Do encounteres (specifically Extremes) FEEL different now?

[Jeeqbit]

So in terms of which one you enjoyed better? Which would you pick? To me Titania was the far better fight imo.

Mechanically, Titania. But aesthetically, I wanted to exhaust the memory of Innocence because the music and the feeling in it is amazing and we might not get anything quite like it again, or Shadowbringers as a whole for that matter.

Unfortunately, I got Titania's mount after only about 30 runs so I cut it shorter than normal.

[Hyperia]

The last good feeling EX trial was Hyadelyn and after that, they started to go downhill from there for me, especially Endsinger, that was such a letdown... I wanted the awesome music.

The most recent EX with all the fire line patterns confused the heck out of me and after several days of attempting it, I gave up, it's just not worth the stress of trying to figure it out. I was told that it's all about memorizing a pattern but I am horrible at memorization so I play jobs where I can react, if I do have to memorize, it takes days or longer to commit it all to memory.

It feels like they put all their attention into 6.0 and after that they checked out. I hope they are all working on 7.0 but we all know the rumors about 16, and if it's true, that's such a shame. My playtime of the game is on life support, and this is the first time... the absolute first time... I am not looking forward to a patch with excitement but rather apathy. In the past, I took time off to play the game on patch days but now, I'll look at it after I'm done with my chores after work, if even then.

I love this game and have been playing since 2.0 launch but, the game just doesn't feel like the fun it was in the past.

[Renathras]

Titania has randomness on whether you're NE or NW (as tank/healer) for the tether break in the add phase, or which of the puddles to stand in for the stack fists in phase 2, or where to stand to best dodge Shiva (if you're not just standing in it like everyone ended up doing). Hyadelyn has randomness on whether the NE or NW crystal is going to flare up first, which element she'll use (therefore which of stack/spread/LPs to do after the mechanic) and which corner is 'safe' for Flood of Light.

Right, but that's why I said the other part:

When I use the word "orderly" I mean a combination of three things - (1) party coordination required, (2) punishment for failure, (3) how constrained the randomness is/how consistent the mechanic order and execution is. More orderly fights tend to require more coordination, but are essentially the same, or very close to the same, every time you run them. Titania's only real variations are the in/out and which way the vines run and the party has to stack for the light party hits. The fight is pretty much "you know the dance steps, it's the same every time with minor variations". While every fight ultimately isn't TOTAL chaos - they can only be so random - some have more variations on the possible mechanics and the mechanics can be different levels of punishing. Zodiark's rotations being random is more significant and harder to react to than Titania's in/out being randomly chose (and in THAT case you know what the NEXT one will be because they're paired).

The "randomness" of Titania is "it's this OR it's this". Not, "It's this OR this OR this OR this", and a lot of it is "use A then B or B than A" meaning if you see one, you know what the other will be.

Hydaelyn's stances, as I pointed out, aren't as random as they seem. She often is limited to using only one of two stances for large portions of the fight, and sometimes only one, I believe, and her elements are only random in which order she uses the three at the start of the fight, as later parts of the fight her specific element is scripted.

It's still less chaotic than Zodiark or Innocence.

The only mechanic in Hydaelyn that comes to mind as 'one person can cause a wipe with their actions' is if a healer stacks with the wrong group for Water.

If the Healers stack wrong OR not enough people in the light parties (this mechanic repeats about 4 times).
If someone overlaps their ice with one or two people, especially key people (Tank/Healer).
If someone from the role cleaves stacks with the wrong group.
If people don't spread enough for the post-stack spread in the final phase (this happens twice AND with a Light Party stack mixed in it).

That's a bit more than "just if a healer stacks with the wrong group".

Oh, and in Innocence, one person CAN wipe the party by aiming the stack laser wrong when there's all 4 balls

Have I not mentioned this multiple times already? Like, I specifically mentioned that's the only real way for one player to cause a wipe in Innocence MULTIPLE times. The only other is running a sword line through the middle of the party, but people can avoid that, technically.

Not that it matters to me, I go by EX1 and EX2 based on 'when you encounter them while doing the story'

Yeah, so the least reliable and most pointless way to compare fights, as I described above. Got it.
(Also, not to be snippy, but considering how you keep harping on this: It clearly matters enough to you to keep bringing the point up...probably because it's useful to the argument you're making. If it didn't matter, you would have dropped it by now. I just always shake my head when someone says "Not that it matters to me..." but then won't let it go, meaning it clearly matters to them.)

Funny that your 'pattern' falls apart at SB though,

Not really. As I pointed out, in SB they were both more constrained. Further, as Jeeqbit pointed out, it was in ShB when they made that transition. "We're doing this going forward" is, indeed, how patterns form.

HW was before the current paradigm, which was proto-typed in SB and solidified in ShB. We've had these conversations before, you know all this. /shrug

.

In any case, I think the general agreement is that things have changed and gotten more difficult. Some people kind of brush this off a bit by noting the playerbase is more skilled in general, especially coordinated groups/Statics/raiders, but I think the problem comes down to "Okay, so what's the difficulty between Normal and Extreme?"

But then, they've needed to add something in that gap for a long time anyway...

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeah, so the least reliable and most pointless way to compare fights, as I described above. Got it.

If it was the least reliable and most pointless way, then the playerbase wouldn't have stuck with it for all these years. You remind me of the people who said we should use V1-12 for Omega raids, because that's what the game called them. Well, until Sigmascape 1-2-3-4 came out and threw a wrench in the idea, but most people had already accepted just calling it O1-12 anyway because it makes sense. If Coils had come out nowadays, we'd likely call them B1-12 instead of T for Turns but that's kinda grandfathered in now

And yeh, patterns start somewhere, but until next expansion does the same thing, I would chalk it up to coincidence. And I say would, because I still don't see how Innocence is 'chaotic' in any definition of the word, it's about as on rails as it gets. Or Zodiark, yes the 'safe spot' is different based on the positioning of the snakes and behemoths and such, but the order of 'what is in this set' is the same every time. The fourth set is always snakes + diagonal behemoths + diagonal quetzalcoatls (example, idk exactly what it is for that one because ive not done it since finishing mount farm), just like how Hyadelyn decides that during the green line stuff on the floor with the balls, it's always ice there. Or during the DNC bit with the three fans of lines it's always water. Stuff 'looks' random, but there's always some kind of pattern if you look enough. And if your line in the sand of what is 'chaotic' versus not is just how many options it can be, of 'it can be A or B or C or D', how many is that critical number where it suddenly swaps from orderly to chaotic? If a mechanic has 4 potential safespots, and another has 8 potential safespots, is the one with 8 potential safespots 'more chaotic' because the number is bigger? It's incredibly bizarre logic to me

And if they have accidentally made EX trials be 'comparable to first savage fight difficulty', they could bump the normal mode of the trial up to be the stepping stone between normal raid and savage raid. Or normal trial > normal raid > EX trial > Savage 1 2 3 4 works too. Making the normal mode raids a little harder since they're 'optional' would probably be the better plan. And it's not like it's an alien idea since they did it in the past. Did you know O1 normal has a 13 minute enrage timer? Me either till someone in my FC said they hit it trying to solo it synced as BLU to learn Blaze. 13 minutes on something as empty of mechanics as O1 normal is pretty lenient but it's still something to ensure people have at least a certain level of skill. It's kinda sad that seeing the enrage in the 24man was a 'whoa enrage in casual content that's crazy' like it's some kind of revolutionary idea

And no, it does not matter to me. I call them EX1 and EX2, or just the name of the actual boss. Same as 99.9% of the playerbase does. It doesn't matter to me if someone calls it 'in' or 'dynamo' or 'the exact name on the castbar, for the fight we're currently in'. I know they mean 'get close to the boss now' in all cases. I don't go out of my way to go 'ackshually you don't mean in it is referred to as dynamo as a reference to Turn 9 of the Binding Coils of Bahamut where the boss Nael Van Darnus used Lunar Dynamo, creating a donut shaped AOE' because that's a ridiculous stance to take. Instead I go 'ah they said dynamo that means in' and then I go in

edit: asked some people, some responded with the same 'pairing based on scriptedness of where to stand', maybe it is a me problem after all

I love this game and have been playing since 2.0 launch but, the game just doesn't feel like the fun it was in the past.

The word you're looking for might be 'it feels sterile', like the color has been sucked out of it, maybe? Which, considering we spent 2 years with a story about how a massive part of a world was canvassed in 'sterile, blank perfection' resulting in it being inhospitable to life itself, is kinda ironic when you think about it

[Renathras]

If it was the least reliable and most pointless way, then the playerbase wouldn't have stuck with it for all these years.

As a method of LABELING, not a method of COMPARING. Has the playerbase (as a whole) compared Susano to Titania and Lakshmi to Innocence? No? Are you SURE? Since BOTH were called "Ex1/Ex2", respectively. It's almost like people don't use the terms for that. Gee, I wonder why. Maybe because people weren't running those specific comparisons and so it wasn't relevant? Maybe because the Devs hadn't made their statement about their intended design goals? Maybe because the mechanics of the encounters didn't align that way?

Maybe because it wasn't what they were doing, so the nomenclature didn't matter.

You remind me of the people that say "Well, the dictionary definition of irony is 'The use of something other than it's literal intention', so no, your 'irony' isn't REALLY irony!"

I've outright explained why the way I'm doing it makes sense, complete with comparisons of fight mechanics. You don't want it to be true because it makes the argument "they've always been this way" less tenable. I get that. I don't care, though; I'm more concerned with what like things have changed over time from and into, since that's the point of the discussion, not "Well, the PLAYERBASE uses THIS TERM for this, therefore, it MUST be this and cannot be anything else!"

And yeh, patterns start somewhere, but until next expansion does the same thing, I would chalk it up to coincidence.

That would be a valid approach (2 dots to sketch a line, 3 to confirm) if the Devs hadn't stated their pattern (gave you the equation of the line so you could sketch it in its entirety with certainty). We know that EW is a direct continuation of ShB paradigms and design structure (SEE: Healers), and that Yoshi P has been pretty consistent on this ([paraphrase]"Change it? No, we think we're going to continue what we're doing." and the like). Absent a statement that they've chosen to go a different direction, AND combined with the nature of the fights as we've discussed (or as I've discussed and you insisted is irrelevant because "the playerbase" uses terms that means fights can't POSSIBLY be similar based on anything else, like, say, mechanics /s) lining up the way that I group them, it seems the most logical way to view the fights.

And I say would, because I still don't see how Innocence is 'chaotic' in any definition of the word, it's about as on rails as it gets. Or Zodiark, yes the 'safe spot' is different based on the positioning of the snakes and behemoths and such, but the order of 'what is in this set' is the same every time.

And I addressed this too.
In that same quote.
Which you apparently haven't read twice now... <_<

When I use the word "orderly" I mean a combination of three things - (1) party coordination required, (2) punishment for failure, (3) how constrained the randomness is/how consistent the mechanic order and execution is. More orderly fights tend to require more coordination, but are essentially the same, or very close to the same, every time you run them. Titania's only real variations are the in/out and which way the vines run and the party has to stack for the light party hits. The fight is pretty much "you know the dance steps, it's the same every time with minor variations". While every fight ultimately isn't TOTAL chaos - they can only be so random - some have more variations on the possible mechanics and the mechanics can be different levels of punishing. Zodiark's rotations being random is more significant and harder to react to than Titania's in/out being randomly chose (and in THAT case you know what the NEXT one will be because they're paired).

[Emphasis/bold added so you can see the important part you seem not to have read...]

And if they have accidentally made EX trials be 'comparable to first savage fight difficulty', they could bump the normal mode of the trial up to be the stepping stone between normal raid and savage raid.

That makes no sense. o.O

"The gap is too big between Normal and Savage(Extreme, but whatever). People aren't able to make the difficulty jump and they need a shallower ramp to get from MSQ to Normal to Extreme. So let's make Normal up to Extreme!" That's not making a step, that's just making the big step on the bottom instead, which doesn't improve the situation. If you have a stairway in your house that only has steps 1, 2, 7, and 10, making step 7 into 9 and 2 into 7 doesn't fix the problem. And you can't mean make 2 into 4 while we make 7 into 9, since we're still missing steps 5-8 AND now people that wanted a difficulty around 7 have nothing. The people that previously had and enjoyed step 7.

That makes absolutely no sense.

The best solution is probably just to add another difficulty in between: Something people have been asking for since at least SB, and possibly as far back as HW...

And no, it does not matter to me.

Again, clearly it does. I fit didn't, you wouldn't keep insisting on it...

edit: asked some people, some responded with the same 'pairing based on scriptedness of where to stand', maybe it is a me problem after all

....

Oh.

Fair enough, then. I...honestly appreciate you asking around and then saying this here.

/shrug

You may be right that the words "order/orderly" and "chaotic" aren't perfect descriptors, but I think/hope they're close enough to whatever the "best" words are that the point still gets across and can be discussed. Fair enough?