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

[Absurdity]

Jobs being fun is complex and subjective. Most people are just burnt out on the game in general.
When you understand jobs and optimization on a fundamental level, every job is basically the same anyways.

Its why when you ask people to articulate what would make jobs fun again they just ask for more GCDs or they want more debuffs/buffs to juggle, but that ultimately changes nothing about the jobs.

If you really want to make the jobs "fun" you have to stack layers upon layers of procs so that there's constant decision making for the most opitmal DPS. WoW had this for a long time around Legion through BFA, but then the masses complain about the game being too difficult/confusing.

This has always been an issue, and I doubt it will ever change.
Players can easily recognize that something is wrong, even if you only have a surface level understanding of the gameplay. But trying to figure out the specifics of what feels "off" is a lot more difficult.
For me it absolutely is the gradual removal of small moment to moment decision making, XIV never had a huge amount of it but it was there.
Fluctuating resource generation, cooldowns not automatically aligning, smaller role/job mechanics that needed tracking, just to name a few.

Pretty much anything that wasn't just making sure to press your oGCDs on cooldown to keep them within raid buff windows, which is all we're doing nowadays really.

WoW on the other hand overdid it, especially in BfA when the azeryte armor gave you a bunch of procs on top of those from your spec/trinkets you already had to track, while making the actual core class gameplay simpler and simpler since WoD. It became more about juggling item procs than the fantasy of playing a mage, or a rogue.

They could bring wall to walls back, but I don't know what people are looking for aside from that that isnt already present unless you're looking for unique minigames or something in dungeon encounters.

Wall to wall is basically all we have in dungeons now, that is part of the issue. Sure, bring in some minigames, really anything other than 2 trash packs -> wall -> 2 trash packs and then fighting a single enemy in an arena that makes you dodge the same 3 or so AoE patterns.

Every time they move from the mob x2 & >> boss formula, people complain and ask why they didnt just do what they always did because people dont like wasting time on more pulls

Doesn't surprise me that a lot of people have kind of just gotten used to the fast food design of dungeons.
They've served you nothing but the exact same cheeseburger for years and now they suddenly give you a salad when you were expecting another cheeseburger.

[MisterNublet]

They could bring wall to walls back, but I don't know what people are looking for aside from that that isnt already present unless you're looking for unique minigames or something in dungeon encounters.

Every time they move from the mob x2 & >> boss formula, people complain and ask why they didnt just do what they always did because people dont like wasting time on more pulls

Maybe if the devs made trash mobs more than target dummies in FFXIV, people wouldn't be as annoyed with them deviating away from the x2 pack/wall formula.

The Alexandria Dungeon was notorious for spawning adds that did one mechanic then nothing for next 15 seconds.

Zero threats of death, boring gameplay.

[Gwen_Lavellan]

My inside Granny misses the time when you had to use your brain to solve mechanics in dungeons/raids and not just being dancing as quick as possible. :/ (playing since HW release)
I miss the old classes battle design too.

[Raikai]

Savage is arguably the best its ever been with the most recent tier.
There's a lot of salty weirdos in this thread.

I don't think a lot of people (me included) contest the actual quality of the fight paradigm in Dawntrail. Compared to Endwalker ones, it's really better.

But I expected a different approach based on what was hyped during the Keynotes. Never thought they would abandon their "DDR", but instead of doubling down on it, I imagined they would incorporate other distinct elements more equally, to which we saw just superficially in a few moments here and there.

Can they bring more random elements to challenge people's ability to adjust?
Can they bring adds more often that need not just be down ASAP but handled in specific ways? (They did for one, at least...)
Can they introduce mechanics that a Phys Ranged would excel in dealing with?
Different arena approaches? I think the last time they made a really cool arena was during Titan Savage on the Eden raid.
How about more 'council fights' like Ark Angels not just in an Alliance Raid?
etc...
Come to think of it, they do address some of those in the Alliance Raid fights, don't they? If we look in retrospect, it got exciting elements that never see the light of the day in 8-mans.

[Supersnow845]

Honestly I don’t even think current savage is particularly great especially on casters. It’s better than EW but that’s a damn low bar

If the answer to “we can’t figure out any other way to make mechanics than having you constantly run around” is “strip casts from casters” then it’s pretty big failure in my eyes. Healers are still boring as well and tanks are still playing baby mode melee

The whole “best tier ever” still feels super melee centric

[Kozh]

Jobs being fun is complex and subjective. Most people are just burnt out on the game in general.
When you understand jobs and optimization on a fundamental level, every job is basically the same anyways.

Fair enough.

That said, I personally very much disagree when it comes to healers and tanks (to some degree). Playing healers ever since shb/ew makes me want to jump off a cliff. I want more GCD and buff/debuffs to juggle. I want my RNG Ast back.

[ASkellington]

What improved encounter design?

[Raikai]

What improved encounter design?

The one that we supposedly didn't get attention to Jobs for.

[Altina_Orion]

What improved encounter design?

Im actually curious about this. Are we referring to smaller hitboxes and some forced downtime? I'm not sure what else changed.

[ASkellington]

Im actually curious about this. Are we referring to smaller hitboxes and some forced downtime? I'm not sure what else changed.

At least in normal dungeons faster mechanics.

Other than that? Nothing.

Were you looking for less to no body checks? Nope we still got those.
Were you hoping for more mechanics for tanks/healers to use more of their defenses/heals? You sweet summer child.
Were you looking for more mechanics other than dodge this and take no damage outside of forced raidwides/stack markers/puddles? I mean we kinda got that but most of the fight is still dodge X take 0.

Only good thing we got was smaller hitboxes.

Boss positioning doesn't really matter still.
Tanks still sit on their defenses instead of using them thoroughly throughout the fight (because auto damage is still low).
Healers can still be replaced even on release because healing requirements are low enough to be covered by tanks/dps.
Mitigation is still king with next to no fights where pure healers shine so the pure/shield split was a wasted effort and destroyed AST for 0 reason (thanks SE).
Bosses still stop dealing damage when casting abilities.
Bosses still don't crit on autos.
To my knowledge there's little to no reason to bring caster/phys. ranged because there's no mechanics for them to bait out.

News flash dev team - making mechanics faster =/= improved design. Its just the same thing we've dealt with for years, just faster.