[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Jaese]

Yeah, initially I thought of creating macros of them, but then I noticed that creating macro out of every ninjutsu.. it'd eat quite a lot of my action bar space.

Now I'm just going with this:


Huton: right, middle, left
Suiton: left, middle, right
Doton: left, right, middle

Not macroing the ninjitsus (that will eat your DPS like nothing), but Ten is one macro, Chi another, then Jin. Three skills, three macros. No DPS eating (well, minimal--skills queuing does help) and you can hammer the mudras to ensure activation.

[arisoh]

Noo!

The recipes are "level 30" but you can't actually learn them until level 50 when you can use the books. I was disappointed, too.

Aww. Oh well, time to level mah DRK then.

[Faroth]

But you can make your own dye at 30!

[Wrecktangle]

I'm sure we could go back and forth with stuff like this, finding mechanics that do one shot you in WoW and ones that don't in FF. It seems like the implication you're making though is that you need 100% execution at all times to beat SAVAGE FF bosses but not previous HERIOC/MYTHIC bosses in WoW, and I'm sure most people would be pretty skeptical of that.

More buttons doesn't make a harder rotation, nor does BFB having a drawback make the rotation any harder. FF rotations are extremely simple, predictable and will never, ever change for most classes. On most classes you will never react to anything, and you don't make any decisions. I don't see how that's more involved at all.

To respond to your first point see where I added some bold above. Ask anyone who's doing savage progression (I don't even think you're max level yet on a battle class right?, if I recall from a previous post of yours); you need perfect execution during progression to kill these bosses. I listed examples of top end raiding fights in WoW where there are numerous mechanics that don't end your pull if just one person makes a mistake. Yes WoW does have them, and even quite a bit of them, but ALMOST every single mechanic in savage does this.

I think though in order to have a meaningful discussion on this topic we need to define the word "harder". Harder means that there is more chance for error, in addition to mistakes being more punishing numerically.

Now with that said, more buttons unequivocally makes a rotation harder because it clearly introduces significantly more opportunities for error. These errors also produce substantial DPS losses when you consider that you hit less abilities per encounter in this game (due to longer GCD) than WoW.

B4B having a detrimental effect does indeed make your rotation harder. It means you have to make a decision to maximize its uptime or you being on the floor to unavoidable mechanics. Not even to mention that in WoW your average DPS class has ~2-3 CDs at most, in FF14 you have upwards of 10. Managing 10 different CDs is much more prone to sub-optimal play than 2-3 is, therefore it is harder. This doesn't even take into account snapshotting (which WoW removed), but FF14 still uses.

Rotations don't ever change? You realized they changed dramatically from 2.0 to 3.0. Myself as a DRG now have a new buff to maintain that if dropped results in astronomically reduced performance in addition to managing a short CD oGCD usage to maximize damage. I have a proc based finisher with different positionals and a retuned DoT and buff.

You have to make a ton of decisions all the time, hold GCD to hit positional, how long before it no longer becomes worth it? Is it safe to try and hit this positional or should I wait until after the boss shares his cleave. Do I pop CDs now or wait until boss lands from his jump? Should I switch to direct damage for the next 3 GCDs because boss is about to jump? Save my gap closer for utility or for burst damage? Hold this CD for an extra 10s to stack with another CD is this a loss of potency over an 8 min fight or a gain?

As someone who's raided at some of the highest echelons of WoW and currently trying to kill A3S I can tell you that the amount of decisions I need to make to DPS in this game is considerably higher than that of WoW.

What experience do you have in savage content to give some basis for why you believe this game isn't more involved.

[Graeham]

I can't wait until tomorrow's Live Letter. We should get a lot of delicious information on 3.1!

[arisoh]

FML, I thought I was gonna level my NIN to 60 so I set my second retainer as NIN. Since I levelled my DRG instead, she's capped at 31 lol. Ugh.

Should I level NIN or just reset her? Hmm.

I can't wait until tomorrow's Live Letter. We should get a lot of delicious information on 3.1!

Please include:
- Hairstyle contest (also Jandelaine related quests pls)
- more Ishguard related quests - Estinien's Fate (also Aymeric cameos)

[Graeham]

FML, I thought I was gonna level my NIN to 60 so I set my second retainer as NIN. Since I levelled my DRG instead, she's capped at 31 lol. Ugh.

Should I level NIN or just reset her? Hmm.

It's a fairly quick process to level a retainer if you keep up with sending them out on ventures. I recently switched one from BRD to DRG and it was quite painless.

[Tazila]

Tbqh when you're arguing with your knowledge of end game content without doing it, the nice armory brah comments are usually pretty relevant.


Generally, when a person is the one stating they believe something is X than something else, it's their burden of proof to show why their opinions are that. You're saying it's easier with only mechanics on paper to back it up. For the most part, myself and others here have put in our opinions based on doing all of these things in both games with mechanics in practice to back it up, but you argue back that we're just cherry picking even though we're saying from our experience. Not from video's we've watched (unless we're talking about the Savage A3 kill taking 687 attempts and still not dead yet), but from actual experience that lets us do comparisons between the two.


So as much as I hate to say it, while we may have better experience with the two, the arguments aren't actually going to end because we feel we're right due to experience you feel you're right due to what it looks like on paper. It'll never end and you won't really get any respectful comments until you do the current end game and are able to compare cause it looks like you're talking out of your butt.

So how about we all agree to disagree and not have this go on for another 10 pages. =]




With that all said, I've been doing an incredible amount of mining and I never realized that I'd get so much gil from it LOL.

[Tazila]

We're arguing that the difficulty of executing the mechanics need far higher ability. The mechanics themselves are easy, they're easy in WoW too, but the execution needed is much higher because the mechanics are unforgiving in most fights. We know the execution needed due to experience and player execution is almost ALWAYS taken into consideration at least in WoW as they have top tier guilds do the testing for the next raids, if they can't do it, it gets nerfed. In theory and on paper =/= in practice. FF is less designed around the player, they in house beta test and well if it's to hard for most people they'll -maybe- nerf it.

One of the irritating things that people who have done content to hear from those who haven't done it is "but it looks so easy, all you have to do is avoid it or do X or Y or Z", which is almost ALWAYS responded with "Well then you come try it out and see how easy it is". This is across almost ANY thing people can play, sports, cards, anything.

Yes we understand that it isn't the companies fault that players suck or that their computers suck, but fights are made with player ability in mind. FF tends to make fights wanting almost 99% accuracy from it's players, whether you believe it or not. If your reaction time was slow, or you had lag, or anything, there are fights you'd never kill because you couldn't afford to be lost, again FROM EXPERIENCE, there has yet been a fight where someones lag made it so we straight up couldn't progress. We could generally heal through it or leave the guy dead til his issues on his end cleared up.

PS this is my last post on this. I think arguing isn't going to get any one anywhere and it's taking up pages where people may feel uncomfortable about talking about the game on a less hostile level. It feels like almost the entire Destiny thread in the Off topic Video game forums.

[Tazila]

Eh, sorry the arguments going on for more than 10 pages and I got you mixed up with Kelimbor for the most part. > >

And neither of these are my game, but a lot of people who have put in an incredible amount of time in anything will usually be fairly passionate about it. I remember times where I'd put in as much time a week theorycrafting my class and applying it as I did raiding. So over all we generally take it more personally because it's something we've put an incredible amount of time in.

[nightfalls]

When you're discussing game mechanics and design, "nice armory, brah" has no place in the discussion. You don't need to kill X boss to discuss the game mechanics, rotations, nature of the overall encounter design, and so on.

You don't need to kill a specific X boss, but if you haven't done any endgame raiding, chances are your ability to actually convert knowledge of game mechanics to actual execution difficulty/feasibility is going to be limited.

There's something to be said that just reading a list of boss abilities or watching a video doesn't really do justice. Hell, even reading a guide often makes fights look a lot easier than they are to execute.

For instance, an example:

Again, really? You sound like you're blowing that stuff so far out of proportion. "Oh no, do I move" really, truly? Not to mention that you have an eternity to make those small choices.

He's not. But if all you do is easy content, classes tend to seem easier to play than they are. And you being completely 100% dismissive to his argument isn't helping the case.

[Tazila]

Woah, woah, hey now. Now this IS getting hostile!

Yeah sorry man, My B. I didn't mean too I promise. LOL

[nightfalls]

Well, then what boss do I have to kill before I can come back and comment on rotations being largely static, for example? Which boss gives me that right?

Any boss where you actually will wipe if you fail to execute a good rotation (i.e. you can make it to the end with no obvious failures except on the meter, then die) sounds like it will suffice. That's really the difference between "easy" and "hard" content for the most part.

Rotations are always easy if you're Patchwerk. Try maintaining them while you lose up-time (so you can drop needed buffs and fail to execute your combos) and when you're constantly forced to move for casts/positionals. I believe most classes have some mechanic to that, the one I played at max level (BLM) definitely does.

Back to the point...

I'm sure we could go back and forth with stuff like this, finding mechanics that do one shot you in WoW and ones that don't in FF. It seems like the implication you're making though is that you need 100% execution at all times to beat FF bosses but not bosses in other games, and I'm sure most people would be pretty skeptical of that.

Part of this is the 8-man content versus 20-man Mythic. Think the old 10-man Heroic (less emphasis on group coordination, more on individual responsibility) but now on steroids. There's still very little group coordination required (still less than what 10H required), but more individual responsibility than 10H likely.

For instance on Savage, any death is instantly likely a raid wipe (not so in WoW because Combat Rez). Where in WoW, you may have had a "kiter" assigned to some adds, or a specific person to manage them, on A1S *every* player has to manage adds (so no one is on Patchwerk duty). If a single player fails? Wipe.

With how tightly tuned the berserk is, bad DPS is a wipe. This is like WoW, but to somewhat of a larger degree because with only 4 DPS (versus 6-7 on 10H, 18-20 on 25H, 14 on 20M) you're going to be a bigger percentage of the group's DPS, so deviations in your performance have a bigger consequence.

[nightfalls]

But it's not even about content, it's just a discussion on the nature of rotations for many classes.

For most all classes, they're incredibly static and - purely in my opinion - could benefit from some "reaction" elements. (Similar to what BLM has with Firestarter/Thundercloud) That was really the only point being made initially.

True, but they are (in a weird way) inexorably tied at least in end-game for what I mentioned above (maintaining a rotation gets harder when you have disruptions). Though I do get that it does make the rotation more bland especially for less-than-Savage content which is what the majority of the players do (personally I don't see "Savage" as ever required, and it somewhat disappoints me there's gear there at all, vs. 2.5 Coil Savage - I'd rather there just be an achievement + title).

BLM at 60 (I haven't gotten mine there, only to 56, so this is second-hand) doesn't really have reaction elements anymore. Instead it's all about maintaining Enochian. So it's an even more static rotation which is even more punished by movement (so "harder" at the top end, but yes, still more bland).

[Kelimbror]

It doesn't have to be "hostile", but it appears some people are way too defensive about the topic. As usual, you can't actually discuss design, make comparisons, or critique systems in an MMO because people will get upset about "THEIR GAME" being "attacked".

Dang...did we really circle back around to this? And did someone actually say that smashing more buttons mindlessly was 'harder'? And then saying that people can't talk about game design if they haven't done X content? Dear lord...I'm so glad this is Friday. I'm going to sponge my brain into games all weekend. That usually means I stay off of MMO-C for the most part. Wheeeee.

Eh, sorry the arguments going on for more than 10 pages and I got you mixed up with Kelimbor for the most part. > >

Nothing I've said was hostile and I also haven't been discussing this for several pages. I think you're just creating arguments you want to respond to at this point. :-/

I'm a perfectly pleasant individual who loves to discuss theory and design. I used to get all ragey and talk about basic game experiences...lord knows the SWTOR forums at launch, where most of my posts are, are riddled with them. I even used to make the mistakes of equating a developer to their game without consideration for either.

Too late! Muh feels! :O

Don't lie. It's an honor and you know it.

[Deleted]

I ve found very few rotations to be static tbh :/
PLD sure as hell has a static rotation and remains my fav class but other than that most rotations have a little niche tied to them

[Kelimbror]

Well phooey, that's no fun.

I've gotta say in general that the way this thread has turned in the last week has kinda put me off from the game. Not because of people or anything, but it's kinda laid bare that the game is maybe not for me right now. I wanted to keep playing for the story and to get into Heavensward, but faced with the grind through MSQ and all this other stuff...ehh.

Gonna miss it, but maybe I think I'm going to take a break again until housing becomes more available and solo options are a thing. A lot of games have new content coming and it would save me $40 anyways. Oh well. :-/ Consider me burned out as well.

- - - Updated - - -

But yeah, I'm gonna spend the weekend playing all these Korean waifu simulators...er, I mean, action combat games that I've been trying out, pretty fun overall.

I was playing Ragnarok II for the first time last weekend. I loved it, but already uninstalled b/c there are more asian mmos I haven't played yet. Maybe I'll try another one this weekend. I also reinstalled Morrowind last night.

I have problems.

[DeadmanWalking]

I was hoping we could keep the 'nice community' in the ffxiv threads as it is suppose to be in game as the wow forums are boiling over with negativity, spite, burn out and maliciousness. Now we are at the point where we have to use another persons name as an insult. Maybe too many people are bringing their toxicity from wow to FFXIV.

[Aberrict]

FFXIV has over 5 million registered accounts.

[arisoh]

FFXIV has over 5 million registered accounts.

"registered" could mean just trials though, not necessarily active subs.

But good for them anyway! Hopefully this will inspire more content.