Like the Gobwalker in A2, where someone doesn't get to play their job?
Like Quarantine in A4, Timegate in A12, the ghost cabins in O5, the add phase in E8 and the platform switching in Diamond Weapon?
1. I completely agree; Coils had a lot of the features I described and I still think of it fondly for that reason. Coming from multiple other games where raids were in the old-school Grand Dungeon style, I appreciated Coil and the Syrcus Tower raids for being large immersive environments.
2. I stopped raiding in other MMOs circa 2013 so I can't speak to how raiding in other games has changed aside from being aware of Mythic+ in WoW. I understand that Raiding here in XIV generally refers to the 8-player, non-Alliance content. I enjoy the non-Alliance raids for what they are, understanding that times change and with it, a game's content. That being said the Trial > Cutscene > Trial > Cutscene pattern no longer seems like raiding to me. It's interesting and enjoyable content with cool story progression but they're not the Epic-In-Scope Dungeons I, in my old-school mind, associate with raiding.
and yet complains about "square and circle" arenas?
So they're complaining about a problem they KNOW isn't true. Even better.
It's also possible they ran them with overgeared people, ruining the challenge.
Either way I am highly dubious of good intentions or actual concern and more convinced they're just here to "lol watch me compare this game to WoW and stir up mud".
It would be great if we would get more Trials which are similar to the Vishap Fight, where we have to defeat it before it reaches its goal, or the other way arround, where you have to run away from a Boss instead and have to fight adwaves until you reach a save spot where you can attack the Boss.
you mean the part when you go from a big square to a small square? or like diamond weapon where you stay on a spot and magically jump to another platform without doing anything?
i love the white knights trying to defend shit raid design
and no, with "changing platforms" i mean things like the elerethe fight on "that game" when you have to run against the wind jumping between poison puddles and walking on a twig to try and cross a precipice while you have adds munching your ass, i didn't mean afk into a square to get pushed to the platform in front of you
A huge point of the design philosophy for Savage is that the fights can be run independently and as such are separate instances and it facilitates PUGs accross the whole week.
Nobody wants to deal with boss lockouts in a single raid.
That's a result of the aforementioned trimming of the raiding experience. In Coils the blend of storytelling and raiding may be more engaging. In Alexander they created a "normal", easier version of the raids and the story is in that version so that everybody could see said story without needing to engage in more demanding content. Those normal versions still kept a walk to the boss plus trash, which were unnecessary in savage because the point there is the big challenge. Yet apparently they were deemed unnecessary too moving into Stormblood, and that's where the format we know today of Trial > Cutscene > Trial > Cutscene solidified. As you can see a more "robust" experience is something that was present in the game at first but that was gradually trimmed of its not-so-popular elements. That's a result of player feedback and not something that was designed from the get-go.
uuuuuh fyi we also had a rectangle in Shadowbringers
Curious does having other arena shapes really matter much? Also while a lot folks woud love for devs to change up dungeon/trial/raid fight dynamics (me included) you also get many others that cry foul and freak the fuck out we theres something changed with the itinerary.