Redo FFXIV: Remove the dance, introduce RNG encounters

[Fyrebrand]

Amon (should be Amen, but I'll forgive them since they're eurocentric).

What? Why?

As for your idea, if I understand it correctly the boss would still do all the same attack patterns but the order it cycles through them would be random? I guess that could be mildly interesting for players who have memorized every boss encounter's attack order, but I think most players probably don't so it wouldn't make any difference to them.

Also, it would have to be compatible with Duty Support and Trusts. I don't see any obvious problem here, but then I'm not a programmer and have no idea how they've constructed that system so I can't say.

[Payotz]

If cbu3 doesn't want harder content then how about removing the scripted fights?
The solution is simple, remove the script and let boss encounters do mechanics randomly.

They can't do that because of a lot of reasons, some of them self-inflicted. A few off the top of my head are:

1. They can't do it because the game is literally just a Turn Based MMO. Think Runescape, but faster. Everything snapshots.
They'd have to slow down the execution of mechanics in order for the player to have enough time to run out of the snapshot, and that would make the raids easier, not harder.

2. The jobs themselves are designed for full uptime, and most of the jobs won't really work for random downtime phases, And SE designed the jobs this way

It's not like WoW where most jobs are actually built to have extra room for downtime. In FF14, you will generate 50 gauge/ stack charge/ just in time for your spender to go off cooldown as long as you press your 1-2-3s. And the scripted fights in FF14 accomodate for that job design. Kinda like this:

0:00 On pull you have 30 seconds to burst. This is where you pop your buffs and burst. The boss will do raid wides into tankbuster.
0:25 The boss starts casting the mechanic
0:30 -1:50 Raid Mechanic A
2:00 Pop all raid cooldowns. The boss will do raid wides into tankbuster.
2:25 The boss starts casting a mechanic
2:30 3:50 Raid Mechanic B
4:00 Pop all raid cooldowns. Boss will do raidwides into tankbuster.
repeat for 6 more minutes.
10:00 Soft enrage. Either mechanic or boss spamming raidwides. Pop all cooldowns and enrage.

Whether or not the fight design is a response to job design or vice-versa, I have no idea.

3. The target audience for the game won't like it, and that's the truth. Game's not designed for people who are searching for actual fights, it's designed for people who just want to memorize the choreography and have the same consistent experience every pull, either just so they don't have to feel bad for being bad at the game, or for getting high parses. They don't want inconsistencies in the encounter, they don't want hurdles, they want clean, well designed, linear experiences. That's just it.

[Amnmaat]

stuff

They already did what I'm suggesting in Seat of Sacrifice (Extreme). Definitely keeps everyone's brains engaged and debating what to prepare for next (even if it's something easy). The fact that we know that Shinryu will start with tidal wave is boring; that would be more surprising is that we don't know exactly when he'll use it.

As for designing the dance around job's cooldowns; so what? It's easy content; boohoo, a tank couldn't predictably predict the next tank buster and took some significant damage for once or someone missed their 2 minute burst phase, bit whoop. Might as well be playing a disney game.

So... you don't really want to remove the dance, you just want to randomize it?

Or in other words... sometimes it's more fun to first bring your knees in tight, and then put your hands on your hips?

Interesting...

Hahaha!

[Payotz]

Might as well be playing a disney game.

Pretty much yeah. FF14 is literally a disney game, and that's what the audience wants.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but the ship has sailed and they're never gonna steer towards the direction that we want. They're too arrogant for that.
You will play your 2 min meta with predictable mechanics, and you will like it.

[Noox-115]

That could be pretty sick form some bosses like Imagine random tankbuster here and there and Heal check coming out of nowhere that would be sick

[tymora]

iirc...
The Extreme fights used to be mostly RNG back in 1.x with a few HP % scripted moves before Yoshi-P took over.
It was pretty brutal. e.g. Ifrit could chain dashes back to back

One thing for fully RNG fights is that for them to remain "beatable" by most people, the variety of moves per fight has to be reduced.
After a few times at it, the fight gets boring too because of a lack of variety.

There is no win-win formula at all.

[Amnmaat]

Jojoya. A dance has a pattern to it.
Is rng-based rotation (for the bosses/enemies) still a dance? You will never know what comes next, you can guess but your chances are never 100% until the boss used all their mechanics except that last one they haven't used.

In the history of dancing there has never existed a dance where there's no pattern to it. If there has, please tell me.

[Jojoya]

Jojoya. A dance has a pattern to it.
Is rng-based rotation (for the bosses/enemies) still a dance? You will never know what comes next, you can guess but your chances are never 100% until the boss used all their mechanics except that last one they haven't used.

In the history of dancing there has never existed a dance where there's no pattern to it. If there has, please tell me.

I can remember one taught when I was in school but not the type of dance it was. The class's teacher enjoyed teaching dances from different parts of the world and most of them had strange names that an 8 year old would have a hard time remembering.

She explained to us that the dance was usually done with a live band. Lacking a live band, she had 3 different recordings of the music she would randomly pick between instead. Each music phase had its specific step order so there was an overall pattern. The difference was the phases of the music that could be played in any order and so that would change the order of the steps. Those dances would be more fun because we had to pay attention to the music instead of just repeating the same 4-5 steps over and over in a line or in a big circle for 3-4 minutes straight and we would frequently return to a step order that had already been done.

Even with a RNG rotation for bosses, you're still going to know the steps even if you don't know which one comes next. I don't think any game is going to develop a fight where the boss has more possible mechanics than there is time to do them. Fights will still have a limited number of steps and players will know what those steps are; all that might change is the order in which you do them.

Regardless, I'd support the idea of randomizing mechanics in a fight instead of repeating them in the same order over and over. E12S was a good example of it because a different combination of primals would mean reacting in a different fashion and there was no way to know what combination would be next. There's no reason it couldn't also be done in normal difficulty content though with mechanic combinations that would be less punishing if there was failure.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Honestly to me I think the fights need to be a bit less on position of patterns with bosses. Every boss has their own dance but you can hide that formulaic design where every mech isnt about every player being in almost the same position to solve the pattern. Its boring and this is something that Ive quickly noticed regarding FFXIV's savage progs, where its always about each member making sure they solve their mech or else wipe and making sure you dont get enough damage downs to get through the dps check. Which Im also going to say that having every savage boss need a dps check is just...lazy.

To me, this is not fun. I'm not trying to say to make the fights easier, but more as in make the fights be less restrictive, because I cant be the only one who truly believes these savage boss designs where it follows the same formula and dps checks isnt getting stale. Im not an encounter designer so I wont pretend to throw in a solution but I just wanted to express how I felt as somebody who tried to get into the savage raid tiers but gave up because of this and the terrible loot reward system