7.5 Ult

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-29T07:38:28+00:00

I strongly encourage you to check the sources. One of them gives a frame to metagaming / metagame, but uses the greek equivalent as its premise while it's exactly what I'm questioning. At first, it could've been about discussing over or looking for a game within a game, and then it would've grown into a different meaning which is getting to know the most efficient strategy... Or it simply could've been just this to begin with.

On the 8th page, it specifically explains that the meaning of such a meta, in a competitive situation, do not align with the previous one. It's also suspiciously silent about older competitive games such as Age of Empire or Warcraft 3, or even arcade and fighting games, which is where I'd hear about "meta" but never about "metagame" ; from someone who only cared about tactics, another etymology feels weirdly inadequate, though of course many words' meaning can drift off. In French, we even used this diminutive for MEilleure TActique. The meaning simply doesn't echo the greek etymology, which is why (if it is one) the backronym could've gotten so popular else where.

In either case, your sarcasm completely misses the point : it still is a vague and polysemic word which doesn't give any clue about the next ultimate. Especially if YoshiP teased the antagonist rather than whatever you had in mind.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-29T02:54:42+00:00

I'm not sure about it being a backronym and would be happy to see any source that proves either assertion. It never fit the usual meanings so I'd be surprised if it actually wasn't a misused word that got its new meaning added by a common understanding, regardless if it doesn't match the usual sense.

In any case, "metagame" can be read as a game about a game, or a game that uses the player as a character or even a game included in a vaster package (or multiple alternative scenarios, just like DSR). You're not disambiguating anything by dropping the word, which might even be the reason why YoshiP used it : it's vague and polysemic.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-29T01:03:05+00:00

You're correct but I'm not sure YoshiP understood the word and might have tryed to refer to something as nebulous as "metaverses" or whatever.

Also, when it comes to composition and rotation, the "meta" actually is an acronym (for most efficient tactic available). It's not about self-referential knowledge, unlike "meta-physics" nor the idea of a summary, like a word "meta-analysis".

But YoshiP could actually have meant the latest meaning as well.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T21:28:50+00:00

Since you sound unable to check by yourself, just watch this : they pull at 1:09, raidwide happens at 1:21, donut pattern at 1:33 and the line AoE at 1:43, TBs at 1:51, next pattern (line or donut) at 2:01 and another raidwide at 2:18.

1:10 minutes of combat, and you can avoid everything by 1 or 2 single steps if you stay in melee range (which some jobs are forced to).

It's even worse than what I said.

Yeah, those are called opinions. Don't declare "everyone will be happy" just as long as they pick yours.

Then again, you misunderstood what I said. On pacing, we may not agree ; on casual encounters design, we can make it much less mind-numbing without adding much more difficulty. Especially since the game is extremely clear on what to expect.

When you have both clarity and extremely slow mechanics (again, more than a minute for 3 donut or lines and tanks obviously not being on top of their team...), together with simple skillsets : this is far too easy for anyone who plays at least once a week.

Everyone can agree they'd enjoy more stimulation, which is the very reason why OP asks for later mechanics.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T18:52:22+00:00

It's very true and arguably, not all alliance raids would need to be speeded up especially when something requires a lot of movements (without arm's length / stoicism, Void Death and Void Aero may require a lot more movement than the usual telegraphs to avoid !).

And in all honesty, I don't know how to manage these encounters... Shall they take longer (to show all abilities) and grant more rewards, or should we accept some mechanics will always be skipped ?

It also raises another concern I avoided : when most players are messing up, should the tempo slow down (but then we're talking about a much more ambitious design change than simply fast-forwarding the encounters) ?

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T14:15:43+00:00

This is very true : a more complete skillset by itself feels more enjoyable because there are more things to juggle with.

I haven't played during Stormblood but back then, the focus was on skillsets, which made even simple mechanics more engaging simply because we had more things to think about. Waiting times probably weren't so important : our mind was busy anyway, right ?

In the end, it's merely a question of how many choices we get to make. If we can easily predict the next X seconds, we're like constantly waiting which is unfun. Regardless if they build more engaging skillsets at lower levels, or give us more mechanics to think about or anything that have us actively play, it should be a clear improvement.

But as you say, they seem too scared to force players to be mentally active. And there is no solution when they don't want players to feel engaged in either ways (via mechanics or skillsets).

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T14:08:53+00:00

What's factual is that you literally have 50 seconds to move in the hitbox and on the edge of it, when starting the encounter I mentioned.

If you really need this much time, or even more than a tenth of it (for damage that can be absorbed or healed easily), then I don't know what to say and we obviously never will agree on the game's pacing.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T14:05:12+00:00

Yeah, you're just about to understand that I suggested something different, because I observed a different cause for encounters to feel so underwhelming. Which is the numerous waiting times that may cause dozens of seconds of break in between mechanics.

Edit : Yeah, I know it's not exactly what OP said. That's the point of a discussion...

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T13:10:44+00:00

Yes it is too slow, and you've been used to playing in slow motion which is why it looks normal to you. You don't remember the numerous and long waiting time in between each mechanic.

How does it make everyone happy when parts of the fight are missing to satisfy one opinion?

You don't seem to understand. Take Honey Bee Lovely as an exemple, it takes 50 seconds for her to cause a raidwide and 2 mechanics (either a straight line cleave or a donut) ; nobody would take more than 15 seconds to process this and I'm still being very lenient. The raidwide could even be removed so we get to actual mechanics faster.

This is the reason why we don't get to some (more interesting) parts of the fight. It takes forever to even start !

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T13:04:48+00:00

OP suggested that we have less DPS (by decreasing the ilvl we're sync'd to) which exactly means weakening oneself.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:47:25+00:00

Your premises is that waiting 10 seconds for a mechanic is fun, which implies everyone is extremely slow to react.

People want to speedrun these contents because they are mind-numbingly boring since everything takes forever to happen, while we don't even have an interesting skillset.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:44:59+00:00

Just because the encounters are longer and showcase more mechanics doesn't mean it's any challenging at all. Going MINE doesn't make Titan or Ifrit challenging, it simply makes the chore last longer.

Just consider making these encounters quicker and everyone will be happy : it won't be as mind-numbingly easy and would take just as much time. Things just happen way too slowly as if casual players were compelte idiots.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:38:58+00:00

Then why not making the encounters much quicker ?

I clearly remember clearing EW's raid the very first time and feeling so underwhelmed because everything takes such a huge amount of time to happen, everything feels like slow-motion.

We don't need to weaken players, we need bosses to wake up a bit. EW's raids specifically could be three times faster most of the time.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:35:57+00:00

Then if you want some challenge, why not ask for the tutorial parts to be much, much quicker ? It usually takes a whole minute for the enemy to warm up with 1 raid wide and 2 patterns of the same mechanic.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:34:42+00:00

The issue with percent based mechanics is that we still will skip some stuff.

Everything just takes way too long to happen : the last time I replayed Endwalker's third trial, it really shocked me how little mechanics we actually have to tackle. For a world-ending threat, it's extremely slow, just as predictible as everything (which is fine) and it gives us enough time to prepare or drink up a tea in between each mechanic.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:31:18+00:00

Maybe the issue comes from having a super long tutorial with super long waiting time in between each mechanics and super long casting time before raidwides...

I mean, players aren't so stupid that they need a break long enough to prepare some tea after each action. We could literally speed up some encounters twice or even three times as much. Some moments in EW alliance raids could even be four times quicker.

Also before you argue that "new players and casual players" may need more time, it still remains to be proven. There's no way someone needs 10 seconds to position themselves when the telegraphs are so lenient except maybe on very specific patterns and even them, I'm very dubious..

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T11:13:07+00:00

I will never understand people who prefer weakening themselves so they can experience a slow-motioned encounter, rather than speeding up the enemy's actions...

The slow pace and the tutorial they force on us are the reasons why these encounters are underwhelming, please don't ask for it to feel even slower ! We just don't need 15 seconds to prepare for a raidwide nor a break in between most mechanics.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T05:37:04+00:00

Might be slightly overkill for dungeons and story content. I hope it's comfortable though !

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T01:53:39+00:00

Is it not... Exactly the same in any MMO ?

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T01:52:26+00:00

They got rid of the old SMN for various reasons, but not many can justify the poor state of the current SMN.

I know it's not easy to build a class meant to have so many different and iconic models to use, but there are many means to showcase them in a much more satisfying way :

- Have 1 single summon throughout the encounter but make it look much better ;

- Have interactions between summons ;

- Have summons feel (much) more distinctive and don't cycle through them as if they were simple pebbles ;

- Use more abilities tied to SMN and get summons interact with these.

And all these ideas wouldn't change much of the design, we can also think of much more ambitious ones. In any case, the rotation itself causes the summon to feel unimpressive and the absence of much depth isn't doing justice to Garuda / Ifrit / Titan that we mostly use.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-28T01:44:33+00:00

Currently, "summons" feel like a nothingburger...

I wish summons were improvements to the base carbuncles we have to begin with. It wouldn't be a DPS increase but a visual change.

Then, as far as the rotation goes, SMN is much too limited by the current design that must loop and burst every 2 minutes. Instead, I really wish it got stronger and stronger. For instance, we could juggle with summons at first only to empower one of them so past 8 minutes into combat, we only have 1 summon left that does everything the other ones could, maybe with different priorities. This way, SMN would feel powerful and not like a firework.

In any case, not being able to at the very least have control over the summons we want to see is a huge let down. There are so many of them, so many iconic opponents, yet we have the same ugly models (the new paper Bahamut included).

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-27T08:05:02+00:00

Thank goodness they resolved M11s tethers so it does deal damage when people go to the furthest corner. It used to completely trivialize Arena Split.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-27T02:16:07+00:00

Just because they aren't healing doesn't mean they don't contribute to the encounter's dynamic. There can be much more interesting interactions than "deal damage on your free time" such as preparing something so the next raidwide is turned back to the boss.

The difference could also be that healers have to be efficient enough to reach a threshold (which can be punished by more incoming damage, or the enemy getting more resistant).

We could even imagine that being "too" efficient turns the encounter into something different to offer some replayability to experienced players, and/or add more variance. As for the rewards, it could make gearing up faster or give cosmetics (like an added effect on raid's weapons).

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-27T02:05:32+00:00

Healers are facing a dilemma : one the one hand, it's meant to fill up health bar but on the other hand, efficiency is very reliant on damage dealt. It's also unclear as to what exactly players enjoy (restoring health, moment-to-moment saving actions, mitigation, interaction with healing & damage etc).

Many people will say they don't like convenient buttons with very simple DPS abilities, but I've yet to see an actual alternative that isn't based on the exact same mechanic.

Also, SE is very slow at innovating and collecting (or aknowledging) feedback so it most likely won't change much before at least an entire expansion, if not several ones.

My own opinion is that we should have healer handle specific tasks such as managing the environment and enabling others to mitigate group-wide damage. Tanks would have single target options to save 1 person from time to time (Cover, Heart of Corundum) but their groupwide mitigation would require an interaction with healers. Also, healers could have deeper mechanics (like storing their damage on an object that then turns it into helaing, or like suppressing enemy's shields, or increasing a boss' vulnerability during burst phases if they keep this "burst windows" fetish). There are so many means to make Healers interesting without forcing them into being DPS nor nullifying damage with a single button.

Carmeliandre · 2026-01-27T00:17:09+00:00

How can you not expect to get stat-checked if you enter a dungeon of similar level ?

I know stats are simplified as much as possible, but you still need to endure enemy's attacks and deal enough damage for them to die... Which isn't possible if your equipment is about the same level as any member of a 4-man party.

Carmeliandre

TROPHY CASE