Square Enix is running out of ideas for raids

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Originally Posted by Skiros

I think I should emphasize that I am not criticizing the lack of challenge, I am criticizing the lack of creativity and the lack of fresh mechanics.

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When I said easier I didn't just mean execution. I also meant it as in more basic mechanics.

A starting point would to simply start making uneven battlefields. Less squares and circles, corridors and height difference instead.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

A starting point would to simply start making uneven battlefields. Less squares and circles, corridors and height difference instead.

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My bar is so low that I'm giving them credit for p2

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Originally Posted by Remish

I think Phantom Train was one of the most creative fights this game ever experimented with. I loved how all over the place that was.
Though I guess from a farm/grind pov, it's annoying.

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Thank you for bringing this up. There's also the halicarnassus fight, which features a nice little intermission puzzle in sliding sands. This is the sort of thing I want more in future raids. These nifty, "need a min to think here" moments in fights.

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Originally Posted by Jybril

Because of this games combat system, you won't get anything too crazy or different because the core won't allow it. Pretty much the same for everything combat in this game and probably why they homogenized everything.

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And you know this... how? Because you have insider knowledge in how the 2.0 engine was constructed and are experienced in implementing back-end systems in game development?

... Or are you just another defeatist apologist that seems to flood these forums defending bad/stale game design?

Just a random idea, but what about an icy arena that gradually cracks as the fight advances and then gives way to a second arena beneath the first? I really want to see more varied approaches to terrain - even if it's just a secondary square/circle beneath the first.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Aside from this the only feedback I would have is to try and make these raids feel a little more like raids. Even if that's just adding some corridor fodder before the boss, or 'boss' fights that isn't just a single entity, but rather something like a throwback once again to Cuff of the Father and Binding Coil Turns 3/4.

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Nooooo I like being able to zone in and clear within 5 mins. If I know the mechanics right off the bat cause it's the same as every other fight the better cause then I can get out faster. Even better if my rotation is less than 2 buttons that way I barely have to focus or pay attention. I don't even like playing videogames and I'm glad SE is designing things around me

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Thank you for bringing this up. There's also the halicarnassus fight, which features a nice little intermission puzzle in sliding sands. This is the sort of thing I want more in future raids. These nifty, "need a min to think here" moments in fights.

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100000% yes and those are my favorite fights in the whole game. This shows they are capable of being very creative and any hand waiving by some people cause of "old design and combat system" is just ignorance.

O3S was probably my favorite Savage raid after A11S. I wish they had kept the sand puzzle during Savage - only made it a random pattern every fight. What I loved about O3S is you didn't know which tile she was gonna jump to at the end, and checking for the safe spot during the cave phase.

I love fights with randomized patterns. It's why I love the current Extreme fight so much. Not knowing where the snakes will show, having to figure out where the safe spot is before the stage turns... IT'S SO MUCH FUN!

This game needs more of this. More unpredictable fights where you actually have to think in the middle. I think the only situation where this wouldn't be good is if it affects uptime.

I don't mind seeing the same mechanics repeating themselves, as long as you mix them up in interesting ways. The current raids that dropped have a lot of potential. Let's see what they do with Savage before we criticize them.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Just a random idea, but what about an icy arena that gradually cracks as the fight advances and then gives way to a second arena beneath the first? I really want to see more varied approaches to terrain - even if it's just a secondary square/circle beneath the first.

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Actually this idea's been toyed with in HW. Zurvan's first phase, though not icy, is an arena that breaks away to a second arena below. Not much else was done with the concept, so it would be interesting to see it explored in more depth.

100% agree with OP, I'm so tired of seeing the exact same old mechanics from years ago again and again.
The new tier already looks like an absolute borefest, no novelty whatsoever. I've never cleared a full set of NM raids this smoothly in duty finder, people know all these rehashed mechanics by heart and stopped failing them a long time ago. It's time for a change, for breath of fresh air

Coming from WoW, it's very unfortunate that FFXIV's fight design is very lackluster. Spectacular mid phase transistion cutscenes and music, but not very fun to actually play. In WoW, you have lots of really fun fights:

• Flame Leviathan from Ulduar where each player gets into a vehicle (some of them are multi-person vehicles, ie one person driving and another is a gunner) and you fight whole armies and fight a humongous tank.

• The gunship battle in ICC, where you have players manning cannons and people using jet packs to jump over to the other ship and try to assassinate the enemy commander before jumping back.

• Spine of Deathwing, where you jump onto the back of a huge dragon and start ripping out his scales and trying to hang on for dear life while he barrels rolls trying to shake you off. Or Madness of Deathwing where you are jumping between the different platforms.

• The Siegecrafter fight where a B-team splitting off from the raid to jump onto a conveyor belt, trying to DPS down random inventions, but they can't destroy all of the inventions in time so the one that is deployed will have an effect on the raid like pushing people back with magnetization.

• Hans'gar & Franzok where you fight two bosses on a moving conveyor belt, dodging presses stamping down from above and such.

• The operator Thogar fight in the train station where you are constantly looking both ways, dodging trains left and right.

• Blackhand where he's calling out siege engines and tanks and infantry to stop you throughout the fight, and as the fight goes on you crash through several floors, and then by the end the whole room is on fire and Blackhand is screaming at you as he goes berserk.

• Socrethar where you rip his soul out of the mech and someone jumps into the mech and pilots it for a short while.

• Shadow Lord Ishkarr where you pass the eyeball around to every player in the raid.

• The Sylvanas fight where you are chasing her, jumping across the giant chains.

• Etc.

The only exciting fights like the above in FFXIV are 1. the hound from the last crystal tower raid where a b-team of players go into the belly, 2. the fight with Dawon at the end of Castrum, with a B-team of players splitting off to rumble with Lyon for a minute, and 3. the fight at the end of Dalriada where you fight two bosses at once.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Sick of this argument of accessibility, this is optional content why should it appeal to everyone? Also theirs a blatant balance between “too difficulty” and “fun yet requires something out of you” also the game very much as multiple ways of communication then hell you talking about?

The transitionary phases such as Eden4/8/12 being savage exclusive isn’t what I call making content accessible to everyone.

TLDR: the game can very much be fun and accessible but these apologist almost always pull the low hanging fruit and say “I don’t wanna wipe” in that case don’t play anything besides story. Done and done

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Everything in this game is optional, your point? Why would you get mad if people wanna complete shit? We gatekeeping raids now? That's why we have normal and savage as separate modes for people like you. If raids weren't attached to the story then maybe I would've understand your point, but story is something that lots of casuals wanna do and they absolutely HAVE to have an opportunity for this without ripping their buttcheecks trying to defeat some boss.

Now, for the last part, maybe I should put it into perspective: you log in and first thing you decide to do is to run roulettes, you get into a NORMAL raid that is absolutely impossible to complete for casuals, let alone new playes on the first, say, 3 runs. Now you're probably stuck in a raid for hours. I have a luxury of playing more than 5 hour a day, but not everyone has, not everyone is a HARDCORENOLIFEEXTREMESAVAGEFULLLOOTPVPGODLOKEMLG player who has the time to play even more than 3 hours, half of that you're gonna be stuck in a raid you probably won't even be able to complete. Now what? Delete normal raid duty roulette entirely? I don't think that's happening and until that time I stand by what I said. Stop getting salty for the fact that other people want to experience the game, because you're not somehow getting less for this, savage is still coming last I checked.

Oh 100%. We now have count dracula as a raid boss. For the next few circles of Asphodelos we might as well add Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, and the alien from Predator.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Actually this idea's been toyed with in HW. Zurvan's first phase, though not icy, is an arena that breaks away to a second arena below. Not much else was done with the concept, so it would be interesting to see it explored in more depth.

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Heavensward in general had a lot more creativity. They were trying out new mechanics that are sometimes janky, but that's the charm. Using the same old, time-tested mechanics will prevent jank, but seriously, people raid to tackle new challenges, not to repeat old ones.

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Originally Posted by Theox

I believe a normal raid should not be that convoluted in terms of mechanics for random parties to complete. It might be fun for someone to wipe for 30th time in a normal raid just because you don't have that communication that's required to do certain mechanics, but I'm not spending 3 hours of my life in a normal raid. That's why we have savage, and until we get savage for pandemonium it's too early to bash on SE's creativity.

Normal raids should be understandable enough for casual players to complete.

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No one said normal raids should be convoluted.

To be fair, SB and ShB had some pretty fun fights. Most of omega was super enjoyable the stand out being Hali, Neo and Kefka. ShB had Titan and Gaia. I am looking forward to P2s and P4s (shades of library and animal farm).

It's bait folks.

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Originally Posted by MoofiaBossVal

Coming from WoW, it's very unfortunate that FFXIV's fight design is very lackluster. Spectacular mid phase transistion cutscenes and music, but not very fun to actually play. In WoW, you have lots of really fun fights:

The only exciting fights like the above in FFXIV are 1. the hound from the last crystal tower raid where a b-team of players go into the belly, 2. the fight with Dawon at the end of Castrum, with a B-team of players splitting off to rumble with Lyon for a minute, and 3. the fight at the end of Dalriada where you fight two bosses at once.

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All of those fights require coordination, FFXIV doesn't unless you're doing Savage. FFXIV is a casual oriented game, you don't have to depend on others at all if you don't want, you just need to know the mechanics, which is nice. I can't remember a single time in WoW raiding where it wasn't required that everyone be on Vent/Discord, unless you're doing LFR, but unlike FFXIV LFR can be cheesed through with current normal or higher current tier gear and is a lot easier IMO.

The big issue with placing a ton of faith in others to do the raid is it makes them easy to troll, which is why most raids in WoW require preformed groups that are very strict on performance, that and loot distribution. FFXIV gets around all these issues and still provides comparable difficulty and fun IMO.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

It's bait folks.

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Everything is bait!

I thought P3 felt disappointing and really reused mechanics, but P2 and P4 were really fun. Resolving mechanics in such a small area and there is a lot of adjustment for the spread and stack when playing with random people. And in P4 the tiles felt too slow but the anti-role towers and orbs was really fun.

I guess I am a fan of spread and player-based mechanics and not so much just everyone goes to the safe spot

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Originally Posted by lezard21

Then why are they not included in any of the roulettes, despite being very important for the oh so great story?

Even the devs know better than to inflict upon us the suffering of doing coils with casuals.

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I used to learn how to play classes in ARR by doing what I called a coil roulette. You just queued for the 4 most recent coils as people used to actually use the queue for this. A lot of japanese servers will use the queue for savage content currently. Problem is in the NA / EU servers no one uses it because we tend to want to gate keep what classes can join, what ilvl they have to be (typically set way higher than needed) and also to prevent new players from joining farm party / weekly clear party ect. Party finder is nothing more than a glorified gate keeping mechanic in actuality. NA / EU player base is actually pretty toxic it just tends to hide itself well.

Amazing how the OP stated over and over again how he's talking about bringing something fresh to the table and creativity and NOT challenge and yet people keep focusing on the "but the game is for casuals!!" when the suggestion has nothing to do with it.

Just because you play casually doesn't mean you can't get tired of certain formulas being overused. Being casual doesn't mean you're not allowed to have taste.

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Originally Posted by Melorie

Amazing how the OP stated over and over again how he's talking about bringing something fresh to the table and creativity and NOT challenge and yet people keep focusing on the "but the game is for casuals!!" when the suggestion has nothing to do with it.

Just because you play casually doesn't mean you can't get tired of certain formulas being overused. Being casual doesn't mean you're not allowed to have taste.

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Yeah, don't know why people keep shifting the topic back to difficulty.

I can agree on some content being too linear, its the same thing every expansion, nothing new.

Atleast WoW offered raids in different parts of the world, places you could fly to, head inside, long halls of monsters and trash to kill.

FFXIV raids are more like a single big room or a very short walk to 1 boss before a need to queue for the next part.

Also the loot still kinda dissapoints me, overall world loot is really... barebones, you don't find any unique weapons or armor from monsters or trash in dungeons, its the same thing everytime.

like 80% of this game reuses the same mechanics though. I don't think they're lacking for creativity in any way. They just have a core set of mechanics they really, really, like to re-use. Even most of bozja was just recycling the same mechanics over again but this time they were faster - and a lot of these mechanics date back to ARR at least.

pandaemonium 1- 3 is extremely slow and boring. The music puts me to sleep.

pandaemonium 4 picks up the pace but just a little.

I would love for the pace and music to be on the level of Titan from Shadowbringers.

Shadow bringers Titan was fast pace and had plenty of moving around with a unique arena.

I hope we get more interactive arenas. So far end walker arenas and music for pandaemonium is a little slow and boring.

My favorite fight from this new tier is P2 Hippokampus or however you spell it. I thought the fight was challenging and fresh.

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

So far end walker arenas and music for pandaemonium is a little slow and boring.

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I absolutely agree with the music statement. I played FFXIV for years now and this is the first raid tier I'll probably turn spotify on day one. I loved the music in the raids so far but this tier I only dig the 4th fight.

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Originally Posted by lezard21

You are wasting your time OP. So long as people are willing to pay an MMO fee for a single player experience because it's "teh greetest story me ever saw" SE will keep cutting corners in all other aspects to maximize profits.

We've seen it in ShB with the uninspired dungeons, cut Ultimate, lack of Deep Dungeon, lack of Allied Beast Tribe quest, lack of job quests.
And it's more evident in EW with the reuse of assets across the board including armor, mechanics, designs; again lacking job quests, lack of Limited Jobs, etc. Not to mention not upgrading their servers or error checking.

Eventually the people will realize that they are paying the same for less and less despite this being the best MMO since Tetris 99, but it took WoW almost 20 years, so your thread comes 10 years too early.



False, as proven by the BCoB's normal mode not being puggable, it's just that SE realized somewhere down the line that casuals spend more money for less content and of inferior quality so long as it makes them feel UwU.

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Can u go somewhere

"running out" as if it's a new thing

Spoiler: This is almost exactly the same game people were playing in Heavensward (a whopping 6 years ago), most of the mechanics were around then. The only thing that happened is that it got more dumbed down and now you can do dungeons solo with bots for some reason

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Originally Posted by Komarimono

Wuuuut? People pugged normal coils all the time... Where did you hear that they weren't done with pugs?!

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This is just completely false. People weren't going around pugging as a norm by any stretch of the imagination. Reminder that there was no party finder until 2.1 and cross world didn't come until freaking 3.5

Even extreme trials and hard modes (before they became synonymous with normal mode at level cap for some reason) were hard enough to get a proper pug party together for, though a lot more frequent ofc. The idea that people were pugging t5 or t9 with any significant frequency is just hilarious to anyone who was around back then. Hell most pugs would probably get stuck on T7 or T4 for days on end. I wonder if you were even here for that with that 2019 join date and if not why you'd be pretending otherwise

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I used to learn how to play classes in ARR by doing what I called a coil roulette. You just queued for the 4 most recent coils as people used to actually use the queue for this.

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Bruh. BRUH. B R U H.



You literally had to go to the area in the open world to enter the raid, you couldn't queue for it in DF.

When they did add the first coil to the Duty finder in 2.2 (ie when the second was released) YOU HAD TO JOIN WITH A FULL PARTY.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0fb8139b3464da

Why are you people making shit up? holy fuck.

Do miss the weird hidden/niche things in raid fights, kill adds, fast, slow, certain order, or do something around the environment and boss gets harder or changes in some way, you unlock a special buff, or straight up unlocks a secert boss kind of deal...

Why haven't we fought on a star platform? Seems kind of obvious... and like it might lend itself to interesting mechanics..... did I miss it?

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Do miss the weird hidden/niche things in raid fights, kill adds, fast, slow, certain order, or do something around the environment and boss gets harder or changes in some way, you unlock a special buff, or straight up unlocks a secert boss kind of deal...

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This is what savage is for, the 4th boss has been a door boss since Stormblood. After you kill him the real fight starts.

Yeah i’ve noticed this too. Despite making so much money they’ve been cutting a lot of corners and the fact we aren’t seeing many unique mechs in this raid series so far is pretty telling.Also doesnt even have any voice acting. P4 is just Halicarnassus rehashed. P3 is just Suzaku etc. Also seeing a ton of reused gear etc. It’s all so boring but i don’t see them changing the formula sadly since a majority of the community will eat up any little scrap the devs feed to them.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Yeah i’ve noticed this too. Despite making so much money they’ve been cutting a lot of corners and the fact we aren’t seeing many unique mechs in this raid series so far is pretty telling.Also doesnt even have any voice acting. P4 is just Halicarnassus rehashed. P3 is just Suzaku etc. Also seeing a ton of reused gear etc. It’s all so boring but i don’t see them changing the formula sadly since a majority of the community will eat up any little scrap the devs feed to them.

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It's still too early to judge the difficulty and mechanics as in savage they are always vastly different. The mechanics in normal are just a guideline with training wheels for stuff that happens without tells in savage among other things. In other words it's meant to be easily clearable by pople who just want to see the story.
That's why I've been judging the music mostly because thats something that doesn't change and I'm really not a fan this time around.

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Originally Posted by Atreides

It's still too early to judge the diffulty and mechanics as in savage they are always vastly different. The mechanics in normal are just a guideline with training wheels for stuff that happens without tells in savage among other things. In other words it's meant to be easily clearable by pople who just want to see the story.
That's why I've been judging the music mostly because thats something that doesn't change and I'm really not a fan this time around.

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I mean we can judge savage but that’s separate from normal raids. The normal raids themselves should still be accounted for as that’s still content most people are going to run. They’re still the same boring arena designs with the same reused mechs. Look at phantom train in stormblood. Even the normal version had unique mechs.

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Do miss the weird hidden/niche things in raid fights, kill adds, fast, slow, certain order, or do something around the environment and boss gets harder or changes in some way, you unlock a special buff, or straight up unlocks a secert boss kind of deal...

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They got rid of several bind/slow skills too. Remember in A3S you had to slow the adds otherwise you couldn't kill them all. YoshiP has bad memories of that fight almost decimating the savage community because of the low clear rates, and this led them going to down to the difficulty that started with Alexander Creator Savage. Everything has been similar difficulty since. He commented they were happy with the clear rates and that was the difficulty they would land on for all future raids.

Sleep was a thing in BA for some mobs so they don't enrage on the alliances, I kind of wish they bring those back so that skill gets used outside of solo.

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Originally Posted by technole

They got rid of several bind/slow skills too. Remember in A3S you had to slow the adds otherwise you couldn't kill them all. YoshiP has bad memories of that fight almost decimating the savage community because of the low clear rates, and this led them going to down to the difficulty that started with Alexander Creator Savage. Everything has been similar difficulty since. He commented they were happy with the clear rates and that was the difficulty they would land on for all future raids.

Sleep was a thing in BA for some mobs so they don't enrage on the alliances, I kind of wish they bring those back so that skill gets used outside of solo.

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True it's kinda sad that they removed that stuff in the future raids, I have fond memories of Melusine Savage in ARR where you needed to apply slow/bind on the Ricardos.

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Originally Posted by crimsonwitch

I haven’t even unlocked the first 90 set yet.
I don’t feel compelled to try them in any way. It’s like, ok, queue into a square or circle platform.

There is no corridors of discovery like Alexander.

Maybe the whole game has lost its flavor on me after 2 years. Bless the people who’ve been around since launch . Idk how they do it

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is getting more tiresome with every patch, but if you dare to say something about it then the white knights appear to say stupid shit about how this is the best game on the planet, you are a egoistical pos because you want new gear/models for every patch and that yoshida is the messiah that came to save our reality with ps2 graphics and potato servers