What do you want EP6 to get right?

[Kilich]

I think that introducing enemies with unavoidable damage will just lead to players instantly focusing them and then beating the rest of loot pinatas that the mobs have turned into with the powercreep.

[Flaoc]

No, that is not my point. The point of having unavoidable damage is to give an additional axis on which players can see progress on their characters. As it is right now, we only see higher damage numbers as we improve our equipment. Now imagine if players could also find themselves receiving lower (relative to their max hp) damage as they get better equipment, which would lead to lower downtime/PP expenditure for recovery. Or they could even find a new meta where slightly reducing your own output to reduce the time you have to spend recovering yourself would end up with better overall performance.

no

[ArcaneTechs]

No, that is not my point. The point of having unavoidable damage is to give an additional axis on which players can see progress on their characters. As it is right now, we only see higher damage numbers as we improve our equipment. Now imagine if players could also find themselves receiving lower (relative to their max hp) damage as they get better equipment, which would lead to lower downtime/PP expenditure for recovery. Or they could even find a new meta where slightly reducing your own output to reduce the time you have to spend recovering yourself would end up with better overall performance.

[Tunga]

No, that is not my point. The point of having unavoidable damage is to give an additional axis on which players can see progress on their characters. As it is right now, we only see higher damage numbers as we improve our equipment. Now imagine if players could also find themselves receiving lower (relative to their max hp) damage as they get better equipment, which would lead to lower downtime/PP expenditure for recovery. Or they could even find a new meta where slightly reducing your own output to reduce the time you have to spend recovering yourself would end up with better overall performance.

Nah that wouldn't work in a game like this, imagine if your average pug needed to use any resemblance of actual teamwork (Force or techers topping everyone off before the hit, or a hunter needing to take the hit for everyone else). It works in a holy trio MMO but not this one, just focus on MUH BIG NUMBERS and MUH DAMAGE like everyone else.

[Mattykins]

Really, just having a more engaging system through which to tell the story might make it seem less bland. Just slammed through the entire Ep5 story at once so I could fight elga masquerade or w/e his name is and was a bit stunned at how much of it was just sitting around watching cutscenes. If they could find a way to intermingle gameplay and story a bit better (I guess kinda like the story nodes or w/e they were that spawned in the world back during the Matter Board days), that'd be great, but it's Sega so meh.

As for gameplay, I like how much more streamlined gameplay has become because of Hero, but since they weren't planning it and had to pull the Ep5 train off its rails to make it happen I'm not confident that they'll be able to build on it.

I don't like how raid bosses have turned into this process of knocking down the boss, bursting on their weakspot, then rinse and repeat. Segregating the fights between offense and defense make them feel... iunno how to describe it... I guess, chore-ish? I guess the most obvious examples are Double, PD, and Deus.

That said, I wouldn't mind more content specifically designed for small groups of 1-4 (instead of just Sega taking raid bosses and tweaking their stats) For example, the hunar forms of all the final bosses are all made so they can be fought solo at the end of their respective story's episodes, and I genuinely enjoy fighting them. Free field bosses tended to be fought in SPAs by parties of 1-4, and some of those can be pretty fun to deal with (tho they're a bit more hit-or-miss imo) More stuff like that, I suppose.

Dunno if there really is a single magic bullet that can fix this game. Maybe I'm just getting old, iunno

[Kilich]

I liked the matterboard approach, actually. You just play the game to go through it, because it needs drops, taking a npc to a mission, sometimes an unique mission, and talking to them/hearing them talk as you play, or seeing a cutscene during the mission if you interact with the spawned cutscene trigger. And you have all those side stories as random cutscene triggers that just appear during a mission. I remember playing mission specifically to find all of the cutscenes.

But I think most of the changes that Sega did in ep4 and 5 were aimed at attracting ps4 and switch players, at the cost of forgetting about the game itself and what made it popular to begin with. Not that this is anything new, since ep1 had a huge no content window while they worked on the vita port. But at least, back then they separated pc and vita players into different blocks that, as I remember, were adapted for gameplay differences.

[final_attack]

Better Collection File value (from the good weapons to strongest, with current rate of 3-5 runs using 250% + 100% TriBoost to fulfill) _(:3」
Oh, and for Collection File to include all kinds of units too

[ralf542]

Now imagine if players could also find themselves receiving lower (relative to their max hp) damage as they get better equipment, which would lead to lower downtime/PP expenditure for recovery. Or they could even find a new meta where slightly reducing your own output to reduce the time you have to spend recovering yourself would end up with better overall performance.

For flinching and stuff, we got Massive Hunter and Air Reversal. For HP recovery you don't need to stop and use mate items, we have skills, potentials, SSA and ring for it or a quick tap on Megiverse.

Now imagine doing stuff with 3k+ HP, maxed Flash Guard, Atra Sword or rainbow Lightning Espada-NT and never stop attacking because almost nothing can kill you, unavoidable damage wont make me stop attacking.

[Zorak000]

an auto-rejoin on disconnect system

[Maninbluejumpsuit]

No, that is not my point. The point of having unavoidable damage is to give an additional axis on which players can see progress on their characters. As it is right now, we only see higher damage numbers as we improve our equipment. Now imagine if players could also find themselves receiving lower (relative to their max hp) damage as they get better equipment, which would lead to lower downtime/PP expenditure for recovery. Or they could even find a new meta where slightly reducing your own output to reduce the time you have to spend recovering yourself would end up with better overall performance.

God no.

If you want people to worry about getting hit again without stupid one-shots, or unavoidable damage take a page from the new chrome dragon's HP cut spam ripped from Ninja Gaiden Sigma (which I have suggested years ago),

The only meta your suggestion would encourage is lifesteal weapons/abilities forever.