Criterion Dungeon Interview

[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.