Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Carighan]

OK in this thread I keep seeing people refer to "DDR fight design"

This reminds me of something that too often happens around dismissive contra-isms: Hates like Mao, please define what "DDR fight design" actually is. So that we're all on the same grounds for talking about it?

[mallleable]

I kinda don't buy the 'DDR fight design' critique either. It's just boss fight design 101 -- dodge its attack while landing your own which can describe almost every fight in any video game with combat ever. FFXIV is not unique. Some attacks will force melees away from melee range, and so melee players have compensate. Some attacks will force casters to run around, and so caster players have to compensate. The bigger problem is that phys ranged jobs are not challenged by anything ffxiv can throw at them which is a problem, so I think phys ranged jobs need to changes to their gameplay more so than casters.

[Supersnow845]

Okay well compare ARR fight design to EW/DT fight design

In ARR there were many differing elements of what you had to do and not every mechanic affected every person at the same time

Let’s take a basic example of T8. T8 had 3 core parts, towers, allagan field and controlling tank cleaves. Allagan field only affected one person (and arguably the shield healer) and was a personal mechanic they had to work with the shield healer to ensure it went off right. Towers were controlled by individual players doing individual and group mechanics than often required only one or 2-3 people to solve them (say also kaliya in T11 how it required uneven party stacks that weren’t able to be manipulated as they were random). The tank is also trying to control Avatar’s enormous tank cleaves from hitting anyone while the rest of these mechanics are going off and often you need to get at the tower that the tank is standing in front of constantly getting cleaved by avatar

The design doesn’t encourage constant movement, doesn’t require synchronous movement and resolution of mechanics can be altered to the party’s strength (say BLM is a good allagan field target but is not a good person to constantly send running to solve towers) or can you make the allagan field players job easier by over shielding them on SCH to cancel damage

Now compare this to modern raid design. Every mechanic is functionally “get a set of debuffs or watch the boss set up a bunch of things then move sequentially into tiny safe zones to solve each part sequentially”. There is no inter-party compensation; I as the BRD can’t move “more” to allow the BLM to move less, we all have to solve exactly the pattern/debuff vomit dumped onto us as the system dictates. If someone does the dance wrong then we all die. Every player has to have the kit designed for their job to be moving near constantly. I can’t as the SCH stand there and overmit the SAM so they don’t have to leave melee range, the dance doesn’t care about party compensation

To me that’s what meant by DDR fight design. Instead of solving the mechanic the way I want to my party’s strengths in most coils fights I just do my rotation around a set of mechanics that everyone is doing but nobody is interacting with: I can’t abuse my job to do something more (arguably spreadlo is a partial exception but only in very specific circumstances) and I can’t do the mechanic in a way the devs didn’t plan. All I do is just dance around tiny safe zones

[Eraden]

Now compare this to modern raid design. Every mechanic is functionally “get a set of debuffs or watch the boss set up a bunch of things then move sequentially into tiny safe zones to solve each part sequentially”. There is no inter-party compensation; I as the BRD can’t move “more” to allow the BLM to move less, we all have to solve exactly the pattern/debuff vomit dumped onto us as the system dictates. If someone does the dance wrong then we all die. Every player has to have the kit designed for their job to be moving near constantly. I can’t as the SCH stand there and overmit the SAM so they don’t have to leave melee range, the dance doesn’t care about party compensation

To me that’s what meant by DDR fight design. Instead of solving the mechanic the way I want to my party’s strengths in most coils fights I just do my rotation around a set of mechanics that everyone is doing but nobody is interacting with: I can’t abuse my job to do something more (arguably spreadlo is a partial exception but only in very specific circumstances) and I can’t do the mechanic in a way the devs didn’t plan. All I do is just dance around tiny safe zones

Andreas gets it. This is DDR. Is not provide for much variation in play style. Is little or no randomness. Is just fancy dance. Once learn the steps, is become borings because is always the same. Very little replay value. In order to make such fights has some level of challenge, is usually accompanied by ever increasing levels of mechanics barfage. What Mao wants is fights to become more randoms again. Reduce some of the mechanics barfage and replace with random events. Let Tanks control where boss goes. Let Healers be challenged with unexpected damage. Let DPS of ALL kinds find niches here and there for thems to shine. THAT is the way, in Mao opinion, to make fights funs again and has replay value.

[Valence]

DDR fight design isn't inherently good or bad objectively, it's just a paradigm that the devs have chosen for the game. It doesn't make casters good or bad, or encounters "caster adverse" as long as casters are given the tool to deal with them, and since it's more and more about running everywhere as expansions go, they get more and more instant casts and mobility tools to use. The whole paradigm is about dancing a predetermined ballet and all about memory and execution. If you cannot fit a cast here, then you need to find a solution and burn instant casts and use the tools at your disposal to play around, memorize it, and replay it exactly the same the next pull until you get it right.

DDR design however, makes everything extremely individualistic. Execute the dance properly or die. Do not deviate. Make excel spreadsheets if you have to, to map out your moves over a whole encounter (we already do this consistently with party mitigation in many statics those days). Follow the mcdonalidized raidplan everybody uses or get out. Even funnier, follow the prebaked TheBalance(tm) optimal openers and do not deviate, which is at odds with the concept of casters.

XIV has always had some inherent scripted design at the core, but left enough room for players to express themselves and most of the fight because ARR and HW had a lot more standard RPG combat elements and focused on different things to achieve beyond moving to the pixel perfect spot every 5 seconds. This made the caster role entirely different to play. Just think that HW BLM for instance, which solidified the turret caster model, only had one swiftcast every minute and a sharpcast to play with, with potentially a thundercloud or firestarter proc not coming from sharpcast. Everything else was long casts (over the 2.5s GCD or identical). No triplecast (and certainly not one with 2 charges), no xenoglossy (not 3, not 2, not even one charge), no instant cast despair, no instant cast paradox, no 30s sharpcast (and not 2 charges either)... And the job was fine to play. It was about tactical positioning, not about dancing like a frog in a blender all the time.

[Eraden]

DDR fight design isn't inherently good or bad objectively, it's just a paradigm that the devs have chosen for the game.

Mao thinkings this one times where Mao respectfully disagrees with Sune. Mao believes DDR-style fights objectively bad. If no randomness to fights, then fights has very little replay value. If point of fight is for everyones to dance around like frogs to specific beat, then such environment creates pressure to redesign jobs to conform to fights. Jobs become more samey. Only good reason to use DDR-style fights, from company perspective, is that thems easier to code because is no need to worry abouts all the permutations that random elements would bring. This, in Mao opinion, is why DDR-style being applied to all boss fights in dungeons, trials and raids. Is make things cheaper for SE.

[Valence]

Mao thinkings this one times where Mao respectfully disagrees with Sune. Mao believes DDR-style fights objectively bad. If no randomness to fights, then fights has very little replay value. If point of fight is for everyones to dance around like frogs to specific beat, then such environment creates pressure to redesign jobs to conform to fights. Jobs become more samey. Only good reason to use DDR-style fights, from company perspective, is that thems easier to code because is no need to worry abouts all the permutations that random elements would bring. This, in Mao opinion, is why DDR-style being applied to all boss fights in dungeons, trials and raids. Is make things cheaper for SE.

I'll say that I probably left unsaid other parts of the problem, which in my opinion informs other action games that are primarily designed around dodging and parrying, like idk, Nier automata. Does it make them bad? Not really, because they do not face the issues you yourself brought up. They're built from the ground up to be those types of games from the get go.

XIV tries to be something it is not and can hardly achieve to be for the reasons you said. In a vacuum their DDR model works but it proves so poor for what a MMO is supposed to be that it becomes a problem.

[Eraden]

I'll say that I probably left unsaid other parts of the problem, which in my opinion informs other action games that are primarily designed around dodging and parrying, like idk, Nier automata. Does it make them bad? Not really, because they do not face the issues you yourself brought up. They're built from the ground up to be those types of games from the get go.

XIV tries to be something it is not and can hardly achieve to be for the reasons you said. In a vacuum their DDR model works but it proves so poor for what a MMO is supposed to be that it becomes a problem.

Mao agrees with Sune. For another kind of game, DDR not so bad. For this game though, DDR pretty bad.

[Realfoxy]

...
Now compare this to modern raid design. Every mechanic is functionally “get a set of debuffs or watch the boss set up a bunch of things then move sequentially into tiny safe zones to solve each part sequentially”. There is no inter-party compensation; I as the BRD can’t move “more” to allow the BLM to move less, we all have to solve exactly the pattern/debuff vomit dumped onto us as the system dictates. If someone does the dance wrong then we all die. Every player has to have the kit designed for their job to be moving near constantly. I can’t as the SCH stand there and overmit the SAM so they don’t have to leave melee range, the dance doesn’t care about party compensation

...
Just think that HW BLM for instance, which solidified the turret caster model, only had one swiftcast every minute and a sharpcast to play with, with potentially a thundercloud or firestarter proc not coming from sharpcast. Everything else was long casts (over the 2.5s GCD or identical). No triplecast (and certainly not one with 2 charges), no xenoglossy (not 3, not 2, not even one charge), no instant cast despair, no instant cast paradox, no 30s sharpcast (and not 2 charges either)... And the job was fine to play. It was about tactical positioning, not about dancing like a frog in a blender all the time.

Ah, that clarifies things a lot when it comes to the "DDR fight design" that was mentioned.

I'll say one thing: The flipside of "you can have the party adjust to the caster" is "you must have the party adjust to the caster". If we take Endwalker BLM as an example, the job had a lot of personal freedom and agency in how it deployed its movement resources.

BLM has always had a bit of a reputation problem, I liked the fact that I could tell the PFs I joined "no you don't need to adjust for me. I will handle all the movement myself, trust that I will be in the right place at the right time" and then I would always be able to make it, because of my planning and practice. In Shadowbringers and Endwalker "BLM relative strats" were confined to either speedkills (BLM relative superchain in P12S) or were just completely impractical meme strats (BLM relative Titan in E12S).

A reversion to earlier designs where you are a lot more fixed in position could mean a greater reliance on begging for caster relative strats. Which is great fun in a static, it's fun planning around that kind of constraint, but doesn't play as well in PF.

I've always maintained that in ShB and Endwalker, 100% casting uptime has always been in your own hands. I'm not sure I'd like a raid tier where that isn't the case.

[Valence]

A reversion to earlier designs where you are a lot more fixed in position could mean a greater reliance on begging for caster relative strats. Which is great fun in a static, it's fun planning around that kind of constraint, but doesn't play as well in PF.

I've always maintained that in ShB and Endwalker, 100% casting uptime has always been in your own hands. I'm not sure I'd like a raid tier where that isn't the case.

I don't recall many "adjust to the caster" problems before ShB/EW personally, but perhaps there is specific cases I just don't remember about. There has always been cases where trying to accomodate the caster better has been a thing (and every time far from mandatory), and it's not been any different since forever. The whole difference isn't about accommodating the caster, it's what you're busy doing as a caster. Today casters spend 80% of their time caring about how to keep casting while dancing. In spite of their total lack of mobility, casters of yesterdays barely cared about that. It wasn't just what pve was about. Just look at HW BRD or MCH, which were actually less mobile than any modern job. They rarely had problems about moving either, because it was just rarely a concern.

Casting uptime has always been in your own hands.