I miss HW

ff14 meta : pay a subscription for half a patch, be entertain for 2 days and stop playing after 1 or 2 weeks, dwell in the forum, go inside your house before the subscription is over, wait for the next "major" patch, continue to dwell in the forum for 2 weeks after your sub is over. Rinse and repeat.

There are some things I miss.

1. Needing to pay attention to healer bubbles instead of them covering the whole arena.
2. Needing to position the boss (I can still find moments where it's useful). More often than not though, I'm fighting against the re-center system, which forces boss movement against my will and disrupts melee DPS, or randomly faces the boss south regularly which forces me to aim the boss at the DPS and kinda imply to them they should attack from the north, so that the boss doesn't keep spinning.
3. Tank mitigation not having a large range was always annoying but I got into the habit of running close and like all the other habits, I can't break the habit of running close to the party yet now efforts like this are pointless so even a novice tank can mit the party.
4. Cone AoEs (on WAR and SAM). Which was part of what you signed up for when playing WAR, and on SAM it allowed you to avoid AoEs by doing the cone attack instead.
5. Stances (although I understand why this had to change, half of people believed in using tank stance 100% of the time and the other half believed in using DPS stance 100% of the time).
6. Unique animations and icons for role abilities.
7. Interactions between attacks (such as keeping DoTs up on Bard enhancing Sidewinder).

There are a lot of things I don't miss though, such as old Machinist, Paladin doing entirely physical attacks, all the janky or useless abilities, parry and its associated abilities and things it procced, reprisal being a proc, all the quality of life we wanted back then that was slowly added over the last 10 years and there is a lot of it, excessive abilities that need combining for DPS (like DRG) or all the annoying GCDs on DRG that were improved in Shadowbringers.

For quality of life think our combos not being interrupted by things such as ranged attacks, combos taking longer to expire, TP, sprint using TP, lack of dungeon shortcuts and not being able to teleport into battles or to the end, no cooldown reset if a pull goes wrong, no cross-world PF, no world visit, no DC travel, snail mount speed, cone targeting, buff timers and flying or diving in ARR.

And really, I don't think there was more to do in Heavensward. There were more dungeons made, there were deep dungeons, there was extreme and savage... but there were no ultimates, there were no variant/criterion dungeons.

The eureka/bozja (Diadem) involved flying a FC ship there or being in a party and the weapons you could get from it had RNG stats so I didn't bother and I found it boring when I finally went there. It was also largely advertised as a place for gatherers which is part of what made it boring to me.

What honestly made Heavensward have more to do was probably just the game being newer so there was still leveling alt jobs more than just 10 levels, wondrous tails was actually putting you in fights with a party instead of just being something that you solo, and maybe server communities had to pull together more because of lack of cross-world PF. Things such as deep dungeons were a new concept instead of just being a copy and paste of the previous ones. And maybe the dungeons felt better to do because the jobs weren't as braindead to play and trying to handhold new players.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Paryy and dungeon finder makes for more social contact.not less.

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"o/"
*15 minutes pass*
"gg tyfp"

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

We cant forget the infamous nickname it garnered during its run "Shallowbringers" for nothing.

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Who was calling it that and where?

I did a forum search and the word has appeared in 8 posts - and 7 of those posts were either you or someone else quoting you when you used the word.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Who was calling it that and where?

I did a forum search and the word has appeared in 8 posts - and 7 of those posts were either you or someone else quoting you when you used the word.

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It was outside the forum community, like in twitter, reddit and some discord servers. Back when the expansion was being compared to Stormblood. Everybody agreed Shb had the better story but in terms of content and job design Stormblood had it beat.

Every expansion is the worst one until the next one comes out, then that's the worst one and the previous one was better.

SB was the best content wise because we still had HM dungeons, and we got Eureka (Yes I had my complaints at the time but I still did it and it at the very least gave me something to do). The extra Rathalos trial. I never felt like I was at a loss for what to do then. But I had started playing right before 3.4 dropped so maybe SB being my first expansion launch added to the magic.
Of course I am not taking the battle system into account because I do not feel like my understanding of it back then was good enough for me to know if I'd want to go back to it or not (I was also bouncing between different classes to main) so I don't have any nostalgia for it.

https://i.imgur.com/I9bmVEE.png

Google wasnt being very helpful with its search where it kept correcting the term on me when I advance pages but this here is a notable example of what I was talking about. It happened 2 years ago.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

https://i.imgur.com/I9bmVEE.png

Google wasnt being very helpful with its search where it kept correcting the term on me when I advance pages but this here is a notable example of what I was talking about. It happened 2 years ago.

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Hold up, Raul_Orzabal was cooking something about 2 years ago.https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.4764...ca443f4786.jpg

I liked Heavensward Bard and don’t see why they had to dismantle and rearrange the entire job to get away from it instead of adjusting the cast requirements to be actually appropriate for the job lol. And look at Bard now….

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It's almost as though some of us genuinely enjoyed the previous expansions and dislike the direction the game has taken in order to cater to those who did not.

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How do you know people didn't enjoy the game then but think the changes were positive?

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EDIT:

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I think a lot of the "complexity" of HW is overblown. Job balance was terrible because of the damage type debuffs. PLD was unwanted in raids because DRK had magic def CDs and every tankbuster in Alexander was magic based.

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It's kinda funny, Mr Happy was talking about this in his 3.4 video. At the time, balance was so bad, the meta wasn't just some Jobs, it was an entire party of WAR/DRK/AST/SCH/DRG/NIN/BRD/MCH. The meta literally did not include an entire role (Caster), and multiple Jobs; PLD, WHM, MNK, BLM, and SMN. Double-Melee-Double-Rangedphys was the meta because of how the piercing and slashing debuffs worked and the damage tuning at the time.

Sometimes, people see things in the past fairly.
Sometimes, people have rose tinted goggles.
Sometimes, people have their rose tinted goggles on so tight, it cuts off circulation to their brains.

HW was debateably one of the worst times and possibly the worst expansion in the game's history in a mechanical sense aside from 1.X itself. The story was great, but in terms of functionality and gameplay, it was pretty bad, and up until 3.4, it almost destroyed the raid scene and could have led to killing the game a second time if they hadn't adjusted course, which is probably why they did so.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

^still waiting for that option where I can force every other character on my screen to just be wearing their artefact armour

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If you were asking for unglamoured, I could see that (though I don't know why; a lot of the base gear looks abysmal and the accessories like everyone running around with dangly earrings is far more off-putting and historically inaccurate than a T-shirt), but artifact armor is supposed to be rare, not common. And you're basically asking for everyone to look the same, which seems...odd. Especially since that complaint is the entire reason every modern MMO has a transmog system; because people don't like looking all the same as everyone else.

Now, you could ask for a "town clothes vs combat clothes" thing, I suppose. But since we spend a lot of time in towns, that wouldn't change much. Other than the hat, my standard garb is the Lalafell tunic (Blue/Green/Red color matched to role; I like having a "physical" satchel for all the scenes my character either puts something into or uses something from it, not to mention if adventuring, I'd need something to carry things in), Cloud's pants (the only Lala pants that don't either tuck into the boots or hug the thighs and shins - I have no idea why they do that for all pants on Lalas, but I hate it, so go with the most available option that doesn't), and either the High Allegan Boots of Casting/Healing (for those roles, respectively), or brown Hard Leather Boots that remind me of FFTactics shoes. Oh, and the Pagos bandages (also color coded) since they're unobtrusive. And I swap out the hat sometimes for things.

I also like the WHM ARR robes and sometimes use those (with white Hard Leather Boots) or the ShB SCH coat (I like the cape), and I sometimes use the Ivalician Squire chest for my Tanks (sometimes with some gold gauntlets I found that match it, don't recall the name), and when I first hit EW and had just SCH/SMN/GNB at 90, I wore the GNB coat with those same gauntlets. Though those are more based on mood. I'd like a lot more armor sets if they didn't do a "floof" over the butt like Zenos'. I can't understand why that is a thing the Devs have decided on for so much gear (specifically, though not exclusively, on Lalas), but it's obnoxious.

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Originally Posted by Nebelheim

It just seems you think that the people who genuinely like certain parts of that era are insane or lying about enjoying it because you found it boring or are making it up for enjoying it. Or that people only think they enjoy it because there looking back on it with nostalgia.

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How's that different than the proponents of the past insisting everyone who likes how things have changed either didn't like the game then or is/wants braindead/lazy content?

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Also btw, hahaha.

I'm saving this thread. Because come 3 or 5 years later or so, where we bark this same conversation again about "I miss EW" You bet I'll be pulling up this thread to remind the wishy washy/nostalgia goggle nature of the average MMO player.

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While I agree with you in a general sense...it may not go ALL the way.

Warlords of Draenor is still considered WoW's worst expansion. That said, Mists and Cata (and Wrath, I still remember "Wrath Baby" as a derisive term for the game being "braindead" then) were all attacked in their time as being bad compared to what came before. Now, Wrath is deified as the height of the game's history by a lot of people, Cata as a monument to challenging and good gameplay (it wasn't, but whatever), and Mists generally gets the credit it should have gotten then.

So there is absolutely a contingent of people who will NEVER be satisfied and constantly saying something in the past was better while badmouthing the present. I'm not saying everyone, though, and I also disagree that EVERYTHING will be praised at some point. I could see EW being looked at like WoD to a point by a contingent of the community. I COULD see if things keep changing those people someday praising ShB, though. A lot of the people that praise SB now complained about it at the time, and that's probably true of HW/ARR as well.

It's either a "you never know how good you have it til it's gone" thing or a "you just will never be pleased and always say something else is better than what you have" thing with a lot - not ALL, but a lot - of people.

...but those people probably won't ever praise EW/WoD. They may praise other things that they currently decry, though.

The funny thing is, 2.x had my favorite raid fights, and 4.x had my favorite combat and class flow.



Endwalker is my least favorite when it comes to both. But that doesn't mean I can't see the faults in the systems back then.



I enjoyed every part of the game when it was current. I even enjoyed parts of 1.0.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

How's that different than the proponents of the past insisting everyone who likes how things have changed either didn't like the game then or is/wants braindead/lazy content?

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All i said was i like that era and would like the harder gameplay back. And content has become easy and braindead. I don't have a problem with people liking how the game is currently i just prefer how it was before. I know we wont be getting heavansward era combat/gameplay design decisions back.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

The funny thing is, 2.x had my favorite raid fights, and 4.x had my favorite combat and class flow.



Endwalker is my least favorite when it comes to both. But that doesn't mean I can't see the faults in the systems back then.



I enjoyed every part of the game when it was current. I even enjoyed parts of 1.0.

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1.15-1.23b what I’ll call the fall of dalamud is even better than EW

Yeah I said it

Give me back rivenroad

There's one thing I truly miss from HW, and that's SMN. I know people will say it's horribly clunky, but for me, it had everything I wanted. MP management, pet micromanagement, burst stocking, timer tracking, it was one of the most engaging jobs I ever played.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

There's one thing I truly miss from HW, and that's SMN. I know people will say it's horribly clunky, but for me, it had everything I wanted. MP management, pet micromanagement, burst stocking, timer tracking, it was one of the most engaging jobs I ever played.

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That's a bold take haha, but actually factual; HW Smn had a big level of player expression. The big problem was the summoning and pet management system itself.

Player expression is ultimately king. You can have a simple job which you can play differently from the person next to you and squeeze out different levels of skill (like good damage, mitigation, healing, etc) than other people playing the same job, in different ways.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

1.15-1.23b what I’ll call the fall of dalamud is even better than EW

Yeah I said it

Give me back rivenroad

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I disagree with that, and you can still do rivenroad, kind of :p


1.2x combat was even clunkier than what we have now. That was one of the worst parts of 1.0 for me. The combat was just too clunky.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I disagree with that, and you can still do rivenroad, kind of :p


1.2x combat was even clunkier than what we have now. That was one of the worst parts of 1.0 for me. The combat was just too clunky.

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T9 is not rivenroad and I will not accept this slander against rivenroad

True the combat in the 1.2 patches was clunky but the world had a sense of “entropy” to it in the fall of dalamud that nothing has come close to for me, oh and nael as well as legacy gaius are criminally underrated as villains

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

but the world had a sense of “entropy” to it in the fall of dalamud that nothing has come close to for me, oh and nael as well as legacy gaius are criminally underrated as villains

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Aight, you know what? ....I kinda have to agree with this. The game has somehow managed to lose that sense of "dread" or "entropy" it had in the days when Dalamud was a serious consideration. Ditto for Nael and OG Gaius being pretty underrated.

Perhaps it's because I was around to hear Answers - Reprise fill the zones as Dalamud burned in the sky? Whatever the case, I found ARR's whole "feel" was far better than what we have now, and a large part of that was knowing what kind of threat Bahamut actually posed to the world. The player-character(s) have gone on to face much greater threats than he, but somehow the "feeling" was lacking. Even the Final Days and lead-up to the Endsinger did not stir any kind of feelings within me at all.

Heavensward was two or three steps removed from that feeling, but there was still a sense of urgency with the threats posed by Alexander and the Warring Triad. Although the former turned out to be benevolent, his mere presence could've killed the planet. The latter were of course primals that very much lived up to their hype as gods, and any one of them would've been basically unstoppable by modern man if allowed to regain its former strength. Admittedly, my interest in the Warring Triad in this regard may have stemmed in part from FF6 having been one of my favorite Final Fantasies to date, but still.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Aight, you know what? ....I kinda have to agree with this. The game has somehow managed to lose that sense of "dread" or "entropy" it had in the days when Dalamud was a serious consideration. Ditto for Nael and OG Gaius being pretty underrated.

Perhaps it's because I was around to hear Answers - Reprise fill the zones as Dalamud burned in the sky? Whatever the case, I found ARR's whole "feel" was far better than what we have now, and a large part of that was knowing what kind of threat Bahamut actually posed to the world. The player-character(s) have gone on to face much greater threats than he, but somehow the "feeling" was lacking. Even the Final Days and lead-up to the Endsinger did not stir any kind of feelings within me at all.

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Dalamud burning in the sky; the hymn of dalamud filling the zones only to be replaced by answers reprise later on created a sense of overwhelming dread that they have failed to capture again even with threats bigger than Bahamut, dalamud was present in every zone, the music filled every corner, you couldn’t escape it and you knew what was coming

The first visit to kholusia came close but the final days completely failed to replicate the feeling and I think it’s because dalamud made the world dangerous, superbosses spawned, hamlet defence became harder, beloved NPC’s that had necessary functions in the world died and never came back, nothing in ShB or EW made me feel like “I” was in danger

And still coils makes me feel that, even going in as a level 90 character coils fills you with a sense of dread and makes you feel like you are actually in danger

Dalamud was just so perfect in how it affected the world it’s sad that 1.15-1.23b are just lumped in with the rest of trashy legacy and forgotten

i miss turn based combat and fatigue system
truly immersive experience

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And still coils makes me feel that, even going in as a level 90 character coils fills you with a sense of dread and makes you feel like you are actually in danger

Dalamud was just so perfect in how it affected the world it’s sad that 1.15-1.23b are just lumped in with the rest of trashy legacy and forgotten

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I think part of it is the Coils aesthetic. It creates the impression you're A.) trapped; and B.) surrounded on all sides by things that want you dead. It's a hostile environment within a hostile environment. The way they incorporated Allagan tech into the scenery really just worked. It was ever-present, but you weren't having it jammed completely down your throat like they started doing later. It played its part without being overbearing, I suppose you could say. It gave the Coils a proper "alien" look without just shoving you into Magitech Research Facility#29304080832. Yeah, they became more "tech" as you pushed deeper, but at the time that hadn't been done to death. Instead of making you roll your eyes, it would make you more cautious because the environment had you thinking some robot was going to pop out and slap you for your entire health bar at any second.

I keep hoping they'll do some kind of special event that allows players to experience the fall of Dalamud firsthand. The entire thing, White Raven fight included. Watching a video on YouTube or seeing people talk about it on the forum just does not convey the experience anything resembling properly. I'm sure just replaying it now wouldn't either, but it would at least give people some idea.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The first visit to kholusia came close but the final days completely failed to replicate the feeling and I think it’s because dalamud made the world dangerous, superbosses spawned, hamlet defence became harder, beloved NPC’s that had necessary functions in the world died and never came back, nothing in ShB or EW made me feel like “I” was in danger

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Sidetrack: When you look back, nothing in EW made it feel like anyone of note was in danger, let alone the WoL, during the "Final Days". Who was notable that died? A couple of named people in Thavnair, that were introduced that expansion, which we had limited interaction with? Ultimately irrelevant NPCs? No scion died. No leader of any of the other factions. No notable NPCs (thinking 2nd in commands or higher ups in the GCs).

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I think part of it is the Coils aesthetic. It creates the impression you're A.) trapped; and B.) surrounded on all sides by things that want you dead. It's a hostile environment within a hostile environment. The way they incorporated Allagan tech into the scenery really just worked. It was ever-present, but you weren't having it jammed completely down your throat like they started doing later. It played its part without being overbearing, I suppose you could say. It gave the Coils a proper "alien" look without just shoving you into Magitech Research Facility#29304080832. Yeah, they became more "tech" as you pushed deeper, but at the time that hadn't been done to death. Instead of making you roll your eyes, it would make you more cautious because the environment had you thinking some robot was going to pop out and slap you for your entire health bar at any second.

I keep hoping they'll do some kind of special event that allows players to experience the fall of Dalamud firsthand. The entire thing, White Raven fight included. Watching a video on YouTube or seeing people talk about it on the forum just does not convey the experience anything resembling properly. I'm sure just replaying it now wouldn't either, but it would at least give people some idea.

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I wish people could experience it as well

Hearing the hymn of dalamud in the background while endless thunder roars and monsters kills all the beloved NPC’s is something you have to play to believe, I would also love it to come back in a future rising event but I think the developers would rather just pretend like legacy never existed even if so much of ARR is based on what happened during the fall of dalamud

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

the literal end of 1.0 could feel dangerous cause there was always the chance the game never came back and that was the end of it, and i feel is a bit of a unfair way to compare the end of it to just another expansion of a game with many more years down the line, they can never hurt us the main character ever so no matter what we see we know we will win.

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That’s not really what I meant when I said the fall of dalamud felt dangerous

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Sidetrack: When you look back, nothing in EW made it feel like anyone of note was in danger, let alone the WoL.

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while i get the other important characters not dying making the story a bit less dramatic, you the main character will never die ever or if you do it will be temporary as we are the main characters if we die the story stops immediately and doesnt continue so we know our character cant die or be hurt in any meaning full way or anything else. any tension in a dire situation is made by us ourselves, as we always know we will make it through perfectly fine.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Dalamud was just so perfect in how it affected the world it’s sad that 1.15-1.23b are just lumped in with the rest of trashy legacy and forgotten

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the literal end of 1.0 could feel dangerous cause there was always the chance the game never came back and that was the end of it, and i feel is a bit of a unfair way to compare the end of it to just another expansion of a game with many more years down the line, they can never hurt us the main character ever so no matter what we see we know we will win.

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

while i get the other important characters not dying making the story a bit less dramatic, you the main character will never die ever or if you do it will be temporary as we are the main characters if we die the story stops immediately and doesnt continue so we know our character cant die or be hurt in any meaning full way or anything else. any tension in a dire situation is made by us ourselves, as we always know we will make it through perfectly fine.

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When Midgardsormr stripped us of our Blessing then we got framed for Sultana's death and had to be smuggled out of Eorzea into Ishgard while multiple Scions "died" behind us, that was pretty tense and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I loved it. That's a large part of what made HW so good. But then everything since then has gotten progressively worse.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

When Midgardsormr stripped us of our Blessing then we got framed for Sultana's death and had to be smuggled out of Eorzea into Ishgard while multiple Scions "died" behind us, that was pretty tense and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I loved it. That's a large part of what made HW so good. But then everything since then has gotten progressively worse.

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This^

We knew full well the WoL wouldn't die, otherwise there'd be no game. What we didn't know was how many, if any, Scions would actually die. We also didn't know how long it would take the WoL to clear their name, what kind of political fallout there would be, etc. The eventual outcome was the loss of Minfilia, Y'shtola going "blind," and Thancred effectively being reduced to a discount Garlean. In other words, there were tangible consequences. We even found out later (in Heavensward) Y'sthola was burning her own life up to see. This was of course eventually swept under the rug as the angry cat lady became popular for some reason I still can't wrap my head around, but it was at least a thing for a while.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

When Midgardsormr stripped us of our Blessing then we got framed for Sultana's death and had to be smuggled out of Eorzea into Ishgard while multiple Scions "died" behind us, that was pretty tense and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I loved it. That's a large part of what made HW so good. But then everything since then has gotten progressively worse.

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Basically this. Of course, the WoL will never die. If we wipe in a duty, we can just retry it. But you can still have a story where there is tension on the WoL and the world.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

When Midgardsormr stripped us of our Blessing then we got framed for Sultana's death and had to be smuggled out of Eorzea into Ishgard while multiple Scions "died" behind us, that was pretty tense and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I loved it. That's a large part of what made HW so good. But then everything since then has gotten progressively worse.

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on the same coin though before we ever got the hw expansion as a way to keep us players from being locked out of uldah the devs just made every npc in the game go nah we aint turning our bro in so players could come and go in uldah not only that at the same time every npc was still viewable so like nanamo could be talked to despite being dead. course i understand why its done and dont think it make the story less dramatic or bad i just mean it all comes down to perspective as its not that the story is less tense or dramatic just some people like death more than others.

i can say i dont see killing off characters as making things tense its about atmosphere, tone and how you want to view a particular scene

People seem to greatly underestimate just how important properly conveyed stakes are to a story like this one.

Legitimately sorry for the length, but I really care about this topic:

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Aight, you know what? ....I kinda have to agree with this. The game has somehow managed to lose that sense of "dread" or "entropy" it had in the days when Dalamud was a serious consideration. Ditto for Nael and OG Gaius being pretty underrated.

Perhaps it's because I was around to hear Answers - Reprise fill the zones as Dalamud burned in the sky? Whatever the case, I found ARR's whole "feel" was far better than what we have now, and a large part of that was knowing what kind of threat Bahamut actually posed to the world. The player-character(s) have gone on to face much greater threats than he, but somehow the "feeling" was lacking. Even the Final Days and lead-up to the Endsinger did not stir any kind of feelings within me at all.

Heavensward was two or three steps removed from that feeling, but there was still a sense of urgency with the threats posed by Alexander and the Warring Triad. Although the former turned out to be benevolent, his mere presence could've killed the planet. The latter were of course primals that very much lived up to their hype as gods, and any one of them would've been basically unstoppable by modern man if allowed to regain its former strength. Admittedly, my interest in the Warring Triad in this regard may have stemmed in part from FF6 having been one of my favorite Final Fantasies to date, but still.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Dalamud burning in the sky; the hymn of dalamud filling the zones only to be replaced by answers reprise later on created a sense of overwhelming dread that they have failed to capture again even with threats bigger than Bahamut, dalamud was present in every zone, the music filled every corner, you couldn’t escape it and you knew what was coming

The first visit to kholusia came close but the final days completely failed to replicate the feeling and I think it’s because dalamud made the world dangerous, superbosses spawned, hamlet defence became harder, beloved NPC’s that had necessary functions in the world died and never came back, nothing in ShB or EW made me feel like “I” was in danger

And still coils makes me feel that, even going in as a level 90 character coils fills you with a sense of dread and makes you feel like you are actually in danger

Dalamud was just so perfect in how it affected the world it’s sad that 1.15-1.23b are just lumped in with the rest of trashy legacy and forgotten

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I get this...but I think the problem here is that you really can't have that (well) with games in general. Lukile from Speakers Network (the "Fall and rise of FFXIV" series - fantastic if you've never watched them - on YouTube) said of the end of 1.X that, for all 1.X's faults, it did something that very few games manage to do in terms of it's feel. And as I've said before myself, it's because games generally don't plan to destroy themselves, so they don't do crazy things like have creepy awesome music play in all zones at the same time (the only other game I ever saw do this was Eve Online with Caroline's start...which come to think of it I never DID hear how that resolved itself other than it was theorized by players it was the destruction of the entire Jovian Jumpgate network and I think it had something to do with Thera appearing in Wormhole/K-Space?), spawning a bunch of enemies and sieging normally safe player areas (the only other game I can recall doing this was WoW's Undead invasion before Wrath and Burning Legion invasion before the Legion expansion).

And while Lukile says, and I think most 1.X veterans agree, "It may sound hipster, but you just had to be there", I think I get a sense of the "feel"; one other game I've played nailed it. Crisis Core. When you enter Nibelheim and hear the Nibelheim music, it just slamed me with a sense of foresight-induced deja vu of "something really bad's going to happen, and this is the epicenter of it". Granted, I had played FF7, but it still hammered the feeling. It's super rare, both in gaming and out (in the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, All Good Things, when they find out the origin of the space anomaly that is ripping through the past and wiping out all life on ancient Earth, it's definitely a goosebump inducing moment).

So to a point, you can't really blame FFXIV (EW or otherwise) for lacking that since it's REALLY hard to cultivate. 1.X nailed it, but it also had totally free reign to do whatever it wanted because the game was shutting down. The kinda stuff they did like spawning hordes of monsters in Ul'Dah is what you only ever get in some Alpha/Beta tests of MMOs. For a similar reason - once the test is over, the server goes away, and it's expected the players are fine with dying over and over and random shenanigans at that point.

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ARR could kind of have it because the world was still new, and ShB when you first arrive in Norvant and fist go to the first couple zones also had it. It's that "new MMO feel" which definitely IS a thing people chase because of how rare it is. It's also a feeling I got first going into Eureka and (to a FAR lesser extent, Bozja)

The problem is, you eventually know more. You know more of the world's lore. You know more of the characters. You know more of the gameplay mechanics. And you also get the Dragonball Z problem of "power level creep". ("Power levels are b******t!")

It's hard to find things like Golbez foreboding when you've traveled to the edge of a universe and punched the literal embodiment of the concept of despair in the face. It's like Avengers: What do you do after Endgame? After you've saved literally all (or half of all) of the universe, in debateably two (or more than two) timelines?

Or to use another game example: Kingdom Hearts. KH1 was mystery. KH2 was mystery and history. But where do you go from there? Even Nomora had issues with that one. His solution was "everywhere (and everywhen) else, a decade prior with Birth By Sleep, hundreds(questionmark?) of years with Union Cross, a hundred or so (Dark Road), before finally settling on Dream Drop Distance (using prior game assets and settings and a post-Union Cross REALLY disturbing lore for the Dream Eaters once you finished UC and figured that one out) to explain Sora getting a power nerf for KH3 (where even Pete is openly mocking his weakness), just to end up saving the multiverse - again - in the end. And where do you go from THAT? Well, other than an alternate "better/true canon ending" DLC and a musical recap game with a tiny hint at the end - we don't know, since KH4 is still in progress...and Missing Link, in addition to being MIA, is ALSO going to be in the past! XD

I think that's why they want to do a soft-reboot of FFXIV with DT, to get back to more...non-universe levels of threats. More grounded. More exploration and mystery (maybe) with the New World. (And PROBABLY why they're holding off Meracydia for now...call that a prediction, but I bet it's a valid one...)

As much as I'm not a fan of "beach vacation: the expansion", I do kind of hope they succeed on that front.

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Though Coils specifically...

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I think part of it is the Coils aesthetic.

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Absolutely this.

The music, the art, the environment; it just has this kind of claustrophobic and dangerous feel to it. The closest thing to that I've experienced otherwise is actually Delubrium Savage. It gives the feeling of being in some ruined and unstable ancient ruins with dangers around every corner...somewhat helped by the perma-death (for the instance) if you get KO'd and not raised within 10 mins.

PotD solo runs KIND of have this feeling, but also don't because of how the floors/maps are generated and laid out and the stakes are more "you lose the run if you KO before getting to that bench at 200". Oddly, HoH doesn't have this feel at all to me, I think it's the setting/scenery. Though I DID like the really big open floors...

THAT is something they absolutely could work on more.

The problem is modern raid encounters are just the boss room...because players have increasingly complained when they aren't. People don't like Fausts or 3rd Coils. They want to zone in, start punching a boss after the preliminary light party/stack/spread marker business, and then leave.

It's why I find 24 mans far more enjoyable than Savage raid fights, and stuff like Delubrium and Dalriada (even the non-Savage DR) as much more enjoyable and foreboding. DR/Dal do feel like a proper dungeon crawl completely with getting kicked out if you all die/wipe, and 24 mans at least feel like you have a bit of travel between bosses, even the Pantheon ones that have largely been hallways with a miniboss or random trash pack. That's STILL more.

Something I remember form doing some raiding in WoW back in the Wrath/Cata days is you feel like you're assaulting an enemy stronghold. Savage just feels like you're teleporting to bosses for a boxing match.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The problem is modern raid encounters are just the boss room...because players have increasingly complained when they aren't. People don't like Fausts or 3rd Coils. They want to zone in, start punching a boss after the preliminary light party/stack/spread marker business, and then leave.

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It's an unfortunate state of affairs. Those fights lose something when you don't have to fight tooth and nail just to reach them, I feel. There's no passing through a vast technological complex or the crumbling ruins of a city. They're basically just glorified trials.

I can't help but feel the same. As much as a pleasant surprise the story was for Pandaemonium, I still feel like that it just doesn't compare to the heights of other raid series in both design and setting. Maybe it's just my overall fatigue of ancients/ascians but despite liking the story it just couldn't hook me the same way other raid series did. As others has stated, even when it's outdated content, the Coils is still truly in a league of its own. Spiral is still one of my favourite tracks in the whole game even after hearing it for the first time years ago in PotD before I unlocked Coils.

^ a ren post I 100% totally agree with and also very well written

I agree that the fall of dalamud can’t be repeated because it was meant to cap off a dying game so it was a situation that EW was never really going to achieve and it’s why I don’t dock that many points from EW (on the other hand I do dock points from EW for being wholly inferior to kholusia). The way it capped off the dying game though was fantastic and I’m truly sad that most modern players will only know it as the failure of legacy and that weird but of janky nael lore they do in second coil

As for coil I agree, coils is easily the raid that had the best feel of space in the game and it isn’t even remotely close, take like T8 for example; you just killed a whole bunch of mobs on the way to melusine in T7 and then you descend down, you make it to the main deck and alisae is horrified to see the same hallways full of monsters from T7 reaching all the way out of sight back up towards the upper levels; it felt claustrophobic, dangerous and that you were trapped with no way to go but down

If people don’t want the T1 style dungeon raid back that’s fine but please attempt to return the feeling of space that coils had that made everything feel so dangerous and threatening, I feel like T8 was a good middle ground in this sense

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The problem is modern raid encounters are just the boss room...because players have increasingly complained when they aren't. People don't like Fausts or 3rd Coils. They want to zone in, start punching a boss after the preliminary light party/stack/spread marker business, and then leave.

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I'm not so sure it had to be either-or, though.

They could have gone with a more WoW-like design (ICC comes to mind, though there are of course other examples) with some serious trash fights that act as still-challenging encounters but with a greater/different degree of player agency (with the "boss" toolkit being reducible by killing or suppressing the particular mobs responsible for those particular actions or auras, kind of like pre-nerf Mog Ex without the King himself) and typically more intuitive parts.

And they could have still kept the core fights separately queuable atop that, for those who lacked the time. All they really needed to do was (A) provide commensurate rewards for the rest of the raid, and (B) to allow players both to queue into the raid and directly to the boss fights, where any full-raid matchmade group that had reached a boss but had players drop could optionally refill from those doing queuing just for that specific fight.

I would love to see a return of full raids, ideally with a good 6-12 rewarding and challenging non-boss fights across the 4-floor tier.



Heck, another great way to keep those raid experiences fresh would just be to reward minimum item level runs and move that from being a hidden option to being a mainstay one (e.g., a second checkmark, alongside the first, with both being queuable simultaneously). Say, the more your ilvl is reduced, the greater portion of rewards you get; where the bonus rewards are time-gated or have already been capped, comparable value is given through non-time-gated rewards.

So, if you want to actually challenge yourself doing the Normal Mode raids (or, the full raid together)... that's a ton of a gil and tomes while they're still time-gated, or you can catch/gear up quite a bit faster atop some bonus tomes after the time-gating has been removed (since your party would have a proportionate chance to additional loot-table items).



And with that, players could get a truer-to-form/intent challenge with commensurate reward --regardless of how many weeks it's been since the tier's release-- and without any chance of feeling like a burden to their party over being late-comers... or they could just speedrun through the time-locked stuff, to be done as a cohesive experience or just piecemeal, as they please.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I think that's why they want to do a soft-reboot of FFXIV with DT, to get back to more...non-universe levels of threats. More grounded. More exploration and mystery (maybe) with the New World.

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Transitioning from a world-ending threat that feels like nothing to a nothing that feels like nothing, so they can hopefully build back up to a world-ending threat that feels like nothing again.

Do the Devs actually read these threads and take notice of what people have issue with? I feel like no matter how much people complain, they're not going to change things.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

It's an unfortunate state of affairs. Those fights lose something when you don't have to fight tooth and nail just to reach them, I feel. There's no passing through a vast technological complex or the crumbling ruins of a city. They're basically just glorified trials.

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The problem with the journey in raids is that if the journey provides no rewards, people will skip it. People got a DRG or NIN to skip T10 journey to boss. People sac pulled T1 to get to boss. People skipped T3 entirely. People immediately ran to boss room in T8, skipping as many adds as possible.

I'm sure many skipped by getting shortcut carries off other groups.


They can't make trash give drops, because people will just farm trash. And if they make the trash actual fights, then you need longer in the instances because you have to prog multiple fights, or clear multiple longer fights. If every floor has a "door" fight and a "boss" fight its just a big mess IMO.



Just look at Alex and the plethora of Fausts.

Something like T2 holds up in its pre fight exploration (I guess since the enrage cast starts when you pull the first node like A6 it’s technically all the boss but eh), T2’s only weakness is that killing the node that taught allagen rot gave the boss such an OP ability you had no choice but to kill the rot node which limited the choose your own path somewhat

I would say with criterion the best middle ground would be take T1, keep the door boss mostly the same (it was a legit interesting boss with week 1 gear) replace the T1 trash with criterion trash then leave the boss as is, 1 raid 3 distinct prog points each one of those three could give one of the three items we usually attribute to floor 1, 8 could be redesigned that you need to kill 2 ADS nodes and their spawned trash to unlock the door to avatar but the nodes you fight all have different patterns and you can choose where you engage and which nodes that will entail and how long your “enrage” is till a third node enters the space and makes the fight harder

3 I agree without a boss is a pointless instance: 3 should have just been 4’s pre boss trash but otherwise I think the original design of coils could be modernised and it would be better than what we have now, most of the problems with coils, like how 10 is cheesable by having a NIN sneak past the trash to open the shortcut is just things that could be blocked from working

Fausts were just bad because they were boring as hell, like what A1’s Faust just stood there and tankbustered getting slowly stronger, A5’s you killed one that was a clone of 1 and you got…..2 more that were also clones of 1, 9’s was kinda okay but 9 was the best and still weaker as a fight than T1’s doorboss

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm not so sure it had to be either-or, though.

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I mean...this is modern gaming.

For better or for worse, we're not in the era where MOST players enjoy "the experience" of a dungeon crawl. Criterion is only one step up from "hallway", but people don't want to do it for "the experience"; they want rewards and they want greater rewards for more time spent. So the Devs are going to lean more towards the less time spent instead. (It's a similar though distinct argument to the "I demand more reward for more work" "Okay, so we're going to reduce your work, happy now?" situation)

And the thing is, this gets even worse when it's content that's consumed repeatedly. Coils was neat. But can you imagine most raiders today enjoying having to go through the hallways (even if we skip out Turn 3 weirdness)? We had Fausts in HW and people complained about it, and some of them were kinda tough. It being "serious trash fights" would only be novel for a bit before people felt it was a slog. "WHY do these TRASH MOBS have so much health and mechanics?" "Can't we just go to the boss and get our loot already?" "SE isn't respecting our time! This is an insult!" "The point of this raid is the boss fights, right? Why are we having to spend so much effort on this stupid trash?"

...and so on.

And you know this. People complain if a Tank isn't doing wall-to-wall pulls. Trash would have to be borderline boss fights (note the Pantheon minibosses have some boss-lite mechanics), and if they're too hard, people are going to complain because they aren't getting rewards and it's a "waste" of time keeping them from the boss. Especially once fights are on farm.

I DO think it would be better if they did this, mind you, but I'm telling you why they won't. Because people that raid would absolutely complain about it. Yeah, a lot of people would probably find it novel and enjoyable at first, but after several weeks of farm, MOST would probably be complaining about it. That's why they shifted to the "boxing match" format in the first place. Because people complained when they didn't.

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All your solutions are "make it more difficult", but I contend it wasn't the difficulty that makes Coils what it is - as Snow and others have said, it retains this feel even going in unsynced at level 90 - it's the environment ITSELF. "more challenge" isn't the answer. Sure, more danger can help, but just making trash that plasters the average party isn't going to give the Coils-like experience, I don't think.

Honestly, I think the best form of this is legitimately Eureka/Bozja raids. The boss mechanics are interesting, they're challenging but fair, BA and DR Sav have "perma-death", etc. They feel like you're delving into a dangerous dungeon, even after having done it a couple times, and they seem to have good staying power with the community. The answer is right there.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

The problem with the journey in raids is that if the journey provides no rewards, people will skip it. People got a DRG or NIN to skip T10 journey to boss. People sac pulled T1 to get to boss. People skipped T3 entirely. People immediately ran to boss room in T8, skipping as many adds as possible.

I'm sure many skipped by getting shortcut carries off other groups.


They can't make trash give drops, because people will just farm trash. And if they make the trash actual fights, then you need longer in the instances because you have to prog multiple fights, or clear multiple longer fights. If every floor has a "door" fight and a "boss" fight its just a big mess IMO.



Just look at Alex and the plethora of Fausts.

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...basically, this.