasn't even appreciably different than normal mode, so it quickly became boring to actually play.

I think Hades is as much of a letdown as Endsinger when compared with Thordan and Shinryu Ex. Hades is probably more fun if you've not seen the mechanics he does, but from where I'm sitting all his fancy mechanics were basically solved by 'go to your clock position.' If you need to stack with someone else its 'dps rotate cw to the next person' and if you need a light party it's 'collapse to your healer on your side.' That fight also had way too much goddamn downtime. They also kept the whole transition from normal mode, so we got to hear a crazed man yell three separate lines separated by like 3 seconds of silence every time he transforms. They kept in the same button mashing "event" that was stale since StB, and to top it all, they added a minute long extra cutscene where he just kinda gets red and gets two more hands.

Compare this with Thordan Ex who got a unique theme, a medley of Ishgard, Azys Lla and Heroes, and the entire fight is introducing mechanics that he combines in unique ways on the back half, and Shinryu who requires you to have 360 degree awareness for most of the first half of the fight, flings you across a gap, and creates a goddamn bridge for you to sprint across in the 11th hour.

Hades was just a huge, huge letdown. At least it introduced getting 2 totems per clear, a recognition that it took too long and a silent affirmation that Extremes basically only exist at this point to give people that love to collect shit a slightly easier time getting another glowy mount to throw in their sack.

From a design standpoint, if fights exist to be re-cleared they should lean towards 'fun to execute' standpoint, imo. Especially extremes, given the catchup/raid-ready weapons and mounts. If there are any fights that should be puzzle-it-out fests, it should be Ultimates, because nobody but the first people through a fight are going to learn the puzzles for real, anyways. Think of how much folks hated the Slime boss in the Copperbell, it's sorta similar.

Actually, now that I think about it, the fact that Unreals have entirely skipped Ramuh and Moggle Mog kinda shows that their design standards have shifted drastically away from their early game, huh?

[Semirhage]

I think it's a weird issue with making the mechanics more "complicated". They keep narrowing the solution for mechanics (think Rubi EX circles). But the problem here is, the narrower the possible solution, the more predictable they have to make it. If the room is going to be blasted except for this one tiny chessboard square, you also need to make the solution recognizable fast enough that players can solve it in time. So you design your mechanics in such a way they have easy shortcuts to their solutions, and you end up with mechanics that *look* spectacular and barf a lot of information at you, but in the end it has 3 variations so you just stand here here or here.

[Yukimin]

The bosses will have a massive hitbox and teleport to the center of the arena after a big attack and you WILL like it.

[ty_taurus]

I think it's a weird issue with making the mechanics more "complicated". They keep narrowing the solution for mechanics (think Rubi EX circles). But the problem here is, the narrower the possible solution, the more predictable they have to make it. If the room is going to be blasted except for this one tiny chessboard square, you also need to make the solution recognizable fast enough that players can solve it in time. So you design your mechanics in such a way they have easy shortcuts to their solutions, and you end up with mechanics that *look* spectacular and barf a lot of information at you, but in the end it has 3 variations so you just stand here here or here.

Something I miss having are more examples of what I’ll refer to as “chaotic mechanics.” Where there are a lot of small, simple things happening all at once, but you can afford to get clipped and are expected to get clipped, and the party much more frequently has to tank manageable chip damage rather than massive bursts of damage followed by absolutely no damage at all. Think Moggle Mog extreme as the purest example of this, but not everything needs to be that of course. But another example is how A4S feels. That fight has issues, but I like the constant, random targeted AoEs during laser diffusion, and people constantly having to pop orbs. Constant, manageable chip damage that isn’t hard to heal, just makes things feel busy.

[ForsakenRoe]

Something I miss having are more examples of what I’ll refer to as “chaotic mechanics.” Where there are a lot of small, simple things happening all at once, but you can afford to get clipped and are expected to get clipped, and the party much more frequently has to tank manageable chip damage rather than massive bursts of damage followed by absolutely no damage at all. Think Moggle Mog extreme as the purest example of this, but not everything needs to be that of course. But another example is how A4S feels. That fight has issues, but I like the constant, random targeted AoEs during laser diffusion, and people constantly having to pop orbs. Constant, manageable chip damage that isn’t hard to heal, just makes things feel busy.

So basically, what you're saying is 'do more fight design like Barb EX and less like Rubi EX'

[Sparkthor]

I think both heavy puzzle fight and intense fight have their win and cons. And 'm pretty sure some people would enjoy one and not the other. As for me i like both, also because i usually love to try to solve puzzle by my own instead of sheeping a dorito.

[Renathras]

So basically, what you're saying is 'do more fight design like Barb EX and less like Rubi EX'

It might depend on the person, but I think it would be more "Do more fights like Ravana Ex or Susano Ex and less like Rubi Ex OR Barb Ex".

Someone brought this up in the General Discussion one that BarbEx was more of a Savage fight, not an Extreme, which is probably why Savage players like it, but that makes it bad design for Extremes.

I think both heavy puzzle fight and intense fight have their win and cons. And 'm pretty sure some people would enjoy one and not the other. As for me i like both, also because i usually love to try to solve puzzle by my own instead of sheeping a dorito.

I think this is what older fights did better.

The telegraphs and mechanics were somewhat more noticeable and obvious, and the fights were slower paced allowing players to take in what was going on and determine the solutions themselves. Higher paced fights where taking avoidable damage either kills you outright or kills you quickly (if you take two hits back to back or while you still have the Vuln stack) robs players of that agency. The end result is everyone either watches a guide made by people who have high performing Statics and throw themselves at the content for hours to figure it out (much like how they approach Savages and Ultimates...) or for the fights that allow it, follow the Dorito around.

In older fight designs, if you weren't in the right spot, it didn't mean a death sentence, and more forgiving mechanics with more obvious telegraphs meant that players often COULD figure them out on their own without needing a Static or guide, which is a far better system for encounters that aren't meant to be done by organized groups and that allow individuals to go in blind and piece together the fights on their own while not dragging down the party.

[Sparkthor]

It's really depend of the fight, but positionning and killing the party for few mistakes happened in some ARR ex.
- Titan Ex can easily throw you outside the arena which exclude you from the fight.
- Ifrit Ex healer flamme aoe can kill everyone, same as add to kill no to quick because vuln stack but not to slow because timer.

I would also say what guide is something pretty new : people went to spend less time in ex and went for guides very early. Also because guide came out more quickly and are spreading among the community. So I'm not sure is more due to design fight than just the community growing.

Lastly, i wonder if Ex fight were trully forgiving back in time : Garuda, Titan and Ifrit Ex are trials with ilvl 65 to 70. Entering in even with ilvl 110 mean having nearly twice as much HP than required, which really lower the overall difficulty in survivability, and also in DPS checks.

I really think on this topic, it's really hard to be objective because we are comparing recent fight with fight we've done more than 5 years ago in context.

[ty_taurus]

It was also nice to have fights where the optimal place to stand wasn’t everyone head deep in the boss’ colon except for the main tank. I liked Ramuh EX where the party had to stay apart, there was a designated spot to stand to dispel charm, and the bard would stay out in the water to bait charms and run back in for lightning attacks. Diamond Weapon was also pretty cool in that regard, but every savage fight lately is just, find the butthole and stay there. P2S was kinda cool, but everyone huddles together still.