So I saw this on gaming news and even though I haven't touched FF14 other than when it was first out it shows that Square somehow remains 15 years behind in MMORPG like they always have even after all these years. So you got this boss and there's this heart that if you don't kill it you wipe, and if you kill it you eventually wipe in the final phase through some seemingly broken mechanism that's never explained to you in anyway. Through apparently no reason whatsoever you have a third way to get kill this hat that prevents you from wiping later, and I see that post talks about how whoever beat it must be super geniuses and how dev made such a great encounter.
Except, guessing what the dev is thinking was something EverQuest did 15 years ago where you have encounters you the secret code was the birthday of whoever who programmed the encounter and other similar nonsense. Or on Mata Muram was a fight that, given it existed before MMORPG raiding become a real job, no guild actually has 54 people who can pull off the reflect mechanism successfully (I was there, it's easy by modern standards but back then a guy who knows not to stand in fire was considered elite) and you're supposed to guess that you only need 10 reflecting mirrors for that mechanic even though there is plenty of evidence suggesting guys without the reflecting mirror can be targeted (if you have less than 10 mirrors!) Or the first encounter in Solteris where there are 9! (362880) ways to input the final combination and something like 362879 of them results in instant wipe and of course everyone claim they figured it out by trial and error instead of having a dev slip you the correct combination (and later from the guys who have beaten it) and it was a fight where you can only attempt once per day to even get to the stage you need to input the final combination (need at least half of the guild with the once-a-day DPS boost for having a 7 year sub to do enough DPS to beat the enrage timer).
Of course, that's why EverQuest faded into the dustbin of history and FF14 probably is something nobody would care about if it didn't have a Final Fantasy name. I was never a fan of WoW, but I was always impressed with how they pretty much stopped doing gimmicks and was willing to put all the information of an encounter so that beating something doesn't require you knowing someone on the inside to slip you the secret info. It makes me wonder how pathetic you have to be as a raid designer for most other MMORPG where you resort to hidden knowledge that the player do not have to prevent them from progressing. I mean, seriously, WoW is out there for everyone to copy. If your goal is to make sure nobody can ever beat something, it's not really that hard.
Except, guessing what the dev is thinking was something EverQuest did 15 years ago where you have encounters you the secret code was the birthday of whoever who programmed the encounter and other similar nonsense. Or on Mata Muram was a fight that, given it existed before MMORPG raiding become a real job, no guild actually has 54 people who can pull off the reflect mechanism successfully (I was there, it's easy by modern standards but back then a guy who knows not to stand in fire was considered elite) and you're supposed to guess that you only need 10 reflecting mirrors for that mechanic even though there is plenty of evidence suggesting guys without the reflecting mirror can be targeted (if you have less than 10 mirrors!) Or the first encounter in Solteris where there are 9! (362880) ways to input the final combination and something like 362879 of them results in instant wipe and of course everyone claim they figured it out by trial and error instead of having a dev slip you the correct combination (and later from the guys who have beaten it) and it was a fight where you can only attempt once per day to even get to the stage you need to input the final combination (need at least half of the guild with the once-a-day DPS boost for having a 7 year sub to do enough DPS to beat the enrage timer).
Of course, that's why EverQuest faded into the dustbin of history and FF14 probably is something nobody would care about if it didn't have a Final Fantasy name. I was never a fan of WoW, but I was always impressed with how they pretty much stopped doing gimmicks and was willing to put all the information of an encounter so that beating something doesn't require you knowing someone on the inside to slip you the secret info. It makes me wonder how pathetic you have to be as a raid designer for most other MMORPG where you resort to hidden knowledge that the player do not have to prevent them from progressing. I mean, seriously, WoW is out there for everyone to copy. If your goal is to make sure nobody can ever beat something, it's not really that hard.
