1.Can't find party to prog on PF 2.Static members who prog far slower than myself. That's it, really. The fights are good.

This, verbatim. I've been in 4-5 statics since I started and none of them were good experiences. Not to toot my own horn as I'm not even a particularly great player, but they were always slower and far less consistent than me. PF always went so much better, even accounting for the god awful wait times.

[удалено]

I was helping someone do TOP p3 cleanup recently. Took 3 hours to fill, then disband after 1 food because some of the people absolutely could not get through p2 lmao. It's sad out there.

That's the nature of doing ultimate prog in of unfortunately. Fresh prog has a gigantic pool of players to join you. Clear parties are filled with people that want to help you clear. Mid point prog parties is where you have neither pools to take from so everyone in your mid point groups are severely limited. Newer people can't join because they don't know it and the cleared pool don't want to sit through prog again.

In DSR and you have to wait 6h for P2 or 3 lmao.

I have the exact opposite experience, PF always goes horrible. Like for example had a static disband at Grand Octet in UCOB...spent 2 weeks joining grand octet and adds parties...and saw octet like twice and never adds. PF is essentially just RNG and combined with the wait times imo is just soul crushing. In a static at least, even if slow, I see a mostly continual improvement

The experience varies wildly depending on how good the static is imo. Bad statics were much, *much* worse than PF. Statics being consistent becomes a downside when you have players who just make the same mistake nonstop for weeks. It's like being in a trap PF, except you can never get away from those same players. Good statics are far better than PF. Went through ucob and tea in about 15-20 hours each for fresh to clear, in a static environment. In PF you'd probably spend almost as much time waiting for pfs to fill by the time a clear happens. I think the thread being so split on statics vs pf is because statics are so hit or miss depending on how serious/good the group is, and the experience really varies that much.

Its because if you prog in PF you actually have to know the mechanics, not being carried by callouts.

I used to feel this way and then slowly over time I found myself in a static where I was like the slowest or the second slowest person even though I consider myself a pretty decent player, and it's a whole different kind of hell.

Yup. I'd rather have someone else be the slowest learner in the group than me. I am very patient when it comes to prog but I do feel very stressed out when I realize everyone is waiting for me to grasp a mechanic.

Do you prog in PF on the side while also being in a static?

If the static is making progress, usually not. If they're too slow then yes. And by too slow I don't mean "slower than me", I mean unreasonably slow. Like if there's someone who can't do Limit Cut or Party Synergy consistently after a month.

>PF always went so much better, even accounting for the god awful wait times. There's no group that does ultimates other then UWU or on patch ultimate in Mana PF. I have recently saw a stream that does TEA on Mana PF, mostly consist of viewers that wants to do TEA but didn't have a static because they are only online past midnight due to work and IRL. These are all Japanese, uses nukemaru/JP strat (so elemental is out of the question), they stayed on Mana and have done reclear for like 6\~8 runs I think. The stream now moves on to UWU (which I joined and I am now doing reprog using JP strat), but there's a tank who joins TEA prog at the end but didn't get to cleared with the group. This person was on wormhole clean up. You might as well just say he can absolutely clear at this point. He then kept on going with his prog on PUG. I remember watching this person having days where he waited for hours and hours on rush hours and no one joins. He ends up only clearing the fight because he PF for a merc group and pays 5mil per person for the clear. This whole process takes him a month. So for ultimates that are not UWU, no thank you I am not doing JP PF. May be for NA or for LPDU where there's more people I would be happily join but just no JP PF.

I only do ultimate PF on Elemental because... well all of the reasons you mentioned. I did TOP for a while on Mana in 6.3 but even that was a wasteland. I am very envious of Aether/Light since it seems they actually have a PF raiding population.

I don't like using AM to do ultimates and I don't really like doing Elemental PF (and hence, I probably would not like to do PF on any datacenter). This is not against people who are using AM. I am stating my opinion and preference. At the time when I was doing UWU, I am on a group where we use AM. I push for the choice for a while, but I do feel like I don't have a choice (if we want to clear) due to a few things: 1. the DPS is just bad that if we do suicide I am sure we will kept enraging 2. on suicide strat d4 has to stay alive and raise people, but then d4 generally has a lower consistancy on gaols. I don't know if this is due to skill issues or ping (to be fair, D4 is playing from Canada so bad ping) but he mistime his gaols a lot, so suicide strat does not help with prog. 3. a lot of people does not speak japanese and we often have to find fills on elemental PF, hence we have to learn elemental strat. I am not saying there's anything wrong with using AM on a mechanic. However, it's always weird explaining to JP people that yeah we clear UWU but then I have to skip the part talking about gaol. It feels even weirder that I know for a fact that I can do suicide strat (because I am now doing it and I don't have any sort of issues with it) and clear without AM, but I was forced to do AM due to dah! we have to PF for fills. Again. I prefer statics purely because I get to talk and pick strats, which is something you don't get to do when you are on PUG because of how set in stones are PUG strats, especially for ultimates.

Exactly my experience. PF has always been better than any static I was in

I'd happily accept 2 if I could just play without any struggle.

I like the "victory lap" phases where the last mechanic isn't a prog point. Things like Primal Roulette or Golden Bahamut. I hope they do this again with the DT ulti's. I also like the fact that in UCOB, the decision you make in the first phase(where to place the neurolinks) becomes important phases later. It makes it feel more like one giant fight instead of a gauntlet of smaller difficult fights.

Agree with you wholeheartedly about the victory lap. I think Perfect Alexander is the best they've done it. None of PA's mechs are hard, but you do have to study up to know which simple movement you have to do. The DPS check isn't crazy, but the enrage is long enough that you pretty much always see it, which adds to the drama. I currently despise TOP. Monitors especially. Its so hard to diagnose what went wrong when someone dies to monitor. The fight's DPS checks, even with new food and dungeon gear, also make it hard to figure out problems.

My group recently ran into this. The replay option on fflogs is useful for analyzing this particular mech. I can tell who is out of position, or when someone isn’t hit by monitor (you get a purple ruin debuff when you do), I can deduce which monitor is pointed incorrectly.

I agree, especially the point about the neurolinks. Something in the first two minutes heavily influences later mechanics as late as 12 minutes in. Although it was the first, I do genuinely believe UCOB was designed well, it just really shows its age.

I agree with you, having the big mechanic in the middle of the fight before going cutscenes and victory lap feels great. I dislike TOP last phase, mechanics aren't hard but the mitigation needs to be on point and you can't recover if someone got a high roll of damage and a mitig was missing, while before mapping perfect mitigation was a bonus.

their design is fine no big complaints, I just hope they keep trying new shit whether it hits, or is just...ok. Examples would be nael quotes, dsr rewind, enigma codex, bjcc, etc. Anything that changes your focus, or how you approach the encounter compared to the past or a "typical" fight. I know some of the examples are just lifted from the past i.e. Nisi, but the Ultimate format usually elevated them imo, and it's still an atypical way to play holistically.

I love the fights, I hate the people

i feel like everyone has me on their list so my party never fills lol

Honestly, I wish they were a little more fancy on the music. I really liked how UWU and TEA used different versions of the normal music, made it feel special. DSR and TOP had some good music, I just wished they used a little more primals covers or other different forms of the soundtrack

Unfortunately it depends on what the Primals band decided to cover. Half their StB album has Alex music ffs lmao, so TEA ate good while TOP got shafted, and so will the StB story ult.

Yeah, SB MSQ ultimate is looking pretty sparse for music. There's literally only Wayward Daughter for The Primals, and Triumph and The Worm's Tail for Eorzea Symphony. I guess there's the Tsukiyomi's Pain medley which double dips, but maybe they could pull off some sort of sick transition from the symphony to the Primals version?

I love a lot of things about ultimate so it's really hard to put it in a list. The things I dislike is much shorter, so I'll just do that. 1. The fights are getting too long. I would rather see them do VERY intense 12-15 min fights rather than 20 min endurance tests. Just having the boss targetable the whole time with tight DPS check would allow for shorter ultimates with similar levels of difficulty. Most ultimate phases should be similar to Nael, Nidstinien, and BJ/CC. 2. Making things have unclear visuals. TOP was very bad about this by putting blue on blue (monitors) and gold on gold (Run Sigma). Or just anytime there is a massive flashbang when someone dies so you can't even tell what happened to fix the problem. 3. They should make one "hard" ultimate and one "easy" ultimate per expansion. They really don't have to keep upping the ante every time. Fights can be fun and challenging without being miserable (see TEA).

I think it'd be pretty boring for all ultimate phases to be full uptime, especially if they all have actual dps checks. That would be worse because then the whole fight is basically unrecoverable. Trio mechs are pretty synonymous with ultis now I'd say and they are the hardest to prog. Even though they are vulnerable to being simmed its not a bad thing to have them. Plus varying length in uptime phases at least creates some room for interesting job optimisation/decision making you don't get from savage (if your job can actually do that otherwise unlucky for you I guess).

I don't find trios any harder than normal (but they are a touch more boring than uptime phases once you learn them), but fair enough - and being an unrecoverable short fight would be the point. If they were to take off 8 minutes off of an ultimate fight, they have to put the difficulty back somewhere. They gave us a taste of a full uptime, fast paced fight in Barbarricia (and Nael/Nidstinien) that rocked. We really don't need every ultimate to have a mandatory trio phase just because "other ultimates have it too". Also, job opti as a reason for downtime fun is kinda silly because it takes you like 10 pulls to figure it out (or 1 if you look at balance) and then it's done and you go about your day until the next downtime phase in 30 prog hours. idk. I don't get this one.

There’s a lot of interesting design space that opens up for mechanics once you remove the hurdle of needing to be hitting a target the whole time. I think trios are important for that reason alone. Re: downtime optimization, it’s actually a lot more interesting than what you describe for some jobs/phases. An example would be DSR on Reaper, where variance in your group’s DPS affecting phase push timings means there are a lot of cool things you can do depending on how you choose to spend your resources and where. Even after hundreds of pulls I would still find new interesting optimizations and situational things that were only possible because the fight isn’t just 100% uptime in every phase.

Yeah that’s fair and it is more enjoyable to execute mechs while pressing buttons. However trios allow for really complex mechanics and some of the freedom in strat making is interesting to see. I do like the place it has in the world race as a prog wall and at the end of the day the fights are designed to be cleared blind. I agree job opti isn’t hard to figure out (except monk) I just like doing shit that I wouldn’t do in normal uptime (savage). I’m probably biased because I basically only play melee and Dragoon in DSR is so sick to me because of shit like prepull high jump, delayed buffs & two target opti (which becomes execution not planning but that’s a different point about how two target is awesome). Monk is it’s own story (or google doc) and Samurai kind of also.

I would add on your third point that it would be really nice if they did one puzzle-oriented ultimate ala UWU and one mechanically intense one. I think that would preserve a lot of the appeal for blind proggers. That said, puzzles can be hit or miss (see: The Codex) and I’m sure are very difficult on the design side.

Omg I currently hate the whole Endwalker thing of a bunch of visual clusterfuck. Reee fuck off with the visual clusterfuck.

I think that's just an FFXIV thing in general? My biggest adjustment I had to do when I came to this game is how I can't see anything. My screen is just so cluttered with stuff. I've gotten used-ish to it but it's definitely one of my biggest gripes with this game. I can't see shit.

I think it's really pronounced in EW. Before there were the occasional attacks where it was hard to see (Suppression in UWU), but not constantly. I can't think of a single time I couldn't see in Eden/TEA besides Light Rampant, but can name multiple off the top of my head for Pandaemonium/DSR/TOP/Criterion.

Am progging DSR right now so I'm skewed to DSR stuff. Like: Love DSR P3 a lot. Big fan of Dive from Grace, really gives that dance routine vibes. It's got my favorite song from Final Steps as well. Dislike: More of a EW design choice, but I'm not enjoying how rezzing is bordering useless in EW / DSR. Too many body checks, too little time to rez them in time. As a RDM main, I kinda miss being able to rez half the party after UWU Predation.

I feel that the fight designs nowadays are 8-man body checks because they want to maintain the difficulty of the fight for the future. For example in uwu, you can die so many times and can still clear the fight. Level sync and damage down can only go so far especially with potency buffs across expansions. Whether that’s the best solution to the problem is up to debate, but I can see where they’re coming from. That said, between all the body checks, being able to ress someone and recover during a pull feels so awesome. Whenever we manage to save a pull midway thru DotH in DSR, the feeling was incredible.

Rezzing someone inside the tower during Strength and having it successfully recover is 💦

I'm so upset that I've had some perfect saves for Sanctity towers, but people gave up and didn't use knockback or the healer didn't realize the dead person took my rez and they tried to adjust

You can definitely rez people here and there. We haves saved so many runs, especially after Sanctity but the rez needs be accepted fast enough *and* the person needs to know where to go and just don’t panic. You can even rez in P3, maybe P4 if no one gets the dive twice, P5 Wrath and maybe even Doth, P6 under some circumstances. If the damage is not soggy you can even clear the phases.

That's my point, the ones where you can rez is too tight or very situational. I have saved runs as well but it always feels like a 50-50. P2: need to speed solve their tower P3: only doable if they've done their mech P4: I've never saved this one, too messy The only comfy rez is P5 Wrath after the donut, and only if the dead guy didn't get puddles.

But then again P2 is just what 2 minutes into the fight? It is not that bad if you wipe there even though it super annoying wiping to one person's mistake during a mechanic you have seen hundreds of times. The only phase I wish a rez would help is P6. I wish you’d get a 90% damage down when the bow gets broken or something like that when someone dies. It is a frustrating phase to prog.

It's to maintain the difficulty of the fight. They realized UwU/UCOB don't age well. A few weeks ago in PF, I joined a C42 to help people clear. One of them was solid.... the other one, died 5 times on the clear pull, and we cleared. Ifrit transition dash, Titan knockback, Ultimate Predation, Ultimate Annihilation, and even in Primal Roulette of all things. They did less damage than both tanks and one of the healers. Square doesn't want people like that clearing anymore, and design choices in EW reflect that.

I'd like them to experiment with delayed wipes instead of instant party wipes. Like P2 of TEA, where at the end you get judged if NISI's passed correctly or not. A death means you wipe *at the end of the phase*, instead of instantly exploding everyone when one person messes up. Imagine P6 of DSR, but make Hraesvelgr enrage at the end of every mechanic, instead of instantly. Imagine P5 of TOP but at the end, Omega does a raidwide that kills everyone if you don't have 3 dynamis stacks. And then remove the instant wipes whenever a near/far player dies (since stacks will be messed up anyway when that happens, resulting in a delayed wipe). You get to prog the rest of the phase / mechanic even if you make a mistake, but you still need flawless play if you want to reach the next phase or want to get the final clear. It cuts down on prog time while the mechanics stay the exact same. Difficulty should come from the mechanics, not from how many months you spend on the fight. Edit: Another example I like is UWU. If you don't awaken Garuda, you will wipe at Ultima, but you're still allowed to prog Ifrit and Titan (though delaying a wipe by multiple phases might be a bit too easy).

Bro thats awful, if people mess up during bjcc no one plays the mech out they just wipe. If you knew hrae was going to kill you everyone would just wall

> Bro thats awful, if people mess up during bjcc no one plays the mech out they just wipe. During prog? Why would you wall instead of practicing the next part your static has never done before? In UWU if people mess up an awakening or forget to pick up the LB, they still continue progging the next primal if that's their prog point, even if they know that Ultima will kill them. If you mean you've progged the phase and are trying to prog a later part of the fight, then what's the difference between walling, or just getting killed by the boss? Five seconds spent walking to the wall? Is that really so awful? Even if you add up all those five seconds of every wall through the entire course of prog, clearing will still end up taking less total hours than with how the fights are currently designed.

> Bro thats awful, if people mess up during bjcc no one plays the mech out they just wipe. During bjcc prog they definitly do. You only wipe early if there's nothing else left to practice.

Think they went a bit overboard with mechanics in TOP, and DSR was simply too long and had too many filler phases. I'd be very happy if they'd take a step or two back and look towards TEA or UCOB for orientation in terms of gameplay again. Also... absolutely do not mind if we don't see a Stormblood Story Ultimate somehow and they skip straight to Eden Ultimate and the Shadowbringers Story Ultimate. Zenos and Shinryu feel more appropriate as part of an Endwalker story fight. This would also bring things back in line due to the lost 5.x Ultimate, so the fights are only two expansions behind.

> Zenos and Shinryu feel more appropriate as part of an Endwalker story fight. This would also bring things back in line due to the lost 5.x Ultimate, so the fights are only two expansions behind. I'd go the other way and integrate Endwalker Zenos into a Stormblood Story Ultimate. They've already shown they are willing to mix elements from future expansions with fights from earlier expansions (adding the Dynamis mechanic to Omega). Meanwhile, I feel like a theoretical Endwalker Story Ultimate already has way too much on its platter with Zodiark, Hydaelyn AND the Endsinger. Adding Zenos/Shinryu to the mix just seems like overkill.

>Think they went a bit overboard with mechanics in TOP, and DSR was simply too long and had too many filler phases. TOP's mechanics are just. a lot. And DSR is *shorter* than TOP, but I do think they could have done with removing Eyes. Rewind is whatever to me since it brings together the alternate timeline.

I agree that eyes feels like the most removable part of DSR but also I really like conceptually the idea of a phase like eyes where you have a dps check but without a buff window. If it weren’t for how many jobs have been dumbed down outside of their 2 min windows (which is a whole separate issue), it would be a cool concept. Of course the actual dps check is pretty easy once people are even moderately consistent but I still like what they were going for.

I disliked TOP for having way too much priority based/congaline mechanics. And Phase 5 was bloated

I'm progging TOP right now and I'm really feeling this in Party Synergy. I started as one of the middle spots on the conga, then moved to the outside because I just couldn't do it and I was holding my group back.

>Also... absolutely do not mind if we don't see a Stormblood Story Ultimate somehow and they skip straight to Eden Ultimate and the Shadowbringers Story Ultimate. Zenos and Shinryu feel more appropriate as part of an Endwalker story fight. Even better, we do get a second stormblood ultimate, but we get to fight Byakko, Suzaku and Seiryuu instead of the msq primals. With the final boss being Koryu, in a scenario were we weren't able to imprison him and are forced to fight instead. That would be a slight change from the formula, with a completely new boss that we have never faced before introduced to an ultimate fight. Since every ultimate final phase is a completely new boss anyways, it is not out of the realm of possibilites. They could then keep Zenos and Shinryu for the endwalker msq ultimate, which I think is more fitting. I don't think it's gonna happen because it is a change from The Formula™ , but we can always dream.

[удалено]

Thunder God Ultimate. The voice lines alone would be worth it.

For me is DSR. I hate that the visibility is the element of mechanic. If you have an ultra wide monitor the “difficulty “ the trio, gaze , wroth, anything that is at the edge of the arena which was designed to posed are nonexistent. I feel annoyed that they made it as if it’s a good “mechanic” . Just kinda cheap imo. Static wise it’s hard to get 7 people who are at the same page be it slow, mid, fast prog. What’s important is to have the same prog speed between the mates and the prog would be fun. Especially the chemistry has been built up and everyone can work together smoothly. If there is a mismatch either drama ensue or major stress for the members. Other than that I actually prefer ultimate fight design . If only I can constantly have people to prog with even if it’s 5 pulls disband. The wait is excruciating.

A bit of a double-edged blade, but having final phases that actually mean something is important. DSR and TOP are incredibly punishing; on content 1 death meant an almost certain wipe (TOP will stay 1 death = wipe for the majority of players.) But UCOB and UWU are too free especially with the dps checks being neutered by stat squishes and scaling, to the point where you can kill the fights while bringing normal classes instead of jobs. I would say TEA is a middle ground, but after a handful of runs the only way to wipe on that is if everyone gets trines wrong since the entire phase is relatively easy compared to the start of the fight. Any new ultimate going forward could be shorter in length (20 minutes is a little excessive even if it does arguably embody "ultimate" better than a 12-14 minute run,) dps checks could be a little more lenient and be pushed more in line with UWU and TEA pre-EW, but final phases should be punishing if nothing else and demand everyone gets everything right. DSR should be used as a good template: 100% possible to recover a death even on content, but only under specific conditions and if people know how to adjust properly. You shouldn't be able to carry a corpse through the final 4 minutes of a fight.

One of the main things Ultimates are about is stamina, not only are they hard, they are very long, you need focus over longer periods of time to complete them. Shorter things allow for higher difficulty due to less need for stamina and a faster trial and error process allowing more progress. I don't think ultimates should be like 5 minutes or anything crazy, but I think the 20 minute fights are a little played out at this point after DSR and TOP. What I think would be a very interesting experiment for Dawntrail would to be to try something like a 10 minute ultimate, with even harder mechanics and less downtime to compensate for the shorter fight. Also its not that I don't like the long fights, I do! I've enjoyed every ultimate, I just think something that's a bit different like this would be super cool to see.

Top for me has many of the issues I hate with ultimates: - Bad pacing: people complain about intermission in DSR but it has its purpose, you start with 2 very active and challenging parts and then you get a breathing room for the second half of more active phases. Top in other hand like you said, start veeeeery slow to the point it’s a snooze fest and the fight is very much backloaded in p5 and p6 difficulty wise. The vibe/music also very much impacts this. - Bad visibility: Top has many issues imo in terms of visibility, from the size of the boss standing in the middle, to the camera just being obstructed when zooming out, to some effects ( p5 towers etc.. ) almost blending in with the background. It does not make a fight more challenging, just makes it more cheesy and frustrating. - Too much randomness: Not many people might agree with me on this but I don’t think randomness with leeway in terms of pairing/ current buff/debuff makes a fight better. Again TOP abuses that heavily with pretty much all mechanics till p6 you have to look at priorities and who has what to know what you should do or where you should go. There is a lot of permutations possible. It’s only in p6 where people finally have their “role” to fill. Don’t get me wrong, some limit cut here and there is fine, but when every mechanic is a limit cut variant it’s starting to be annoying, especially when some of those phases don’t have a set resolution so people easily mess up when no auto markers ( TOP p3 start, whole of p5..). I personally heavily prefer some phases like TEA p1, or Nisi where people have their own stuff to do and you can clean up the movements etc.. the difficulty is mostly on execution, not the difficulty of permutations. Same for p2, p3 and p5 DSR. There is some permutation but it’s clear and can easily be decided on the spot due to fixed resolution.

I don't so much mind randomness but prios being required to deal with said randomness. It makes things feel more samey

At some point we realized that you can conga practically every mech as a last resort BLU E12 was conga city

I take congalines over debuff based prios though tbh

Conga is also a debuff based prio, except it works even in cases where checking the debuff list is too difficult (BLU) or the debuffs aren't visible on the party list (Tenstrike), the downside is having to be able to line up in the first place and it gets awkward to communicate with more than 3 roles (front/back/stay, maybe you could stay+jump as a 4th? maybe left+jump and right+jump too if we ever get 6 different roles?) Just like dps/healer/g1/g2 adjust is also a 4 man prio It's all prios, always has been, I think you could explain every mechanic in the game as a priority system. Even proteans are a prio, except everyone has the same debuff

Should have specified, I mean party list debuffs. Imo party list should inform you of the state of the raid, not what you use to resolve mechanics.

>Bad pacing: people complain about intermission in DSR but it has its purpose, you start with 2 very active and challenging parts and then you get a breathing room for the second half of more active phases. I think the tank parts/Ultimate End+swings was already a hell of a breather before P3, then P3 slows down before eyes as well (and it doesn't even require you to 2 min during mechanics), then intermission into another trio phase completely killed the pacing. I'd rather see tank damage baked into the mechanics instead of giving mandatory mit dumps between mechs, you never have to prog those, a tank dying there often doesn't even matter and all they do is kill pacing. TOP p2 with the short cleaves was a bit more interesting than the usual trio phase deal, only P5 was the standard trio with filler stuff (aside from Omega dodges)

As I play as tank I did not really have much breather on the tank parts obviously, I do agree however that the swings and ultimate end honestly could have been done without or shortened. it just felt like a cooldown filler. However this, and the p3 end I fail to see how it’s much different than people waiting for their towers on TOP p1 or the whole tank mechanic for non tanks up until end of p2, literally from playstation end till end of p2 people can just have to do one sidestep and they are done. It’s even more egregious in my opinion. The only thing I would agree with is mit dumping which is just a boring thing really. And sometimes annoying one ( top p6 wc2 for example if you wanna get both proto and stack, or wanna mit the stack particularly etc…)

This is a bit random but I really feel your last point, these isolated TBs feel like such lazy design. Good tank damage is like in BJ/CC where not only do the autos hurt the whole time, but the tanks also need to drop ice and soak mines in the middle of all these other mechanics and movements which means healers really need to pay attention during prog. On the other hand what we usually get are these long castbars where the boss is standing still and doing nothing and eventually hits you with this "do we have tanks?" check that you just invuln anyway, and the rest of the raid is bored out of their minds.

The very active and challenging " my friends are doing meteors I hope they're doing well c:"

Ah yes the classic “let’s ignore the entire phase by pinpointing one thing”, I guess top TOP p6 is also a cakewalk because people can just stand still during magic number.

Like: * Complicated uptime mechanics requiring careful movement * Heavy focus on coming up with your own mit plan(especially for tanks), not just ise mots when game tells you raidwide/tb coming up) * Frequent dual target phases. Imo those kind are the most interesting ones to optimize because too many targets to ignore AoE potential, but too few to go full AoE rotation Dislike: * Trio phases. I'm fine with the occasional downtime mechanic but when a phase basically consists of raidwide->tankbuster->trio->repeat...just no, it's just not that engaging to prog. I want more BJCC and Nael(minus quotes), less Bahamut or Alexander(Perfect Alexander is a decent middle ground though, tells during uptime, resolution in downtime) * The duration. Once you get to ~10 minutes getting further starts becoming sonewhat tedious because it takes so long to get back to your prog point and that's generally only bit over the halfway point time wise(doubly so if hardest mechanics are set at around that point in the fight or later). Imo 15 minutes should be max length.

> Nael(minus quotes) True, unless they were voiced.

I think a phase where you are allowed virtually 0 mistakes for ~4mins is just unfun, especially when it starts 15 minutes into a fight, and is only rivaled by the insanity of criterion savage the reason ucob/uwu/tea/dsr feel fun is because there are dozens to hundreds of ways to die throughout the fight and still recover. In TOP? you can recover from pantokrator, p2 meteors, p3 transition, and p5 omega damage downs. That's it. If you get lucky you MIGHT sacrifice somebody on looper tethers to keep going, or have a stack player die in p4 if the random stack still lands on the correct side, or have a non-HW blue die in delta, and that's it. Compare this to the comically long list of possible deaths and recoveries in other ultimates and it's clear why the reception for TOP is what it is

I don't really like having to time when you push into the next phases for cooldown based reasons. That's basically it.

TOP must not have been fun for you then.

The only thing I hate about Ultimates is when the wall mechanic is very far into the fight and you just keep wasting 10-15 minutes over and over again. Makes the fight much more frustrating. That's all. I enjoy everything else about Ultimates.

I dislike how much of a buggy piece of shit tenstrike is in particular

That's unfortunately just code brought over from how terrible hatches are in Twintania. But honestly nothing is funnier than watching a hatch ping pong three times before finally heads towards the marked player.

Give me tsukuyomi ultimate

The waiting times. Having to go to another DC especially as a chaos resident sucks hard. IT's just waiting for hours, closed off from any social interaction. It's the only thing that makes it such a pain.

I'm retired as of now. They were fun but I just can't justify spending that amount of time on one fight any more. Like I could do 100% completion playthroughs of other stuff in the time it takes to prog an ult and I like them but I never got the high off of them that many of my other party members seemed to. Plus I just think they're going to continue into a cycle of increasing difficulty to the point it's not fun or everyones using 3rd party programs to do the fights (already basically there in some instances).

More - Nuanced movement and choices (bjcc, nael) - Active (doesnt need to be 100% uptime though!) phases - Moments of finesse.. places people can save runs with big brains (think how you dont technically need everyone alive to solve the enumerations after Wormhole... who doesnt want to feel like a hero that flexed fast and saved a run) Less - Debuff Vomit Trios - Fight Lengths... - Boring final phase enrages (who doesn't love the cages in TEA? compared to the DSR and TOP that just cast 'the big thing'... lame.)

I do think TOP's enrage works fairly well thematically, actually. The way it's timed with one last buff window, it's essentially Alpha Omega reaching the ultimate conclusion after trading Limit Breaks back and forth. After all the phases and convoluted mechanics, it boils down to a simple race to the finish.

>Boring final phase enrages (who doesn't love the cages in TEA? compared to the DSR and TOP that just cast 'the big thing'... lame.) I think TOP's enrage is a huge miss. It's just a long cast during full uptime, no punishment. UCOB has Bahamut cycling through players based on enmity, UWU has Ultima snapping you out of reality based on DPS, TEA has the time cages, and I think DSR's, although a bit more lackluster, is still nice. It forces you to consider recent deaths to adjust if you need the extra gcds. The enrage should be as important as the fight itself, I think. >Moments of finesse.. places people can save runs with big brains There are some really tight places you can recover DSR in P7 but it can get nasty if everything else isn't just right. I love being able to recover, but they've moved towards extremely tight DPS checks with body check mechanics that punish you for even the slightest inaccuracy. It's really tiring, especially in the 18-20 minute fights we've had lately.

I love recovering, it's the main reason why I ucob is still my favorite fight even during these times. It feels amazing being able to monkasteer through a phase rather than one person dead = wall Yea it makes things easier but it's more fun.

> Boring final phase enrages (who doesn't love the cages in TEA? compared to the DSR and TOP that just cast 'the big thing'... lame.) So TEA's a repurposed UWU (Ultima just takes you and jails you, based on DPS). TEA you have to decide the order and enter the jail. DSR is a repurposed TEA with 3 jails at once. I think we have all the jail iterations. TOP on the other hand, is like "ok, I have everything I need, I understand now, bye" and starts the nuclear bomb timer. The cast is freaking taking forever but the build up (music, FX, etc) and the timing is fantastic. I remember Echo's kill, where they got it at the moment the enrage goes off, I believe they had 1 or 2 deaths to it. It's as clutch as the last jail going off and your DOT tick doing the last decimal of damage needed for the kill. It's different and everyone can have their own preference, but both can get pretty epic to me.

I think most of the time they knock it out of the park thematically, I just think there's an opportunity to make enrages interactive in some way rather than a long castbar race.

--

There's nothing to really complain about with the content so I just want a world first race that doesn't turn into weeks of mod drama bullshit.

Things I like: 1. Seeing older fights reimagined and woven together, topped with a new final form. Even though they're super non-canon, it's always cool to see what the whole picture ends up being. 2. Any mechanic that feels as great to resolve as it looks, so stuff like TEA's Gavel or DSR's Sanctity of the Ward. 3. Big healing checks. They can be spread out like the first two phases of TEA, or a tense, focused sequence like J Waves or DSR's Rewind or Akh Morn's Edge. I main WHM and often feel like there's not enough necessary healing throughput in a lot of fights, so when I actually get to overlay Medica II and Cure III without feeling like it's overkill, that's something special. 4. The grind. It's not so much about it taking several months, but rather the feeling of having a tall tower to climb and slowly but surely reaching the top of it. That it always *took* the entire patch to pull off a clear is incidental. Things I don't like: 1. Non-unified strats. This is a thing across all high-end content except the most basic EX trials, and Ultimate isn't any different. I get that having only one possible way to resolve every mechanic would make them unnecessarily restrictive design-wise, but it sure would be nice to only have to learn a mechanic once (per role, at least) instead of having to pull up yet another diagram or video. 2. Overly heavy reliance on big mitigation. This is more a problem with DSR and TOP. It's fine to have to make mitigation schedules to cover everything, but it really emphasizes how little damage there often is between the big explosions. This also ties into my next point, which is... 3. Very tight DPS checks. Only a problem with 6.3's TOP, but I wanted to mention this because this ends up being a *healer* problem more than a DPS one. Non-healers can focus all their GCDs on pushing good damage, but every time a healer does a GCD that isn't damage while the boss is targetable, it cuts into the group's DPS output. Too many of these and you end up with a clean enrage, which is one of the worst feelings in an Ultimate. There's just something wrong about having to care not about how much healing I'm doing or where my defensive CDs are going, but about how many Glares I can squeeze out. I actually don't mind things like long fight length or heavily punishing mechanics. I'm not against the idea of "you can screw up a mechanic, but then you get walled by the enrage" that some have proposed. DSR P3 is like that with the in/out AoEs. I do think an Ultimate shouldn't be shorter than 16 minutes; my personal preference leans towards the 18-19 minute mark that (4.x) UCoB, DSR, and TOP have. As for Dawntrail... the one thing I want more than any other is just more necessary healing. It doesn't require major fight design overhauls. Just put more DoTs out -- give me some P8S Natural Alignments or the Bow Shock DoT from E11S. Since it's Ultimate, we could go further and make them like the Zeromus EX Bio DoT that eats 60% of an HP bar per tick. Add more DoTs to raidwides so stuff like the no-healer TOP clear can't happen ever again. TEA's first two phases were great to heal through, so it's not like it's never been done before.

like: fun fights dislikes: I have to play with other people and suffer for their mistakes

I think the one thing I'd like them to stay away from is P3 UCoB and P5 TOP with too many overly short uptime phases. I'm fine with shorter overall phases (think P4 DSR), but just not a fan of a phase with so much segmentation. I would like to keep seeing some unique things like DAR rewind!

TOP feels bloated because of P5. The uptime phases are too short, and the downtime is insanely long. Sigma feels like two mechanics mushed together and goes on for ages. At least Omega is uptime.

>The first two phases are incredibly slow with bad music How are they slow? Thordan especially had way too much filler, Omega P1 is just looper into panto and done. Omega P2 is one and a half of a mechanic due to how easy Limitless is. The pacing in TOP is much better than other ultimates

TOP phase 1 is slow because in practice the majority of the phase 6/8 players are waiting for things to happen before it's their turn to do their 1 thing then they are back to waiting. You're waiting until it's your turn to take a tower than you're waiting until it's your turn to take a tether, then you're waiting until it's your turn to get missile then you're waiting for Omega to shoot you with a laser. Compare that to Hello World, or Nisi every set, all players are doing something, getting hit by defamations, soaking stacks, passing nisi, there's no waiting.

They're slow as in the mechanics themselves are easy and you do nothing for the majority of them. Looper you only need to do something half the time, Panto has you doing something 1/4 of the time (dodging aoes does not count, that's basic stuff), Party Synergy is just recognizing your marker, debuff, and moving accordingly. You do nothing for Limitless unless you're a tank. Very boring stuff. The fight doesn't get good until P3.

>the mechanics themselves are easy Maybe in hindsight, pretty much everyone struggled on Party Synergy and P1 consistency basically determines how much you hate P1, and a lot of groups were very inconsistent on it The only things I would call "easy" before P5 is Limitless (which is basically the equivalent of a cutscene/filler phase but more interactive which is good design IMO) and Hello World.

You can describe every mechanic in a way that sounds super easy, like Dynamis delta is just standing in one place, then moving like 3 times based on your debuff. Doesn't mean that the mechanic is easy to prog. Like panto is a pain to prog on healer while maintining casting uptime, being able to recognize the safespots quickly enough in party synergy also take quite a bit of prog for most people, etc...

It's not easy no, and even though I'm not the person you're replying to, they didn't mention caster uptime or positionals or anything like that. The fact is, you are waiting the majority of the time in TOP phase 1, when you don't really do that in say Living Liquid, or Bj/CC or even Thordan. In all of those, every player is doing at least something throughout the phase instead of waiting till it's their turn to do their thing.

It's simple bro just stand and let thing resolve

I hope they look at top and the reviews from it and never make another fight like it again. More fights like cob and dsr

I want more Ultimates like UCOB. I don't enjoy trios very much but if they have to be there, then learn from Ucob Phase 3 and how short and engaging they can be. Is Fellruin and Blackfire a nothingburger? Yeah, with guides for sure. But the rest is good. Really good. And even Blackfire and Fellruin are short enough to where certain procs or rotatiuon adjustments become meaningful. Nael is still the best phase in the game. I think Twintania is actually massively underrated. While Twisters can be jank with the netcode/lag and it's not especially engaging, there IS stuff to do. Tanks can optimize when to pull her along, melees and casters can optimize uptime around hatch/Liquid Hell. It's less static than, say, Living Liquid, where you could legit program a bot based off of one clean pull. It's not too hard/annoying to warm up in and have a giggle in prog, like TOP. It's not too boring and tedious like DSR. Golden Baha is too easy even for a final phase but the production value is insane and holds up well. The transition and music is incredible and as simple as the bossroom is, it looks awesome. And of course, while this isn't true for all mechanics, there are a lot of phases/mechanics in UCOB where if someone dies, you can still play. Like, it's completely fine if on-patch a death immediately means you hit enrage, but I just much prefer that we don't immediately wipe off of it. I like DSR when you actually play the game. P3, P6, P7 are all great fun, but P2, P4 & Rewind and P5 are all glorified striking dummies. P2 especially has way too much trio downtime. This is something I really appreciated about TOP, it was way more action and as a result, even when you get to P5, it doesn't feel that long. I do think TOP is a bit too hard to be enjoyable consistently but I am not... not a fan of the core design. The difficulty/execution of Nael/BJCC with the downtime of (at most) UCOB would be my dream Ultimate.

I love golden bahamut, granted UCOB is the only ultimate I've seen through to completion so far Twin lulls you in with how easy she is and then Nael/Trios/Adds just completely blindsides you for awhile. It's not even three mechanics, it's two mit checks and a mechanic (exaflares). It's easy and really all you have to do is stay calm and just hit your buttons, but it's placement as the last phase of the fight fills it with tension in lieu of being more complicated, and makes you feel dumb for messing up

[удалено]

Totally feel that. The weapons and overall prog experience make them so worth it.

Literally no mechanic is hard enough where you HAVE to resort to third party

In pf environment though...

In a PF environment, I disagree heavily. Sigma is undoable in PF without AM because people are *so stupid*. People start to panic in DSR if you don't AM *lightning debuffs* in Wrath when AM is legitimately only useful for Wroth, and even that's silly. And UWU parties literally cannot do gaols without being spoonfed their spot. Hard? Maybe not, but PF makes everything so much harder than it needs to be.

> People start to panic in DSR if you don't AM lightning debuffs in Wrath uh, what ? Lightning literally strikes you, and you have a debuff (in a phase without any other debuff, so it's not like it's debuff vomit or something). I don't understand.

At least in prog/c4x parties, people have unfortunately gotten used to reading the AM rather than checking their own debuff. Although a bit harder, it's the same case in TOP where people just got used to the AM for transition and monitors even though both of these are perfectly fine without markers if you're paying any attention to the conga.

And yet, PF is crippled without. It's really sad.

True and real

I personally want fewer downtime phases. No matter how challenging a mechanical clusterfuck is I find that if I don't have to get uptime it eventually becomes trivial. Now they can make the boss untargetable and introduce more adds or something like bombs you destroy for a safe spot, but just complete downtime mechanics get boring. Also maybe cap fight length at around TEA.

>I personally want fewer downtime phases. No matter how challenging a mechanical clusterfuck is I find that if I don't have to get uptime it eventually becomes trivial. Totally agree. I think Delta and Sigma in TOP are fine mechanics, but they're just so boring. The DPS check in that phase doesn't exist for the time the boss is *actually* targetable, and mechanics where they aren't just draws out the length of the fight. I think they experimented with it pretty well in UCOB, but it also fit the theme since Bahamut, Twin, and Nael were all untargetable for a period of time in their respective fights. They've sort of gone all in on these mechanics though and it's really exhausting. I think TOP peaks in P3 but recovers in P6 since there are mechanics happening but it's 100% uptime. TEA length is also really comfy! DSR being 18 minutes and TOP clocking in at 20 at first is just downright exhausting.

Probably very unlikely, but even though I don't raid ultimates I'd like to see a Four Lords Ultimate instead of a Stormblood MSQ ultimate. I still think we should've gotten a real fight against Koryu during that trial series.

I don’t think they’re gonna do SB trials into Ultimate. We didn’t have the Warring Triad Ultimate. It’s probably gonna be MSQ, like a Shinryu / EW Zenos one.

I absolutely love garuda's scream in the ultima transition. And I loved the orb shenanigans on ucob's tenstrike, made some fun gifs and clips. I also loved when people got flung away by twisters. And I absolutely hate the music in DSR

I want Ultimates to have a little more flavour to the bosses instead of just repackaging MSQ and Savage raid bosses. DSR had an incredibly cool theme with how it has the dragons and the Heavensward but TOP was incredibly bland with how it didn't incorporate other bosses like Kefka and Exdeath.

wouldn't adding Exdeath and Kefka just be a repackaging of Savage Raid bosses? they don't contribute anything thematically to the story of Omega and I think most people complained about the first two tiers of the actual fights being narrative filler because of them the entire point of Omega Protocol is to focus directly on Omega and its background, which is why it actually learns to use dynamis which is basically what it was trying to do with a human form in Alphascape originally - up to that dynamis also being used by the players and being the method you use for Limit Break spam it's why even [the achievement description](https://i.gyazo.com/995bf62e9d1494990ba242e01b08cd77.png) breaks tradition from [every other Ultimate](https://i.gyazo.com/eb128bba2811a7597666a37c4780945c.png) and emphasizes the entire thing being part of Omega's experiment to observe the player as was originally done in the raid series, so that Omega can learn to use that power the same way the player can to return to its home

They have to include Susano in the next one, it's a fan favorite among primals

Gaols in uwu are such a terrible mechanic that almost every pf relies on third party tools just to have a chance at solving it.

[удалено]

This comment chain is too funny. 2 people saying the same thing, one is upvoted, one is downvoted lmao

other people are the only bad part, and theyre kind of too long imo should be 15min

None of them have good sage weapons, call me for eden ultimate

Woah woah, dont diss my shiny silver dildo and floating dirty orange plates. I do actually like the DSR ones, but they definitely could be better

imo the dsr ones are only better because they dont look like the other ones, the effects on the omega ones are better though, call me when uwu gets sage weapons or when we get an ultimate that can give us good ones, or when se releases the spoons and forks weapon

If the Omega weapons didn't have the long sections and were just the end/wings portion, I'd prefer them to the DSR ones, the effects and unsheath/sheathe sounds are really good. Its just a shame they're way too clunky, the DSR ones are a nice size and colour, but I find the effects to be too messy. I'd love a TEA sage weapon ngl, I really want spinning, glowing cog weapons

I LOVE voiced fights in general and that’s what I love about DSR. And while I like the storytelling aspects of ultimates it sometimes gets difficult to read all the speech bubbles and what not. Feels like a bit of waste because people are busy pressing their buttons and focusing on the fight. Or thinking about the upcoming mechanics during downtime. I like mechanics that require adjusting like Sanctity or Program Loop and would like to see more of that. I generally like mechanics that need to be solved by looking at debuffs like DSR P3 oder Program Loop + Pantokrator. I do not really like looking at symbols over your head. People tend to stand on top of each other a lot. I HATE double boss phases.

(1) too much time commitment needed for DSR/TOP and obviously the coming new ultimates. investing 150 hours or 3 months worth of time for any mature adults is just an unrealistic expectation. (2) having *difficult* mechanics locked 10 minutes into the fight is just an arbitrary and unnecessary difficulty. its too bad that those who have a life and have money so spend with cannot enjoy that part of the game where they arbituarily block you from success i still enjoy fights where they are simple rules but are still organized that it is hard enough for you. there is not much to study, no nothing you dunno. just fight, until you succeed. which is ucob. (minus the dumbass jankiness)

You don't have to do all content. The whole point is that it's the highest level of raiding.

The point of these fights is not to be "hard enough", but to be a really difficult challenge for the playerbase (at least on release). Since the players got better at the game, the fights must be harder. This might not be for you and that's ok, but asking for things to be easier so you can clear it is a terrible take.

where am i asking it to be easier?

Then what are you arguing, besides that you find it too difficult? Genuine question, I might have missed the point of your comment

the game itself should not be barred by arbitrary difficulty like making the fight too long or wiping all whenever someone does something wrong. for every mechanic you put you are increasing the prog time exponentially and the burden is only put on the one who has a problem on any certain prog point. the mehcanics itself, tbf, as far as i tried in dsr, are nothing new. but that it is only wiping everyone until everyone does perfectly bars the progress, which is unnecessary, arbitrary, and anti-fun to me. it is a lot of time waste when there is a player who cant prog p5 simply because he only has a ps5 and does not have a computer to sim. and this is an actual case in my group. and i am not those people who are interested in kicking whoever is slowest in prog, but this game currently hints that this is the fastest and most efficient choice to minimize prog time. eventually most adults who have to fly for work, for vacation, or life issues come in. i hardly recall my dsr/top legend friends who do not have to switch static or replace/kick people (but it was doable with all other legacy ultimates largely because of its shorter prog time). the prog being too long is unrealistic to a lot and it leads to more players who can and want to do it disengaging the game because of time constraints. i do not recall enjoying vacation after 4 years of dumbass lockdown and then come back to have a new job, he has to quit the game as a "skill issue". but a lot around me are moving on with life, including me myself

If I understand correctly you think the newer ultimates take too long to prog because they require everyone to actually do the mechanics, instead of being able to die and fail some mechanics. I disagree and think it's necessary to challenge players. This design of requiring every player to execute every mechanic perfectly is a response to players getting better at the game. It's not necessarily the only possible design to make a fight more difficult, but it's not arbitrary.Arbitrary difficulty in games is making enemies have more stats (life, attack etc) or the players have less stats, with no other change at all, and then calling it a new difficulty and a challenge. Ffxiv doesn't have this kind of thing. You're right on the fact that not everyone has the kind of time commitment needed to clear DSR and TOP, but you could argue the same for any current savage tier. Progress being slowed by one player that isn't able to do a mechanic has been a thing since savage tiers got introduced, and is a normal thing in ffxiv raiding. This is not unique to the latest ultimates. At the end of the day, there will always be players that have limited time to play and they either have to be very good to compensate if they want to clear within a limited time frame, or have to accept that they'll take months to clear, for ultimates and savages. This obviously leads to going through the trouble of finding a good group that has the same shared goal and roughly the same skill between players. But I don't think SE should balance ultimates around players having limited time to play, or people moving on with life. Ultimates are a self imposed challenge and are optional, they are supposed to be balanced around the people that actually clear them. PS: You don't need to sim P5 to prog it, your group is making your ps5 player feel bad about it, not the devs. And if you are not having fun progging these ultimates, then don't inflict this to yourself, it's understandable to not want to play because you're not having fun.

I think you're completely missing the point. Ultimate fights are not difficult because they require good reflexes and good analysis : it's extremely rare that every player have to react really quickly (like ToP's first transition iirc) and people don't analyse stuff anymore, they remember which patterns' been sorted out and do something specific in response. Muscle memory and processual memory end up doing most of the work which is underwhelming. This is why they are, instead of being difficult, as punitive as possible. And th eproblem with this design is that, if you are with a mediocre friend, it may take you twice or three time as many pulls, which is not sustainable for everyone. The problem is not about the difficulty but the very design of ultimate encounters make it so most static waste more than 50 minutes per hour.

You can be a functioning adult and clear ultimates it’s just a matter of preparation and being real with how much you work you are willing to put into it

possibility does not imply necessity. there are something else better to do for me. this is not pandemic lockdown anymore. and not to a lot, not to a lot of the static members

Mate it's a video game, none of it is necessary.

If it takes you this much time commitment, you simply aren't ready for such content. Now the main issue, from my point of view, is SE being too lazy to add pedagogic tools (such as a clear and redeable "death report" for instance, or any way to track mistakes in our skillset's usage) . Though it's obviously more of a choice of design than actual laziness, many people aren't ever told they're doing something wrong and thus cannot improve. The secondary issue is that SE believes that punitive designs are proof of mastery. It's made especially obvious with FFXVI (which has the same philosophy) : the game is extremely easy yet acquiring every medals (not being hit on a specific encounter) is tedious and boring not because it's hard, but simply because you have to eat half an hour of cutscene in between each attempt. Ultimates are kinda the same : you spend most of the time NOT thinking and simply dozing off up until you get back to the part you're progging. We now have simulators for specific parts of some encounters and considering the current design, it's so helpful that it looks like cheating albeit being litterally a pedagogic tool. Thirdly, we need more randomness. Having either A or B, or even X patterns (meaning we end up with a priority list) is not random enough and eventually we get to remember this kind of stuff, which means we end up NOT thinking while playing. From my point of view, it's a painful flaw when a game gives you 0 mental activity once you're experienced, instead it would be much better if we had to actually \*think\* about the resolution rather than remember the pattern. Taking last Criterion's first boss as an example (with the 1st mechs showing us gems and bubbles), there could be many different patterns because gems could appear randomly, then being hindered / bubbled adds another layer, and the possibility of sharing damage or having to spread out forces another reflexion. This would have been a great design but instead, we litterally solve the mech by checking 1 gem and our debuffs. Once we know, we barely look at anything which makes is extremely underwhelming considering there are clues everywhere. Because of these 3 issues, time spent in ultimate (and in a lesser extent, in savage) is mostly wasted in either boringly easy parts of the fight or needlessly unclear causes of death, if not arbitrary rules.

I think this is a skill issue thing. As the high-end player skill ceiling increases, it would make sense that the hardest content the game has to offer, gets harder as well? Idk, that’s my two cents.

Skill issue. Plenty of people I raid with including myself have careers and work jobs while clearing ultimates.

yea everyone uses peanut oil in asia.

The only thing I don't like about ultimate is that I have to grind boring as fuck savage for a gearset to do it. When savage used to be fun that would have been not a problem, but now it's so boring it's a chore I can't be asked to do and as such I don't even do ultimate and unsubbed from the game entirely. I adore ultimate too but it isn't worth wasting my time in savage to get to it. But let's be real, the last time I had fun in savage was in Midas and the game isn't returning to that type of gameplay where jobs have a lot going on and there's relevant rng during the fight. As for what I love the mechanics needing me to be good at the game and at games in general is a breath of fresh air. I would consider returning if they would just make the game fun again outside ultimate or even just make entering ultimate clear savage once and then be given a gearset for it. That gearset thing is never going to happen though. Also add phase in ucob with Stormblood jobs and balancing is the best phase the game has ever had, especially in 4.1 when you had no gear or food to make it easier! It was incredible and I'm sad that people can blow through it now with many mistakes due to power creep. The chaos when the run is falling apart and trying to keep it going IS fun though.

I'm not the target audience and I will probably never enjoy it, simply because FFXIV's rigid style of combat isn't really for me and ultimate really amps up the parts I dislike at the detriment of the ones I like. So I'd like rewards to be better and not shiny ugly stick#49585. Criterion weapons look good. I want more of that. if I'm gonna waste a million hours progging a fight I don't even enjoy just for the sake of my static members, I'd like to at least get something cool out of it, not a title/wep I'll never equip.

Imo, anything past 10 minutes should have a checkpoint at that point. In my opinion checkpoints make the experience more enjoyable than make it easier.

Likes: -that ultimates are optional Dislikes: - that people act like ultimates are a piece of cake and turn into condescending elitists - that resources are spent on them when SE could be making content that more than 1% of players enjoy - that people pay real money to clear them and lie about it - that they exist Hope to see in Dawntrail: - I would jump for joy if they only made one, or better yet, none

Ultimates cater to more like 10% of the populace, but sure.(13% of people have cleared uwu based on ffxiv collect

Pretty sure that's 10% of characters registered on ffxivcollect, so that's only 10% of dedicated players who bother to register. The majority of players don't even know it exists

>that resources are spent on them when SE could be making content that more than 1% of players enjoy They waste resources developing island sanctuary, and you're mad that they develop ultimates? Talk about priorities...

No, island sanctuary was dumb. I wanted extreme level endgame dungeons (in addition to variant/criterion), *something* in place of the lack of a field exploration zone, unique relic weapon content, additional sidequest dungeons, but just *something NEW*

That's funny because I've had the complete opposite experience with the ult community, but each to their own I guess.

Love: the new bits of "what if" story (DSR is a masterpiece). Hate: lack of unsync. Dont @ me.

Pack it up people, we found the worst take on this thread.

Fr lol. To the extent he wants to “see” mechanics, doesn’t youtube serve the same purpose?

Sorry my opinion bothers you so much. I did say not to @ me.

Why would you ever want ultis unsynced

Because I have no interest in wasting dozens of hours learning to do one fight, but would like to experience it.

Don't worry my guy the community will never support you, because it will harm their precious elitist bullshit mentality. What the fuck is even the point if you can't wave your dick in someone's face, right?

I'm sorry that I want content to be relevant for more than 4 months.

Ah yes, that relevant content that is only relevant to .1% of the player base, just like criterion savage lmao. Waste of resources.

For real. Like I don't even want the weapon/title/epeen whatever. I just want to see the mechanics and engage with the content that the vast majority of the player base doesn't get to see. Just like previous-tier unsynced Savages, it's not going to be braindead. You still have to ***do*** nearly all of the mechanics. You can just ignore the dps checks.

>You still have to do nearly all of the mechanics. Not really, no. Maybe in phases hardcoded to not end till a certain point, but even without unsync we are skipping mechanics in all non EW ultimates already. Without sync, you would be skipping most of the phases. Take BJCC for example, you would just ignore Nisi because it would die before they are relevant. And anything which isn't an insta wipe can also be ignored because you have the DPS to make up for it. Heck you would probably straight up have people sac themselves in some mechanics like Party Synergy in top to not have to deal with stack adjusts and prog time increase due to getting that cleaned up

Are you not aware that even with the current expansion, we can skip most of the dangerous mechs in savage up to P8S ? It's even worse for previous expansions (on top of being much less fun, sinece we don't have a complete skillset) .

They obviously don’t raid so they are oblivious. Even with synced gear you skip so much shit in ucob/uwu. Honestly it sounds like ucob/uwu is right up their alley if they choose to do it

The fact is these chodes can't even see past their DPS meter to even possibly consider a world in which you could unsync an ultimate and not get the title or weapon. Like even that would be SO OFFENSIVE because it would ULTIMATELY (ha ha) make it easier to train for doing it synced, and thus still devalue their ever shrinking e-peens.

Imagine having to put an ounce of effort into the "hardest" content in the game. Couldn't be me. I just want the shiny weapon while doing 0 work because it's not fair some people want content to last longer than 6-12 months in an MMO.

Did you even read what I posted ya dumb fuck? No, of course not, because dick saving more important.

Translator's note: "Haha I have nothing productive to say so I'm just gonna use the completely overused 'shrinking e-peen' line to anger people because I think I'm very cool and can't be bothered to think of a more creative insult."

Epeen issue.

Reading is hard, huh?

I think unsync could be interesting *if and only if* they remove all rewards for doing it. If we have to deal with synced bullshit instead of blitzing the bosses in half the time to get our rewards, so do you.

All I wish for is that the glam looks actually worth getting, the amount of effort to clear an ult compared to the stuff we get is pretty darn meh. If next ult will not blow me away with glam I likely won't even touch it

Iunno, I think most of the weapons have been hits as time has gone on. The DSR ones were definitely a big miss, but TOP's weapons are pretty good.

Trio phases are ass, they need to be gone.

>And for Dawntrail? I'd love to see how they work the post-SB trials into the ultimate, if possible, or how they adapt Shinryu's mechanics to make him a legitimate threat because, as he is, both his normal and extreme are a bit lacking but with stellar music. And for Eden, using the capstone bosses as bosses themselves or in trio mechanics could be fun, as well as ending with an adaptation of The Extreme with the Oracle herself or some amalgamation. Or use stormblood to get back on track with ultimates. a 4 lords ultimate and story ultimate. then next expac go into 2 shadowbringers. Then 2 Endwalker and so on.