The new 24 man alliance raids are a disappointment (mechanic wise)

I'd take frenzy over nothing happening for X amount of time any day of the week.

If I were to go encounter by encounter and judge each fight and compare them all to each other (First Raids with First Raids, and so forth) and since my memory is free real estate to useless information (I remember how the raids were on release day. Bone Dragon and Atamos were the main cause of wipes and rage quits in LotA back then), I'd probably have each raid ranked something like this:

Rabanastre > LotA = Aglaia > Copied Factory > Void Ark.
Ridorana Lighthouse = Weeping City > Puppet's Bunker > Euphrosyne = Syrcus Tower
Orbonne Monastery > Dun Scaith > World of Darkness > Paradigm Tower = Thaleia

ever notice how i never really praise the nier raids ;P
Aglaia was a pretty decent raid for what it was. While every boss could/should tone back the tutorials of their mechanics (and Azeyma definitely needs more going on during Radiant Rhythm. Could've made this a DPS check where she gains a damage up stack per fan rotation and Radiant Finish being AoE damage + certain debuffs that need to be resolved similarly to Ascian Prime), it was still pretty decent.

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

The world called planet earth?

Like, no matter what you want believe you can't argue with the fact that people have been cheesing to avoid Avalice/Nier raids for ages, so much that they have introduce a "fixes" so people can't "avoid" the harder raids. The perception of majority you have is simply due to the vocal minority who complain loudly. The silent majority doesn't need to be loud, because statistic is already on their side.

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That didn't actually fix it. You can still dual queue with a free trial account and force crystal tower

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Originally Posted by Renathras

We could do this with HW raids as well, and get a similar result other than a few random outliers like Ozma specifically. Likewise with Ivalice outside of, specifically, Orbonne. And a lot of the NeiR fights, too - many aren't mechanically that difficult, they just are HP sponges that take forever to kill but don't actually have a great deal of difficulty responsible for that. And even with Orbonne, the mechanics were often at a slower pace than EW's are. As I noted before, Cid's attacks are slow and have long telegraphs, they were just lethal in damage if you failed them at launch, which isn't mechanical complexity.

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No actually, The HW Alliance Raid mechanics have been downgraded as well.
I went through them again except for Void Ark. They seriously cut out some mechanics in those but they're so small you wouldn't notice unless you had done them a ton. I was at Deathgaze Hollow and the suddently the Gravity well only pulses twice now. It used to be a 4 gravity pull and the only way you could get out of it was full sprint. Also.... the DPS checks nowadays due to gear even adjusted is nowhere near as hard as it used to be in Diablos. In Weeping City The first Spider Boss you never even see the sand pit anymore, it's dead long before you even get to the mechanic.

So they have cut down on the mechanics of the earlier Alliance Raids, I assume its because they wanted people to get through them, they were much nastier back in the day.

Also... Orbonne isn't even the hard one of the Ivalice Series. That would be the crazy Ridoranna Lighthouse one that is the newbie killer.

While looking at the Alliance Raids of old, by playing them today makes you THINK they were just by nature easier... reality is... they've now adjusted the mechanics subtly to be less impactful. While this may or may not be true of Crystal Towers... it is definitely true of HW Raids.

EDIT: BUT There is one thing that now that I've played them again after years... the Ivalice Raids... the monologues from the Bosses as you fight them are just incredible and inspiring, and even chilling as you listen to them. Just as often as not it has got to be the most memorable monolgues during the boss fights I've ever heard. Cid's is incredible even though he's constantly slashing at you while doing the mechanics. Who can forget Mustadio Bunasa and the robot voice. Even Agrias in the second fight "The Beolve youth guids your fate, but have you the faith to fulfil his legacy".

I wish I could decipher Mustadios dialogue for the Arm Shot... something like "6 rounds to the casket" just absolutely cool dialogue and so well done by the voice actors.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...astery_script/

Huh? Death Gaze Hollow's Void Death was always two pulls and then death for anyone caught inside.

Also Weeping City bosses dying early isn't due to "mechanics cut" or anything like that. It's because you're doing a raid where people were around i220-230, but now ilevel sync'd to i270. This applies to every First and Second raid and vaguely to the finals. We're all "BiS" for them by simply being a higher level. Also the amount of changes to Jobs and attack potencies over the years. It's why even if you min-ilevel the Crystal Tower raids (particularly Syrcus tower, which was also a disappointment on release) you'll still skip Scylla's Petrifaction and Mr. Glasya's Wild Ride.

Each Ivalice raid was newbie killer in one way or another. Hashmal from Rabanastre, Construct 7 from Ridorana and Thunder God from Orbonne.

like i said my memory is free real estate for useless knowledge

Another thing I remember about the old raids, there was always some kind of really crazy crap in them, like in the Alexander raids when you had to turn into the Giant Ape and use the smash technique, jump in the back of the Cruise Chaser, or the Calculation for Construct 6.

But yes the iLvL does have a significant impact, that was never there before. I can remember once at Deathgaze Hollow where the entire ship was filled up with Death Squares with the exception of one space with the boss at a sliver of health and the raid barely making it through.

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Originally Posted by MissBananaNana

Someone on reddit called IzanaghiOkami posted this and I cannor agree more:

"Where are the alliance mechanics? Did the devs forget that this is a raid for 24 players, there's not even something as simple as an add phase where you have to split them. And that final boss was so insanely underwhelming, "mechanics" (if you can even call them that) that a toddler could solve. I'm not asking it to be hard but I don't like being treated as a baby with keys being jingled infront of me and I'm expected to clap and praise the devs for their ingenuity and fun fight design, Euphrosyne had this problem too, the combat was so undertuned with very little unique mechanics or alliance raid responsibilities and the only thing it had going for it imo is music and aesthetics which this one has aswell. This post going to get downvoted to hell because casual players clearly enjoy these fights, but it feels bad that something I used to look forward to just doesn't apply to me anymore because the devs went overboard on dumbing these fights down, and this is like 30% of 6.5's content"

So pls dear FF team consider making the content a bit less easy

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Yeah, agreed. This alliance raid has been pretty bland overall.

Did anyone else notice that the entire myths of the realm had literally zero mechanics that split the alliances or made them do something different

The closest was each of the three adds during the scales mechanic would only copy a person from each alliance but you weren’t punished for attacking a clone that wasn’t from your alliance

Absolutely nothing else made you care about being 3 alliances rather than 24 individual bodies to buffer against failing a mechanic. We even had a tank DC in our first run that we reached the omphalos and we all say there afraid that we couldn’t split the three adds————they literally don’t even tether to each other

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Did anyone else notice that the entire myths of the realm had literally zero mechanics that split the alliances or made them do something different

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Yes.

And that did bother me.

Even the Atomos stuff was nice from time to time. The only thing we got was the ice slide, which isn't an encounter, it's a themepark ride.

So yeah, I'm with you on this one, and it's weird they didn't anywhere since they easily could have in some way, even just the trash along the way.

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

So I have...(some good points)

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I don't entirely disagree.

I think what we have now are both encounters and Jobs that are more complicated, more unforgiving, and harder...but in a way that makes it less fun. I disagree with people all the time saying the game is braindead or getting easier/too easy. In terms of mechanical complexity, encounters are absolutely harder now, the playerbase is just more skilled in dealing with them...but that's not ALL of the playerbase, it's more the people who consistently do high end content.

Likewise, Jobs are more complex in almost every way now than they were at 50. WHM has almost the same rotation it did back then (Cleric was not a leap of difficulty, it was just annoying), every melee in the game has a more complex rotation now, as does BLM. The only real exceptions to this are somewhat SCH's damage (but its healing is more complex) and moderately SMN (which is less complex or, at least, not really more complex), and WAR due to the rework in...4.1, was it? BUT, back then, they worked differently. SCH to a point and WHM absolutely had to worry about cast times and MP, neither of which are issues now for any healers, and msot healing is done with oGCDs without even interrupting our GCD nuke spam. Tanks and Melee (and BRD) had to manage TP, which forced them to adjust their rotation instead of just doing a rote rotation min-maxed for damage without considering resources other than CD timers. ALL the Jobs had fewer buttons, but they had to engage with them differently.

That is, the Jobs were less complex than they are now, less technically and mechanically difficult to perform with, and theorycrafting was in its infancy anyway, but they had optimizations that were not directly rotation/mechanic related but were important, generally more intuitive, and arguably more fun.

The game is harder and more complex than it was in ARR.

...and less fun.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Valid points

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I i don't completely disagree either, the lack of engaging content and job design doesn't have to revolve around difficulty, hence why we have a skill ceiling. BLM is the highest end of Difficulty, followed by SAM, MNK, NIN, SCH, SGE, PLD, and GNB, these are jobs that require effort and by design exist for people who want more involved jobs, but, BUT what SE has done is put most jobs on the same playing field design wise recently and have no nuances between the skill required to play. Lower end jobs were and are still lower end jobs, but high end jobs no longer can be seen as more skillful because they're making the thin line smaller.

For example we do everything in 2 min bursts, this leaves you more then enough room to plan mit ahead of time, the fights are so static you no longer have to have, again, much forethought, from statics to PFs, everything is planned and the only time things get hectic is when people die and aren't raised, people wiping isn't even an issue in any content outside of Ult and savage. I'm not having less fun because the jobs are too complex, my groups aren't having less fun because the jobs are too complex,we're not having fun because they're boring and require little to no engagement, out of my few statics I'm the vet, most of these people are newer to XIV in the last 2 expansions and don't find jobs hard. I think going back to having jobs that are engaging and rely on choices made from moment to moment by the players is the best bet.

If I take my own experiences, I went from having to plan out how to get 3 gierskoguls on dragoon to having them given to me, it was a show of skill and job mastery if one could manage that, now dragoon is so smooth, that it would be odd to not weave in a gierskogul every other burst inbetween your double life of the dragons, the only nuance I have is one fight out of each savage tier requiring me by design to use a different rotation based off what the boss does first. On Ninja I used to have mutiple finishers, 2 dots, and trick attack management along with helping with aggro, I now just have mug and a personal burst on trick which again, like dragoon, simply varies on what the boss does at the beginning of the fight.

No matter how you cut it a player can learn how to play with how old XIV used to be and modern XIV is. But a player will get bored faster now because everything is static and pre determined for you. Your agency and choices are no loonger in your hands.

Edit: I will also say I'm looking at a lot of content as well after the initial release period and the first time you do it. The Alliance Raids currently didn;t even manage to be difficult baseline for the first time. and I think that also contributes to the larger issue, people expect these runs to at least be hard the first time, because we usually out gear most content p quickly.

It honestly seems like SE has made Crystal Tower raids 2.0 with this new raid series.. the bosses are to slow and do no damage.. they show off their attacks for so long and barely even move.. the first set of adds in the 3rd raid has more teeth when you spam kill them then the entire rest or the raid..

I main tanked the entire thing blind day one.. my HP never really dropped except the final boss during which I got 5 vuln stacks and even then when I was targeted for a tank buster.. I only used 2 cooldown.. and was still alive and holding the aggro the entire time..

The HP being so low just completely ruins the fun of these fights too.. with them showing the mechanics for so long they're dead before they even get to do the actual fight.. it just dosnt make sense for these fights to be such a push over.. you don't even see some major mechincs in the older raids now.. like the scales being balanced..

Honestly idk what else to say on it.. there's no real reason to run it after getting my gear piece once a week and once I have it all no reason at all since we're already extremely over power ilvl wise... why would I want to farm out tome gear upgrades for Dawntrail and make everything a cake walk there too.. besides I can just save up a round of poetics and buy the already augmented gear once the expansion drops..there's nothing else in EW that will require more power..

I truly don't understand SE take on this.. as a long time MMO player the content is suppose to get harder and tougher the stronger our chr get.. its what gives a challenge.. the way they're taking it with everything staying easy or at a base level of difficulty what's the point of us even leveling or having better gear? Remove the levels, the gear stats and ilvl and just make things based on how far into the MSQ you are and nothing is any different then what we're getting now..