Mao has question for everyones about DDR-style boss fights.

[Gurgeh]

I miss Mao.... :-( ...

The reason we don't get much challenging casual content I think is because the battle engine is really limiting and so makes that kind of content the hardest of all to achieve.

The whole latency and snapshotting mechanism makes fluid paced battle fights almost impossible.
So instead your just left with wrote learning 'stand in the right place ahead of time' , and 'learning' as the the only challenge. Not thinking. Not building up a repetoir of actions.

It's far too bold to expect from CB3, but i think if they had any sense and real ambition they'd seriously consider developing an
"XIV-2" Battle Engine to run alongside and phase into XIV.
Can you imagine if you gave that to casuals to refine and test for you?! (Before handing it to ultimates who will just complain that not all of the jobs work exactly the same)

(Yes, it will require parallel job action designs. You don't have to make all jobs engine 2 ready at once. Pick a tank a healer a raged a melee and a mage.)

Right now WoW it's embarking on scraping add-ons. WoW?! Scrapping add-ons?! Can you imagine?! How incredibly brave.

Maybe it's time to dig yourself out of your hole too CB3, and be brave too.
It's your game engine that has emergently given rise to DDR fights that:
* Need tedious study.
* Even simulators.
* Strategies so complicated you can't help people with discussion alone and note you need selective PFs.
* Fights that can only be hard by requiring people to know the dance before they've even pulled.

It's like natural selection. Because of this the fights will always tend back to what you have now.

But be careful CB3. Wec do not need another diablo, or live action, button mashing brawler. Like Expoedition 33 has proven, and frankly so did FF16 not everyone like pureblood action games. It has to somehow still be FF. It has to be RPG.

It's s shame the current engine is perfect, but for the un-fixable problem of internet latency which is why you then get snapshots etc.
But there are many online games that provide much more low latency task time experiences than XIV, so better is certainly possible.

Maybe it's time to develop a whole new battle engine CB3.
(Just be careful of listening to the theory crafters too much they will suck the fun out everything with their love of spreadsheets and finding the 1 optimal way everyone now needs to play, and that one best job.)

And, to the armchair devs out there, (I could name people now), I haven't said it's easy, I haven't said there aren't big challenges to met, I could start naming them myself now and not finish for weeks or months... I don't want to hear you know for a fact it's authoritatively mathematically (all coding is regular maths still) impossible. It's definitely not. It's just hard, with 100, 000 possibilities to choose the good ones from.

[Valence]

Mao is my Haurchefant

[Mawlzy]

Question: is it really the engine that is the limiting factor, or the imagination of the devs?

My experience is that jobs and fight design have simply been getting steadily worse.

(Concerning Mao, I seem to recall something in DT MSQ to suggest Mao will always be with us, but don't recall the details.)

[TKMXIV]

Mao is my Haurchefant

I miss Mao.

[Valence]

Question: is it really the engine that is the limiting factor, or the imagination of the devs?

My experience is that jobs and fight design have simply been getting steadily worse.

(Concerning Mao, I seem to recall something in DT MSQ to suggest Mao will always be with us, but don't recall the details.)

The engine has issues but it's not a limiting factor. The game used to be different, more interesting with its jobs and systems, and a lot less tearing apart the engine at the seams.
I don't think it's a problem of imagination either, it's a problem of direction, and they double down into it because they cannot accept that it's exposing a lot of crippling issues.

[Nero-Voidstails]

system limitate thing but! they also choose to do worst to make a fight and adapt the job to it instead of the fight being made around the jobs

[Mecia]

I actually dont mind the 'DDR' design by itself,

Yeah you do after OC critical engagements, dummy.

[Raikai]

The engine has issues but it's not a limiting factor. The game used to be different, more interesting with its jobs and systems, and a lot less tearing apart the engine at the seams.
I don't think it's a problem of imagination either, it's a problem of direction, and they double down into it because they cannot accept that it's exposing a lot of crippling issues.

The design issue nowadays also goes with everything boiling down to just 3 things: Damage / Healing / Mitigation. There's nothing an encounter ask for the jobs that aren't these, and even Healing/Mit coming as utility from non-healers get less important as players gear up or the healers build their spreadsheets. Even movement skills or the 'free' mobility of the Aiming group are kinda obsolete when you learn the script.

If we stay into today's paradigm, then the DDR is bad because it offers very little fun post 'solving', or in a more practical sense, for reclear parties. They need either the encounters to feel more dynamic for those OR the jobs feel more complex for players. I don't think they'll go for the former, so the only hope is that 8.0 changes things around for the latter.

Thinking about what they could explore with the engine limitations and the references we have today:
- MP management for healers by more dynamic tools (e.g. replenish based on their dps actions) and MP costs to most of their oGCDs
- Utility with a brink of death/Damage Down/Vulnerabily cleanse
- More 'beacon-like' movement abilities. AST got exactly that in PVP
- More dynamic short-term blocking mechanics for tanks. IF they make auto-attacks more dangerous, they could add a filler 'block/evade' button
- Buff-management themed healer / Dot-management themed DPS job if they can make sure it wouldn't be affected by the buff/debuff limits
- I don't have hopes for a true pet-based job with how the engine works today, but I'd love to be surprised
- Adding more importance to the Aiming's 'grazes' on encounters or targets that would make their free, long-range movement useful. The niche is already a requirement for the party buff, might as well give them a more defined role

List goes on.

[Sekundessounet]

The design issue nowadays also goes with everything boiling down to just 3 things: Damage / Healing / Mitigation. There's nothing an encounter ask for the jobs that aren't these, and even Healing/Mit coming as utility from non-healers get less important as players gear up or the healers build their spreadsheets. Even movement skills or the 'free' mobility of the Aiming group are kinda obsolete when you learn the script.

If we stay into today's paradigm, then the DDR is bad because it offers very little fun post 'solving', or in a more practical sense, for reclear parties. They need either the encounters to feel more dynamic for those OR the jobs feel more complex for players. I don't think they'll go for the former, so the only hope is that 8.0 changes things around for the latter.

Thinking about what they could explore with the engine limitations and the references we have today:
- MP management for healers by more dynamic tools (e.g. replenish based on their dps actions) and MP costs to most of their oGCDs
- Utility with a brink of death/Damage Down/Vulnerabily cleanse
- More 'beacon-like' movement abilities. AST got exactly that in PVP
- More dynamic short-term blocking mechanics for tanks. IF they make auto-attacks more dangerous, they could add a filler 'block/evade' button
- Buff-management themed healer / Dot-management themed DPS job if they can make sure it wouldn't be affected by the buff/debuff limits
- I don't have hopes for a true pet-based job with how the engine works today, but I'd love to be surprised
- Adding more importance to the Aiming's 'grazes' on encounters or targets that would make their free, long-range movement useful. The niche is already a requirement for the party buff, might as well give them a more defined role

List goes on.

I like those ideas.
What needs to happen, whatever path they go on to improve job variety and gameplay, is to not go again into the pitfalls we saw between ARR and SB that made some jobs absolutely mandatory and others basically undesirable. This is the reason why they homogenized so many things, now they can at least control how differentiating the jobs more affect gameplay.

[Ayuhra]

I don't like it.

I am not good at DDR-style fights, never have been. And while I do not mind SOME fights being faster, I am really disappointed that they all are.

To be clear, I am fine with harder content. But does it all need to be harder in the same way?

People thought the original Steps of Faith was hard. I loved it. Seat of Sacrifice was complex, and I love that fight too. But this constant "be hyper alert for aoes and move constantly" design philosophy is more exhausting than fun. For me.