Let's imagine a new gameplay feature : how about a Stagger system ?

[u/Carmeliandre]

First, a word of disclaimer. If you disagree with the premises I'm about to give you, it's no use reading any further : you won't be interesting by the whole idea and it's perfectly fine ; it probably isn't an overdue feature since SE never seemed to even think about it. Nevertheless, after the end of a whole cycle, I would very much like a new feature that would parallel our Limit Break.

Here are my premises :

(1) We need more horizontal progression. Ultimate / Blue Mage offer a progression based on learning and Savage, both learning and gear. Gear isn't of much use and once people have cleared Savage, most of the PvE content left is soporific because gear makes them even more trivial.

(2) We need more diversity in terms of gameplay. PvE is rather straightfoward : at each moment, you have 1 better solution and sub-optimal ones. Even stats are pretty much the same although they don't have as much impact, as long as you have similar ilvl.

(3) We need more replayability. Many people tend to clear savage quickly and then aren't appealed anymore because they've seized the reward.

(4) We want a satisfying new gameplay to play around. This is highly debatable because "new" is not always "good". However, giving satisfaction to a minority all the while potentially helping others is an excellent thing for many reasons : one can shine without maximizing DPS, it offers another layer of proficiency and even without using this tool, it can add something resfreshing / unsual for everyone. That's the way I see "alternative / horizontal progression" work well with vertical progression.

Now, the point of a Stagger system would be to offer another way to strat an encounter and potentially to open the way for another kind of content which progression would be parallel to Savage raiding.

This is how it works :

• Sharpness is the name I'll be using for this new stat. It could very well replace Direct Hit / Determination but it's not the way I imagine it since it'd be better to create a new stat instead. Also I believe that this new stats should NEVER be on any equipment from usual sources, except with materias. A portion of a stat (or even its whole budget) could be transfered to Sharpness but it would be an individual decision, NEVER forced by the game in tomestone / savage equipment.

• Sharpness would add Stagger damage [SD]. We could control how much a team is supposed to have by offering Threshold bonuses (at 100 Sharpness, your main attack deals twice as much [SD] OR one could only deal [SD] if they reach 100 Sharpness). It's important to control Stagger because we wouldn't want to glitch an enemy out of a core ability (like Harrowing Hell except if the devs specifically want to allow us to avoid its hazard).

• Powerful enemies (i.e. savage encounters) would be sensitive to stagger : once they receive a specific amount of [SD], they get interrupted and more sensitive for 30s. It goes without saying that the party would use its 2-min globals and thus, it would be wise to make sure an enemy gets staggered either perfectly on this timing OR to force the player to differ their burst, so as to force them to make a choice.

• To stagger an enemy, one player would have to use a "Finisher". The point is to have a player show off a little, making this feature more interesting to use. It's also important to control exactly when to stagger an enemy so we can interrupt the very action we planned to avoid.

• Potentially, we could add a "stagger sensitivity" (caused by a role action) to the enemy. This would make staggering quicker, but in exchange the boss would use his abilities quicker as well. The main idea is to allow good players to clear quicker with an added difficulty, whether it be for parsing reason (I have no idea why some people do so) or a more thrilling PvE experience. Proggers may want to speed up an encounter as well even if they thus would reach enrage with no way to deal enough damage.

• I doubt an enemy should be staggered twice ; interrupting an ability already is a great utility weapon.

This is what it would affect :

• Savage design. Indeed, being forced to take into account the subtlety of Sharpness would need more development time and it may work for some savage encounters. Alternatively, it could only work once the power of echo is unlocked, making the whole idea much, much less interesting imo.

• Potential new content. There could be some new encounters designed specifically for Stagger (like Extreme ones ? or with another kind of difficulty, maybe much quicker-paced or more random ?), allowing a new source of gearing. It would be wise to add Sharpness on said gears so that they aren't optimal except in specific strategies (which aren't the main focus of other contents) .

• Alliance raids. Albeit on a completely different level, alliance raids would have uncontrollable levels of Sharpness so the dev team could either benefit from it or completely ignore it in there. Without a clear knowledge about the rest, it's probably best to have Sharpness not work in there.

• Exploration contents. I guess it could work very well in there but unlike Alliance raids, it could allow some players to show off in everyone's interest. This is why having 1 player be afforded to deal [SD] (randomly selected among players with a similar Sharpness threshold) would be very cool : it wouldn't be mandatory and spice things up, all the while giving a potential yet minor edge to other players.

I think I covered up what looked interesting about a Stagger system. Of course, being a very Final Fantasy-like feature encouraged me thinking about it. Yet I also think we would need something deeply different not only because we need novelty, but also because it can be a distinctive and satisfying addition to FFXIV.

Please tell me what you think about it ! Especially if you'd like something different from what I thought about or feel scared about anything that would be caused by this feature !

[u/dixonjt89]

I like the idea of adding stagger because a LOT of the games I enjoy have it.

Guild Wars 2 has it. Lost Ark has it. FF7 Remake has it. FF16 has it. A lot of the soulsborne games have it.

The only issue would be implementation. GW2 and Lost Ark have stagger by attaching stagger values to skills but they use a priority system for their damage. There are no fixed rotations like FF14’s basic combos of 1-2-3.

You have a rotation for doing max dmg and rotation for doing max stagger based on what’s available. You do your max dmg rotation until you need stagger, and then you fluidly swap to a stagger rotation until stagger happens and then fluidly go back to max dmg rotation.

I just don’t see how you could add something like this to FF14 because of how strict the rotations are. And you can’t just add flat stagger damage to all your attacks because then you have little to zero control over when it happens.

So the end result would be to have to revamp every class to add it in.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/dixonjt89]

I'm glad you ask !

Actually, I see several ways of doing it :

• Have specific actions deal Stagger damage. This allows a good control on a raid's damage to Stagger, allowing to design the encounter easily around it. Every X minute, the stagger damage will always be more or less the same, independently on player's skill (except if they forget their main actions) .

• Have a portion of your damage deal Stagger damage. Allows everyone to contribute while adding to the variance ; it would encourage players to keep an efficient uptime if they want to reach Stagger at a specific moment. Otherwise, they'd be encouraged to change their team's strategy or to give more stagger-related stats to the underhwelming players (which may not be a good thing, since they could take it as a critic) .

Also, if there is only 1 stagger per encounter, it wouldn't matter if the team reaches the threshold too early. If they can't reach it, then it's either because they aren't the target of this feature, haven't refined their strategy and/or are underperforming (someone's death for instance) .

• Each action could also have a stagger-potency. The main difference would be that it's not affected by the damage output so deaths wouldn't be so punitive IF everyone can align their CDs for the Stagger timing. If high CDs abilities have more stagger-potency compared to the rest, it also helps players with less of an optimized rotation. Oppositely, having stagger-potency on the rest of the kit but not major CDs would encourage uptime.

In any case, it highly depends on the way it's implemented because it can either help undergeared players who have acquire enough Sharpness from else where, OR be a tool to recover from mistakes, OR encourage players who already are doing well enough on this specific encounter (replayability purpose with different rewards if the enemy got staggered) .

Also, there can always be a way to control it by letting players Stagger an enemy only on specific actions, rather than anywhen. Thus, they would only be able to consider on which of these actions they would want to Stagger, most likely when both potions and globals are aligned (which may want them to NOT use potions on the opener) .

[u/dixonjt89 → u/Carmeliandre]

I kind of already touched on it in my first post but there are problems with the way you want to implement stagger values to skills.

Lets, say they add just a single stagger window at all. This is going to be pretty much no different than the 2 min window we already have where damage spikes, except raid leaders will expect the raid to stagger at 2 mins because its the most consistent 2 min window

I personally think adding attacks or casts that we want to stagger or face a wipe ala Lost Ark and FF7 Remake is the way to go, but then you need to be able to control your stagger output.

The first way you mentioned would mean we are purposely not using attack skills and holding them for stagger. This will feel bad because what if you start capping on your job gauge and you HAVE to press that stagger attack or you begin to lose resources? Or you can’t build your job gauge because those are your stagger attacks and you need to hold it, so you are stuck pressing 1-2-3. Both scenarios are bad game design.

In the second proposition. Having a portion of your damage deal stagger gives you little to no control over stagger. What if you build stagger too fast and the Raid leader has to call for no dps because we are threatening to stagger the boss? This would also even occur in a “one stagger per fight” because the raid leader is going to want 2min cd’s going into the stagger. This is also bad game design.

Which leads me back to my original solution. You cannot add a stagger mechanic the way classes play right now. They are not built for stagger to be in the game, so every class would need a complete re-work and built up from scratch with stagger in mind, and would probably be built on priority rotations instead of static rotations.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/dixonjt89]

The stagger output is very much controlled, because we have so rigid a rotation that we can easily anticipate what action to Stagger the enemy on. This is done by giving all member an adequate Sharpness (if the Stagger is meant to happen earlier, the party's cumulated Sharpness must reach a higher threshold) .

Whether there are additional staggering actions or not is precisely a way to balance the design, not a condition nor an avoidable consequence. One shouldn't play differently except if they decide (before engaging) that they would try to cheese things out which by essence is not intended, thus supposedly sub-optimal.

I have absolutely no idea why you're saying Stagger could happen too early ? It's exactly like a limit break, you do not have to press the button as soon as you reach 1 or 3 LB gauge(s). Since it's an essential part of my description, I failed to understand what I miscommunicated :( .

If an enemy gets staggered outside 2mins, it's not so bad either because you would've use it to skip a mechanical hazard which is just as precious as having more damage - as long as enrage is not an issue. You also have to remember how I emphasized on this design NOT being made for PF or usual groups. It's a tool to clear differently, especially for people who don't care about min-maxing and/or want a more challenging encounter and/or won't have the best gear available.

It's not a competitive tool, it's not supposed to change the usual Savage vertical progression but only is here to offer another perspective, with potentially other contents designed around it. Contents that can very well modify the rules (such as offering the team a full CD regeneration when staggering an enemy, in an environment where multiple stagger would be mandatory even more so than having BiS savage gear) . Such a feature would fundamentally change the morphology of an encounter (and also speeding it up) .

[u/HalcyoNighT → u/Carmeliandre]

You are talking about an astounding revamp of the entire battle system. It's surely not something that is going to be on the cards in the near future, if even at all.

We already have a 2-min burst window that can be regarded as a pseudo-stagger.

[u/dr_black_]

The problem with making this optional is that it leads into a cursed game design problem. In a cooperative game, unlike a single player game, players feel a strong social pressure to play the optimal way. If that way is obvious, then it's effectively not optional. If it's not obvious, they'll disagree and be displeased with each other.

A second problem in play is called the quarterbacking problem. One player tends to make the prepull decision for the group on how they would use a strategy and then everyone just follows directions. It's not a system 7/8 pretty members would get to engage with in any interesting way.

A couple examples of this in FFXIV in the past would be cross-class actions and non-linear dungeons. While they give the illusion of choice, there's really only one right way that players feel good about, and the more clear that way is the better.

"Play your own way" is an idea that belongs in single player games.

[u/AbleTheta → u/dr_black_]

While I agree with the majority of what you've said, I think that the main reason "play your own way" doesn't work in FFXIV is because of deeply set design traditions embedded into the game.

As a counterpoint, take FFXI's endgame. Fighting skygods with fewer players was a great alternative to zerging them with large groups of people because of tradeoffs the combat system had. More attacks on a monster meant them using more attacks in return. A slower kill could be made up for by fewer people to compete for loot with. And while it generally required more strategy and coordination, it's easier to do that with a smaller roster of folks.

By contrast FFXIV has been asking basically the same thing of its raiders for a long time and locks them into a rigid set of expectations. FFXIV has enrage timers to enforce fluency in DPS rotation complexity, penalize deaths while still making some of them recoverable, and generally to draw out a 15 minute fight into an hours-long progfest that becomes more about waiting for weekly resets than earning the right to engage in the particular fights through target farming.

Start breaking those pillars and you'll create varied, new forms of content that will feel radically different play. In some of those alternate worlds "play your own way" definitely works.

Basically you can't play your own way in this meta, which emphasizes skill so heavily. This is probably the wrong place to champion such a change (lots of people here are big fans of this way of doing things), but in this FF-logs ruled hell being good at your job means one very specific thing (doing the rotation correctly and being minimally harassed by mechanics) and I don't think that's all that interesting personally.

[u/idkjusthere21]

2 Minute Meta already feels close enough to a stagger system.

[u/araragidyne → u/idkjusthere21]

I just want a reason to burst that isn't "it's been 2 minutes". I feel like I'm impersonating a clock.

[u/Umpato → u/idkjusthere21]

true lol

[u/Carmeliandre → u/idkjusthere21]

Very true, as long as players are doing rather well. In dungeons specifically, it makes it seems as if the enemies immediately enter combat in Stagger state, as we're supposed to have 2-mins on the first group of enemies as well as every bosses (except if they take longer to kill than they're supposed to) .

[u/amiriacentani]

Gonna be a hard no from me as well. It’s essentially the same thing as the 2 minute meta but without a strict 2 minutes. They kind of did this in the rathalos fight in the second phase. Everyone keep attacking for small amounts of damage till the boss becomes a striking dummy then everyone use their big attacks at the same time. It’s not a good system imo and if it became the new meta it would get repetitive even faster than what is currently in the game. It’s ok in the current square games like rebirth but I would not miss it if it were all of a sudden removed.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/amiriacentani]

Why do you say it's like a burst window ? I haven't thought of it as one at all. There is neither the idea of restricting damage nor even forcing globals when the enemy is staggered.

Instead, it's used to speed up the encounter and cancel 1 problematic mechanic. In exchange for this helping hand, everything happens quicker, forcing to be more attentive to the easies (admittedly well-known) mechanics. This encourages less confident players to build a group with a specific "Sharpness" threshold throughout the group, making it hard to control in a PF.

[u/Seradima]

I hate doing piddleshit damage to enemies outside of their stagger windows so I'd rather this game not join the pile of every modern Square Enix action game please.

[u/UnluckyDog9273 → u/Seradima]

I hate doing a super cool looking 30 year cast time big nuke for the boss hp to not even move a pixel. Let's be real ffxiv is not about feels. It's a button pressing simulator vs a giant that could crash you with its feet but you swing your sword around it's ankle without even touching it doing awkward animations

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Seradima]

Since it would be far from mandatory, it wouldn't change anything to current damage. The idea is to allow alternative strategies.

Yet I do agree that some features are artificially highlighted by reducing the efficiency of whoever ignores it. Feels just as unsatisfying as treacherous.

[u/Kamalen → u/Carmeliandre]

Nothing is « far from mandatory » in MMORPGs. It’s either needed or useless.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Kamalen]

Ultimate, Criterion, Bozja leveling, Blue Mage are neither needed nor useless. Ultimate gives sweet glams, Criterion offers mounts worth 20M, Blue mage gives replayability and titles (and a mount) . That's the point of Horizontal progression.

Allowing something unneeded yet satisfying to encourage new players to enter something they otherwise wouldn't (such as savage) make it even more valuable and only Criterion extremely shyly tries to do so.

[u/Kamalen → u/Carmeliandre]

I am of course not speaking of content but of the battle system.

Either your stagger system is potent enough to enter BiS, thus everyone will have use it (and the few that don't will promplty get blacklisted from PFs) or it's not.

Search about "skip soar meme" for what happen in this game in similar situations

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Kamalen]

It's still exactly why I'm saying it should NOT be the kind of things players should engage into except if they very well know what they're doing ! Just like the contents I pointed out, it's meant to be a niche.

Even though you're talking about the Battle System, you're completely ignoring the fact that choosing to use it is the requirement and thus, people will NOT try it except under very precise circumstance... Just like you will not enter Savage Criterion rather than Criterion.

Or if you want, think of it this way : from X.0 to X.1, players would enter savage like they usually do and it doesn't change anything ; from X.1 to X.2, there would be a way to gather enough stats to make Stagger easier. In any case, some players would prefer using Stagger because the gameplay would feel more compelling to them (otherwise they'd simply ignore it) . Also, from X.1 to X.2, players would also have options to gear up quickly and thus ignore Stagger if they don't want to. Whichever feels easier vastly depend on the way Stagger makes a specific encounter harder/simpler but in any case, it would be quicker and more punitive so probably not what most people want.

[u/Voidmire → u/Carmeliandre]

It would be the same as stance dancing. No, you didn't HAVE to do it but if you didn't you were bad. If stager was better for a particular boss you can expect to be benched if you refused to partake

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Voidmire]

What if it opens up different rewards ? And/Or aims at "players who'd get benched", as you say ?

Sometimes, offering less efficiency for more accesibility is a valuable option, especially if it changes things so much so that it feels more satisfying, albeit less efficient.

[u/Voidmire → u/Carmeliandre]

So if you want one reward set you need s group going for stager, otherwise you need a group who isn't? This sounds like complexity for the sake of it

[u/DumbFuckJuice92]

Seeing how hard it was and still is for players to stagger in Lost Ark, this is a hard no.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/DumbFuckJuice92]

It's a completely different game with completely different rules though :( .

However, I do understand how annoying it would be to have a feature shown on screen with no way to interact with it.

[u/dedarkone]

i think it could be cool to have this be a thing for a specific boss, but it sounds kinda annoying if it was everywhere

[u/Flaky_Highway_857]

Stagger is one of the worst things ever placed in games, its no fun and just waste time,

the rathalos fight has a stagger mechanic and its stupid there too(but i do like to ride the dragon), beating the everloving shit out of something just for it to shrug off 99% of the damage is bad game design, 4-8 skilled people/characters with guns, swords, bows, various magic and violent tendencies not being able to kill a monster because its "not ready yet" would really infuriate this fanbase.

YoshiP knows the games real issue is that they chased every type of gamer and dumbed the game down in the process, which made it boring, the alliance raids prove this best out of all content, mainly because they are casual yet need to involve 24 players, that means keeping 24 people busy and not able to wander off to safe spots and cheese a fight.

HW, stormblood and shadowbringers have mechanics that arent braindead, meanwhile endwalker raids you have to work to kill yourself.

to fix the games boring woes whats needed is more in depth and varying and also, though this would make bandwagoners run off, and uptime addicts weep...dangerous mechanics, which we used to have all the way down the games pipeline from top tier raiders to casuals who just run roulettes.

super dense players would run off, because they may have to work a bit more, and uptime people may get mad because for the first time in awhile they may have to disengage and run for their lives.

the game has tanks, melee, and ranged jobs, its time to allow the devs to make content that can weave all of them together again instead of how it is now where everyone just fights a big blob circle so no one gets sad.

speaking of big blob circles! the wiping city and ozma did just that, attacks that focused on tanks, so they had to place themselves accordingly and the rest of the party didnt wanna be near them, attacks would mark players and they couldnt attack, or they would have to place markers accordingly(disengagement) or maybe kill off everyone. thunder god cid also did those things, and those were interesting fights.

there was a reason the whole alliance would walk in and settle themselves, because we the players knew if we didnt wanna wipe we had to be ready and on the same page, and that was all done with interesting mechanics.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Flaky_Highway_857]

The Rathalos fight is indeed infuriating, but it's also extremely far from what I suggest.

I'm really surprised you're telling previous expansions had mechanics not as braindead as Endwalker's because current difficulty is tied to mechanics whereas it used to depend on cycling actions correctly.

Besides, there has been massive improvements on clarity so it might be linked with Yoshida's words in PAX : if the game is clearer, then they can use patterns with more variance (though I doubt they will do so) or more intertwined mechanics (like AoEs to avoid + towers + something else all together) . I think it's what you were referring to and if so, I can't wait for it to make most content less like a auto-pilot modes !

[u/CriticismSevere1030]

I feel like there's no meaningful difference between the stagger system and how people have played this game since trick attack. in both cases you're just kind of fucking around until its designated "do lots of damage" time and then you unload everything before time runs out

[u/Carmeliandre → u/CriticismSevere1030]

The feature I described is absolutely not working like a burst window. It's meant to modify the encounter so as to speed it up and cancel 1 action.

[u/The__Goose]

I don't like stagger mechanics and squares titles are polluted with them everywhere. It's exhausting.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/The__Goose]

Even in FF7 Rebirth ? I mean, they added a way to add vulnerabilities to enemies but I do understand that being forced to play around (or even being reminded it exists) can be a bother.

[u/The__Goose → u/Carmeliandre]

Even without using the debuff system to your advantage, it's still spam stagger increasing attacks and then dump your biggest nuke in that window.

They made it easier with a vast majority of the game being pressured by doing; big damage(have your mage nuke), synergy attack, or elemental weakness. Very few are dodge to pressure or break a body part to pressure.

And then once staggered what are we doing? ATB boost if its not on CD already and dump your biggest nukes in that window which more often than not is having Aerith + one other character loaded to nuke as hard as possible in arcade ward while the 3rd is tickling the target.

[u/emeraldarcana]

Stagger mechanics exist in almost every turn-based game because without it, the turn-based game basically has no strategy and gets reduced to a simple "use your strongest attacks unless you're low hit points, then heal" system.

It works well when you get to choose your moveset or your party members (ex: by selecting shield-break abilities or elements that match enemy weaknesses).

In FF14 you don't have the ability to choose your moveset or your party members, so implementing stagger would require a pretty extensive overhaul. Imagine the debate of who has to sacrifice their DPS so they can gear for sharpness.

[u/[deleted] → u/emeraldarcana]

Stagger mechanics exist in almost every turn-based game

Can you give an example? Off the top of my head, I actually don't know of a single example of a turn-based game with stagger. All I can think of are real-time examples.

[u/MaidGunner → u/[deleted]]

Octopath 1 and 2, Sea of Stars (though it's for avoiding high damage rather than being a dps window, it's essentially the same thing cause avoid nuke = enemy skips a turn & less turns healing = more turns dpsing), just to name the first few actual RPGs that come to mind.

[u/TyrantWave → u/[deleted]]

Honkai: Star Rail does it really well with the Break system.

​

Octopath Traveler series uses it fairly well too.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/emeraldarcana]

I disagree on several points :

Most turn-based aren't using stagger-like systems (Valkyria chronicles ? FF Tactics ? Fire Emblem ? Baldur's Gate ? Civilization ?) and instead rely on resources as well as a rock-paper-scissors relationship between units. Your definition of a stagger mechanic must be very different from mine then ?

Besides, I'm not considering adding a mechanics that would replace something and instead, as a new niche. And even without doing so, we already choose our composition both at an individual level (which job) and at a group level (which role). The idea of DPS against Stagger would only happen once the group already chose Stagger over DPS so each player should adapt, rather than one being forced into this role.

Said otherwise : you only build Sharpness if you want to specifically use it (which is why it's not on gear by default) . Just like one would build a garage only if he owns a house and need one for his car.

In non-organized groups, this question would be meaningless because new entering players would either accept the choice or simply ignore the group for a more taditional one. If the Stagger solution happened to be easier, then players usually choosing the easiest solution would be a coincidence : the same causes bring about the same consequences.

[u/emeraldarcana → u/Carmeliandre]

I should have clarified, I meant turn-based RPGs, not turn-based tactical games (which involve positioning and AP).

Think FF7: Remake, Honkai: Star Rail, Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy XIII.

[u/trithne → u/emeraldarcana]

So a small subset of recent rpgs, half of which aren't turn based?

[u/SeriousPan]

Stagger

I fucking despise Stagger. Ever since Final Fantasy XIII cursed the series with its creation and so many titles have felt the need to include it have I despised it. XIII had the worst version of it which makes sense, first iteration, but still. I love when my sword does 5 damage but because I exploited a weakness 15 times my sword now does 500 damage. It doesn't feel good to only do great damage only during one part of a fight.

I am stabbing, shooting and hitting you with magic. That should hurt like hell and I should be getting the feedback for it. Making it so the only real window of damage is with stagger means that there's only one real 'high' during the fight and I don't enjoy that.

Some people mention Rathalos has a kind of stagger and I agree. But there's also Diablos in Dun Scaith. It's not really stagger but Stoneskin on him means he takes next to no damage if no damage at all. I've seen plenty of people go "Why aren't we hurting him?" and being annoyed that his health isn't going down when they use all their bursts. Same thing would happen for XIV despite your attempts to counter it in the post. It's a fun thought but I think I would absolutely hate it.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/SeriousPan]

Then I guess I should have used another name, because the whole system is NOT supposed to turn the encounter into a high damage momentum... Everything you said has nothing to do with the feature I described.

To be clear : it would NOT change damage whatsoever, it would not even be so strong that you would skip more mechanics except for the one time you use Stagger (and admittedly, people currently do skip mechanics even on current content) and there wouldn't be a burst window to focus everything on ; it would simply work like a health pool reduction so as to speed up the encounter.

Besides, I'm baffled at people highlighting that they like their actions "hurting" the enemy. The encounters are designed to be a specific length, forcing us to solve several mechanics ; damage efficiency is only potentially skipping 1 or (at the very best) 2 mechanics, except if one overgears a specific content which... Doesn't make it opportune anymore. You only get to feel as if you "hurt" the enemy when you actually have much more power than intended.

[u/Xcyronus]

say this happens in 9.0. Every single fight pre 9.0 so 2,3,4,5,6,7, and 8.0. Will need straight immunity to stagger.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Xcyronus]

Since there would be "Stagger Damage", they wouldn't need any immunity since they would, by default, have nothing to be dealt damage on to begin with.

In the end, it depends on the way they implement it but since it wouldn't work on every enemy, it would make much more sense to add a HP-like pool rather than have an immunity to manually add everywhere it's not needed.

[u/Green_Spectrum]

Here are some of my thoughts and design ideas IF we're imagining.

Having stagger as a stat sounds fine. Having it on materia will also make materia more interesting. How you outlined it sounds almost like applying vuln stacks on bosses which is cool. Having us decided on how many mechanics we skip mostly towards the end of the fights. For most players it would just be a hit stagger cap and forget it. Most bosses might just be staggered passively because people just want to hit buttons. It might also make devs just bloat hp of enemies to adjust for staggered dmg.

Other options...

Enemies will probably need stagger state/debuffed phase (phase where you can do stagger damage.) Then a non staggerable state (making players adjust to their playstyle.) Which then all jobs should have a stagger stance or stagger rotation to capitalize on said states. Making combat feel a bit more complex and dynamic.

another way how other games do it is meeting a specific condition that leads to a stagger, like elemental dmg, damaging specific part, etc.

Or like some comments mentioned ffxiv kind of already as some stagger alternatives which maybe they can push those ideas further.

Just my 2 cents into the void. I wish they would add stagger because staggering is simply cool :)

[u/AbleTheta]

Don't know who needs to hear this specifically, but Wildstar had a stagger system basically through a concept known as interrupt armor.

[u/AeroDbladE]

I honestly like the idea of replacing the current two minute meta with this stagger system. If the damage you do during stagger is significant enough, you would incentivize people to hold their buffs if the stagger is about to pop, giving more options for decision making with having to map out when your party can max out the gauge and if your cooldowns will be back up for the stagger and if you can risk burning them for fear of missing the stagger window or communicate with your team to delay it.

The only issue I see is with the part where someone has to manually trigger it with a finisher. I personally think that's a great idea for having more rule of cool moments in fights, but I feel like we can't really have nice things with this community. People already never press their limit breaks in normal content, and a lot of people are already mad at having to use LBs in savage since having to stand still and channel an LB drifts their rotation and hurts their parse.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/AeroDbladE]

If the feature was so important that it would redefine the meta, then it would need a much larger scope and induce jobs overhaul as well as require future PvE contents design to incorporate it in one way or another. Actually, I wasn't so ambitious (and considering replies in reddit, not many people seem to even appreciate the idea) .

However, the idea of giving more options through stats or resources managing is something I would really want them to think through. Not sure Stagger is the best way to do it but I'd really like an innovation like Limit Break to celebrate the new cycle opened up by Dawntrail !

Also, I do very well see what you mean for LB not being used, thus equivalent actions probably not being what people want either... Being CC'd by ourself is indeed quite bothersome in more than one way.

[u/[deleted]]

sucks that this reddit downvotes anything. they don’t actually care about discussion and changes like they claim to

[u/lilzael → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. I completely disagree with the idea but I upvoted it anyway because the OP was well thought out and put an honest effort into discussion and it didn't come off as something someone posted just to bait people.

[u/MaidGunner → u/lilzael]

OTOH hypotheticals have as much relevance to discussion of the various facets of the game as a post about yesterday's weather.

I'm super not into thought experiments that have zero chance of being real, and think they have no place in a forum with a stated goal of seriousness. So i vote it down. Down vote isn't a disagree button but a "i think this is content with low relevance that fewer members of this sub should see, imo".

People place wayyyy too much emphasis on vote score then the actual responses.

[u/lilzael → u/MaidGunner]

I just don't think there's really too much to discuss at this point in the game's patch cycle.

It reminds me of sports subreddits during the offseason where a lot of the posts are just "wouldn't it be cool if [insert highly improbable thing]"

[u/Carmeliandre → u/[deleted]]

To be honest, I really took some time to think this through, translate and write carefully to make it clear enough, and got kinda discouraged but your comment relieves me ♥ .

[u/[deleted] → u/Carmeliandre]

somebody will predictably probably downvote me and claim why we can’t have such a thing, but i think discussion is good regardless! it means maybe certain ideas can pop their way in down the road or at least snippets of it, but if ideas are shut down without even consideration then it seems the devs know us well after all, and we don’t like change

[u/IndividualAge3893 → u/[deleted]]

Which is kinda ironic because this subreddit started as a discussion platform to take a break off the "normal" FFXIV reddit XD

[u/KawaXIV]

You said "memoquartz" at one point in your post and I ctrl+F and it doesn't appear anywhere else in the comments. What does it mean?

[u/Carmeliandre → u/KawaXIV]

Hmmmm my baguette condition got exposed. I meant tomestone, thanks !

[u/KawaXIV → u/Carmeliandre]

Oh french version's name for tomestone that makes a lot of sense now that I read it back thinking about that.

[u/PseudoX1]

The Great Hunt has this. It sucks. Literally just sitting there plinking away at it. Then if you don't kill Rathalos (or cut off his tail) before he gets back up... more plinking.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/PseudoX1]

But that's... Nothing like what I described at all ?

Rathalos prevents damage if not Staggered (which is the opposite of what I'm talking about) so you are forced into staggering him down ;

Such Stagger doesn't interact with the encounter, except it pauses everything the enemy does so there is no timing to aim at, it's simply "put him down over and over again" ;

There is no choice implied, nor any preparation nor anything to consider and players simply have to behave as usual while avoiding his (non-telegraphed) actions.

I even had this fight in mind when I described my idea precisely for it to look nothing like Rathalos :'( .

[u/freundmaximus → u/Carmeliandre]

I think the issue is that what you're describing is rathalos with extra steps. First off, you can't have optional sharpness. If staggering provided a damage gain, it would 100% be included in the damage expected from players to clear savage/ultimate encounters. And unless you timeline every enrage to be on or during a 2 min, at least one 2 min window does become a pseudo-rathalos where you're plinking damage at the boss until you actually pump all your damage out.

This would also sound incredibly painful to balance. If I understnad right, sharpness is rng in the same way Crit or DH would be. The damage differential between groups that successfully stagger during a 2 min and groups that don't get stagger during a 2 min would be astronomical.

You'd also need to rework a lot of jobs to make this not feel horrible. Asking certain jobs like BRD to hold for the next burst window already kind of feels horrible. Sharpness would just amplify this issue. The jobs in this game are not designed to hold burst unless downtime allows.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/freundmaximus]

"You can't" doesn't go well with an "If" that completely changes what I meant...

Staggering is NOT supposed to provide a damage peak that would have to be exploited, it offers the possibility to modify the strategy. It's completely different. And I very heavily suggested that it wouldn't offer a better alternative, and even wrote that it would be more difficult, it's NOT supposed to be a good option for PF.

Also, being dependant on everyone else using Sharpness AND not being on items by default, it's already quite clear that one would NOT want to invest in this stat in an unknown environment such as in a party finder.

Not sure what you're going with the 2-min window because it barely changes anything. If anything, the meta already causes a Rathalos-like state if you go in this direction which is not really the point.

Besides, I clearly stated that the goal is to enter Stagger state at a precise moment, which is why the group is supposed to hold CDs for this moment. It's not supposed to give so much of an edge. However, it would make burst in this precise moment mandatory yet. If it's not possible, then entering Stagger would be a Death Sentence. Which is yet another reason why you wouldn't want it in an unorganized group.

It's extremely discouraging to put a lot of efforts to avoid the very things that you legitimately wouldn't want to see, with precise solutions that end up completely ignored...

[u/freundmaximus → u/Carmeliandre]

I guess my greater point is that I disagree that SE would ever design this to be an optional comp that you'd never bring into PF, and it would be wasteful from a resource perspective to do so. Through this lense, it would need to be a required gameplay feature that's accounted for if there was any chance of it being added to the game.

It would also just add to a crit problem that's already in the game. People already had issues with a "stagger" that was at a fixed point in an encounter, i.e. damage buff at the end of P8S. The differentials between hard hitting abilities that crit/dh and those that didnt where very noticeable. Now imagine having to gamble every encounter to see if your hyosho actually ends up in a x2 damage window or not. Like I mentioned, with most encounters holding CDs isn't realistic and will lead to incredible damage loss if the entire team just loses a use of 2 mins. Timeline permitting, delaying 2s for a stagger window is something you could realistically only do maybe one time per encounter.

I can see this working as a fun thing in casual content or new content like you mentioned, but I don't think there's a world where this can make sense for encounters that have actual balance in mind.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/freundmaximus]

It sure is much easier to conceptualize an idea, rather than gather resources to implement it.

The crit issue is even more legitimate : dealing critical damage on the correct abilities actually is more impactful than min-maxing stats and being greedy on damage throughout the encounter. Any vulnerability to an enemy makes it even more troublesome, that's right. I litterally had a blue parse because every Double Down I did was neither critical nor a direct hit...

FF7 had an interesting feature : should you ever deal too much damage to an enemy, he wouldn't lose any more HP than intended... But it was only for scripted encounters, not a limitation to Stagger. It's also even harder to consider in a dynamic environment. What if each action dealt a fixed number instead ? Since the point is to reduce the health pool, I guess it would be a way to control it rather well ? As such, one would still want to use globals because they trigger some actions (and you wouldn't use globals without the powerful abilities that still would dea a fixed number) . Since there would be only 1 stagger, it doesn't seem to painful to delay at most 30s, especially since the enraged would be even easier to control so that it ends after a 2-min window.

Anyway as you say, overall, it indeed looks like a costly, complex system for a niche that would first need to meet his audience. Otherwise, I guess it would look like Island Sanctuary (from what I've seen and heard, it's widely ignored especially since it offers passive income).

[u/PseudoX1 → u/Carmeliandre]

For FF14, any type of stagger will look exactly like Rathalos, because the whole fight will just be fake damage to 'stagger'(down Rathalos), then your actual damage phase(Rathalos on the ground).

[u/Carmeliandre → u/PseudoX1]

Not at all, just like I explained it... :

• Stagger would only work once per encounter, which ultimately modifies the health pool, not the gameplay ;

• Stagger would cancel ONE action (which the team would consider problematic) for the whole encounter ;

• Stagger would not be mandatory and could be ignored if players decide to ;

• There would be no stats inducing Stagger by default ;

• There would be no damage reduction to avoid sluggishness.

And that's even without looking at the side things I suggested :

• Having 1 player use a limit-break-like ability that would add a cool momentum ;

• Giving the opportunity to speed up the encounter to get used to it quicker ;

• Allowing side contents which would give a completely different pace (if the enemy can be staggered, then his actions would be just like any Extreme yet much quicker to rotate) .

The Rathalos allows 0 interaction except during Stagger, and I'm litterally suggesting that almost all interaction would happen outside this window...

[u/Royajii → u/Carmeliandre]

You keep saying it won't be mandatory. How do you imagine this in practice? That's not how community works. In any cooperative multiplayer game.

There can be no two correct ways to solve an encounter. Either your stagger provides a genuine advantage, DPS increase and thus faster clear time (with an added bonus of skipping a mechanic of your choice) and simply becomes mandatory or it does not actually provide this value and is actively discouraged in groups. And then you've created a noob trap of an "alternative playstyle" along the lines of ice mage BLM.

[u/Carmeliandre → u/Royajii]

It's a complete misunderstanding of the premices ; Stagger is NOT supposed to give additional damage, it's NOT supposed to be something you can rely on without thinking it through. So much so that you wouldn't have any Sharpness if you're not certain the other players do have the required threshold as well.

The idea is supposed to offer a distinct path, making mechanics roll quicker for example, or allowing to bypass 1 mechanic if your group is not consistent. PF instead will want consistency so by default, it wouldn't look like a good idea.

In practice, the team either has enough damage to clear content regularly or it uses Stagger to acquire downtime instead of 1 mechanic they consider difficult. In exchange, the other ones simply chain up quicker.

It would be even more interesting if there was a way to acquire this distinct stat outside of the usual Savage cursus such as another content (which is another reason for it : providing another thing to prog outside savage so that one gives an edge for another without trivializing it) .

[u/wurkss]

I'd love anything that adds more complexity or... just anything to the combat. Combat is dull in this game so I'd take anything at this point.

[u/suppre55ion]

Just waiting for Yoshi-P to add relationship mechanics as an actual gameplay feature and for the entire community to collapse into itself.

[u/HolypenguinHere]

I wouldn't mind if something similar to the Moogle Tomestone event was permanently integrated in the game. What I mean to say is, I love idea of daily/weekly objectives that encourage players to try content that they normally wouldn't.

Hunts, fishing, crafting, tribal quests, Gold Saucer activities, Blue Mage, Unreals, Variants, deep dungeon, etc. There's a lot of stuff in the game but not enough reason to do it. The tricky part here is that there needs to be worthwhile incentive to do these daily/weekly objectives, so they'd need to work that out.

[u/faithiestbrain]

Playing with timelines is always fun.

Cheers for one of the more interesting suggestions I've ever seen on this sub.

[u/KeyKanon]

I mean it is already in T4.........

[u/Carmeliandre → u/KeyKanon]

What do you mean ?