Thread: Almost into 7.3, what you think about the *improved* encounter design?

I will give them credit. Encounter design is 100% better than in EW. However it is still bad due to overall job design

Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

I'll agree with this. They can do whatever they want with the combat encounters, and I can praise elements of DT design over EW for sure.

But the jobs are the lens you view the rest of the game at. If the jobs aren't fundamentally fun to play, it casts a shadow over the entire game, whether that be in savage, in dungeons, or on a dummy. You can give me the most engaging, fulfilling task on the planet, but if you give me a garbage, boring tool to work on it with, I will never be truly satisfied. Building mansions on foundations of sand.

This is my biggest personal gripe with all of FFXIV.

It's something on my mind when I compare the fight design versus job design.

Well designed or not, the shelf life of XIV's encounters is rather limited. It's a puzzle fight that you need to solve where to be and when. After you solve it, it gets into autopilot mode. I personally don't find that fun or engaging. Yeah, you can take weeks to prog fights with random parties, but still the parts you "master" get behind you in the autopilot sense. At best, it just gets frustrating when others fail repeatedly at points they shouldn't (the infamous "prog liars").

So what's left then? Job engagement - the thing you play as. If the fight design is so cemented, that ideally should be counter-balanced with job mechanics that attempt to keep you engaged, at the very least for the skill ceiling. What is the challenge today? A game of, like Zenos once said, "A test of your reflexes" whether or not you press your 30/60/120s abilities at the right spot to align everything. No joke that the healers can literally spreadsheet all mandatory healing requirements and even have some leeway oGCDs just in case.

If they intend to leave the encounter design paradigm as it is, they need to bring it with whatever they have planned for 8.0's job improvement, rework, or whatever it is.

I've been playing this game for 12 years. Given the past 12 years, I don't know why I'd expect some great overhaul of the game.

I personally haven't seen a single thing that struck me as being that much of an improvement. If the visual vomit in the new raid tier is supposed to be an "improvement", then they failed.

All they know how to do is "make fight go faster". That's the only way they know to "improve" encounter design. And this game's not snappy and responsive enough to become an action-combat game like they are so desperate to turn FF into.

After seeing them sacrifice BLM on the altar of "improved encounter design", I don't have any love lost for them either.

Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

But the jobs are the lens you view the rest of the game at. If the jobs aren't fundamentally fun to play, it casts a shadow over the entire game, whether that be in savage, in dungeons, or on a dummy. You can give me the most engaging, fulfilling task on the planet, but if you give me a garbage, boring tool to work on it with, I will never be truly satisfied. Building mansions on foundations of sand.

This is my biggest personal gripe with all of FFXIV.

100% agree with this.

They're literally the only thing that doesn't make me puke in dungeons. Are they interesting? No, not really, but at least they're not DDR slop while hitting a dummy. Wish we had actual engaging jobs to enjoy ourselves over that trash though.
To my perspective it's the bosses that are here to lengthen an instance. At least they quelled this down a little in 7.2, so instead of being infuriating, bosses are now as bland as trash.

How? I mean, there's: no priority focus to be made. No mechanics linked to these packs. They follow on from each other at a pace that sounds like my neighbour snoring. How does that stop you falling asleep in the dungeons?

Originally Posted by Valence

Edit: but I do recognize that trash packs have lost a LOT in terms of gameplay actually. Mostly an actual battle system and resource scarcity, which SE deemed not fun or something and axed out.

I think this is the biggest downgrade of dungeon design.

We've seen on these boards that tanks not pulling W2W are very naughty indeed. Okay, but maybe the problem is they should only be able to do so in a strong party in which tank and healer are having to think about the other's resources.

Is it possible to pull all the trash to the first boss in Stone Vigil? I've never managed it with NPCs, but I'm pretty bad.

Dzemael Darkhold. I know it annoys people, but there are some really good pulls in there and even dps needs to be on their toes.

There are many other examples from ARR where the trash made the dungeons engaging.

Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Is it possible to pull all the trash to the first boss in Stone Vigil? I've never managed it with NPCs, but I'm pretty bad.

It is possible in a player party but it's really stressful, even with the best of tanks I know, I feel forced to use PoM to keep up with the throughput.