FFXIV Criticisms

[mario710]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

Meanwhile, I look at creatively designed encounters like Sylvanas in World of Warcraft or Sire Denathrius and there's no comparison! I genuinely hope that Yoshi-P branches outside of the same old formula when designing the environments for encounters.

FFXIV is formulaic to a fucking fault.

Active Thread Warnings:

This thread is verging on the territory of becoming a game vs. game free-for-all, and that's not healthy for the thread or any kind of true critical discussion. Let's drop the FFXIV vs. WoW rhetoric and return to the topic at hand, which is a fair criticism of FFXIV that doesn't rely on partisan headbutting.

[Calfredd]

It's a good thing you quit the game right? So that you don't get irrationally angry at a game you irrationally hate, right? Though it doesn't matter because your thread history already tells me that your "criticism" isn't worth the bandwidth you used to type it.

[Ghost of Cow]

["Aw shit, here we go again" meme goes here.]

[Simpless]

Agreed with OP, its not horrible and it doesn't make the game bad, but I feel that actual layout is definitely boring or very formulaic in terms of where you are. Not to mention the fact that you just queue into the circle/square can be odd

[MsSideEye]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

Meanwhile, I look at creatively designed encounters like Sylvanas in World of Warcraft or Sire Denathrius and there's no comparison! I genuinely hope that Yoshi-P branches outside of the same old formula when designing the environments for encounters.

FFXIV is formulaic to a fucking fault.

To be 100% fair, they HAVE been branching out a bit lately. Aglaia's raid, for example, has us fighting on a giant hand which are entirely part of the mechanics. And the fight before that actually made the arena move and change, another first. The thing is though is that arena for the encounters honestly matters very little when it comes to a fight. It's what the boss does. Can get it get a little samey when you're seeing the same circle/square? Sure. But that kinda doesn't matter when the boss is through completely new mechanics at you or is doing things you've never seen before, which is honestly the more important thing.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

The Rhalgr fight in the latest Alliance Raid showed a tinge of creativity with the fight arena being taking place on the palm of his statue and the fingers being safe spots, but it's still a flat arena.

WoW boss fights are top notch.

[eschatological]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

Meanwhile, I look at creatively designed encounters like Sylvanas in World of Warcraft or Sire Denathrius and there's no comparison! I genuinely hope that Yoshi-P branches outside of the same old formula when designing the environments for encounters.

FFXIV is formulaic to a fucking fault.

I just started trying out raids this week, and I found the fights very interesting in Abyssos. The mechanics being blocked by mirrors, the disappearing platform tree boss, the mirrored/swapping AoEs, and so on, and so forth.

[Aucald]

While I agree that FFXIV's raid and dungeon encounters can be quite formulaic, Sire Denathrius is probably the wrong example to use. Both areas of his encounter are basically circular rooms and flat platforms - with the only movement mechanic of note being the mirrors that warp you across said circular room. Denathrius' fight really wouldn't be out of place in FFXIV, IMO.

[mario710]

It's a good thing you quit the game right? So that you don't get irrationally angry at a game you irrationally hate, right? Though it doesn't matter because your thread history already tells me that your "criticism" isn't worth the bandwidth you used to type it.

Are you fishing for an argument?

Find that elsewhere.

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Now I agree that wow does a lot more things better than FF14 does and I hard main wow in terms of what I play, but be real here lol....FF14 shits all over wow in terms of fight and encounter designs are you kidding me? FF14 has some of the most epic moments in encounters I've ever witnessed in my 25+ years of gaming.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. In terms of encounter design, FFXIV is hands down ahead of the curve. What I'm referring to more specifically is the ARENA LAYOUT.

We are invariably teleported to a square or circle-shaped arena. I'd like for them to continue experimenting with variety and not become complacent. The Rhalgar fight in the alliance raid was an excellent change of pace.

[Swnem]

Seriously? Sylvanas? Like... the most hated fight in SL. Terrible encounter. Running a gauntlet and having your party members fall in pixels on the terrain is in no way a good experience. WoW encounters are buggy as hell and often cause wipes/waste of time.

Either way, there are positives to just having an arena. FF is not nearly as toxic to melee because of it. After being trounced about in WoW, it always feels refreshing.

In honesty, all WoW encounters are arenas as well and often more buggy. FF just wants everyone closer so all do the same mechanics plus it's more stable. I like how balanced it is too. I don't think this is an issue.

While editing, i remembered a raid roulette i was on today. The train. Has you jump on the top of the train to go destroy the Chimney and teleports you to rooms where you fight an add by yourself. Maybe a fight more to your liking? It was alright.

The only issue i had with FFXIV since day one was the GCD being 2.5seconds. But, the classes got so complex with off-gcd's that even that isn't an issue anymore. I would still prefer to have a 1.5s gcd and only 1 off-gcd in those windows. I think it would work better for low latency peeps as well. But, alas.
Oh... also projectiles, such as arrows or gunshots. The game doesn't have them and the animations got better at disguising it by having flashier and longer animations plus impact animations, but i always found it off putting. Nothing actually flies to the target. XD

Either way, these issues were minimised with the years and i confess i don't have much to complain about in FF. It consistently gives me a frustration free experience. If it happens, it's probably a rude player, not the game itself.
Also... the story man. I finished Endwalker a couple of days ago.

[Caprias]

I'd rather take a circle or a square over the sylvanas clusterfuck fight or, lmao get rekt casters halondrus.

[Xilurm]

WoW's raid and dungeon designs are way better than FFXIV's.

But Square is a big company with loads of franchises and games, FFXIV doesn't get the same budget that WoW does. They try something new and the whole patch cycle gets thrown out the window. They currently do a patch every 4 months, and probably don't want it to be longer than that.

[BraveNewWorld]

Seriously? Sylvanas? Like... the most hated fight in SL. Terrible encounter. Running a gauntlet and having your party members fall in pixels on the terrain is in no way a good experience. WoW encounters are buggy as hell and often cause wipes/waste of time.

Either way, there are positives to just having an arena. FF is not nearly as toxic to melee because of it. After being trounced about in WoW, it always feels refreshing.

In honesty, all WoW encounters are arenas as well and often more buggy. FF just wants everyone closer so all do the same mechanics plus it's more stable. I like how balanced it is too. I don't think this is an issue.

All I get from your post is that you're a bad WoW player, and your weaknesses aren't as exposed in FF as they are in WoW.

Melee isn't as easy in WoW as it is in FF, but I've played all roles at a high level since Legion, and I have never encountered a fight where it was "toxic". Except possibily Sludgefist, where we killed it on Mythic with 10 melee in our raid.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Who cares about the arena? Encounter design is on point.

Have fun trying to clear the EX, though I'm sure OP wouldn't be able to do even that. Savages look like they'll be extremely fun.

Also, third boss of the raid has a pretty unique platform design.

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Here's a video as to why comparing WoW dungeons to FF dungeons is both idiotic and unfair to consider.


FFXIV EX, savage, and ultimate raid encounter design is amazingly off the chart well designed. Tend to find that people who criticize FF dungeons have only ever done normal story fights, lol.

[selrah]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

Meanwhile, I look at creatively designed encounters like Sylvanas in World of Warcraft or Sire Denathrius and there's no comparison! I genuinely hope that Yoshi-P branches outside of the same old formula when designing the environments for encounters.

FFXIV is formulaic to a fucking fault.

Are you comparing dungeons to raids?
You are comparing Apples to Oranges. One thing to consider is FFXIV is designed to be played without addons. The floor is used to give cues on how boss mechanics work. The floor can also be used along with other things outside of the arena. An easy example would be in EX1 in Endwalker -

Just spent some time looking at the Sylvanas fight. Other than the chain section, which I admit is pretty nice, the fight is either on a large circle or a bunch of squares.

[KrayZ33]

Dungeons for sure are very boring and the layout is always the same... but the wow boss-arenas are most of the time very similar to FFXIV.

It's always a cycle or a half cycle or square or whatever.

FFXIV has that too.
some noteable "shapes":
Cid is on a circle, the Alexander raids had multiple platforms and what not
Turn (1 or 2 or whatever) had this downhill part where you could decide what abilities the endboss has and does.
etc. etc.

I'm sure there are much more but I don't feel like thinking about every single fight, in FFXIV it's just more "obvious" that it is a certain shape but it's not like in WoW where the shape is always the area you can play on. Lots of fights in FFXIV change the platform... first it's a square, then it's a "Plus" or something else, just like in Shadowbringers... was it E9S? That Darkness-Girl-Memory thing. The phase which would turn everything dark and now you had to a "Plus with a hole in the middle with a circle around it to move around... and when 2 people stepped on the same platform, it would disappear.

[Shakzor]

Raids in both, FF14 And WoW, are mostly in confined arenas, some are circles, some are squares. It's only rarely where they aren't either in WoW or FF14.
The only real difference is that in FF14, you party up, go for boss and immediately start in the boss' arena, rather than having to clear 15 minutes of trash to get to the boss.
Both have their pros and cons.

[MsSideEye]

Oh shit I did misunderstand and you are right. FF14 is always like 'energy circle platforms' or idk what they are. Yeah if they did layouts similar to how wow does more times they could take their fights to the next level with interactions with the environment and what not imo. Like sludgefist

I haven't done Rhalgar I see its in the new 6.1 raid I quit playing shortly after I beat MSQ, but you got me interested in resubbing now.

Having just finished up the newest four fights for the raid tonight, I'll say with confidence that they have been, slowly but surely, branching out in testing out new arenas... or at the very least having arenas that switch up the set up. As was mentioned before, the 24 man raid has two fights in it's set up that are quite different from the standard circle/square set up and the third fight of the newest raid? While it does start with traditional 'Big circle where we can fight', it does have mechanics that DRASTICALLY change the playing field. Honestly, it's been really fun seeing them experiment a bit more!

All I get from your post is that you're a bad WoW player, and your weaknesses aren't as exposed in FF as they are in WoW.

Melee isn't as easy in WoW as it is in FF, but I've played all roles at a high level since Legion, and I have never encountered a fight where it was "toxic". Except possibily Sludgefist, where we killed it on Mythic with 10 melee in our raid.

To be fair, this is in part because of Melee players giving Blizzard hell for it back before Legion. There were major complaints about any big key fight where the boss didn't have the ability to strike from behind, with Rogues back in the day being dropped from some raids because of that if progress was a big thing at the time. Last I checked, the amount of bosses WoW's brought in that were massive 'I'm against the wall and don't move' kind of bosses has dropped significantly since the older days.

FF14 doesn't have that problem because they specifically deign it so that if you're in an encounter with that kind of boss, you just flat do your max damage and don't have to worry about positional (Not sure if that's a thing in WoW now though). Not only that, but you've also got the fact that the hitbox for the Bosses are so much bigger so as to make it so that you're not having to be sitting on a bosses butt just to be able to hit it. Honestly, I feel like the design that allows players to do their jobs regardless of how the boss is designed feels a bit better.

[Yarathir]

Does the encounter team ever intend to make a more creative arena for boss fights and gauntlets in dungeons? Literally, every single boss arena is a circle or a square.

Meanwhile, I look at creatively designed encounters like Sylvanas in World of Warcraft or Sire Denathrius and there's no comparison! I genuinely hope that Yoshi-P branches outside of the same old formula when designing the environments for encounters.

FFXIV is formulaic to a fucking fault.

They do tend to rely on square and circular platforms a lot. But it's not the case all the time. See: Rhalgr. Still, it would be nice to watch them expand on it a bit more, though I'm not exactly too pressed either way.

[Ghost of Cow]

On one hand, it is true that XIV boss arenas tend to be the same circle and square simple area over and over.

On the other hand, I always preferred ToGC over Ulduar in WoW, so it's actually fine for me. At some point I just wanna get to the damn fights!

Honestly, the dungeon design in XIV is more worrisome to me. The same linear pattern of "pack, pack, pack, wall, boss" everywhere. Could mix it up a little!