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

Originally Posted by Renathras

Never tried Savage before EW but been doing Extremes since HW. You telling me I could have been clearing 2 fights of Savages for all these expansions? Extremes used not to have a lot of the things they have now. I'm not sure when they decided body checks were a good idea (Emerald Weapon, maybe?), but they used not to be as much of a focus as they are now. The used to feel a lot more approachable and allowed a lot more room for errors.

Nidhogg EX and Shinryu EX on release were harder to prog than P6S or even P7S. Some tiers have absolute stinker 3rd fights. Actually, more tiers than not have stinker 3rd fights, it's like SE peaked in SB and it's been downhill since. Compare Halicarnassus, Guardian and Omega-Beetle to things like Agdistis, Fatebreaker, or god forbid, the E7S bird tornado. 3rd fights in this game have an annoying design tendency to fall into a trap of 'do comparatively simple things for the first 60% of the fight, and then have all the complexity of the mechanics backloaded as hell', making progging annoying (go through 6 mins of sod all to get back to Deaths Harvest in P7S, only to immediately wipe to it again), and farming boring because you skip parts of said backloaded complexity. Like Fatebreaker, Cycles were interesting in earlier farm, but by the time everyone started getting gear, you'd start skipping some of them

You could argue P11S is in a similar boat of 'it's easier to prog than 'NidEX on release', having only 3 'prog points' of Shadowed Messengers, Dark and Light, Letter of the Law, but P10S is the filter of the tier that you have to get through first

Body checks have existed since like, HW. Nidhogg Fang/Claw phase, Zurvan meteors etc. The difference is that the modern body checks are instant pass-fail checks with no chance to make up for the 'failure', eg by overshielding the heck out of a Zurvan meteor getting missed. Body checks themselves are not the issue, SE's reliance on 'you need 8 people alive going into this or you're instantly die' is

Originally Posted by Duskane

honestly some EXs could be classed as Hard modes like lackshimi

Thanks to the way ilvl sync works, by the end of the expansion it was faster to kill Lak EX than it was to kill the story mode version, because HM synced you to level 69

Originally Posted by Renathras

Hm...sure about that?

Never tried Savage before EW but been doing Extremes since HW. You telling me I could have been clearing 2 fights of Savages for all these expansions? Extremes used not to have a lot of the things they have now. I'm not sure when they decided body checks were a good idea (Emerald Weapon, maybe?), but they used not to be as much of a focus as they are now. The used to feel a lot more approachable and allowed a lot more room for errors.

Yoshi P said Ex5 was more the traditional design, and it felt COMPLETELY different than the others in EW. (My bigger issue there is long periods of no damage and then a big spike of like 5 mechs at once towards the end then another 3-4 at once right after that). The only ones this expansion that have felt kinda like old expansion Extremes to me were ZodEx and RubiEx. ZodEx and HydEx are the only ones that I don't think had body checks (though Hyd is iffy with the LP stack late in the fight). ZodEx has a semi-soft enrage before the enrage at the end as well. ZodEx is also the only one that really felt like it was between Savage and normal/MSQ content difficulty. And even it had the snakes that were hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.

The example I remember was Yoshi P specifically saying that Shinryu EX was designed to be between O2 and O3 - his words were that the weapon drop would help those struggling on.

I believe even patch EX should be a stepping stone to floor 1 and odd patch EX is between 2 and 3. Not sure this time though with Golbez being extremely easy compared to the savage tier, and P11 being easier than P9 & 10

Originally Posted by FenyxRising

Wrong

/10char

Agreed. Zodiark EX and Hydaelyn EX were on par with some normal modes from past expansion. Barb EX was so easy we had members clear it on their first pull. You could skip almost 25% of Rubi EX and Golbez was easily progged in 20 to 30 mins with a fresh party.

I miss fights like Thordan Ex and Nidhogg Ex which on release were comparable to todays savage floors

Exploratory Zones filled that niche.
I know some people call them 'casual' content, and they can indeed be cleared by players with casual level skills (mostly freeloaders), but the time investment and all the extras you get for farming the content past just completing the story, or actually pulling your weight in the raids/large scale instances is very much midcore.
And that lasted WAY longer than mere 5~10 min boss fights that come once every major patch.