What happened to 8-man raids? Binding Coils was so elaborate compared to now..

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

TBH they could just scrap all this pseudo endgame PvE, bake some of the fights into the MSQ and allocate the free resources to side content, where the game really shines. First none of those “””raid””” fights is any fun, there is no build-up, no excitement, no atmosphere, you press a button and the screen goes black and next second there’s a boss in your face, where you learn a dance that is pieced together by seemingly randomized selection of the games “””mechanics””” (circle aoe, donut, line, stack, split, etc).

And the gear is pointless because there is no real (open) world in the sense of WoW to use it on and everything else is scaled, on top of it being only stat sticks where there is zero excitement or sentimental value involved. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if this thing is ilvl 590 or ilvl 600 with 5 stats more.

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This games side content is pretty crap we must be playing different games. I would pretty much say the same about WoW the gear feels rather pointless, your whole open world idea stopped existing once open world pvp ended. Big difference in WoW is I have a gear progression to go through to reach each raid vs FFXIV crafted gear instant catch up. As much as people on youtube, twitch, or even in the game claim the old content is always relevant they are wrong. The first tier of Pandemonium becomes obsolete once the second tier comes out. Old content in this game is in reality as relevant as it is in WoW, glamour and mounts. But I am ranting.

I can agree atmosphere is cool, I never had a problem with how Alexander did little introduction areas before the boss fight. Coil had some pretty bad areas before a fight but some were awesome. But the idea of actually traveling through different sections of Dalamude and Alexander was cool. I can excuse it in Omega cause it was basically a Dragon Ball Z tournament, maybe Eden but I thought Eden was over all trash. This expansion why are we not exploring this hell castle, sure the boss areas are different, first fight is on the entrance bridge, second fight is in the sewers, third fight is in some hell deminsion thing, and the last fight is in what looks like the main hallway entrance of the castle. Why are we not actually exploring this place, how did i get to the sewers, how did the sewers lead to the main hall. It's a minor touch that could go a long way. As far as fun goes, I think both games have pretty crappy raid mechanics. How ever I like FFXIV dances vs WoW's don't stand in the circles.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

What solo fighting instance did we have in Eden? I dont remember having one of those at all akin to omega.

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Wasn't there? Been ages since I did story for Eden. I thought I recalled something between tiers.

Maybe it is a pattern then, sadly. Omega had a great balance. They should use that as a guideline.

Omega did it right. Solo instances before each tier with trash mobs you gear you up for the boss fight.

Nobody wants to deal with trash for reclears and farming.
However I see no reason why normal mode couldn't still have trash mobs, but I guess then it's a matter of redundancy and creating two entirely different encounters for normal and savage.

Trash was always irrelevant difficult wise, that's why people asked them to be done with.

It would be nice if the raids had an extra reward: one chest containing something not as good but decent in the end of the trash clear route. But for that the trash would actually need to be interesting to deal with. Also another reason to make the AoE rotations interesting outside of dungeons.

Alternatively, Savage modes could be straight to the boss, maybe? Since in the game lore, these are recollections of those fights anyway.

Trash mobs are nice and interesting as long as you do them occasionally. Once you start fighting with them every week on reclears - they become a chore and a waste of time tbh.

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Originally Posted by RicaRuin

People complained about having to fight through trash for their reclears/prog and those complaints led to the development removing trash mobs after Alexander.

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People also "complained" about needing more time for ultimate, and that is why they don't want to release so soon another. It later changed into "we are not ready to release". I don't think any raiders would have complained about ultimates releasing faster. This is like handpicking feedback to delay or reduce content.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Trash was always irrelevant difficult wise, that's why people asked them to be done with.

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Then don't make them irrelevant, I actually like the progression system of WoW - how it saves your progress of a raid. You wouldn't have to reclear mobs just when you requeue then...

It's like cutscene transitions in fights, having to watch a minute long cutscene after the add phase every week in e1s was just obnoxious.

If they want to have that and trash I think it should stay in normal mode cause it really doesn't contribute meaningfully to savage prog at all and legit just pads out time for nothing.

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Originally Posted by 24spencer

It's like cutscene transitions in fights, having to watch a minute long cutscene after the add phase every week in e1s was just obnoxious.

If they want to have that and trash I think it should stay in normal mode cause it really doesn't contribute meaningfully to savage prog at all and legit just pads out time for nothing.

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e1s is legit the only case where it is so long while being not as cool as endboss transitions, I really think its just a rare exception

ARR and Heavensward raids had a better feeling of progression towards the goal. You had the big bad guy and his helpers who you can identify easily to be part of that group. The last two raid tiers they are only connected by lore but the design/theme is totally different for each fight. When I saw omega for example I hoped more for fights like o11/12 instead of the raid itself becoming a theme park raid.

Rather than trash, I'd be more interested if they do more gimmick in Normal like some of Alexander raids:
A5. ..a player needs to push the bombs away, everyone transforms to avoid the consecutive raidwides.
A7/A12 ...specific roles or players are separated and have to deal with a different mechanic.

These are fun and change the pace from just avoiding the orange circles, stacking and spreading.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

You know, recently going through Binding Coils of Bahamut and Alexander, and I have to wonder...what happened to Normal raids these last few expansions?

They used to have such intricate level designs, the story interwoven within those various raids, and they just were so much more elaborate. Now it is simply loading into a square or circle zone.

Why? I get budget constraints, but if they could do something as memorable as Binding Coils, why can't we get that back?

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Coils was ok.