FF 14 has the worst dungeons

[Mawlzy]

They'd need to accept that some parse chasers would be unhappy, because them moving the needle slightly for one mechanic(Alarm Pheromones) caused a lot of complaints about lost uptime.

I think this is right, and ultimately SQEX has to make a decision on direction.

For example, they could choose to make FF14 a raiding game with a skeleton story that connects the raids together. Despite losing half the player base, such a game would be so much cheaper to produce they may even increase their profit despite the collapse in subs.

This seems to be the direction they are taking, in the sense that jobs are "balanced" in part to achieve this holy grail of the parsers. Similarly high-end raiders have been catered to far more than other sub-communities so far in DT.

It's even possible the sub-par nature of the DT story is a symptom of this direction shift.

[Kohashi]

They'd need to accept that some parse chasers would be unhappy, because them moving the needle slightly for one mechanic(Alarm Pheromones) caused a lot of complaints about lost uptime.

You lose uptime if you are trash, and you have no clue how to actually solve the mechanic. Mario Kart is a thing, and you can also sit in the middle and react if you are ranged.

I've suggested no such design, as the quote of mine you've embedded clearly demonstrates.

There's a broad spectrum between DDR monotony and infinite chaos. I think it would be good for the game if we unglued the needle from the DDR end.

Sure, provide an example of a code integration and how you would fix it.

Plus, god forbid one actually understands how to play your class effectively. Checkmate.. actually nvm... what's that?

[Bonoki]

They'd need to accept that some parse chasers would be unhappy, because them moving the needle slightly for one mechanic(Alarm Pheromones) caused a lot of complaints about lost uptime.

Parse Chasers are a significant reason the game is the way it is in many ways, such as the 2-minute meta and why we have less forced downtime. And lack more interesting mechanics like from the Alexander raid series.

[Valence]

How would you suggest they completely randomize attacks and provide infinite variations? Please provide a coding solution and an example of how this can be achieved and integrated into the FF14 code backend. Who knows, maybe some dev will look at your post and implement your solution into the code itself.

It looks like you have this solution since it's so easy. This is your time to shine!

Please provide a full copy of FF14 source code and all the backend so that people can start working on solutions to offer. Who knows, maybe we can actually take your request seriously once this prerequisite has been fulfilled. This is your time to shine!

[Kewitt]

Story time with Ewitt Rainbow
A long time ago in the times of ARR,
People would pull all mobs to the dungeon boss.
Even if a player was new it became the meta. Which for many causal player was very overwhelming.
Some dugeons that would normally take 18-20 mins were getting completed in 10-12
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DdeN568gc
This for many people wasn't fun indeed it was stressfull, and if you did whip people got upset and it could take longer then if you just did things normally.
Also if you didn't pull fast enough people would just leave the party. causing everyone else to have to wait.
I did a few speed runs in my day it was ok for me. But my hubby HATED IT, and it turned gaming into work.
But every party was trying to go as fast as posiable.

So they walled off content to slow down people and make every dugeon a 15-20 min task.

[Sekundessounet]

It's not difficult to randomize which attack occurs when, and some 14 fights actually do this.

I'd suggest the bigger issue is how the mechanics require you to respond. In many cases, the solution to the mechanic is "run to the safe spot." That is lazy design IMO, but likely inevitable given the job kits.

One solution is to give the jobs more crowd control and interrupt abilities, so that rather than DDR we have pseudo-random attacks that require countering instead of avoiding.

I see your point, but you could argue that CC is also very boring and binary. Like, we have silence mechanics currently, it's basically "press the silence button when bar glows". You'd also need to load jobs/roles with CC abilities that don't fuck up their rotation otherwise it will make for a disatisfying gameplay loop.And randomness doesn't always cut it, look at Rubicante for example.

The issue is always binary interaction, because it makes you do the same thing weeks after weeks. I think they need to add something in the interaction for it to feel fresher or more interactive. Off the top of my head, following your CC idea, maybe tanks and melees have a shared Stun skill, but a boss can be stunned only if three stuns are applied in a very short timeframe like 5 seconds. Therefore it rewards group play ?

FF14's engine and back-bone game-design makes it kinda hard to keep iterating upon I think, but there are ways.

[Sekundessounet]

How would you suggest they completely randomize attacks and provide infinite variations? Please provide a coding solution and an example of how this can be achieved and integrated into the FF14 code backend. Who knows, maybe some dev will look at your post and implement your solution into the code itself.

It looks like you have this solution since it's so easy. This is your time to shine!

I'm not in the "XIV's dungeons are bad and boring" wagon, but my guy this is disingenuous. They're asking for a level of unpredictability in encounters that forces you to be reactive rather than having the whole fight planned ahead. They're not asking for each encounter to be a rogue-like.

And your "coding" argument is also irrelevant. You don't need to be an engineer to voice things you want or dislike in a car for example. Having an understanding of how gamedev actually works is good, too many people (especially here) think devs won't change stuff because of laziness while the truth is way more tentacular that that. The person you're answering to doesn't fall into that category as far as I see.

[Feronar]

While FFXIV's dungeons are certainly nice to look at, they do seem to be a bit too formulaic.
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill first boss
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill second boss
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill final boss

[Sekundessounet]

While FFXIV's dungeons are certainly nice to look at, they do seem to be a bit too formulaic.
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill first boss
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill second boss
* Pull and kill trash up to barrier, barrier opens
* Pull and kill trash up to another barrier, barrier opens
* Kill final boss

I get why people can get tired of the formula. The issue is that the formula kinda created itself over the previous dungeon design from ARR and HW. For example, Toto-Rak had two pathways you could go through, yet one was definitly less worthwile than the other and people hardly ever took it. Same with the bonus rooms in Dzemael for example.
You also had some different traversal mechanics/hazards sometimes, but player feedback was that it was more of a hassle to play than fun most of the time (for example Aurum Vale poison puddles, Neverreap tornadoes). So instead SE kinda curated more on the way players were already handling dungeons.

[Mikey_R]

Nobody here is advocating for a full rng soup, which this game has never been.

And I never claimed anyone did say that, at least, that wasn't the intention. Instead, it was meant to display, starting at the other end of the spectrum, which I did highlight is absurd, put restrictions on it and then made the claim tat all fights have always been like this.

The important question from that post was the very last one, What does a fight need to look like for you to consider it not DDR? I asked this, not as some kind of gotcha, not as some kind of unanswerable question, but the same motivation I have after asking any similar questions. I want to know what that person is thinking, I want to know exactly what the issue is, especially if I have made a post with some reasoning and I happen to be off. Tell me how and why I am off. Vague statements tell us nothing, especially if the vague statement doesn't (appear to) correlate with reality.

Mao gives example that Mao gave little bits while ago. Boss has phase where hims planning to do attack. Dice is rolled. On 1-3, Boss summons bunch of mooks to join fight. On 4-6, Boss throws rock at party member outside of melee range. When rock lands, is begin slow roll out of arena. If players bust rock before it rolls out, is award them with Gils because is turn out that rock is actually Geode full of gems. If this phase happens on average 4-8 times per fight, is already, just this one random element by itself, make for 2 to the power of 4 to 8, possible different fights. If add one or two more random elements, can has much MUCH more variations! Is not take much to make fights exciting agains!

So, mechanic that either has you kill mobs or one where you ignore the rock? One allows for more uptime on the boss whilst the other takes it away. Let's be honest, Gil isn't going to be a motivator for killing this rock, however, Let's just say, for the sake of argument it will always be killed, for whatever reason.

You now have 2 scenarios, kill adds (of which I assume to be more than 1) or kill the 1 rock. How is this any different than having a mechanic that is either stack or spread, in or out etc.?

Going back to the original, but put it in an EX, Savage or Ultimate. Depending on how long you have to disengage for, you lose damage on the boss, which makes it harder to clear the damage check. Do you get lucky where you can ignore the boulder, giving more time to do damage, or, do you have to slow down damage because of mobs, making the damage check harder? Ideally, you would want something a bit more predictable. Your dice could be RNG, but, throughout the fight, it will always give some predictability, 2 rocks in a row guarantees mobs and vice versa. Maybe trying to keep the ratio as close to 50% as possible so it is slightly rigged.

This is then where problems come into play if one RNG mechanic heavily favours one job over another, or even one role over another. You create an imbalance with the potential to screw a group over, just because of RNG and that is not fun.