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

[Gwenkatsu]

I think the devs got things all backwards. We need simpler fight mechanics, and more complex job rotations in 8.0.

Finally a post on this forum that I can fully and wholeheartedly agree with. Having to look constantly at the floor, the boss' hands 30 feet up in the air, his castbar, and into 4 different directions all at once isn't challenging gameplay - it's just annoying.

[Mikey_R]

I don't remember running out of resources that much due to other players failure even in casual content for the very reason that casual content was also a lot more forgiving than savage on resource management (except AoE in dungeons but that's another trivia). I do even remember complete randoms in dungeons manashifting away, or even goading. Uncommon, but not totally non existent either, and that was just a bonus, the run worked perfectly fine without. That's frankly a skill issue.

As has already been said, different regions and different environments play a factor. I can only comment on my own experiences.

And how many more blocks have we lost over time? All the ones that aren't about players running all over the place and jumping into the safe spot. You keep asking the question, we keep giving you examples, but you always come back to ask the same question anyway. Why should we bother more?

If we actually want to go down this rabbit hole rather than just using vague ideas to get the concept across, we need to define what it means to be a block. I can say a stack marker is a block, but do the normal circle AoEs count as the same as the line stacks? How about the mechanics with several stack markers that you have to keep separate? Are all these things considered the same block or are they different?

How about using objects to block attacks? M7 is the most recent on that used enemies to block attacks, but I believe Rathalos is the next newest fight to use that. However, P9 has a mechanic that you use objects to block damage, but these aren't enemies, so is this considered the same or different?

We then need to define what it means to 'lose a block'. How long does it have to be before a mechanic is said to be 'lost to time'. What if a block was classed as lost to time, then a mechanic came out that used it, if it really then lost to time still, or, has it always been part of the fight design, they have just never had a reason to use it.

This is why the vague metaphor was used.

The random group excuse is literally why we got where we are today, with the complete removal of skill expression. What's next, we removed tanking/healing failure points in casual content, what is left to remove, since the only thing that remains to trip people up is encounter mechanics?

So what you are saying is the random group shouldn't be considered, despite the fact they likely make up the majority of people in the DF? And why should I feel the burden of someone else not pressing their buttons? I'm trying to be optimal, but that other player isn't letting me. That is the frustration.

Edit: I already gave other examples of non DDR mechanics or fights in another thread.

-Healer add, no different to burning down any other add mechanic wise. DPS for the fight as a whole is going to be balanced around it already.
-Managing damage stacks, once you know how to manage them, it becomes routine. it is just another step in the sequence of doing the fight (you mention second boss of Aery, literally wait until bomb eats enough before it explodes, then kill it. Barely managing anything).
-Adds doing 'specialised things' is just another name for 'boss mechanic' it means nothing.
-Enemies you have to kill, you burn them down, enemies you have to keep alive is a more interesting one. In the current gameplay, it might not work as well, mainly because of al the AoE we have even in our ST rotations. The alternative is to have the second tank take it off to the side so it cannot be cleaved, but then your second tank is standing there throwing ranged attacks at the boss, hardly compelling gameplay.

Obviously, you then list of a number of fights, which I won't address except the first boss of Sohm Al (already mentioned the second boss of Aery), the question is, where should that mechanic be tuned? Should it give a chance to insta kill a party because it gained too many stacks? Is that a bit harsh for the first boss of a dungeon? All things that need to be considered when making mechanics for specific pieces of content. Even if it was made where you need to kill all the bees, it is just adds you need to kill, nothing special.

- Tam Tara hard: that first boss is still hilarious to this day and wipes parties that try to bruteforce it but don't have the skills to do it..

That is literally the most boring boss ever. It is literally everyone just stands on the boss and single targets it down. That is the entire fight, everything else can be ignored as it gets resolved automatically. It is quite literally the definition of stand still and let mechanic resolve. The only reason people die is they move the bosses targeted AoE away from the mobs, mobs blow up, wipe party. The bosses AoE kills the mobs, in one hit. Adds do not blow up, party wins.

What was said: "we hate how synching debuffs is difficult"
What was meant: "due to multiplicative damage calculation, trick attack is a black hole that sucks in every other cooldown, since it is not optimal to not use CD's under TA"
What CS3 did: "lets put every damage cooldown on the same timer"

What was said: "keeping uptime is hard"
What was meant: "with how strict we have to adhere to our resource generation due to damage CD timers, any loss in uptime makes our burst worse"
What CS3 did: "lets make enemy hitboxes massive so players can always hit the enemy"

I mean, this has been my entire point. Why is it that when you mean one thing, you say something esle, then act surprised when the thing you meant wasn't acted upon. This is why I keep saying to stop using vague sentences that don't mean anything or why it is important to give examples of things you want to see. That way you give clearer feedback to the devs and they might actually change the game based on what you actually meant.

This is also clearly something other members of the community are noticing as well, for example:

At this point, I have no idea what anyone actually means by DDR, because the original game is just you standing, more or less, in one spot hitting buttons on cue, which is barely any different from "preferring to stand in one spot or do one thing over standing in some other spot and doing some other thing,"

While some people are able to define “DDR” in an understandable way, the definitions seemingly varies per person so the more important things are what specific things it sounds like the specific person is disliking and why, and what they seemingly prefer instead.

If everyone is talking about how DDR is bad, why is it that there is no one definition to work off of? You all complain about DDR mechanics, but you arebn't even singing off of the same hymn sheet. It makes it incredibly difficult to know what is actually wanted.

Now put yourself in a devs shoes. You see this feedback of 'fights need to be less DDR'. You think, OK, lets have a look. You go in and see people complaing about DDR fights, but nothing is really said about why they say what they do. What do they mean by DDR anyway? This person is saying one thing, this person is saying something else, do they even know what they are talking about? Got nothing to work off of here, so I'm just going to ignore it.

[Kazuke_Miso]

"I sincerely want to know what is meant by 'DDR'"

"No, your definition is wrong!! For arbitrary reason X, Y, Z!"

"No, you are wrong because I don't want to watch the video!"

"No, you are wrong because I found it boring!"

"Uh, you all complain about DDR mechanics, but what is DDR??? Got you!! Haha, I won the Internet debate."

[Eraden]

That is true tho. The cancellation thread from Mao was in November last year. It was sad and all, but now months passed and… what?..

Mao subscription is 6 month. Mao cancelled while backs buts it still has times left.

[Eraden]

There are 6-month subscriptions though. Regardless, I'm always supportive of people who really put their wallets where their mouth is and quit, even if it's just for 3 months every patch cycle, or more. If you look at the cancellation thread, many of those people have indeed quit.

Kazuke got its in one. Mao subscription is indeed 6 month. Been cancelled for little while now. Mao only logs in once per week to checks on house (Mao friend has some expensive furnishings in house whats Mao been trying to get friend to recovers thems) but once subscription is overs, Mao lettings house go backs into circulation and Mao will no longer be able post in forums. In mean times, Mao been playings WoW.

[AmiableApkallu]

If everyone is talking about how DDR is bad, why is it that there is no one definition to work off of? You all complain about DDR mechanics, but you arebn't even singing off of the same hymn sheet. It makes it incredibly difficult to know what is actually wanted.

Now put yourself in a devs shoes. You see this feedback of 'fights need to be less DDR'. You think, OK, lets have a look. You go in and see people complaing about DDR fights, but nothing is really said about why they say what they do. What do they mean by DDR anyway? This person is saying one thing, this person is saying something else, do they even know what they are talking about? Got nothing to work off of here, so I'm just going to ignore it.

My friend on Hydaelyn, I talked about the thematic tie between mechanics and the encounter, and intentionally avoided using "DDR" as much as possible, precisely because it's not a generally useful descriptor.

[Mikey_R]

My friend on Hydaelyn, I talked about the thematic tie between mechanics and the encounter, and intentionally avoided using "DDR" as much as possible, precisely because it's not a generally useful descriptor.

I think something has been lost in translation here.

I used your quote and the quote from Voryn to strengthen the fact the the term is functionally useless as a descriptor as to people's actual concerns about the game, which all started from ovIm's post. To go through it:
-Initially, ovIm posted the 'we said this, we meant this, why did they act on what we said and not what we meant'.
-Which I pointed out that being vague is pointless as noone knows what is actually meant, of which I used the 2 quotes as more examples of people not knowing what is meant.
-This is then followed up by making the point that better descriptors of what is actually wrong/what has actually changed need to be made.

Ultimately, we agree on the fact DDR means nothing without more to go off of.

[Underscore]

I've only been raiding since Endwalker, but I do feel they've been leaning too far in the direction of complicated mechanics > job gameplay.

It's a whole lot of "solve this rubiks cube in under 8 seconds while juggling or everyone dies", which can feel quite overwhelming as someone with a brain that struggles with that sort of rapid complex processing and multitasking. I shouldn't need to have flash cards with lists of instructions for each debuff or limit cut number on my other monitor (*coughP12Scough*). Feels pretty bad to have the entire party wipe because 1/8 people made a tiny mistake on the puzzle too. Not to mention the impact that this design philosophy has on job homogenization. I cleared UWU not long ago and while the experience obviously wasn't the same as it would've been during Stormblood, I really enjoyed it.

[flowerfairy]

Internally I understand where Mao is coming from, but it's hard to put in words.

Well, when I think about ARR fights, random isn't the word I would use. Bosses do follow a chain of events if you look hard enough.
But, like other people might've pointed out here, it's a little harder to keep track of what's happening because many things were untelegraphed, and depended on %HP Phase changes.
Titan EX is a good example of this. If you played it enough, you might be able to get a feeling of exactly when he'll use a TB, landslides/puddles, tumults, gaols, etc. But sometimes the fight can get chaotic if phase change thresholds are hit in awkward times.
For example, phase 2 usually ends after he drops bombs on 80% of the stage and does a landslide. But, if for whatever reason the party still hasn't hit the transition %HP, he'll repeat all of phase 2 again, starting with gaols. And if you're party was juuust close to the transition %HP that he'll do gaols and then jump up for the phase change, it can get hectic. I think Ramuh EX is much more notorious for how chaotic phase changes can get.
You can probably argue that there's a case of randomness here but I think it's just semantics at that point.

So DDR probably has always existed depending on how you define it.
But, even then, when I think about everything I've played as healers, I still remember having the most fun on MINE ARR and HW fights.
Well, maybe I haven't gave DT a fair chance with healing, because playing EW's extremes and first savage raid tier on SCH when it was current bored me out of my mind that I decided to just drop it all together.

Yeah, Titan is predictable but he still hits like a truck. Levi is predictable but you still have to deal with Briny Mirror. Ifrit is predictable (actually, I feel like the amount of TBs he does in a row isn't very predictable!) but you still have to deal with that mega annoying pushback debuff he puts on healers.
On top of all of that, you also have to consider the job kits themselves. DPS players probably hate having less buttons to press, but personally as a healer, being forced to interact with my MP more and not just with raising people is much more engaging than having a bajillion redundant oGCD heals. I agree with everyone that says encounter design and job design come hand in hand.

You can probably predict everything that goes on in Coils as well... but I can't. Not in the same level that I can predict the primal fights.
T1, I forget the boss name but it's the snake that splits into 2 and needs to be fed slimes to keep its constant increasing of damage buffs in check. The sustained damage in there is crazy enough that some experienced healers still prefer to use mainly Cure 1 to keep some MP.
Everyone has a relatively simple job to do in regards to the fight itself. Tanks keep snakes apart, healers sometimes like to split their focus on one tank for each, ranged DPS run to flashing platforms to spawn slimes.
But when you start to consider the small details - slimes heal the snake depending on their HP so you want to bring its HP as low as possible before feeding but you don't want to kill it; the snakes have a baitable back attack that stops its auto attacks if just for a moment so you want melees to bait it as much as possible but you don't want them to get hit; tanks don't have as many mitigation buttons and the cleaves are untelegraphed mini busters so they want to space out through as long as possible (PLD is really strong in these raids because of Sheltron) - it makes for a unique experience and it's overall very hard to stick everything to a specific timeline. For me, anyways. It feels more like everyone has a job to do and less like everyone has a spot to stand on in specific times.

I consider these kinds of mechanics as attrition-type. And to brush it off as "just routine", "hardly compelling", it really irks me. Because these are the kinds of mechanics that specifically consider tanks and healers in the party who have a limited resource they need to hold on to.
With today's endgame job kits, yeah these mechanics won't be interesting. Don't you think that's a part of the problem too? What exactly is "compelling" about tanks drowning in passive heals and healers with the same functional buttons in different colors? Wouldn't you consider fights that are able to be almost 1-to-1 slotted in a mitigation sheet to be "just routine"?

I understand Mikey's point even if it comes across as a little pedantic. Sometimes a player isn't clear what they're issues are with a game, just like how sometimes someone at a restaurant isn't specific about what tastes bad about a dish, it just tastes bad to them. And I personally feel that it isn't the consumers job to specify the exact ingredients the chef should use to make the food taste better, but to each their own.
However I think it's wrong to imply that content hasn't changed... it most certainly has. And I'm sorry that I'm not good enough with words that I can exquisitely explain what I like about the fights but you (general you) can do the fights yourself in MINE right now to understand what everyone is talking about. And I'm positive the devs know what everyone is talking about, I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that they feel a bit of remorse having to cut through old dungeon mechanics just to accommodate for trusts.

[Valence]

To everybody that can't see it, doesn't relate to it in any way, genuinely or not, then I'm genuinely happy for you if you enjoy the game as a result.