Is this really the extent of XIV endgame?Follow

Nope, not everything does, just(most) attacks that center around the mob doing the ability (not sure if they are adding more, as the circles are new). You can still see the progress bar of an attack you should avoid, or spell casts. So you need to use those. But I love the circles, as a tank it gives you a great way to know when you have gone too far. But at the same time, the lack of an indicator is also fun. Determining the first time if you need to get out of range, or if you can just run behind the mob...

Personally, I think they have a perfect balance between letting you know you need to move, and where you need to move to. And yeah, the fact that there are times where running from one attack leads you into a lot more (pretty much any fate) adds to the challenge.

-Edited, yeah, there is also a spit attack by a mob that centers around a target. Conal attacks don't have an indicator.

Edited, Jun 19th 2013 9:49am by rfolkker

Yeah, Kobold attacks showed up too, it seems like most circular AOE attacks show up.

Know what? The mechanics of flying a fighter jet look easy and simple to overcome on youtube.

Ifrit is really hard if you don't know what you're doing. It takes 2-3 integral people to mess up to completely fail the fight.

There are times when we beat him in 8 minutes with our eyes closed, and there are pickup runs that I've tried to help with that didn't run away from eruptions properly or even worse, run the eruptions to the White Mages.

Solo healing Ifrit is impressive, because if that one WHM gets hit by Eruption, they have to move out of the way for a little while, leaving the tank to fend for himself. We always brought 2 WHMs to our Ifrit runs.One on each side so the tank was properly kept up to fill.

Nope!

Only to a certain extent. Keep in mind that the underlining aspects of the game were pretty different, not to mention the whole mess was put on a highly flawed framework. 'Latency issues' Wasn't just lag, but essentially a delay on everything, including actions taken on both player and computer's end.

I'm interested in seeing how Hard Mode Ifrit changes, honestly. Yeah, we've seen the level 30 version, but I wonder if hard mode includes moves we do not entirely expect, or uses them at a pace much faster than before.

Somehow I have this sinking feeling that Ifrit will be harder and Garuda easier to the point that they're more or less on the same level of difficulty.

I'm fairly confident that every raid boss is easy, given that your group can pay attention. There's never been an encounter that couldn't be overcome except by raw gear checks or broken mechanics. Not in WoW, Rift, FFXI, or any other game have the "pros" not been able to crush the content. The issue of end game content is not difficulty, but rewarding the player: knowing that they did pay attention, they did contribute, that it's not a broken mess that simply cannot be beaten because of mechanics or technical limitations. There has never been an encounter I couldn't get the jist of after a few attempts, but that doesn't mean that everyone does...therein comes the problem, the players themselves.

Very much this. All encounters performed by a group of people, once learned, are easy. The question is, is it enjoyable? Does it make you stand there and attack endlessly and mindlessly or is there something to make you pay attention? Are the mechanics between fights varied? When my group first went into Ifrit, we died. When we went in 100 tries later it was only frustrating that everyone didn't have ALL the weapons yet. Somewhere in between there was learning, trial, and a mix of teaching new people the fight. Ifrit wasn't terribly hard, but as a first raid boss encounter in the entire game, was pretty decent.

I felt like the Ifrit and Garuda fights in 1.x were quite challenging. You really had to have experience to complete them. Couldn't go in with just the mentality of tank tanks, healer heals and DPS unloads and we'll be fine. There were quite a few variables(on top of latency and animation lock issues) you had to worry about. Had to really pay attention to positioning and what the bosses were doing. They felt like fights that a random PUG couldn't complete unless everyone had done it multiple times before.

Same with the Nael Van Darnus fight(just story mode, I never even tried hard mode). It felt quite involved and challenging with a lot of moving parts to pay attention to. These fights to me felt like encounters that you would need to repeat a few times to learn until you eventually beat it and a few more times later you master.

That's how endgame should be. It should be encounters that you have to experience and learn for a while until you can master it. It shouldn't be encounters that you can clear within a couple weeks. That is one of the things that doomed SWTOR. The first few raids could be mastered in a couple weeks and cleared literally in a couple hours. Based on at least the Ifrit, Garuda and NVD fights in 1.0, I am confident that The Crystal Tower and Bahamut's lair or whatever it is will require a focused a group at least a month or 2 to clear and master. Of course assuming they don't raid 7 days a week.

By the way, I can't look at youtube right now, but is that the video of the lv30 Ifrit fight or the actual endgame Ifrit fight?

Also I noticed that cone shaped attacks (like the Gnats Thunderstrike or whatever that paralyze move is called) is totally dodgeable as well, but like BartelX said you can just keep an eye for when the charging gauge appears.

Actually it looks like the initial thing was complaining about an endgame for a game that no longer exists.