Thread: will midcore encounter design get any better in 7.0?

back in sb and shb savage and extreme content was good midcore content that was fun to prog. you had to learn how to optimize, how to avoid downtime, memorize how a boss would move so you wouldn't lose any gcds. wall bosses were mostly one per floor, and boss hitboxes weren't the size of a house.

nowadays in endwalker (at least in abyssos, anabaseios, golbez ex, and likely zeromus ex) the boss will either:

a) be wall
b) have a ginormous hitbox so you almost never lose uptime (except in rare fringe cases like in p8 with dog1->snake1->dog2->snake2) and will typically go untargetable during high movement mechanics (dog1,

this has removed almost all nuance in encounter design. mechanics have been reduced to where it's either pass or fail. you are only as consistent as your least consistent player. you are punished with a wipe even if you do nothing wrong. it's not fun, and i don't think this kind of design philosophy has a place in midcore content. keep it in ultimates

I think extremes are fun as a healer (AST main) but once a fight is figured out it's too monotonous. Savage can be fun but I personally don't like that all it is is DDR. There is no real strategy and if one messes up all die. I'd rather have more interesting RPG mechanics like poison or doom than stand here or die. I liked Silkie because of the bleed for instance. Or Barby for how phrenetic it was. Also pulse damage.

Doesn't change the fact that AST is in absolute shambles. I still believe that I'd you were to transplant the current job design into a single player game it would flop.

Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

back in sb and shb savage and extreme content was good midcore content that was fun to prog. you had to learn how to optimize, how to avoid downtime, memorize how a boss would move so you wouldn't lose any gcds. wall bosses were mostly one per floor, and boss hitboxes weren't the size of a house.

nowadays in endwalker (at least in abyssos, anabaseios, golbez ex, and likely zeromus ex) the boss will either:

a) be wall
b) have a ginormous hitbox so you almost never lose uptime (except in rare fringe cases like in p8 with dog1->snake1->dog2->snake2) and will typically go untargetable during high movement mechanics (dog1,

this has removed almost all nuance in encounter design. mechanics have been reduced to where it's either pass or fail. you are only as consistent as your least consistent player. you are punished with a wipe even if you do nothing wrong. it's not fun, and i don't think this kind of design philosophy has a place in midcore content. keep it in ultimates

excuse me the last thing ultimates need is having ginormous hitboxes so you never lose uptime, it's already boring enough

how about we don't have ginormous hitboxes anywhere in the game ?

Originally Posted by Avoidy

I feel like these instances add up and paint a picture for the developers

The wrong picture ?

Heavensward and Stormblood grew just fine. Shadowbringers grew as much as HW and SB percentage-wise. EW didn't grow at all outside of the WoW influx which all left already. Did this new direction actually do anything ? If the game keeps growing 30-50% in population whether you have hard or easy jobs, that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with whether the jobs are hard or easy does it ?

Most of the design direction around raid content dates back to Stormblood.

Generally speaking, there's a longstanding push from the playerbase that the 'theoretical maximum' dps of an encounter should be practically achievable. Forced downtime mechanics are frowned upon because if a boss has a targetable hitbox, players expect to be able to maintain full uptime despite mechanics. RNG elements are equally frowned upon because they're clearly the only thing preventing the average player from achieving the top 1% performance. WAR players complained endlessly about how unfair Crit/DH was on their clears back in Stormblood until it was effectively removed, and SAM players did the same this expansion. The players are the ones pushing for more predictable design elements, as part of a quest to achieving one ideal clear on every fight. If we stop caring about best performances and look at consistency instead, then this won't be an issue.

I mean, I'd say we have a plethora of enjoyable midcore content in the game. The problem is that they really never made an effort to future proof it and now everything melts without giving the chance for the bosses to use their mechanics. I mean, do CT and there's still plenty of people who die to Behemoth's meteor, and even MORE in ST who have no idea how to survive Amon's Curtain Call, but it doesn't matter because nowadays they die so fast that the chances of having to deal with the consequences of failure are minimal.

I mean, now that the Tomestone event is up and I'm getting more than ARR Alliance Raids, I am impressed by the amount of times we have wiped, and it surprisingly did the encounter more fun for everyone because people were discovering things they had never seen before and created some fun memorable moments, like being blown away from Deathgaze's arena the exact moment he died because the ice dissapears once his HP hits 0% but the Aero still goes off. Of course things get easier after you understand how to do them, but encounters are hectic enough that they keep you on your toes without risking becoming a wipefest.

I'm still progressing through SB, but the Alexander raids are proof that moderately challenging content doesn't matters if the current scaling makes it so you can faceroll half of it. Alexander Prime is still a challenging encounter for most players and the boss doesn't dies immediately so you actually have to do the mechanics, same with the boss that uses reassembly.

Originally Posted by Mcg55ss

I mean it wasn't a flop it was a massive success with over 90%+ approval rating across the board. Square enix said it didn't sound enough copies because as normal they overshoot their estimates every game which this is a known issue they always tend to overestimate their sales but to say the game got shredded is delusional.

To me its more like the game came out and people quickly just stopped talking about it. But in true SE fashion, the game's budget likely ballooned out of control, especially on marketing so there's a high chance the game wasn't actually all that profitable for them.

Final Fantasy as a brand and IP also doesn't really have a lot of staying power anymore. People get more excited to see "FFVII" or "FFXIV" then they do to see "FF", thanks to the plethora of mediocre games and questionable decisions they've made in the past 20 years that split the fan base time and time again. I don't think using the Final Fantasy name in this regard will lead to them getting free critical acclaim status like other companies can do with their IPs. No one really cares about FF as a brand anymore, just its individual entries that remained popular, and they're even ruining that by mistreating the ones that are popular with such wonderful projects like FF7:Fortnite Soldier.

The incredibly mid post release support of Endwalker also isn't helping things.

Originally Posted by Oizen

To me its more like the game came out and people quickly just stopped talking about it. But in true SE fashion, the game's budget likely ballooned out of control, especially on marketing so there's a high chance the game wasn't actually all that profitable for them.

Final Fantasy as a brand and IP also doesn't really have a lot of staying power anymore. People get more excited to see "FFVII" or "FFXIV" then they do to see "FF", thanks to the plethora of mediocre games and questionable decisions they've made in the past 20 years that split the fan base time and time again. I don't think using the Final Fantasy name in this regard will lead to them getting free critical acclaim status like other companies can do with their IPs. No one really cares about FF as a brand anymore, just its individual entries that remained popular, and they're even ruining that by mistreating the ones that are popular with such wonderful projects like FF7:Fortnite Soldier.

The incredibly mid post release support of Endwalker also isn't helping things.

I mean you literally just describe 98% of solo player games. Most solo player experiences are you play through it you experience the game complete whatever side quests you want to whether all or none and then once it's done it's done. Very few single player game have staying power past the first few week of release and usually those that do are exceptional. Now has FF had mediocre titles yea...but it's not a new thing FF8 was good for 2 disc then fell flat. Final fantasy 16 only has few problems and that it only released for PS5 is a major one, it will get a second Spike when it comes to Xbox and PC,