Couple Random ThoughtsFollow

I've taken a couple long breaks from XIV after giving up on 1.0 and then stopping during 2.0 after getting burned out dungeon grinding low level instances to level up new jobs. I always thought the grass would be and could be greener on the other side trying new MMO's when they release but they always let me down.

So I would go crawling back to FFXI (played off and on over 12 year period) or now XIV. I'm not super well geared, i103 pld, i93 drg. Just finished the 2.55 story line and now working on clearing the extreme primals and maybe will try some coil and see what happens. maybe get to or clear T9 before expansion hits, but I only play maybe 10 hours a week so I'm not holding my breath.

WALL OF TEXT OMG WHAT IS MY POINT!! Well my point is I really suck at Titan Ex. I always feel like I know what I'm doing for any encounter, always watch the videos sometimes twice before doing something new, and try to not get carried too much despite being under geared when paired with people i120+. But I "beat" Titan Ex for the first time last night and god dang that is a crazy fight, even with half of the group being mostly i110-i120 with a few people around i90 (I was on drg). I don't know if it's my mediocre PC or latency but even trying to wait for weight of the land and immediately running with the group stacked up I get hit 50% of the time instant death. Granted I've only done like 4-5 runs with DF maybe 20 attempts and got my kill but for the first time in this game I felt helpless. Should I just practice more and do it more often to get over this or is this a fight that is just truly harsh on anyone without split second reflexes and good latency.

My other question is greed etiquette for tower runs. I don't have every job leveled to 50 but do plan on leveling certain jobs and gearing for them but I feel bad rolling greed for an item that could be level 15 or something. The thought could be hey if you want the item run as that class and roll need but I do feel guilty especially in WoD not so much ST and who cares about CT unless you want for glamour. I see max geared tanks in ST rolling need on every tank item that drops when they clearly have gear 20 or 30 ilevels higher now the argument can be for glamour but man it's somewhat irritating, or any job that does that for that matter.

Any thoughts? Thanks for reading, had to do something waiting for NFL draft to start! Go Jets!

I find turning down my graphics settings help, even though the PC runs fine and I do some times get lag.

Titan is a fight that practise makes perfect, its about pre-empting the move instead of waiting for it. Positioning your self ready for the run for what's about to come. I do seem to get hit on things that don't actually hit me but again I adapt to that.

I greed on everything, every item from every dungeon and every primal/coil etc. I use items for turn-ins for GC Seals, for desynthing and occasionally (WOD for instance) to upgrade gear on my lesser jobs. In the lower level dungeons if a player asks that is obviously not well geared I'm fine with passing and if its FC/LS members I am usually on Teamspeak and know if they want an item before I make my lot. I wouldn't think many people would complain as loot drops are part of the game and in most instances you/they can just run again to try and get a specific tiem. Congratulations on Titan btw - I hated that fight because of the lag until I moved back to my home country and got fibre optic - hey presto all of a sudden I never got hit by weight of the land - so liberating!

Randomness has it's inherent problems. The most crucial issue from a design perspective is making sure the RNG cannot s c r e w you over in a worst-case-scenario. This means that the boss should never be able to behave in a way that a sufficiently geared & skilled group cannot recover from it. Otherwise the encounter comes down to luck which is not acceptable.

This in turn means the boss skills should be balanced in a way that the said group can recover from them in a worst-case-scenario. The conclusion is that the boss will be at it's hardest in a worst-case-scenario, and that scenario should be beatable. The issue is that the worst-case-scenario does not always happen in a random environment. In fact the content becomes generally easier as long as the worst-case-scenario does not happen, while being the easiest in a best-case-scenario. Only those groups having to deal with the encounter at it's worst will face the hardest difficulty, but as it is very easy in FFXIV to repeat failed encounters, the community might just decide to retry if the worst comes to worst.

Either way, it follows that a fully scripted encounter will always provide more challenge because the developers can design the content to always test the players' mettle according to the standards deemed applicable. Randomized encounters on the other hand will have to be designed according to the standards of the worst-case-scenario, making the content easier in a non-worst-case-scenario. That's not to say that randomized content does not have a place in the game (in casual-midcore content for example), but regardless of how much we kick and scream the design issue will not go away.

Though what the issue really is escapes my understanding. There's nothing wrong with having to learn a script; in fact, as you said, many talents in this world are solely about learning a scripted sequence and executing it flawlessly (dancing, playing an instrument.. you name it). Some MMO gamers seem to have a real issue with this for some reason, but I don't see anyone telling a world-famous pianist that what he's doing is not so impressive, as he has "only" learned a script.

Edited, May 4th 2015 6:18am by Hyanmen

As long as the community is fine that "less scripted" equals "less difficult" then both can co-exist. However to me it seems that some players (not you necessarily) have the mindset that non-scripted encounters are a true test of player skill, when the reality is the complete opposite.

I always liked Nyzul Isle, and I think that kind of template could make for good casual-midcore content, as it was in FFXI.

Would you care to debate my aformentioned arguments then? I may as well be wrong, but as far as I see it my argument is quite sound.

I did argue before why that wouldn't be feasible regardless of the win rate. In your example, if there is even a slight chance that winning would become impossible then it cannot be done since winning or losing should never be a matter of luck.

Some of XI's most difficult long form fights ran on scripts, too, especially in {sea} and Limbus. Ultima did its horrible terror + morbol status effect move at 80, 60, 40, and 20% of health. It could be stunned with good timing, but you had to know it was coming to do that. Then after 40% health it started with the Citadel Busters, and everyone knew they had 30 seconds to GTFO and hope that the target somehow survived (usually not. A tank might make it.) Jailer of Love spit out its waves of adds exactly one minute apart, and they followed a very clear pattern of 9 sets of 3 adds before settling into the same ones over and over again. For Odin, you know that Zankenshukin was coming at 9% as soon as he started trash talking, and you better GTFO and hope your tank lived there, too.

I think XI had much larger battle arenas in some cases (some even open world), which allowed for more interesting placement of players and more interesting mechanics for dealing with adds. That, I think, could add some variety and spice to long form fights. We've seen that start with Steps of Faith. I hope to see other large battle arenas in in the future in FFXIV.

Edited, May 5th 2015 1:03pm by Catwho

Every single fight in FFXI without exception would be completely and utterly obliterated by every single group that struggles on Savage Coil. The only sliver of hope XI ever had was the design choice to limit the amount of retries you get if you happen to fail. This obviously makes it "harder" to win in an artificial way because you get to practice less. Had XI allowed for unlimited and immediate retries like XIV does all the content would have been a complete joke right from the get-go.

Moreover, the dev team's struggle to create truly varied encounters has always been immediately clear by looking at the ways they tried to circumvent the extremely simplistic combat mechanics. Either the variance of contents depended on environmental gimmicks such as salvage cells and nyzul floor layouts or the "most difficult" encounters were made to be that way by making them last for ages (AV & PW anyone?). For how little the devs had to work with they did a good enough job though, aside from the AV fiasco. Such desperate measures for "hard" contents will never be needed in FFXIV and fortunately so.

In less than two years the ARR devs have already went above and beyond the encounter mechanic variety that XI ever had, while admittedly having less environmental gimmicks. I only wish this could be a matter of opinion.

In hindsight, the "limited practice" design choice is something I've often thought about regarding FFXI. While it had drawbacks, it also fit in nicely with XI's other battle system elements, and I wish some of those elements could be more prominent in XIV.

In XIV, not only can you queue up for endgame battles whenever you'd like, but it also doesn't really matter which job you queue up as -- the strategy never changes. Tanks, DPS and healers always do the exact same things. So in addition to limitless practice attempts, there's not even any need to practice using different party setups. To compensate for this, you have these heavily scripted battles filled with mechanics that will wipe you with even minimal mistakes. As a result, "practicing" is mostly memorizing the boss scripts and "reacting" preemptively.

In FFXI, not only did you have limited practice attempts, but fights often unfolded differently with various party setups. The healer and support jobs usually took on completely different roles depending on the type of tanks or DPS the party had. Or, if the party didn't have great DPS, then kiting may be employed to extend fights and minimize damage to the group. If people made mistakes and the party started dying, then each person's 2-hour ability often provided the chance to turn the tides and regain footing. Loading up on potions, ethers, etc., was also a "must" for certain groups before content got nerfed or people grew way overgeared years later.

While the community often settled upon the optimal setup to make these fights easier, it was anything but "easy" to jump into these fights with a group of friends, work out a strategy and get the win. True, it didn't take weeks of a group bashing its head against a wall... but why should it? To me, that's more an issue of insanity than challenge.

Really, I just found FFXI's battle system to be so much more engaging and satisfying. I liked being able to win a fight in a few tries without having to memorize a 10-minute YouTube video. Heck, in FFXIV, no party could survive the first two stages of a coil turn (and probably not even one stage) without first memorizing several minutes of a YouTube video. And while memorization is certainly a skill, I found the "easier" battles of FFXIV to be more comprehensive tests of skill. XI's battles didn't use memorization as a crutch; they relied on planning, team work and the use of each party's unique abilities to cope with various situations. Those tests of skill are largely absent from FFXIV.

I do love XIV, but I really wish this development team could find some kind of middle ground between "you don't stand a chance unless you've memorized this!" and "here's a fight you can win on your first time through if you and your team are creative and really work well together."

Edited, May 6th 2015 1:06pm by Thayos

Agreed.. That's why I liked Abyssea so much, most were open world fights. You could use the terrain to beat things and different stratagies.
My most memorable fight was in abyssea where Tesee and I took down a boss with the two of us and most alliances could not beat it. She was Monk and I was Whm when that was one of the best combos for a while. We had about 50 people watching at the end and cheering us on and a few were there to try and steal I am sure... Man it felt great and a huge sense of accomplishment.

We had a static for empyrean weapon and it was 4 of us and we took down glavoid when full alliance could not even brew it sometimes. That feels great when you do something like that.

This stuff can not even happen in this game. They dont even allow you to enter anything with out a full party.
That is the stuff I like.

There was that giant worm in the past that you were lucky to find and it would suck you under ground after a while and I had no idea it even did that. We came across it and my friend grabbed it a a pld and completely freeked us when it took us underground to continue the fight. We did it with 3 people and it was amazing. i mean it was soo cool running across this just out in the open. Never in this game. To me there was allot I didn't like about FFXI but this kind of stuff made it worth it and a group of good players could come up with ways of under-manning stuff.


Would it now be cool to do any of crystal tower with a few really good people. That would be awsume.

Everything feels like it is on rails in this game.



Edited, May 6th 2015 4:49pm by Nashred

Unless you haven't done a lot of XIV content, it's the same exact kind of tedium in XIV, only in a different format. "Tedium" tends to come from the unnecessary stuff thrown in for the sake of grinds, e.g Animus Books and Nexus/Mahatma lights/Dungeon KIs that are RNG "drops" rather than actual content. (Something that even XI didn't do as it usually got tossed onto an spawned NM or spawned fight ala Abyssea style where you could even force higher drop rates in certain content.)



Also take into consideration this game isn't exactly hiding the design of it being wonky for some people and some confirmed latency issues (Mudras for example), so if your personal net is terrible, you'll have a terrible time no matter what which will add difficulty, but only artificially. So when a lot of the difficulty comes with needing to avoid ground AoEs of some kind or charging enemies (hi to you T12) if your net doesn't hold up, it turns something insanely easy into something borderline impossible, but it may not always be the game's fault (Titan for example.)



Every MMO does. XIV is chock full of them in the worst way possible. In XI, you could rotate content and still had side content you could do that wasn't weekly or daily based, but currency based in a way, i.e Burning Circles of some kind or activities like Besieged, just something other than the gear treadmill. In XIV, the ONLY end-game content is usually weekly locked until they obsolete the drops, then you can spam it. At current time, all content is unlocked but you still have a cap on your progression weekly (450 poetics) if you can't do Final Coil, which based on census data by players and parsing the lodestone, the majority of the playerbase are still on T9. So limits aren't part of an argument as that's to keep people subbed more than anything and the more MMOs you play, the sooner you realize this.

Especially when it comes to XIV, it's blatantly obvious they limit things for the sake of keeping people subbed because there truly isn't that much progression content with the vertical progression design - when you obsolete all of your prior content, you kind of create a bottleneck in the final step while waiting for the next update, in this case, the expansion that Yoshida confirmed is basically on the level of 2.x being that I130 is actually TOO HIGH for Heavensward 3.0 meaning that progression actually isn't happening until August/September.



Yep. And if you actually did it and actually take part in the "end-game community" it's accepted fact that Final Coil is the easiest content in the game when it comes to "End-game" content. So much so that Yoshida gets insulted if you say it. They're mechanic driven but...the hardest part is if you have common sense, meet your DPS check and know how to work with people. Binding Coil 1 is beyond easy, the only difficulty was T2 and T5 in 2.0, T5 held people because it was -full- of instant death mechanics. And if you can sit there and say "Nothing in XI was difficult", instant death mechanics isn't difficulty either.

Ever notice the majority of Second Coil and Final Coil had and has tons of instant death/wipe mechanics? If you took them out they would beyond cake walk. Get caught in a DB in T9? Well hey guess what you wiped everyone. That's not difficulty. Both game have different battle system and mechanic styles - Here, Yoshi is afraid to give us actual stats (yet let enemies use more variety of skills and spells that enhances them in various ways) yet in XI you also had mechanics like Geomancy and Blue Magic, which are on a whole different level of gameplay because in XIV, what skill combo gives you traits and bonus attributes? What spells boosts your party's attributes or perma debuffs the boss that isn't part of your "rotation"? XI is a very different game in setup which means the difficulty would be on a different level..where most of ARR's difficulty is instant death mechanics and the player who joins that says: "I LEARN BY DOING SO I'M GOING TO WIPE YOU GUYS FOR THE NEXT 2 HOURS IF YOU DON'T RAGE QUIT."

Have -you- even cleared Coil? Remember, Savage Coil is done purely for a title and even stated by the lead guy himself is the: "Untuned and non balanced version", meaning you're technically not even supposed to have seen this version, but people wanted something tougher and sadly, the fact people were asking for tougher content to the point Yoshida said he doesn't want to make the game "too hard" basically means that the game actually is fairly easy. ARR is far from a tough MMO..GW2 is tougher..TERA is tougher. Even Ragnarok Online is tougher. But they met their goal in targeting a specific playerbase, so whether it's tough or not is more of a personal desire, but in terms of what SE wanted? It's not difficult at all and they did it that way to target newer players and draw in fresh blood. In all actuality.

Recovering after a summons' Astral Flow is neigh impossible. Almost always results in instant wipe, and the Summoner is like on top of the alliance, not going anywhere.

I think 8 vs Dynamis Lord is possible. About 3 RDM/DRK should do it.

Edited, May 7th 2015 4:02pm by TwilightSkye