The overall story of Coil was much better than Alexander's I think
The overall story of Coil was much better than Alexander's I think
I disagree since one of my friends came back to the game the other week he's been gone for 4 months or so, he got caught up on MSQ, did Alexander normal and got crafted gear. He went in blind into A9S and died once to Acid Rain, we went onto A10S and he only died to 1 crusher, we cleared both. We didn't have time for A11S since it was late in the night and he had to work but the bottom line is he never did Midas or Gordias raiding he did coil back in the day and cleared A9S and A10S in a single night.
For returning players they have the tools and means to getting gear and raiding, same as new players once they get there it's not hard to get gear the game throws it at you and once you start capping weekly and doing your weekly raids you'll have full 270 in no time. The reason people say screw everyone is because in raiding you can't jump in and help people without losing a chest which when you're trying to gear up really sucks I'd love to jump in and help people but that depends on the time and day in the week if they care about 1/2/pages run. I only go into groups that need help when I haven't cleared so I can help the group and not gimp their drops, like when my friend hadn't done any Creator Savage.
The only thing that I really do not like about SEs gearing in the early ilvl grind at 60 is that it's very boring, very gated, and you get no gear while doing these dungeons such as ARF/Neverreap/Fractal since it's old content that no one needs. PvP is the only alternative if you are new honestly it's 235 gear, gives you lore, scrip, it's starter gear for the dungeons while you start buying more accuracy for 230 gear and jump into Creator so you avoid queing for Midas and Gordias as the ques would be well over a few hours. It honestly needs to be addressed as SE has kinda screwed the pooch with their ilvl gating which in turn makes new players hate gearing any alt classes without PvP.
Gating has other benefits, besides the special-club effect - it makes people want to tackle content that they otherwise wouldn't. In 2.4, Titan EX still mattered - people wanted the clear because it unlocked something, and us gamers tend to hate having anything on the "still need to unlock" list. Much fewer people bothered to clear Ifrit EX afterwards, which is telling of how important that unlock carrot was in the equation.
Now, aside from people that seriously intend to farm birds, your average new 60 has little reason to care about any tough fights that aren't Zurvan EX or Creator Savage. Two to five fights that matter at any given time. That number was nine to twelve in 2.4.
And it extends to players helping and teaching the newer folk too. How often do folk go and get some FC mates their Nidhogg EX clear? Mog EX clear runs happened all the time, because people also feel bad for someone who needs something unlocked. It was the kind of community builder that's just flat absent in HW. Nobody gives a damn about your bird.
For this reason, I would strongly support a return of gating, so long as SE is smart about it. If Bend of Time is going to have three difficulties, make the middle ones gate each tier and just let savage be savage. Assuming primals continue, do up to two gates a la Primal Focus, and importantly make sure the first entry in each gate is on the easier side. Sophia EX would be a good fight to serve as a gate; Bis EX very much was not.
The reasons the Bis EX gate was cancerous were that it served as a gate -on release-, demanded strong dps at current gear levels, while being on the back of a fresh expansion and job changes/additions no less. And it was also the only thing to do for a bit at level cap save for Law farming. There was thus a massive population of players trying Bis EX who normally would not have been worrying about it until they had better gear, most of which had no business attempting an EX primal on release like that.
The dismal fail parties that resulted, and the useless-joke level of the drops, turned the players who had clears off of trying to help others without bringing a full premade. And people's interest in leveling their second and third classes at the time made even those groups hard to pull together. SE, as usual, decided to bludgeon-overkill the problem by saying no more gates, rather than applying some critical thinking to what was really going on there.
T9 was also one of the easiest fights that's ever been released, requiring minimal skill at execution beyond, 'Can you memorize this mechanic for this one phase'? All problematic mechanics vanished once you passed the relevant phase, and it was a total mess of a fight with neither logical escalation or building mechanics. It was literally just like trying to entertain a child with an entire box of disjointed toys, making for a very aggravating and boring experience... and the gear is absolutely atrocious in design as well, IMHO.
Memorizing a 100% scripted fight =/= skill. Memorizing isn't a skill, it's just following a checklist. An actual skill check would be a fight that not only involved a ton of mechanics, but equally difficult mechanics, requiring the party to actually adapt to the boss' actions as they came out rather than the easily exploitable alternative.