Should SE scale high end content difficulty towards the usage of SIM ?

[BigCheez]

Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen
Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models or either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

UWU is a prime example of all of these. Ultima 3/4 of map view sometimes more, Titan, Garuda, and Ifrit all spawning randomly further altering your view.

FF14 does have a lot of noise that inflates the difficulty.

These aren't intentional sources of difficulty. This isn't "artificial difficulty", it's just bad game design.

The exception being restricting the player's view, which is pretty commonly used to create a feeling of claustrophobia and force the player to move cautiously in horror games. I don't think that's inherently bad design unless it makes it impossible to see things that you're supposed to be able to see - then it's just bad game design.

[Kohashi]

These aren't intentional sources of difficulty. This isn't "artificial difficulty", it's just bad game design.

The exception being restricting the player's view, which is pretty commonly used to create a feeling of claustrophobia and force the player to move cautiously in horror games. I don't think that's inherently bad design unless it makes it impossible to see things that you're supposed to be able to see - then it's just bad game design.

that's exactly the synonym to describe Artificial difficulty, bad game design.

Despite UWU not being a horror-themed instance it gave me claustrophobic PTSD (hahaha joking, kinda..).

Yes it is obstructing the view in most angles. I am talking about Ultimate Annihilation. It's the phase where you go from A to 1 to 2 (LPDU markers) to avoid Titan gaols + Ifrit dashes + Titan awaked landslides while dpsing Ultima at all times.

[Absurdity]

I would absolutely consider the VFX vomit on some boss mechanics to make it artificially more difficult to figure out what just killed you.
The same applies to some of our own abilities but those are at least player controlled and any death caused by them therefore unintentional.

[BigCheez]

that's exactly the synonym to describe Artificial difficulty, bad game design.

Despite UWU not being a horror-themed instance it gave me claustrophobic PTSD (hahaha joking, kinda..).

Yes it is obstructing the view in most angles. I am talking about Ultimate Annihilation. It's the phase where you go from A to 1 to 2 (LPDU markers) to avoid Titan gaols + Ifrit dashes + Titan awaked landslides while dpsing Ultima at all times.

That generally isn't how the term is used though. You're using the term to describe things that are not intended sources of difficulty but unintentional difficulty created by poorly designed systems. The term is generally used to describe an intended source of difficulty that someone doesn't like for some reason. I've heard bosses having a lot of HP described as artificial difficulty. Mechanics that are too complex. Content not having checkpoints. Body checks. Something that requires the player to react quickly. AI opponents in Civilisation being given bonuses on higher difficulty settings to account for the fact that their decision making isn't as good as a real human opponent. Essentially any time a player doesn't want to develop the skill required to meet a challenge, they'll just slap an "artificial difficulty" label on it because it's easier than admitting that it's a skill issue.

In UWU anni specifically, what are you looking at besides which side Titan is on? I don't remember anything else having any impact on the way that you avoid the AOEs. It's the same movement every time with 2 slight variations based on which side Titan is on.

[ExiaKuromonji]

The fight designers are doing an excellent job. The problem is the restrictions that other aspects of the game are forcing them to work under. The problem is absolutely not that difficult fights require players to build consistency.

The problems with restrictions doesn't only come from the game's netcode or engine. There's also restrictions placed on the devs by players who complained about certain mechanics because of various reasons. It's why everything is just "place AoE here" or "spread/stack" in different formations.

We used to have very creative and unorthodox fight design in Alexander. While some of those things were kinda whack (A2S gobwalker thing for instance), but a lot of other stuff was just complained about because "muh uptime". It's no wonder we just have spreads and stacks in the game now when every time they try something different the parse brains shit on them for it. Players were complaining about the fights then, so SE fixed it, and players are still complaining. It got way worse in EW when tanks were just an easier DPS role that kitchen sinked or invulned every buster. And I hear healer wasn't much better.

I do agree they have kind of put themselves into a corner with the design. But I think there's more than just the general game design at fault.

[BigCheez]

The problems with restrictions doesn't only come from the game's netcode or engine. There's also restrictions placed on the devs by players who complained about certain mechanics because of various reasons. It's why everything is just "place AoE here" or "spread/stack" in different formations.

We used to have very creative and unorthodox fight design in Alexander. While some of those things were kinda whack (A2S gobwalker thing for instance), but a lot of other stuff was just complained about because "muh uptime". It's no wonder we just have spreads and stacks in the game now when every time they try something different the parse brains shit on them for it. Players were complaining about the fights then, so SE fixed it, and players are still complaining. It got way worse in EW when tanks were just an easier DPS role that kitchen sinked or invulned every buster. And I hear healer wasn't much better.

I do agree they have kind of put themselves into a corner with the design. But I think there's more than just the general game design at fault.

There are a lot of limitations on the fight designers.

Some of them exist because of snapshotting and the game needing to be playable on up to 100ms or so, given some people's proximity to the nearest servers. Some of them exist because of modern job and role design.

It's less a case of "muh uptime" and more a case of "my rotation will be irrecoverably scuffed for the rest of the fight if you force me to miss more than 2 GCDs per 1 minute cycle". GNB was one of the best examples of this before they made double down only cost 1 cart. If you didn't generate 3 carts in time for your next no mercy window, either gnashing fang or double down had to drift, which would cause problems for the entire duration of the fight. Making damage rotations less rigid would open up a lot more creativity in terms of fight design.

[ExiaKuromonji]

Examples of artificial difficulty that can be applied to all fights are :

Blinding flashing effects from bosses sometimes covering the entire screen.

This is a bit of a problem (more annoying for me but probably worse for others). Currently P1 of FRU does this just before Utopian Sky.

You used UWU as an example of all of those points. But this first point only has flashes when there's literally nothing currently happening, as the boss stands motionless before the mechanic actually starts. This is how it works on other bosses too in every case I can think of it occurring but maybe I am missing 1 or 2.

Obstructed Character model, hidden by a spawned object or the boss model itself
Camera view
Overly large models of either bosses or mobs
General visual noise

These are basically all the same point as they can all be resolved by either letting the player zoom out further or reducing the model size of the entities on screen. Ultima itself is definitely a massive boy with bright effects on him so that's fair I guess.

[ExiaKuromonji]

There are a lot of limitations on the fight designers.

Some of them exist because of snapshotting and the game needing to be playable on up to 100ms or so, given some people's proximity to the nearest servers. Some of them exist because of modern job and role design.

Yeah I read your whole conversation with the other person, so I already saw this point and I'm not really disagreeing with it. The snapshotting system is complete garbage.

It's less a case of "muh uptime" and more a case of "my rotation will be irrecoverably scuffed for the rest of the fight if you force me to miss more than 2 GCDs per 1 minute cycle". GNB was one of the best examples of this before they made double down only cost 1 cart. If you didn't generate 3 carts in time for your next no mercy window, either gnashing fang or double down had to drift, which would cause problems for the entire duration of the fight. Making damage rotations less rigid would open up a lot more creativity in terms of fight design.

For this specific point I was talking about older fights within the first 3 expansions (ARR, HW, SB. Maybe you don't consider ARR an expansion, but it doesn't really matter here). These were times where from what I understand, DPS rotations weren't so super reliant on the 2-minute window that missing 1 or 2 GCDs would completely screw you over for the remainder of the fight. And in this case the only excuse would be uptime complaints.

My point was that they have been doing creative fight design in the past even with the problems with the game's snapshotting design.

[AllenThyl]

My favorite part is having mechanics completely outside of my control. There's only so many times I can die to cleansable Doom in Shadow of Mhach while being told I suck for dying to it before I got fed up and didn't want to do Alliance Raids anymore.

And people say it only gets worse having your life decided by others as the expansions go on or you move up into Savage and Chaotic? Frickin' hell...

What do you even care? You have 0 intention of doing any content harder than Alliance Raid, in fact you already struggle with all the easy stuff, you are in fact fact already unsubscribed. What are you doing in a discussion about the high-end of the high-end difficulty stuff? (especially when you've already demonstrated that you have absolutely no idea about the topic actually being discussed here)
Got no game you enjoy to actually play and enjoy? Is your life so empty?

[Kohashi]

This is a bit of a problem (more annoying for me but probably worse for others). Currently P1 of FRU does this just before Utopian Sky.

You used UWU as an example of all of those points. But this first point only has flashes when there's literally nothing currently happening, as the boss stands motionless before the mechanic actually starts. This is how it works on other bosses too in every case I can think of it occurring but maybe I am missing 1 or 2.



These are basically all the same point as they can all be resolved by either letting the player zoom out further or reducing the model size of the entities on screen. Ultima itself is definitely a massive boy with bright effects on him so that's fair I guess.

Yeah but I could also give the example of P12s where my eyes were constantly strained due to absolutely horrible color choice of the arena + background. Also, SC2 A and B were so damn visually noisy as well. everything was flashing.

I am not saying bosses should not have effects but currently, it's too much. If you let your effects on + party + boss + flying text+ names, you pretty much ain't seeing jack shit in some instances. Luckily you can turn off some of that but I would very much prefer to have something in between.