And the slow death of the RPG based battlesystem

[Shurrikhan]

Mechanic based difficulty is always going to create more unique and engaging encounters compared to rotation based difficulty.

Compared to rotations in isolation, sure, as those are what you do against striking dummies. Compared to a fight that requires significant adjustments to both the overarching rotations (2-minute loop) and to or within smaller strings, though? Not necessarily; the mechanics, if the kits so permit, can easily create more rotational complexity and the kits in turn make the fight feel more fulfilling (but generally in a way that, unless tuning is extremely tight, also doesn't come with the lesser accessibility of forming that engagement from [body-check] mechanics).

Personally, I'm fine with there being content in which mechanics are 80+% of the gameplay. My issue is that there's no difficult content for which all else isn't (almost) wholly eclipsed by the simple ability to perform mechanics. Arguably, there is only even one genre we'd consider crafted "content" (rather than mere mob-grinds) outside of that. We have MobGrinds, TrivialHallwaySprints... and then TrialsV1, TrialsV2 (Normal Raids), TrialsV3 (Alliance Raids' Raid Bosses), and TrialsV4 (Savage Raids), and TrialsV5 (Ultimate).

The short of it is that rotations (be they overarching rotations, tactics, or fine adjustments) can only be as varied as content allows, but in the pursuit of making the content's own mechanics as clear as possible, content has increasingly failed to give rotations anything to vary or be varied by, which in turn makes a fight feel that much more similar between runs, between a job's place among different players/compositions and consequent strategies, and in playing the fight across different jobs.

When using the same rotation for every fight, yeah, rotations would quickly lose their novelty. But, lacking much interaction between kit and the given fight, the various skins of in, out, left, right, clocks, cardinals, etc. also lose their novelty that much more quickly, making fights increasingly feel same-y.

I don't know what the perfect solution here is. Doubtless, fights would take up some constraints in efforts to better leverage kits. But without that, fights and kits both take far less time to lose apparent depth and uniqueness.

That being said, those constraints are nowhere near what you seem to be imagining.

[Valence]

Compared to rotations in isolation, sure, as those are what you do against striking dummies. Compared to a fight that requires significant adjustments to both the overarching rotations (2-minute loop) and to or within smaller strings, though? Not necessarily; the mechanics, if the kits so permit, can easily create more rotational complexity and the kits in turn make the fight feel more fulfilling (but generally in a way that, unless tuning is extremely tight, also doesn't come with the lesser accessibility of forming that engagement from [body-check] mechanics).

Personally, I'm fine with there being content in which mechanics are 80+% of the gameplay. My issue is that there's no difficult content for which all else isn't (almost) wholly eclipsed by the simple ability to perform mechanics. Arguably, there is only even one genre we'd consider crafted "content" (rather than mere mob-grinds) outside of that. We have MobGrinds, TrivialHallwaySprints... and then TrialsV1, TrialsV2 (Normal Raids), TrialsV3 (Alliance Raids' Raid Bosses), and TrialsV4 (Savage Raids), and TrialsV5 (Ultimate).

The short of it is that rotations (be they overarching rotations, tactics, or fine adjustments) can only be as varied as content allows, but in the pursuit of making the content's own mechanics as clear as possible, content has increasingly failed to give rotations anything to vary or be varied by, which in turn makes a fight feel that much more similar between runs, between a job's place among different players/compositions and consequent strategies, and in playing the fight across different jobs.

When using the same rotation for every fight, yeah, rotations would quickly lose their novelty. But, lacking much interaction between kit and the given fight, the various skins of in, out, left, right, clocks, cardinals, etc. also lose their novelty that much more quickly, making fights increasingly feel same-y.

I don't know what the perfect solution here is. Doubtless, fights would take up some constraints in efforts to better leverage kits. But without that, fights and kits both take far less time to lose apparent depth and uniqueness.

That being said, those constraints are nowhere near what you seem to be imagining.

You actually touch to a point I completely omitted in the OP, which is the total homogenization of fight models. Everything today is a variant of a trial, be it raids, criterion, or actual trials. Most pve today boils down to beat the crap out of a boss in a battle arena. Trash mob on the side is always the same, in the same amounts of packs between each walls in the case of dungeons. There is so little variation that when you actually get hard content with trash (criterion) it immediately feels like a breath of fresh air, and yet, it follows the exact same patterns between every criterion. When one thinks about it, why do they feel so constrained and forced to constantly have every piece of content following the same overused model down to a T? Having patches following a formulaic pattern is one thing, but fight models?


Just imagine the face of players the day we get a dungeon where the first boss waits for your immediately? And then you get completely different trash mob patterns, perhaps even randomized a little, some "gate bosses"? That's not a lot of variation, but even such a tiny thing would suddenly feel like playing a whole different game already, and it goes a long way showing how much the current formulaic, rigid patterns are oppressive. Why does every dungeon have to be 2 mob packs > boss 1 > 2 mob packs > boss 2 > 2 mob packs > boss 3? Criterion tried to backpedal a little and revisit the concept of trash, which is cool, but what do we get now? Interesting trash 1 > boss 1 > Interesting trash 2 > boss 2 > boss 3, every single time.

What the heck?

[mallleable]

You actually touch to a point I completely omitted in the OP, which is the total homogenization of fight models. Everything today is a variant of a trial, be it raids, criterion, or actual trials. Most pve today boils down to beat the crap out of a boss in a battle arena. Trash mob on the side is always the same, in the same amounts of packs between each walls in the case of dungeons. There is so little variation that when you actually get hard content with trash (criterion) it immediately feels like a breath of fresh air, and yet, it follows the exact same patterns between every criterion. When one thinks about it, why do they feel so constrained and forced to constantly have every piece of content following the same overused model down to a T? Having patches following a formulaic pattern is one thing, but fight models?


Just imagine the face of players the day we get a dungeon where the first boss waits for your immediately? And then you get completely different trash mob patterns, perhaps even randomized a little, some "gate bosses"? That's not a lot of variation, but even such a tiny thing would suddenly feel like playing a whole different game already, and it goes a long way showing how much the current formulaic, rigid patterns are oppressive. Why does every dungeon have to be 2 mob packs > boss 1 > 2 mob packs > boss 2 > 2 mob packs > boss 3? Criterion tried to backpedal a little and revisit the concept of trash, which is cool, but what do we get now? Interesting trash 1 > boss 1 > Interesting trash 2 > boss 2 > boss 3, every single time.

What the heck?

Hot take: player's insistence, and CBU3 following suit on w2w trash pulls stifles dungeon design.