A case for Phantom Train (Sigmascape v1.0) being one of the most creative encounters

[Valence]

Since there has been words dropped about SE shaking the encounter formula a bit for the upcoming expansion, I did reminisce a little on older fights, and while most of them are essentially one boss in the middle of an area, mostly with edges to fall off or a death wall in earlier fights... well one of them was phantom train.

For those who don't remember or haven't played it, Phantom Train is literally a whole saga contained within a fight:
- The party starts on a (long) platform car followed by the boss (the locomotive), trying to kill the players and bumping into the arena. It summons ghosts periodically among other mechanics, and if any player touches one of them, they get transported into a passenger car to have a duel with said ghost.
- The boss eventually goes away and comes back on the side on the other track, and belches out a horde of zombies that the players need to mow down with AoE.
- The players then proceed to use a puddle leftover by the zombies to jump on top of the train and run all the way up to the chimney that they can blow up to remove a good chunk of HP from the boss.
- Intermission phase: ghosts spawn on the main platform and each player this time is forced to get transported into a passenger car to fight it (in savage, different ghosts to pick for different roles).
- Back to the platform with the train coming from behind again and doing more involved variations of the very first mechanics.

Why is this good? Well, besides being back then a very chaotic fight with players that can get snatched by ghosts left and right, or being pushed over the edge in savage, this is probably hands down the most creative fight ever created in this game. The sheer amount of unique things happening, and phases, is mindblowing when we think about it.

Imagine if every trial and raid fight was a whole story like this, instead of a boss facing the player from A to Z with little variation?

I'd love to get more of this, it was wild.

[Asako]

I always loved the time mechanic in A12 when 4 people mid fight had to port off and do something else. Really wish they done more with this, having multiple ojectives to clear all whilst the fight is still going on.

[ShadowNyx3]

It would be nice to get fights where the devs say "screw your parse" again instead of entire tiers of training dummies.

[Minali]

This is one of these fights where I feel this improper item level sync really does the fight dirty, but even with that in mind, it's still a funny and very creative fight and you get at least some of these things. Would really love to see more of this.
Also agreeing with Asako, afaik the cruise chaser fight has a similar part, where you can even see Cid and the others in the arena frozen in time or something as a bonus. That was pretty cool.

I wonder how long it took people to figure out the toxic rain mechanic in the phantom train fight when it was fresh. Ghosts are evil until they aren't might have taken a while.

[Duskane]

i had good time solo tanking savage version week one

[VentVanitas]

Omega raids in general were very solid, not gonna lie. very few of them felt unimaginative/boring, at least compared to Pandaemonium. Phantom Train was not afraid to use its unique setting to be creative.

back when it was relevant in Stormblood, it was very fun to try and rush the chimney without dropping Greased Lightning, though I'd drop it anyway because I sucked back then lmao

[Bonoki]

Phantom Train stands out as one of the most inventive battles in the game, offering a thrilling experience that's hard to forget. Additionally, I have fond memories of facing off against A7S and A10S in Alexander Savage—they provided a level of chaos and excitement that seems rare in today's raid designs. It feels like modern encounters are overly focused on optimizing rotations and parses rather than fostering the kind of dynamic gameplay that made these older fights so memorable.

[Aravell]

Because of the community hyperfixation on damage numbers above all, we can no longer have any creative fights that assign separate roles to each person (some of which are forced to lose damage when performing said roles).

That said, the one thing I hated about Phantom Train is that anyone with the Saintly Beam can grief the physical ranged directly by destroying the ghost boxes.

[Gullis]

but think of the poor uptime!

/s

[AmiableApkallu]

Because of the community hyperfixation on damage numbers above all, we can no longer have any creative fights that assign separate roles to each person (some of which are forced to lose damage when performing said roles).

It seems to me the problem is more that "the community" uses the wrong baseline when talking about damage. For example, if an encounter picks someone out to play a particular role that forces them to disengage from the boss, the comparison should be against other players who were also chosen to play that same role — not players who had the choice of maintaining uptime, and not some idealized fight against a striking dummy. What's the best that you can do given the hand that you were dealt?