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  1. #1
    Hyperion Cross
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    FFXIV's Ifrit Battle - any fair comparison to WoW's Heroic Raid Bosses?

    I hope this doesn't constitute as a FFxx vs WoW thread (if it is please lock/delete and PM me what happened), but while browsing on the FFXIV board I came across:

    http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/107325-Ifrit-Battle

    Reading the comments and seeing the screenshots made my FF senses vibrate with some interest and excitement.

    I know FFXIV is still buggy and incomplete, and given the input lag (as described by others) and other inperfections of the engine/game, I was wondering what exactly made this boss exceptionally harder and needing 5 days to master by BG LS (whom I will assume to be good players and well communicated)? (reference: http://bluegarter.guildwork.com/foru...good-milkshake)

    Just to quote some of the posts:

    However, we've been waiting longer than just five days for this. We've been waiting since before FFXIV's release, over a year ago, for an encounter of this difficulty and this level of fun. Yoshida has delivered on the potential and promises that he previously dispensed to us like drops of milk from a lamb's teat.
    We were starved for this kind of content. The Ifrit battle is a triumph of design, even considering the insane handicaps resulting from FFXIV's antiquated engine. Despite macro sloppiness, animation locks, and needing to push Enter sixty billion times to perform one action, we haven't had this much fun in as long as we can remember.
    No access to a video right now but what consituted as it being fun/hard?

    Can this actually mob be compared to any WoW current tier (or previous tier) bosses? Or is there another boss in FFXI that it can be compared to? (I guess wrong forum to ask this kinda but seeing as we're all ex-FFXI players here more or less...)

    By those comments it has actually perked my interest to go play it (I'm a day 2 release quitter).

    And I wonder if this is the feeling that we all get when we "go into the unknown" to try new things without knowing beforehand what happens that actually got people excited. Infact, I often wonder how Catalycsm and its patches/raids would've faired should there not be test realms months in advance of raid bosses, so by the time the patch hits the strategy is pretty much finalised by high end groups.

    I mean, using FFXI as the example, I can't think of any WoW bosses (since WoTLK, not around for Vanilla-BC era) that's garnered attention and praise like FFXIV-Ifrit(maybe except the exploited Lich King kill). i.e. Kirin, Jailer of Love/Absolute Virtue, Dark Ixion and PW.

    NOTE:
    (as far as I am) I'm aware there was probably no test server for this boss fight, so essentially everyone was going into it with trial and error in mind, unlike WoW's bosses.

    Also, I figured if I take this question up to the FFXIV/FFXI board it might generate too much flame potential, whereas keeping it here is nice and isolated! Sorry in advance if it breaches any rules!

  2. #2
    blax n gunz
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    This thread won't end well, and probably should be in the parent Gaming forum as an exploration of MMO encounter design in general. WoW's encounter design has been 'spoil everything on the PTR, wipe enough times so people learn not to stand in the fucking fire' since at least TBC. The only difficulty to hurdle is the relative competence of your weakest players in the raid.

  3. #3
    New Odin
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    I'd say asking in the actual ifrit thread would generate more answers as I doubt many people have experienced the fight that come to these boards as opposed to people actually posting on the XIV boards have surely experienced WoW encounters and bias is really unlikely considering everyone knows the the current state of both games.

    My2cents

  4. #4

    Wow has moved away from discovering strategy into a more execution dependent model. It's not just the test server at this point, but the encounter journal as well. Regardless though, final bosses are virtually never seen on PTR (Yogg, LK, etc), and I'm pretty damn sure H-Rag took far more for people to conquer than what's being listed there. I also think you are overrating the skill of people involved.

    I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but those FFXI fights you're referring to were nothing special. AV's attention was only due to poor design and the fact he was only killable with exploits at multiple times during his history. PW's attention was again due to how ridiculously untuned the fight was originally (coupled with the fact it took hundreds of manhours to even be allowed to fight him). Regardless though, if you think WoW final bosses garnered less attention, I think you just haven't been paying attention to the Wow community. There were more people keeping tabs on H-Rag than total people that played XI+XIV together.

    I also don't think you're going to get a solid discussion anywhere, and I doubt more than 1-2 people on the XIV boards have even played WoW at a high level (aka actually clearing full heroic content in Wrath/Cata).

  5. #5
    Hyperion Cross
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    FM: Yeh you're right about it all there. I'm home now with images unfiltered and went around looking for some stuff, and noticed the guy who made the topic also plays WoW, who's made several videos I've watched before (I couldn't recognise him with blocked images at work) . I'm gonna PM him/just poke him for some feedback as he made a comparison "end game" video before between FFXIV and WoW, which I recalled was funny given the huge differences, and now this Ifrit fight pops into the game.

    Regarding:

    Wow has moved away from discovering strategy into a more execution dependent model.
    I recall those threads being made where it's always a lol-fest (regarding AV, PW) and people were always speculating/theorising how to kill them, which provided for hours of entertainment. I suppose I just miss that lately, with that I believe the stuff in Abyssea/currently not providing any challenge at all, and how WoW, as you definied it, to be all execution dependant, and now suddenly this "great Ifrit" pops up, which made me reminisce of the past.

  6. #6

    Quote Originally Posted by The Stig View Post
    FM: Yeh you're right about it all there. I'm home now with images unfiltered and went around looking for some stuff, and noticed the guy who made the topic also plays WoW, who's made several videos I've watched before (I couldn't recognise him with blocked images at work) . I'm gonna PM him/just poke him for some feedback as he made a comparison "end game" video before between FFXIV and WoW, which I recalled was funny given the huge differences, and now this Ifrit fight pops into the game.

    Regarding:



    I recall those threads being made where it's always a lol-fest (regarding AV, PW) and people were always speculating/theorising how to kill them, which provided for hours of entertainment. I suppose I just miss that lately, with that I believe the stuff in Abyssea/currently not providing any challenge at all, and how WoW, as you definied it, to be all execution dependant, and now suddenly this "great Ifrit" pops up, which made me reminisce of the past.
    If you want those types of threads, I can guarantee you they are on private forums for all the top progression guilds (in WoW). It's where things like Paragon deciding to farm Sorrowsongs comes up, and there's plenty of brainstorming going on with the best way to deal with XYZ mechanic. Even back before PTR and journal, we would check out every relevant spell on the wowhead database, looking for things like school, distance, actual damage #s, etc, so even back in the day, the information was there. This is of course the exact opposite of the FFXI model where it wasn't even known how threat/hate worked for years when Kaeko actually dedicated tons of time to figure it out. Everything in FFXI was just left a huge mystery that players had to figure out how the numbers behind the mechanics worked, whereas WoW gave you that information. Personally, I prefer how WoW approaches that.

    One thing worth pointing out is execution dependent fights retain some difficulty on later repetitions (some, not all), whereas "figure it out" really doesn't. Even since Vanilla WoW, they've had more execution issues (including some amount of random), where as XI really hasn't.

    I can't really comment on this Ifrit thing, but I'm always skeptical of posts like that. In every game (WoW included) whomever gets the first kill seems obligated to say how amazing and fun the fight was. On the other hand, if you don't get the first kill, you have to bash it. If you look through the history of WoW on any relevant kill, this is almost universally true. From my limited exposure to original FFXI endgame, it was the same there.

    Finally, if you want theoretical debates and stuff, there's plenty on the official WoW forums about how the next patch will be, the 10% AP buff, pures vs hybrids, etc etc etc. I, at least, can get lost for hours arguing in them.

  7. #7
    blax n gunz
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    Quote Originally Posted by FailureMidgard View Post
    I can't really comment on this Ifrit thing, but I'm always skeptical of posts like that. In every game (WoW included) whomever gets the first kill seems obligated to say how amazing and fun the fight was. On the other hand, if you don't get the first kill, you have to bash it. If you look through the history of WoW on any relevant kill, this is almost universally true. From my limited exposure to original FFXI endgame, it was the same there.
    This is 100% attributable to post-kill euphoria. In retrospect, you can always go back and say it wasn't actually fun except for the part where you beat the world at something, as opposed to simply beating the encounter, which is stressful and has some very stringent requirements that aren't fun for the 99% of people who aren't you and your guild.

  8. #8

    Quote Originally Posted by Correction View Post
    This is 100% attributable to post-kill euphoria. In retrospect, you can always go back and say it wasn't actually fun except for the part where you beat the world at something, as opposed to simply beating the encounter, which is stressful and has some very stringent requirements that aren't fun for the 99% of people who aren't you and your guild.
    I agree with all of that, I'm just saying that Ifrit post I'd attribute to something similar. The encounter may be fun, but I'm sure it was overstated. Not sure what you mean by me and my guild...we're super casual now and half of the group hates H-Rag whereas I like it and hate post-nerf FL 'cause I just think it's insanely boring now.

  9. #9
    blax n gunz
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    By 'you and your guild' I meant the general division between have-beat and haven't-beat, wasn't trying to single you out

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Stig
    I mean, using FFXI as the example, I can't think of any WoW bosses (since WoTLK, not around for Vanilla-BC era) that's garnered attention and praise like FFXIV-Ifrit(maybe except the exploited Lich King kill). i.e. Kirin, Jailer of Love/Absolute Virtue, Dark Ixion and PW.
    Ifrit encounter received attention and praise because it's vastly superior to other encounters in the game, not because it's superior to encounters in other games. It's obviously going to be refreshing when most players never played anything that isn't FFXI or FFXIV.

    Secondly, FFXIV is still a new game in the sense that players haven't explored the mechanics yet, and were not particularly challenged until now (not to mention they changed a lot of stuff recently). It's going to take a few weeks to adjust the strategy.

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