Can it still be called a "raid" anymore?

I like Alexander's design, with each tier's Faust roughly checking if you are "worthy" to get in.
But I'm not so keen to see them put pools of trash mobs for the sake of it. I think FFXIV's AoE DPS is bland and boring, so there's not much challenge or anything to do that (like A2S).

In terms of design (not balance), I like A6S, the mini-boss rush feeling of it. And also I don't know which Bahamut turn where the team was split in two at the beginning : doing two mini-bosses that needs to be taken down at the same time by two teams of 4 could be nice...
I think there's a lot of possibilities for the future of raiding. Omega was like that because of its lore, it was a fighting contest. So let's see what ShB will bring.

I'd rather have 3-5min boss battles where the journey to get to each of them is hell than drop me in an arena for the next 10m.

Trials exists already for that. What's the point of calling 8man raids, "raid", if there's no raiding?

Gimme a map with conditions other than beat enrage to clear it:

-Get to point A before while escaping sandpit/wall of fire/etc

-Defend point B's targets from rush mobs

-Boss Battle C

-Half your party has to solve D puzzle. The longer it takes, the longer the other half has to spend their resources trying to kill mobs.

-All skills are nullified. Use only what E room has to battle monsters

-Boss Battle F

-Thrash mobs but with condition, map G. Go along with kill orders or watch yourself get reflected/debuffed/etc

-Final boss.

People were already trying to skip the trash mobs in Coil to get to the boss faster so they could learn the mechanics of the boss faster so they could clear it faster. That's why the 8 man fights, the savage ones anyway, are deemed a raid. Because the mechanics of the boss require more effort and teamwork than the usual dungeon / ex primal, and the average player, can handle.

Honestly, I've always disliked the way the words "dungeon" and "raid" are used. What are called dungeons should be called raids and raids/trials should be called trials. I also like SWTOR's names for its instanced duties: "flashpoint" and "operation."

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Originally Posted by LastFireAce

everyone complain back in ARR/HW about it, this why they change it with omega.

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People in ARR were only complaining about T3, that didn't have any boss. Don't put words into people's mouth.

Also, trashs can be made to be interesting. Make pulling mobs technical (like it used to be in some FFXIV's dungeons), make them drop stuff, give them mechanics. They made an attempt at this in BA and, even though it is far from what we ve seen in older wow's raid in that regard, it is still something.

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Originally Posted by Awful

...Qarn normal where you gotta remember what the patterns are and then once you know it you know it forever...

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If I remember correctly (talking about YEARS ago), you had to look the (variable) pattern you can see in the starting room, and then replicate it at the end. Then it was nerfed to a fixed flame+fruit because, you know, it was too difficult... but I may remember bad...

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Even doing M/F before progging final omega is a massive hassle. Imagine having to fight the same trash and mini bosses each week before doing the fight you actually want.

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I would gladly trade the Savage transitions for trash mobs if it meant I didn't have to do tons of annoying mechanics for 7 minutes before I get to the actual boss fight.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

I just wish they'd do something to spice them up a bit, or at least not just give us a trial fight and call it a raid.

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Idk what other people have said, but it's been my impression the 8-man raids are called "raids" because they are each 1 part in a 4-part series of an overall "raid" (deltascape, sigmascape, alphascape, etc).

Alphascape is a raid, just broken up into 4 parts. Why? It probably has to do with difficulty, the loot, the fact we get 3 raid tiers per expansion...this is a good question to ask at the next fan fest, IMO.

I cant imagine why they would break up the 24 mans into smaller fights unless they made them 3-4x more difficult. And adding trash mobs to the 8-man raids would just be...useless and annoying. I like the direction Omega has taken the 8-man raids. No faff, just boss fight with your team.

There is a fine balance in raiding between zone in, see boss, kill boss and zone in, do a tedious number of trash pulls for reasons, see boss, kill boss.

While straight to boss encounters get old after a while, older mmos had raids where youd kill 30-60 minutes of trash before bosses, which was one if the worst experiences in raiding.

Everquest started doing a pretty solid job with this in the expansion everyone remembers hating, by having the first raid zone with heavily scripted encounters that were interesting, and a combination of killing trash, killing bosses, and puzzle solving, as well as a zone with 1 trash mob before every boss (4 before the last boss), in a pattern that bracketed through the zone and let you choose your own bossventure.

Theres stuff in the past that needs to stay long in the past though.

It's a mixed bag for me.

When I ran through Alex at the end of HW, I did appreciate the scenery and atmosphere provided by the lead ins to fights and not just being plopped into a boss arena. It was a really cool place.

On the other hand... when I think about fighting Omega 8 times in a row trying to get a spring to drop for me, and I imagine putting 5 or 10 minutes of trash in front of that boss EVERY TIME I want to try again for my weekly loot...I feel like that it would wear out its welcome VERY quickly. It's all fine and dandy in say WoW where you're expecte to clear a boss no more than once per difficulty in a week, but here where you may have to farm over and over and over to get the piece you're after....that time adds up.

On the other hand it is a bit odd that the only thing really separating raids from trials now though is the way loot/reward structure, and raids coming in sets of 4 while trials are standalone.

Honestly I'm not sure why the game has extreme and savage as terms for the 'hard mode' of content instead of using one or the other for both.

We did have raids in Omega, it was those single player encounters between battles where you fight level checkers and stuff. Moreover, the lack of trash inside made sense because it was an anime tournament arc, so it was a singular opponent each time.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

It's a mixed bag for me.

When I ran through Alex at the end of HW, I did appreciate the scenery and atmosphere provided by the lead ins to fights and not just being plopped into a boss arena. It was a really cool place.

On the other hand... when I think about fighting Omega 8 times in a row trying to get a spring to drop for me, and I imagine putting 5 or 10 minutes of trash in front of that boss EVERY TIME I want to try again for my weekly loot...I feel like that it would wear out its welcome VERY quickly. It's all fine and dandy in say WoW where you're expecte to clear a boss no more than once per difficulty in a week, but here where you may have to farm over and over and over to get the piece you're after....that time adds up.

On the other hand it is a bit odd that the only thing really separating raids from trials now though is the way loot/reward structure, and raids coming in sets of 4 while trials are standalone.

Honestly I'm not sure why the game has extreme and savage as terms for the 'hard mode' of content instead of using one or the other for both.

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Then just design the content so people don't have to run a single floor N times each week ?

Sure it was a tournament arc but they could have had more. Like for example on O5 imagine if we fought through a few train cars before fighting the train itself. Or 06 fighting through the haunted mansion. They could in theory have still had places to fight through to get to the boss. IN practice however...

Part of the issue though is that unlike Coils and Alex, there was no unifying theme to share assets between when it comes to the area we're in. Sure, 07 and 08 are both in Kefka's Tower, but the phantom train and chardanook are in entirely unralted locations. So it may have been more intensive to have environments to see before the actual boss fights compared to Coil and Alex where it was all in the same location, with a unifying aesthetic and reusable assets. So in Omega it may not have been feasible to do this for all the different unconnected environments. tournament arc or no.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Then just design the content so people don't have to run a single floor N times each week ?

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They could but I doubt SE will.

The raids are in an odd spot. They don't want people to be able to farm them in a week and be done with them, so they have one piece per fight per week per character. But they don't want it to be one and done either, so they don't guarantee you a drop so that you'll have to run it more than once.

Personally i wish each fight dropped a unique item that could then be traded for a part that would normally drop from that fight. IE a 'Alphascape McGuffin 1' could be exchanged for a bolt, chain or petal. 'Alphascape McGfifin 2' would be used on bolts, petals or lens etc.

But I'm not expecting SE to shake things up with the loot system since it wasn't really changed from HW to SB, but we'll see. Personally though I would like it if they had more to the raids but also let them be one and done per character per week.

I pretty much agree with the OP.

I feel like I would enjoy the raids a lot more if there was a sense of space and traversal through it. As they are, you are just tossed into an arena and fight a boss. My ideal raid would be one that evokes a sense of actually breaking into and exploring a place with really strong enemies (bosses and otherwise). In this aspect, I think the 24-man raids have the 8-man raids beat, although oftentimes the 24-man raids can feel like guided tours since you run by certain areas and can almost expect the NPCs to go "if you look to your right, you'll see Ozma hanging out :]" If people are so pressed for time, I suppose the savage version could include a skip to the boss or something... Coulda sworn Alexander did something like that at some point.

I found this raid tier to be a bit on the boring side simply because of the tournament arc set-up, because of course it was contrived to be that way.

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Originally Posted by Rhus

Hmm personally ... that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot

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I agree. Why should we even have to do the raid... just give us daily login loot.

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Originally Posted by Nariel

Then how about make those trash attractive ?

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I don't live in a world where trash is ever attractive.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

I don't live in a world where trash is ever attractive.

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And? You cannot imagine a world in which multiple enemies of varying strength can ever be as attractive or better than only ever a single enemy of (relatively speaking) full strength?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And? You cannot imagine a world in which multiple enemies of varying strength can ever be as attractive or better than only ever a single enemy of (relatively speaking) full strength?

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And... trash is not attractive. That's what makes it trash. If you try to make it more rewarding or worth your time, it's not trash.

I don't see at all, what having to tromp through a couple high HP facerolls on the way to a boss does except waste your time, especially learning in a pug.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

And... trash is not attractive. That's what makes it trash. If you try to make it more rewarding or worth your time, it's not trash.

I don't see at all, what having to tromp through a couple high HP facerolls on the way to a boss does except waste your time, especially learning in a pug.

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Yes. That's the point. To make what is currently trash... not trash. Not exactly mind-blowing.

And, as already mentioned multiple times, enemies prior to the boss don't have to solely be a one-time chore before the "real fight". They can be part of the encounter.

Well... Considering the around story the raid with Omega, it perfectly makes sense to not have trash in there...

Omega is literally throwing you into an arena to fight the bosses. It would be more awkward if it went "Oh, by the way, before you do that, here's some random things to fight."

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Well... Considering the around story the raid with Omega, it perfectly makes sense to not have trash in there...

Omega is literally throwing you into an arena to fight the bosses. It would be more awkward if it went "Oh, by the way, before you do that, here's some random things to fight."

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Actually there were trash mobs during the solo instances :)

But don't misunderstand me: I like the "just boss" more :)

Here's another way to consider it:

<Like this post or the one below accordingly>

Would you prefer it if the 24-man raids had nothing but bosses, and instead simply teleported you from one boss arena to another, but still took just as long?

Or...

(See above.)

Do you prefer the 24-mans as they are now, a mix of bosses and non-bosses, assuming that the raid will take the same total amount of time regardless?

As an initial experience i like the alliance raids more.

But when it comes to farming particular drops I like the 8 man normal mode raids better usually. Because say I'm trying to farm a drop from Ultima, unless I get lucky and get into an in progress group I have to do the entire raid to get to her. Where as in the 8 man raids I can only focus on the bosses I need parts from for the week.

No, the 8-player Stormblood raids are not "raids." They are lair raids. There is a lot to love about this game, but the complete lack of an epic, storm the castle feeling in the 8-player offerings is not among them.

It's definitely more interesting to have progression from one battle into the next and makes it more fun. Omega was interesting in concept but the story and fun totally fell flat and I feel it was probably a mistake for a raid theme. It has some okay battles but the rest of it is just terrible, I like Cid and Nero but even they can't hold up the awful storyline. Jumping through the bits inside Alexander was pretty fun, things like that can break it up a little bit so it's not just instance in and do x y z which is a bit dull imo. Having those sorts of things plus neat arenas and a feeling of discovery can add a bit to the fun too. One of my favourite arenas was Alexander 7 where you slide down the things into a little mini city inside alexander. Sorry these thoughts are a bit jumbled but I think you can probably get my feeling for the raids.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

As an initial experience i like the alliance raids more.

But when it comes to farming particular drops I like the 8 man normal mode raids better usually. Because say I'm trying to farm a drop from Ultima, unless I get lucky and get into an in progress group I have to do the entire raid to get to her. Where as in the 8 man raids I can only focus on the bosses I need parts from for the week.

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Doesn't that bring equally into question, though, whether the loot system, itself, should be changed? If you're being forced to thin out your content preferences just because of a grind being stretched too long... shouldn't the grind fall as much under scrutiny as the content?

I'm of two minds on this.

I don't want to have to fight my way to the main boss every time. However, I agree that making raids actually feel like raids would be nice.

Perhaps for a future expansion, they might consider making savage-difficulty dungeons that are non-linear. Players pick and choose what to fight.

That said, given the players' hopeless obsession with rewards, people would quickly find the "best" route and repeatedly spam it for rewards. So the whole idea of creating such interesting content is generally considered a waste.

At the very least, though, as the OP suggested, more raids like T1 and T2 would be nice.

Coil and some parts of Alexander were raids. Omega was just a straight trial after trial after trial.

Raids need to be what they are actually titled which is raids. A raid often consists of 2 or more boss fights along with trash mobs. Hopefully Shadowbringers brings some of that back.

Yes. Yes, it should.

Grinding loot should not be about thinking content preferences.

I'd love to see a system where all content offers tokens for the latest gear, in varying amounts based on the difficulty of the undertaking. If all gear came from tomestones (NOT chest drops), and you could get various types of top-tier tomes, for example.

Like right now we have Genesis. If they made Genesis the currency of Savage raids and extreme trials, then added a lower currency for normals that could be used on good, but not perfect, gear. Like how we have tome/raid gear now. Usually BiS is some mixture of the two. The normal time gear could occasionally be BiS, but usually the Savage tomes would bring in the best.

These special tome rewards would be given once per week, when you clear the content. There would be a higher tome cap. However, ALL content would give tomes. This means that while your first stop might be the latest raid tier, which might give, say 50 tomes for each clear, you could also get end-game tomes from old content. However, the amount of would get varies depending on the fight's general difficulty and its difficulty setting. If you set the fight to MinIL, you get maybe ~15-30 tomes. Again, locked to once per week (all other rewards are limitless). At standard iLevel sync, you could get a smaller amount, but at the cost of efficiency, as you still use your one clear for the week.

So to put into a less-ramble-like example:

- Chest system removed. All gear comes from tomes.
- Genesis tomes are used for top-iLevel BiS gear.
- Genesis tome cap per week raised to 2000 (from 450)
- Cost of Genesis tome gear increased to reflect increased cap.
- New tome type added: Helios (placeholder name)
- Helios tomes are used for top iLevel sub-BiS gear.
- Helios tome cap set to 2000.
- Cost of Helios tome gear reflects increased cap.

- Current Savage raid tier (Alphascape) rewards 40/40/50/60 Genesis per stage (O9/10/11/12s), respectively.
-Current Extreme trial (Seiryu) rewards 30 Genesis
- Old raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward 10~40 Genesis when cleared on MinIL.
- Genesis tomes are rewarded once weekly for each raid/trial cleared.
- All other rewards are do not have the weekly cap.

- Current Normal Raid tier (Alphascape) rewards 40/40/50/60 Helios per stage (O9/10/11/13s), respectively.
- Current Normal trial (Seiryu) rewards 30 Helios.
- Old Savage raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward ~30-40 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- Old Normal raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward 10~20 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- All mob dungeons in the game reward 10~15 Helios when cleared on MinIL, and 5~10 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- Helios tomes are rewarded once weekly for each raid/trial/dungeon cleared.
- All other rewards do not have the weekly cap.

- Extra: Tome rewards may be subject to various alterations per week to encourage players to interact with different content for the best tome rates per week, and/or to rebalance the tome rate to discourage repeatedly grinding the raids that offer the best tome rate for the least effort.

I think you're missing the point that they want you to have the chance of needing to go more than once in a week, especially for normal difficulty, which helps with duty finder queues.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Well... Considering the around story the raid with Omega, it perfectly makes sense to not have trash in there...

Omega is literally throwing you into an arena to fight the bosses. It would be more awkward if it went "Oh, by the way, before you do that, here's some random things to fight."

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Agreed. For that, it's perfectly fine, but it's aesthetic is built around generating space out of nowhere. That isn't true, however, of any of the raids we've had prior, and is not likely to be of any of the raids hereafter. It doesn't exactly set a precedent; it just did what it ought to given its idiosyncrasies and general concept.

Does that mean a 5.x Allagan fortress 8-man would need to have trash in the same form as we've seen in Coil or Alexander? Not at all. Maybe it'll even throw in gunships or mechs; who knows? It should simply fit whatever it's got and flesh out whatever setting it intends to immerse us in.

I'd be happy to see a bit more differences between normal and savage too.

For istance, normal raids could be a bit more "story focused" with it being still enjoyable in a farming mindset for each week. I think they did some great work in narrative fights with Tsukuyomi so they could rely on this system for the story immersion that is kind of lacking in Omega.

Then savage could be designed in a "training" mindset, no obnoxious trash pulls or long transition/downtown phases that bring nothing to the fight except making it longer (hello there O10S and Middy's dives).

For instance I like Halicarnassus, with the normal mode having a small mini game and the Savage having the Book phase added. I'd like to see more fights with this kind of dual representation in difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

I'd be happy to see a bit more differences between normal and savage too.

For istance, normal raids could be a bit more "story focused" with it being still enjoyable in a farming mindset for each week. I think they did some great work in narrative fights with Tsukuyomi so they could rely on this system for the story immersion that is kind of lacking in Omega.

Then savage could be designed in a "training" mindset, no obnoxious trash pulls or long transition/downtown phases that bring nothing to the fight except making it longer (hello there O10S and Middy's dives).

For instance I like Halicarnassus, with the normal mode having a small mini game and the Savage having the Book phase added. I'd like to see more fights with this kind of dual representation in difficulty.

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Middy's downtime phase after the add can actually be quite good, can be used to realign buffs that have drifted and perform a proper opener again on some classes. I know on my mch I'm able to do a 3 ammo opener again with raid buffs aligned because of those dives, which also makes it a great time to pop pots.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

Middy's downtime phase after the add can actually be quite good, can be used to realign buffs that have drifted and perform a proper opener again on some classes. I know on my mch I'm able to do a 3 ammo opener again with raid buffs aligned because of those dives, which also makes it a great time to pop pots.

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I know I'm being unfaire because all forms of downtime in boss fights are always an occasion to realign groups buffs, reset timers etc. It lets me prepare a new set of cards on AST or prepare a burst on SMN.
It's just that there are too many of them in this particular fight, which I already dislike before those downtimes haha.