Please Bring Back the Death Hands to the Second Boss of Ala Mhigo!

[TaraShiro6]

This is my first time posting in a forum so hopefully I posted this in the right place with the right tags!

First of all, I must say that I love most of the changes made to all the dungeons up through Stormblood. But one change drove me crazy.

During the Aulus mal Asina boss fight, the second boss in the lv 70 Ala Mhigo dungeon, there used to be death hands that would chase you after you got mind-jacked by the boss. Then, you would have to run away from them back to your body while avoiding Magitek Bits. It was a fun kind of stressful and it made the boss fight interesting.

Now the hands are gone, and you just have to avoid the Magitek Bits before you get doomed. My issue is that the Magitek Bits are way too easy to avoid, and there is no trouble making it back in time. The old version was already fairly easy and I rarely saw anyone die when the hands were around, so this just feels even easier. As the final dungeon of Stormblood, I want the fights to be exciting and interesting, so taking away the death hands makes the fight seem lackluster in comparison, and the already short fight feels unremarkable for a final dungeon.

I was told that the forum is a good place to post feedback for Yoshi-P and the team, so beloved developers, please bring back the death hands to the Aulus mal Asina fight! We want the fun stress of that mechanic!

[SeriousPan]

Sadly reactive mechanics like those hands are not friendly to Trust AI so they removed 'em. I agree though I was shocked to find them gone when they added some intensity to an otherwise trivial boss fight.

[Post]

Yes, pretty much any changes you see in any old encounters are due to the AI not being able to handle them, even including massively mixed or negatively viewed bosses like Copperbell's second (the slime you blew up with dynamite a few times).

I think it's a shame because often times these older or different versions at least had more variety than today's fight design by contrast alone; OP pointing to the hands that chased you down on Aulus is an example of this.

It's also unfortunate because it's not unthinkable that they couldn't have just had a totally different version of these bosses for the AI dungeons, as it's not like players ever struggled to defeat these bosses as they were.

As it stands now, the developers are quite exactly reworking the game to be less of a multiplayer experience in favor of being more of a single player one, going against the game's core design to do so.

[ThorneDynasty]

Yeah, it's kind of a worrying trend that they are constraining themselves, developing an MMO, by making it more single player friendly. I don't know if the ultimate goal here is to future proof the game so that it will some day still be technically playable even if the online dies down completely, but it seems way premature to start tying your hands over it. They've already basically solved the past expansion inactivity with the roulette system. There's not really a reason they can't just put a prompt that says "trust isn't available for this duty" for content the AI can't handle, and then flip a switch in a final patch for the more AI friendly mechanics when the time comes to turn off the lights.

Or just have encounters behave difficulty if you are doing them with AI.

[TaraShiro6]

That is a good point, I hadn't considered the trust AI!

[TaraShiro6]

Yes, pretty much any changes you see in any old encounters are due to the AI not being able to handle them, even including massively mixed or negatively viewed bosses like Copperbell's second (the slime you blew up with dynamite a few times).

...

It's also unfortunate because it's not unthinkable that they couldn't have just had a totally different version of these bosses for the AI dungeons, as it's not like players ever struggled to defeat these bosses as they were.

I really disliked the bosses of Copperbell Mines so I'm quite happy with the changes, I didn't really find the Slime fight fun! There's only a few mechanics that I found fun that I miss, and the hands are definitely one of them! I do wish they could have worked them in somehow!

[TaraShiro6]

Yeah, it's kind of a worrying trend that they are constraining themselves, developing an MMO, by making it more single player friendly. I don't know if the ultimate goal here is to future proof the game so that it will some day still be technically playable even if the online dies down completely, but it seems way premature to start tying your hands over it. They've already basically solved the past expansion inactivity with the roulette system.

Yoshi-P has said in the media tour interviews that his goal was to lower the barrier of entry into MMOs, since running content with other players is the part that turns off many people from playing MMOs and allow them to gradually get comfortable with multiplayer content, but now that they've succeeded in that he says he plans to focus more on multiplayer content! That said, I don't really have a problem with them adding the duty support, I agree that it's a good feature for players who aren't used to MMOs, or may avoid playing certain classes because they get tank or healer anxiety! As I said, I'm quite happy with most of the changes to old dungeons with duty support, I think they do a lot better at teaching the game's mechanics naturally! And I agree that I wish they could've found some way to keep some of the old mechanics that were fun! My hope is that someday they'll look back and further improve upon old content!

[fulminating]

The removal of death hands here, the aery’s Estonian heal check and the fat ghost transformation in skalla are my biggest disappointments with the reworked dungeons.

[Arohk]

Sadly reactive mechanics like those hands are not friendly to Trust AI so they removed 'em.

Big brain idea:

Only remove them for the AI but leave it for the player?

[vetch]

Bigger brain idea:

Make a companion AI that can do mechanics beyond simple AoE placement and 'find the safe spot'.

The Trust AI isn't just responsible for deleting all the old fun stuff from pre-ShB dungeons, it's also ensuring that such interesting mechanics never get added to future dungeons.