Anyone feel nostalgic for larger scale raid?

I've been a big fan of MMPoG for long time ever since Everquest comes out. WoW is the only game that I do not have experience with end game. I was too addicted to FF11 and SWTOR by then. But for every game I played, I never had MMPoG has restriction on larger scale raid.

I am getting slightly bored with FF14. I was expecting larger scale raid (not just 8 but more like 24+ man raid. Well I know there is 24 man one but we can't do it as FC and I am getting sick of troll and all the newbie wasting my time. I just don't feel like I achieve anything as a team but feel lucky I cleared with bunch of random people.

Anyone missing the old style raid with just FC members?

So in raid you can have a whole group of people who are not doing anything and getting credit for participation :p. That sounds like FATE grinding.

I don't know about the "average FC" but in my FC we could never do a 24 man Raid because we never have that many Raid players on at the times most of us play. I like the harder content being the 8 man although one day I hope they will up it to 10...I think that would be just right. 24 is just a cluster "F" and would be a nightmare...even if they are all FC members or static members. Just my thoughts.

I miss larger raid content from old school MMOs as well, they give more reasons and opportunities to run things together as an FC and aren't nearly as restrictive or as community damaging as the 8 man based content we have now.

Yes, yes I do. 100%. Maybe 24 might be a bit too much if not a lot of people are online, but 18, like in FFXI, is a sweet spot imo. Eh even if 18 ppl weren't online, there was no restriction on how many people were online at the time to do content, you just waited for them to arrive and they could join later. Of course, most of the content was either open world or instanced mini worlds/zones like Abyssea or Dynamis, not necessarily ALL linear raids with a time limit. You could complete stuff albeit a bit harder but still complete even if you didn't have a full alliance. There was more freedom and linkshells had a real purpose.

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Originally Posted by skyfox

Well I know there is 24 man one but we can't do it as FC

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You can do it as an FC. Once you've filled up the three teams, one team leader prods the other two team leaders and asks them to join an alliance party. Once you have your three parties linked, you can queue up for the 24-man dungeon and go in together =)

While I like the idea of larger more cooperative raids, that does lock quite a few of us out if you make it mandatory to have a full group going in, especially with just FC members. Right now my FC is very small, and we couldn't even form a full static from JUST FC members. The one I left to form my current one also had maybe 5-10 players that would get on consistently within a 24 hour span, (and even then not at the same time), despite having 40 or 50 members. Even in larger FCs that have hundreds of members, I find it unlikely that even half of them would be ready for raid level content, and of those, how many would be able to get on at the same time as the rest consistently enough to form a full static for your 24+ player FC raids? If they added content like what you're suggesting, then that would lock a great many players out of it just because they would rather be in smaller FCs composed of just their friends, or where they have some say in FC matters, rather than the main 2 or 3 FCs per server that have enough members to make that realistically viable. The number of players taking on raid level content is already an incredibly low percentage, and making that content accessible to only a small portion of those people is certainly not the way to go.......

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Originally Posted by Gamer3427

While I like the idea of larger more cooperative raids, that does lock quite a few of us out if you make it mandatory to have a full group going in, especially with just FC members.

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Correct me if I'm wrong -- this is my first MMO, so I only have hearsay to go by -- but with larger-scale raid teams, like 25+ raiders, since each person is responsible for a smaller percentage of the team's performance, it actually means the static is a lot less limited. Sure, the better you know how to work together, the better your team will handle the encounters, but it doesn't really matter nearly as much if you bring five BLMs, two DRG and one MCH, or if you bring an even amount of all DPS classes. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the same players all the time, as long as those replaced don't mind not 'keeping up' and are willing to find another way to get through that encounter (if it's a gate for the next place you go into) before joining in again. The core would most likely remain the same, but the rest could probably be filled from those half-serious raiders in the FC or even from PF if necessary.

More people = more problems

20+ player raids are a nightmare to organize. It's all well and good when you're just one of the participants, but those of us who have to lead the raid can tell you it's just horrible.

Heck just the pug-filled 24 mans in this game are clusterfudges, and after playing WoW I never want to lead more than an 8 man ever again.

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Originally Posted by Noxifer

Words.

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Maybe, but with as many wipes as there are in the Crystal Tower trilogy of raids, even when you go in with a full party and do your part absolutely correctly, it's scaled so that if even half the over all group isn't up to par, (with the bar obviously being pretty low for those three as is), then you will be struggling to clear it. If it's content designed around having to go in as a pre-formed group as the OP is suggesting though, then it would also be scaled around the idea of "cooperating" with the other members enough that PF members, non-raiders, or people unfamiliar with the content would begin causing issues in even small numbers.....

Not to mention the fact that trying to PF a group for anything post the first month of it being out is very difficult at times, much less if you were trying to form a full alliance with it. I actually checked the PF on my server during prime time a couple of days ago, and the only ones there were a couple of Ravana EX farms, (both with half a party's worth of members), someone using it as a "/tell and make me offer to buy item X" party, and one FATE farming group. And this was during prime time. I went into the PF with some friends a few weeks ago to try and do a Garuda EX run, during the time we normally play, (slightly later than prime time), and we sat there for about an hour with no one joining even when using tells to advertise it. Again, particularly with small groups of players such as my FC, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to get a full PF group for a pre-formed 24 player raid after all the more "hardcore" players are through with it. And even if we could, chances are it'll be the same as going into the DF anyhow in terms of players cooperating, with the only difference being that it would take longer to set up and get going.....

Then comes the issue of difficulty. Either it's as difficult as Alexander Savage and you're forced to use a full static to clear it, or it's easy and becomes as dead as the Crystal Tower trilogy is right now after the gear in it stops being relevant, but with the added restriction of being locked behind needing pre-formed alliances. Anything in the middle will make it too much trouble for 90% of the players to deal with, while making it so that the other 10% will either give up on bad PF groups, or will just be using a full static anyhow. There's no middle ground here that would make it both accessible to players outside of large free companies, and make it difficult enough that even partial statics will be needed.....

Don't get me wrong here. I'm all for larger scale content, and when I saw that there was going to be a new 24 player raid in 3.1, I was particularly excited. I'm just saying that gating more such content behind the restriction of pre-formed parties will just make it so that the majority of players at that point in the game's content can't access it in general, even using the PF. As is, there's nothing stopping players from forming statics on their own for 24 player content, aside from the players themselves, but making it mandatory for some content isn't the way to go.....

I'm sorry if I became repetitive in what I'm saying, or didn't convey my point as well as I intended. It's late here and I'm headed to bed soon, so I'll just blame the lack of sleep......

Yeah WoW suffered lately with their 20 man Mythic Raids. Back in the times of Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest and FF XI, it was far more easy to organize big raids.
Today most players are no longer interessted in planing the RL for Progress Raids and there for the amount of people aviable for Big hard Static Raids are only a few.

Currently most WoW Raider are wishing back 10 man Mythic raids instead of the 20 man of Warlords of Draenor.

I miss them and I don't know why. I remember waiting for 90 minutes sometimes for everyone to show up to Dynamis and then you raided for 3 hours. So 4:30 of raiding every 72 hours. And then Kirin back in the day being almost a 3 hour boss. Everyone dead with the pld kiting while the healer slowly rezzes the entire alliance. And to think it only took me 7 years to get those W. legs! I won't pretend I would have the patience for that sort of thing anymore but god do I miss it.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Yeah WoW suffered lately with their 20 man Mythic Raids. Back in the times of Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest and FF XI, it was far more easy to organize big raids.
Today most players are no longer interessted in planing the RL for Progress Raids and there for the amount of people aviable for Big hard Static Raids are only a few.

Currently most WoW Raider are wishing back 10 man Mythic raids instead of the 20 man of Warlords of Draenor.

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There was also Wildstar's attempt at reviving 40 mans. It didn't go particularly well.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

There was also Wildstar's attempt at reviving 40 mans. It didn't go particularly well.

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More because the content and classes were poorly designed rather than due to the size of the raids. You cannot just say "wildstar had 40 man raids and failed, therefore 40 man raids are bad", it is flawed logic.

Also, current FFXIV endgame share a lots of wildstar's one faults (namely : lots of grinds at max level, few content available, extremely hard unfun endgame in order to slow guild progression, lack of variety in class roles and purposes, ...).

the thing with larger scale raids is that they are a nightmare to organize, by raids i mean actual difficult content. like your average coil or alex savage level of difficulty. not only do you have to get 24 people on the same page for fights, but you also have to make sure all 24 are able to make it at the time you are organizing it, if one cant make it you have to find a rep IF ITS ONLY ONE OF THEM THAT CANT MAKE IT, then you got to get that rep up to speed wit how you guys do it...

basically. its an planning nightmare because you have to deal with so many more peoples schedules.

however if its anything like the the crystal tower saga, which sometimes can also be a nightmare in itself because of all the colorful types of people you get to deal with.... at a difficulty where you can just participate and get credit is as good as it gets really.

I grew up on 40-mans, and I quite enjoyed them. I'm not sure where the myth that you could fill em' with the AFK and the incompetent started - probably people who stopped at Blackwing Lair.

yes I would like to see something of greater scale. I really miss a siege type of raid. Something vast with many people. A war field that will be dangerous and will require many groups but not something like CT. A siege of a fortress with hundreds of enemies coming in waves and siege weapons along with a big boss inside it will be nice.

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Originally Posted by Kahnom

More people = more problems

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we need hard raids that involve 16 people 2 full party's. I'm tired of these 8 man short instanced stuff and having to mostly pug the other 2 party's in duty finder for the 24 man ones.

24 man raid with the difficulty of FCoB. :)
That would be soooo awesome. (no sarcasm btw)

Whenever I think of a raid, I always think back to Tower of Orthanc in LotRO... Strong difficulty progression centered on skill, weekly raid progression lock which makes you challenge the whole thing from the start each week but has specifically zoned sections you can tackle one night at a time and each section can take an hour or two with difficult trash and harder bosses. The "raids" we have currently feel more like small skirmishes to me and lack the grand scale that the term "raid" invokes in my mind.

That's the problem Malzian we have reached the point where the majority of gamers do not want hard game content but stuff they can compleat in about 4 hrs. Aren't videogames supposed to be a hobby. Isnt a hobby supposed to be challenging.

No, a hobby is supposed to provide you with entertainment, not frustration. Work provides frustration enough.

I honestly don't care for the amount of people in a raid all too much, but 8 is a weird number, should be raised to a nice 10 at least. What does upset me is knowing that we'll never have something as amazing as Ulduar, we'll never have something like ICC, we'll never have Siege of Orgrimmar or the Throne of Thunder because of the way raids are structured. I prefer raids feeling like raids, not the short little trials we have now.

Even when we get "big" 24 man raids, they're always so structured like we're entering the same place but with a different model. Why aren't they like dungeons where you're fighting adds while journeying through the raid and not in a circle room? The closest thing we have to a real raid is Castrum and Praetorium, and that kinda stucks. For example, with ST in the crystal like place with the huge staircase leading up to the final boss, they could have quite easily made that staircase not as huge and thrown some adds on there instead of the usual circle platform. We fight them while ascending the staircase so it's not just a circle room into a loading screen into another circle room as I said earlier. =l

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Originally Posted by Dererk

That's the problem Malzian we have reached the point where the majority of gamers do not want hard game content but stuff they can compleat in about 4 hrs. Aren't videogames supposed to be a hobby. Isnt a hobby supposed to be challenging.

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The problem is that with that many people the challenge turns away from beating the content to managing and keeping together that amount of people. In FFXI, which is the only game I can compare to ARR, it was manageable for things like Dynamis because content over there was absurdly easy compared to the endgame we have here. It was somewhat good as it allowed you to be more social and in runs you'd see a lot of activity in LS chat and people generally having a better time than the wipefest that becomes endgame progression in this game. It was more social and community engaging, sure, but those large raids were in no way more challenging than most trials or the current endgame raid in this game.

Larger raids would be awesome, the funnest bosses are always in the larger raids, they all have the interesting mechanics. Be nice to see some unscripted ones. My favorite boss in game right now is probably angra mainyu. Only problem is that they become trivially easy due to this games ilvl gear that can overpower you or underpower you instead of just enhance you or allow you to perform better. Thats another topic though.

Large scale raids sounds awesome until you actually have to do them.

When done properly it can be really awesome. But you also run into the issue where only a core set of people were actually needed to preform, the rest were just warm bodies that could click a button.

Another issue (which is more an issue with design) is that if you for whatever reason don't have the numbers to actually do the content, you simply aren't going to get it done. Back in the glorious TBC days, my guild could never get out of Karazhan because to do so we needed to gear 25 people, and whenever we geared more than our core 5-6 people, they would instantly jump ship to an established raid guild leaving us to gear another new guy. I'm sure other people enjoyed feeding members to better guilds, but I found the trial exhausting.

That said, if they did have larger scale raids in this game, I would not be adverse to it, so long as it isn't locking me out of crap to do. And no, they can't add it into a Duty Finder type situation because if you throw 40+ random people into anything that requires actual coordination, you are in for a bad time.

The problem with large scale raids is that only a handful of guilds per server have the resources and number of competent players to participate in such activities. This leads to 1-4 guilds monopolizing cream of the crop players while leaving out everyone else, this always happened in the time i played WoW, L2, and ffxi.

In this age of the MMORPG genre EVERYONE wants to raid, small group raid design allows more players to get in on the action.

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Originally Posted by skyfox

I've been a big fan of MMPoG for long time ever since Everquest comes out. WoW is the only game that I do not have experience with end game. I was too addicted to FF11 and SWTOR by then. But for every game I played, I never had MMPoG has restriction on larger scale raid.

I am getting slightly bored with FF14. I was expecting larger scale raid (not just 8 but more like 24+ man raid. Well I know there is 24 man one but we can't do it as FC and I am getting sick of troll and all the newbie wasting my time. I just don't feel like I achieve anything as a team but feel lucky I cleared with bunch of random people.

Anyone missing the old style raid with just FC members?

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Aren't they bringing this back with Airships? My bar is set pretty low right now to avoid another disappointment but we could be getting Sky-esque raids in 3.1. You will get 4, 8, and 24 man NMs from what I heard.

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Originally Posted by Moonleg

No, a hobby is supposed to provide you with entertainment, not frustration. Work provides frustration enough.

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That's ridiculous. Any difficult video game can be frustrating while also being entertaining. Beating the challenge is what gives the entertainment. If that was the case the NES would have been the biggest failure and no one would buy games like Ninja Gaiden, Dark Souls, or have a "Hard" difficulty.

Large scale raids aren't really fun to me. Scheduling them is difficult and coordinating is a chore. This is coming from someone who has raided in most of the big MMORPGs that had them. FFXIV's casual 24 man raid is even more pointless and I question why it even exists. Especially once the content becomes old and you can't even run it for glamour because there aren't enough people registering for it.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Aren't they bringing this back with Airships? My bar is set pretty low right now to avoid another disappointment but we could be getting Sky-esque raids in 3.1.

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No one but the developers really know, but in the recent Duty Commenced they gave fly through the area and and it really doesn't look comparable to raids in WoW or whatever. It's just a bunch of islands surrounding a giant crystal thing, it's obviously going to be more and we'll find out at the FATE event, but that's what we've been given.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

No one but the developers really know, but in the recent Duty Commenced they gave fly through the area and and it really doesn't look comparable to raids in WoW or whatever. It's just a bunch of islands surrounding a giant crystal thing, it's obviously going to be more and we'll find out at the FATE event, but that's what we've been given.

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Well, it's comparable to NMs from FFXI not a raid like WoW. So a big monster that you have to take down vs going through a giant raid dungeon. This is assuming that is what they are going for.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Well, it's comparable to NMs from FFXI not a raid like WoW. So a big monster that you have to take down vs going through a giant raid dungeon. This is assuming that is what they are going for.

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I've heard NMs are a joke but HNMs are difficult and actually require coordination or you wipe, if it's filled with HMN-like monsters I'll be a happy camper but unfortunately I'm leaning on they're going to use it as a replacement/alternative for Hunts. What I mean is a concentrated area with hunts that spawn constantly and relatively close to each other, where you don't get yelled at for pulling early and whatnot. That sounds great, if it were hunts, but I'm sure most of us don't want that. Something on par with Alexander normal in difficulty maybe, I'd say EX primals but that's wholly unrealistic.

I'll refrain from making any more pessimistic comments until we learn about how it actually works though. I really hope I'm wrong. Random nitpick though, I'm disappointed we're going to be flying around with flying mounts instead of airships, I thought it would be fun piloting an airship. :(

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Originally Posted by Mikedizzy

I don't know about the "average FC" but in my FC we could never do a 24 man Raid because we never have that many Raid players on at the times most of us play. I like the harder content being the 8 man although one day I hope they will up it to 10...I think that would be just right. 24 is just a cluster "F" and would be a nightmare...even if they are all FC members or static members. Just my thoughts.

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Pretty much this.

In fact, we tried to get an 8 player static started. There's an incredibly vocal "raid hater" segment here.

I would like them to dabble a bit with the idea of (challenging) 16-man content to see how the community responds to it. The more they drift away from this "8 people, no more, no less" shtick, the more faith I'll have again in the social aspect/1st "M" of this "MMORPG".

When they release Airship Explorations that can accommodate up to 24 people; we'll see just how well things go and if it turns out to be any sort of "cluster 'F' and "scheduling nightmare" for people who do have the numbers or decide to, I dunno, recruit for a FC, or even a Linkshell (I know, right? crazy) with this specific content in mind.