The Battle Reform Blueprint

[Hyan]

Still in denial that mmo can challenge people with something else than pure grinding?

Still in denial thinking most people actually give a shit about just how hard an mmo is?

[Draylo]

Still in denial thinking most people actually give a shit about just how hard an mmo is?

They do actually.

[Meko]

How do you define difficulty?

[Kaylia]

How do you define difficulty?

Something that make you feel like a good player when you complete it.

[Nevex]

How about a more objective answer?
People botting Fafnir, being AFK the whole fight and lotting Ridills considered themselves good players too you know.

[Lordender]

How about a more objective answer?
People botting Fafnir, being AFK the whole fight and lotting Ridills considered themselves good players too you know.

lol, I know right? Then seeing them as drk/nin with a maneater and ridill 3 hours later failing in a burn party.

[Kaiyoko]

I'd say out of new XI content if you can solo abyssea bosses w/o atma, cruor buffs, and temp Items. That takes some kind of skill.

[Hyan]

It can mean different things to different people.

I'm sure they can make the battle system good enough to be entertaining for most people. Especially if they can figure out creative ways to utilize the resources available. More than that is simply a good card to use in mmo vs mmo arguments. All of them are more or less full of non-challenging activities either way, like leveling.

[Zettofaia]

Well, to me, difficult means content that only a small percentage of the players can "clear". IMO, you should always have different levels of difficulty when it comes to content, especially in a game that's not centered around PvP, you need some grounds for competition, and group achievements can do that to a certain degree.

[Meko]

I think there is a fine line between difficulty and time sinks. Being that I'm older now and have a wife/kids etc, I hope they don't add time sinks for the "hardcore" etc etc etc. I'll admit that I do like some of the WoW encounters but at the same time, they do get a little boring after a while because everything feels so controlled. I equate it sometimes to like a Double Dare physical challenge. You just have to fill up the bar past the red line on the cup to win the prize. Bosses do X move at Y % every time and then they phase change and so on. I'm not comparing or bashing just more so stating that I hope they make the raids/instances interesting and that the loot isn't tiered.

[Tomino]

Difficulty I'd like to see in FF14:

- Preparation. Learn the fight and come up with a proper job setup. WoW can't do that because each toon is single-class and when they tried, raid leaders were keeping certain classes out of endgame.

- Damage control + the whole monster's TP issue. I loved how in FF11 you didnt simply unleash hell on your enemy but you had to weight if certain damages were worth the TP the monster was being feeding.

- Reactive situations. One thing I dislike of WoW bosses is the fact their abilities are on timers, which you can have on-screen via DBM. I prefer players to be on their toes and react once the boss picked its TP move.

- Crowd Control. Make it adds, pods, summons or henchmen. Oh and kiting.

- Positions. From the most common breath attacks, players should focus on how they're placing themselves as the fight goes on.

- Resources Control. Fights should be challenging in a way that players must use their brains to save mana/cures by using cooldowns and such. WoW took the same path with Cata and it's nice.

[Hyan]

Instead of focusing on bosses, make the whole event entertaining and varied from the beginning to end and event to another. Time limits dictate how much you can accomplish. Better players can do more in less time, bad players prioritize. Randomization is a bonus and keeps things fresh.

[Kaiyoko]

Difficulty I'd like to see in FF14:

- Preparation. Learn the fight and come up with a proper job setup. WoW can't do that because each toon is single-class and when they tried, raid leaders were keeping certain classes out of endgame.

- Damage control + the whole monster's TP issue. I loved how in FF11 you didnt simply unleash hell on your enemy but you had to weight if certain damages were worth the TP the monster was being feeding.

- Reactive situations. One thing I dislike of WoW bosses is the fact their abilities are on timers, which you can have on-screen via DBM. I prefer players to be on their toes and react once the boss picked its TP move.

- Crowd Control. Make it adds, pods, summons or henchmen. Oh and kiting.

- Positions. From the most common breath attacks, players should focus on how they're placing themselves as the fight goes on.

- Resources Control. Fights should be challenging in a way that players must use their brains to save mana/cures by using cooldowns and such. WoW took the same path with Cata and it's nice.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean but... The reactive situations just don't need to be X mob readies X TP move in the log, they need visual indicators to show which TP move it's about to use. Idc if it's random, but for people to react to a special ability there needs to be something to tell what it's using.

I think Ixion is one of the better representations of this in XI.

[Navarius]

I'm not sure if this is what you mean but... The reactive situations just don't need to be X mob readies X TP move in the log, they need visual indicators to show which TP move it's about to use. Idc if it's random, but for people to react to a special ability there needs to be something to tell what it's using.

I think Ixion is one of the better representations of this in XI.

I think what he meant by 'reactive' has to do more with how the group has to react as a whole. Take Fafhogg, for example. Everyone can agree that it's usually an easy, uneventful fight, but it could get difficult if it decides to spam wing six times in a row. You might have to sleep it to get HP/buffs back up, requiring the DD to pay attention to how mages are doing and whether or not a sleep is necessary. If the DD fail to turn in time, maybe a tank dies, maybe white and red mages run out of MP from spamming cures, or maybe one more fluke wing comes in and finishes off your party of taru black mages. I can think of various other ways easy fights can go horribly wrong, depending on how people react to things, but I think that illustrates the point that was trying to be made(at least, that's what I got from it).

[Kaylia]

How about a more objective answer?
People botting Fafnir, being AFK the whole fight and lotting Ridills considered themselves good players too you know.

Obtaining a ridill was difficult, even if it was for the wrong reason. Difficulty mean different thing to different players.


However, it's pretty obvious that we are talking about difficulty where players skills are involved. A good metric for this is to check what percent of the playerbase is able to clear the content assuming similar fighting condition (same accessibility, same gears).

[Kaylia]

I think what he meant by 'reactive' has to do more with how the group has to react as a whole. Take Fafhogg, for example. Everyone can agree that it's usually an easy, uneventful fight, but it could get difficult if it decides to spam wing six times in a row. You might have to sleep it to get HP/buffs back up, requiring the DD to pay attention to how mages are doing and whether or not a sleep is necessary. If the DD fail to turn in time, maybe a tank dies, maybe white and red mages run out of MP from spamming cures, or maybe one more fluke wing comes in and finishes off your party of taru black mages. I can think of various other ways easy fights can go horribly wrong, depending on how people react to things, but I think that illustrates the point that was trying to be made(at least, that's what I got from it).

That's because there was so many casual retard playing FFXI. Controlling damage intake (tp given, sleep/bind when needed) wasnt rocket sciences, and nobody decent had issue with such thing. You could just be conservative and roll face through everything.

Also, because FFXI was incredibly boring for the most part, people were always multitasking, not paying attention, or simply didn't care to learn how to play.


There was still a few fights where the RNG would fuck you up, but the only solution was to bring more bodies to replace the one that died

- Preparation. Learn the fight and come up with a proper job setup. WoW can't do that because each toon is single-class and when they tried, raid leaders were keeping certain classes out of endgame.

I disagree if you're comparing this to FFXI, because once a strategy was discovered, it would be reused in so many fights. Sure, very early, a few pioneer had to think up of something clever, but that's not true for 99% of the population who followed after. When I left the game right before the level cap increase, every fight were limited to the same 2-3 strats, and figuring which one to uses was very easy. All you had to do was try the fight once, and decide if it was a tp burn, a zerg, or a manaburn. Most fights were also very forgiving and you could just go with about anything.


Secondly, WoW hard mode do require some tweak and thinking depending of your raid composition. What worked for someone won't necessarily works with you. In fact, we usually have more discussion in WoW than I ever did in FFXI.

[Tomino]

Still, we shouldnt mix RPG style difficulty with Action style difficulty.
Personally, I don't associate RPGs with reflexes, pattern memorization or counter-moves. Sure, games like WoW built their whole endgame around it and people loved that but this is still an MMORPG we're talking about, a FF-related one nonetheless.

I think it's fair for SE to work and deliver some kind of game experience that ties with other FF games. Bosses from previous games never required too much coordination, just a few brain cells and proper gear/setup.

In my opinion, FF11 managed to recreate that. And in doing so, surely "failed" all players who were looking for something more finger-challenging.

[Kaiyoko]

I think what he meant by 'reactive' has to do more with how the group has to react as a whole. Take Fafhogg, for example. Everyone can agree that it's usually an easy, uneventful fight, but it could get difficult if it decides to spam wing six times in a row. You might have to sleep it to get HP/buffs back up, requiring the DD to pay attention to how mages are doing and whether or not a sleep is necessary. If the DD fail to turn in time, maybe a tank dies, maybe white and red mages run out of MP from spamming cures, or maybe one more fluke wing comes in and finishes off your party of taru black mages. I can think of various other ways easy fights can go horribly wrong, depending on how people react to things, but I think that illustrates the point that was trying to be made(at least, that's what I got from it).

I should have added you need to move out of the way or do something to counter the ability being used. Don't stand in flames or something.

Ixion's lightning horn or lightning aoe is what I'm meaning. @75 most DD had to get away from getting hit by those abilities when he did the charge up animation. I guess his ramming is another instance of needing to react.

[Kaylia]

Still, we shouldnt mix RPG style difficulty with Action style difficulty.
Personally, I don't associate RPGs with reflexes, pattern memorization or counter-moves. Sure, games like WoW built their whole endgame around it and people loved that but this is still an MMORPG we're talking about, a FF-related one nonetheless.

I think it's fair for SE to work and deliver some kind of game experience that ties with other FF games. Bosses from previous games never required too much coordination, just a few brain cells and proper gear/setup.

In my opinion, FF11 managed to recreate that. And in doing so, surely "failed" all players who were looking for something more finger-challenging.

Your solution to make a mindless game less boring is to make it even more mindless? You can make a 4 lines gambit that beat pretty much every bosses in every games..I don't want that.

[Lordender]

Yeah, FFXI was so challenging, I two sometimes three boxed out Tiamat kills and never missed a beat. That shit was so easy back at 75, FFXI was more about figuring out shit than challenge.