Criterion Dungeon Interview

[Recon1o6]

interesting to note they design it for savage not extreme level difficulty like a lot of people thought/wanted

its good that they got to think outside the box when designing though. fight design is stale rn so getting them out of their comfort zone even for a little thing is good long term

[Noumenon]

interesting to note they design it for savage not extreme level difficulty like a lot of people thought/wanted

its good that they got to think outside the box when designing though. fight design is stale rn so getting them out of their comfort zone even for a little thing is good long term

What in Criterion is them getting out of their comfort zone? I see nothing. A very confused <Ascendant Ascetic> here.

Criterion Sildhin: 6.0%
Criterion Sildhin Savage: 1.1%

Criterion Rokkon: 2.0%
Criterion Rokkon Savage: 0.3%

It's just a matter of rewards. There is no reason to do Variant or Savage.

Please don't tell me you got these statistics from xivcollect or lalachievements.

Unless you seriously, seriously believe with a straight face that >15% of players have cleared at least one Ultimate.

It should probably be adjusted downwards by at least 80%. That is, the people who cleared Rokkon Savage is probably at around 0.05% (if you have to ask why please Google the problems with using xivcollect as a frame of reference).

[Recon1o6]

What in Criterion is them getting out of their comfort zone? I see nothing. A very confused <Ascendant Ascetic> here.

Mainly the trash but also some boss design

First: they have to design more actual tanking mechanics and dangerous trash that actually requires healing. Moving mobs about, cooldown rotation etc because they cant say "here's a tank swap" as there's no second tank. If they just made it a series of bosses instead without trash, then it would drag it out in SE's savage design.

Second: they can't have as many body checks mechanic, particularly in the criterion mode. Doom via hp to full is unlikely to be added because SE is afraid of making healers having to actually heal. Pair ups or tethers are more restricted as well given the lack of players.
What's the solution? More personal responsibility mechanics which is a good thing. One of the most frustrating things in ex, savage and ults are the fact if one person dies, everyone dies. This is where the jump rope memes came from.


Granted they are still playing too safe rn. But a lot of people like the easy difficulty because puzzles and lore makes otherwise boring dungeon environs actually worthwhile to look around

[Noumenon]

Mainly the trash but also some boss design

First: they have to design more actual tanking mechanics and dangerous trash that actually requires healing. Moving mobs about, cooldown rotation etc because they cant say "here's a tank swap" as there's no second tank. If they just made it a series of bosses instead without trash, then it would drag it out in SE's savage design.

I think the trash was interesting enough at first, but once you realize it is scripted, it became as dull as the bosses, except it's more aggravating when people keep getting hit by wind sprites despite there being a very easy way to dodge it (stand at the exact middle of the arena and move a few pixels to dodge everything). Even the wind sprite patterns are scripted and non-random, which is why you can start by dragging the first add to SW, second add to bottom half NE, and third add to exact middle.

I applaud SE for making trash dangerous, and indeed something that wiped us enough times where it truly felt different from any other trash encounter in the game. However, I do not give any award to SE for implementing it in a way that makes it yet another lame memorization script to execute the same way again, and again, and again, and again.... Sadly, the raiders who are dissatisfied with piano recitals have mostly already moved on from FF14, so the remaining pianists - a minority among gamers in general - are the ones who are content to mindlessly rehearse the same script again and again and again and again...

And dangerous trash exposes how extremely clunky tanking is in FF14. Dragging any monster should not require so much effort. It is truly bewildering to me how no one has ever commented on how dragging mobs, especially mobs with invisible casts (especially noticeable in PotD if you play a melee/tank), is extremely, extremely bad. And I wonder how much of the design is limited because of this atrocious engine. This same flaw in the engine is why sometimes you are out of range when you execute a melee-range attack on a monster that is moving somewhere despite you inside the hitbox of the monster following it. It's extremely garbage netcode where the positions of players and enemies on the client have next to no tether to reality.

[Post]

[QUOTE=Noumenon;6347394
And dangerous trash exposes how extremely clunky tanking is in FF14. Dragging any monster should not require so much effort. It is truly bewildering to me how no one has ever commented on how dragging mobs, especially mobs with invisible casts (especially noticeable in PotD if you play a melee/tank), is extremely, extremely bad. And I wonder how much of the design is limited because of this atrocious engine..[/QUOTE]

I dunno dude, it's just kinda one of those things that you get used to. I feel like you could say the same about the fact that you can only weave so many oGCDs without clipping your GCD because animations have a certain amount they must play.

It's kinda like saying Super Mario Bros. 3 is strictly better than Castlevania 1 cuz Simon can't change his direction in mid air like Mario can once he commits to a jump.

At some point it just becomes emergent gameplay, which is partially why I think folks don't comment on it too much. You can usually take advantage of it, too, from kiting to slightly delaying certain mechanics because of movement. They certainly have stopped commonly designing encounters where adds and positioning are a thing, or bosses without giant hitboxes, so you can probably read that as them agreeing with you if you will, but I think you could also just read that as and number of other things that make players feel better easily getting full uptime/positionals and it's just part of the reason design has shifted to how it is now.

Personally, I don't mind it and I relish the variety. You're right about everything being pretty scripted, down to the trash encounters though. Even things like the wind sprite movements, which is kinda lame. And screw tab-targeting; despite what I just said about emergent gameplay that's just wrestling with the controls and is just awful in FFXIV.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they went back to how they implemented hard modes for Criterions and just made them tough reworks of basic dungeons with alternate paths. Throw a short reason why we're there again story and just let the battle designers go to town, cuz the interview makes it sound like they take a lot of work because of all the environments and animations (no doubt), but most of what I enjoy about them is that they're small group and feel fresh and challenging. Maybe they could make them less costly to make if they didn't include all that overhead. I dunno about everyone else, but I'd rather get more Criterions per expansion with semi re-used environments if they could keep the trash and bosses as fun to play.

I think the mechanics on Criterion as a whole have been much better than Savage this expansion, whether that's cuz they don't bog the fights down in 5 minutes of 'teaching' before the fight really starts or because most actions aren't as predictable with 'you're a healer, therefore stack marker goes on you' I dunno.

[Payadopa]

Square are so terrified of upending the current balance of the gearing system they haven’t stopped and realised that power in this game is worthless and almost nobody cares about it

Put BIS in criterion; literally nobody would think it’s a negative

But they are also afraid of making the game fun by giving us interesting abilities because meta slaves will pop a coronary. Sorry, guys, you can't have more than 1 2 3 because then raiders might parse less. They don't even release potency changes because people go ape shit. If anything it's par for the course how they act, really.

Honestly, I don't envy them.

[Atelier-Bagur]

If they have concerns about gear, they do not have to put in BiS, just glamours, lots of glamours, mounts, upgrade items, etc. Though I would not mind having an option to get a BiS level 2nd ring, good use of the system. Have it cost a few runs if they are worried.

In my opinion, the hardest content should give out the best gear.

Criterion should be used as an alternative means to getting BiS for alt jobs since thats considered a problem with the community

[Payadopa]

In my opinion they should just delete Criterion savage and give us Variant normal for solo and hard for group play.

[sindriiisgaming]

So we just got a little interview about Variant and Criterion recently here

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/ffxiv...eons-interview

Of course the biggest thing to take notice of is

So they are aware that rewards are lacking but its sadly is going to take some time for that to change.

so i saw this mister happy/xeems videos in respectivity. and honestly.. there ideas for improvement are not good enough. everything has to be solved with more of the same problem. "oh just give us upgrade mats" im so tired of the game pushing gear levelling onto us.. when its such a neiche part of the game in the first place. yet because of this the players are OBSESED with damage, BIS and performing the same boaring job rotations over and over and over.... criterion dungeon rewards should not be about what shiney stuff u get when u collect enough coins.. the reward should be the content itself being fun, exploratory and different each re-run. the mount is obtained in this most boaring repetive of ways "farm 25 tokens" but thats NOT FUN. whats fun is solving puzzles, finding secret paths and finding rare loot that you EARNED. that u cant just SELL. criterion dungeons need to be proper dungeons, massive and i mean MASSIVE exploritory content designed for the adventurer that you are... not the same mundane dungeon over and over

[Bonoki]

Honestly the content is a failure for me. It's crazy they consider it a success. I wouldn't miss it at all if they got rid of it.