So... This is the "improved encounter design"?

[Raikai]

Sometimes outside of the crazy apm, not gonna lie, I feel that I have more of a wow player profile in spite of being absolutely unwilling to get into it.

Is just because WoW's design philosophy has a bigger 'shelf life' (again mentioning this lol) than XIV's, simply because it actively encourages the players to think on the go and adapt to the variables offered.

Here we don't have anymore job depth in meaningful skill ceilings to strive for if we want, so after the initial hype of playing a new job, when it becomes auto pilot (honorable mention to VPR), it suddenly becomes monotonous.

Then what's left? The encounter design... but the DDR + puzzle aspect loses a lot of value after you solve it, granted every player in your group is on the same page. I honestly say my fun in XIV's encounters plummets as soon as it gets into reclear mode, even in an optimized aspect because by the time I get the clear, I'm already very optimized in most of the fight because we do need to repeat previous steps ad nauseum to get to our prog points - even more to a Party Finder raider (like myself) having to face player inconsistencies more often.

To me, they need to invest in a more dynamic design in one or the other. So far I don't think we have seen this in the Encounter design, and the job design sadly is in the backburner for 1 and half years. Will the next tier promote something that addesses this? Yet to be seen.

[Valence]

I feel that kind of more chaotic, less tight mechanics is actually found more within the realm of normal content and not just as evidenced by M2 NM. Those encounters don't require people to perfectly fit a square into a square else everything blows up. A mechanic that's made its big come back is the bullet hell type found in the lvl87 Dungeon (2nd boss) and the lvl100 Dungeon (last boss) for example, which was previously found in a less chaotic pattern in Barbariccia NM, and also in criterion Rokkon (first boss). But even then just AoEs being tossed around randomly, on players or on the ground, has been the bread and butter of normal modes because they're very basic in a way to understand and don't require excessive, mechanical execution to solve the more complex puzzles with less solutions often found in savage. In fact, the more complex a mechanic, the more it tends to narrow down to single possible answers (that can require a lot of thinking or be solved with a single trick, doesn't matter), which is not something that would mesh well with casual modes.

Since everybody agrees that if there is one thing that FF14 lacks, it's midcore content gameplay and I do feel that this kind of gameplay but more involved could prove interesting to fill up the much needed midcore niche. For instance, that's what Criterion normal (ex) should have been in my opinion, because its savage version is pretty much the same with more constraints asking you to play perfectly, but the content is essentially the same. Just looking at the trash in criterion, and this would be absolutely perfect for midcore content. It's not hard, it has more moving parts and violence involved than what you'd find in casual dungeons. Why are the bosses suddenly on the level of ex/savage encounters then??