I really DO hope Alexander's story steps up, but I don't think it can top Coil's.

[Phireblast]

This post is chock full of spoilers. Avoid at your own discretion. tl;dr on the bottom

The major contributing factor with Coil is that it tied in with the game's main story pretty well. Let's have a bullet point summary of that along with 1.0/2.0's story. Since i'm an idiot who can't find bullet points with this forum's markup, I'll be using hyphens instead.:

-You defeated the villain of 1.0, but that wasn't really enough to stop the world from ending
-You're forced to watch in shame for a week or two the world end right before your eyes
-Right before Bahamut destroys the servers for a few years, Louisiox pulls a Samurai Jack by tearing open a portal in time, flinging you into the future, where Yoshi-P's evil producing is law.
-You don't know what the hell happened, but you continue adventuring anyway since that's all you can do.
-Things happened such as refighting old enemies such as the primals which all led up to you challenging the Garleans(and winning) again.

Now where Coil comes in.

-Alphonse(i hate spelling his name, so i'm calling him this)'s irrelevant twin sister along with the outdated language Arcanist report to you about a lead with the aftermath of 5 years ago
-Eventually you stumble upon an Allagan structure underground with a letmotif of the main theme playing in all variations of its music, which gives the vibe of a real final dungeon even though it's really hard to pinpoint where Coil's story happened if it were part of the MSQ
-A good amount of the challenges you faced were memorable such as fighting its defense systems, or fighting Meracydian trash on the fucking Right claw of Bahamut, or fighting an empowered version of the final boss from 1.0(kinda)
-You finally reach Bahamut, but there's a twist!
-The last line of defense was a primal, something that you may or may not have expected, and the Primal was Louisiox himself?!
-After you defeat it, the children say their heartfelt goodbyes to their grandfather, and all three entrusts finishing the job to you -You the player while having feels, probably thought deep down the fight was a bit too easy, but there was a reason..
-Because right after the fight, you thrown inside Bahamut for the final showdown
-Not only the main theme plays and intensifies, his attacks actually synced with the music on the final phase
-You win, you saved the world, and you kept this a secret between the siblings since you didn't want to cause a panic making you a hardcore unsung hero.

Okay, so it's not a summary. Now so far with Alexander:

-Suddenly at the end of 3.0's main story, Alexander's appearance is shoved into canon despite it being a raid thing
-It was all the doing of the cheese masterminds!
-Aura mch who does nothing to help you in combat touches her scar reminder her about a lost loved one

I understand this is only the first part of the story, but with how they set things up, could they really make Alexander memorable when it looks like it might turn into a love story with slapstick villains? The entire first wing of the raid didn't have memorable encounters or let alone any that made sense story wise outside of A2. Are the Oppressor and Manipulator just glorified defense mechanisms with no purposes? What the HELL is the Living Liquid?

One thing coil did was further expand on its story a bit more between the turns while indirectly explaining encounters(dalamud spawns, allagan experiments). Correct me if i'm wrong here, but Alexander did poorly of that so far except maybe around the end. I do admit that with Coil being fueled by 1.0's story helped a bit, but as someone who never bothered looking into 1.0's story extensively before finishing coil, I don't think you even need to previously experience it to enjoy it.



tldr: Coil was good because things actually made sense and was memorable. Alexander did not do that, but I hope it does.

[Gale_Buckhannah]

I don't think Alexander can or is even intended to match what BCoB was/is. But that's okay, one thing we can be sure of is that eventually something else WILL be added to match or surpass that standard. SE has a large amount of lore and FF games to draw from.

In particular I'm still waiting for more info on the Warring Triad. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've gone to Azys Lla and flown up to appreciate the Statues. I can only hope that however they are implemented it's as awesome as it SHOULD be (right FF6 fans? XD).

But yes, there was a lot of story woven into BCoB which made it so amazing. Alexander has not been so intense thus far... but we'll see, maybe it will yet surprise us...

[Makado]

I play FFs mainly because of their story. I also like MMOs so FF14 has been doing well for me. But I agree with you. And one thing I liked about coil was seeing the new part of the story motivated me to beat coil, now you see it in the easy mode gear up raid and savage just kind of made me say "meh to many instant wipes why put in a ton of work for nothing new or interesting."

[Kenji1134]

One thing I could see happening is that since Alex has a Story Mode (unlike Coil), it may be woven into the MSQ in a way.

Right now we have a bunch of goblins who woke up a massive and aether hungry primal and have no clue on how to control him.
Not all that far from here, we have the Garleans, who hate primals and this is a perfect example of something that they would want to eliminate.
We also have the Warrior Triad, who appear to be "frozen" lets say... Perhaps the reason those statues are on the Garlean mothership is because they are the new "Ultima Weapon" plan. Something that can overpower primals and drain them of their aether.

Alexander is effectively uncontrolled and drawing in aether, the Warring Triad needs aether to resurrect, and the Garleans believe they can use them as a tool to conquer Eorzea.
So what's stopping the Garleans from attacking Alexander with their mothership, using the latent power of the Warring Triad to drain Alexander's power, which will in turn awaken the Triad who will immediately rip the Garleans a new one, take over the now weakened Alexander, and form a much more interesting dungeon...

Picture it, 3 aetheric powerhouses fighting over control of a living fortress that serves as a shelter and source of energy... And we just so happen to be tasked with stopping them.

That'd be kinda fun.

[Dhex]

Alexander's storyline is a train wreck.
We see and experience no immediate threat from Alexander but we're force fed lengthy exposition about how Alexander is dangerous and draining the aether from the land BE SCARED OOGAHBOOGAH.
We're not treated to any deeper discovery or mystery by travelling deeper into Alexander.
Our guide is an annoying single-faceted forced character that has no involvement in the raid or story beyond "Hey look! A throw away character to explain the plot!" - all I can do is think she'll be going the way of G'Raha Tia & Moenbryda.

No emotional attachment at all. No invested interest.

Blegh.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

Coil's story wasn't that amazing either except for the plot twist at turn 12. People wanted story mode, well you got it. all the meh of it. It's just a little side arc, it's not the main plot. It's not going to be any more or less amazing then void arks story

[kuma_aus]

-Suddenly at the end of 3.0's main story, Alexander's appearance is shoved into canon despite it being a raid thing

To be fair, Alexander was introduced in the story much how Binding Coil was. Binding coil is just an optional raid but at the end of 2.0 when everyone is celebrating your victory against the Garleans, everyone hears a massive roar of a Primal. We all know who that primal was now, but the exact same thing happened with Alexander except that we actually see what caused a commotion since Alexander is quite easy to find.

I'm not sure how Alexander's story will be like really. Right arm didn't end on any cliff hangers, didn't show us that the story can get that deep unless all this codex talk is foreshadowing of something amazing. I think the story of Alexander will just be slightly above average with a good explanation of the nature of primals that we didn't get to know or understand before (cause like wtf, you can now pray for a building and it will appear if you have enough crystals? Can you Shiva transform into a building? Maybe the next villian will Shiva transform into the Eiffel Tower).

[DragonSlayer45]

Yeah, I agree. Even in comparison to First Coil, there was still some amount of urgency and seriousness to why we were down there. There wasn't much story in First Coil, true, but Turn 5 took place on the hand of Bahamut himself. At the end, you find that Bahamut is actually regenerating and we can't let that happen unless we want him to unleash another Calamity upon Eorzea. By the end, you have experienced and learned so much to the point that it made you question if Bahamut really was the bad guy.

In Alexander, you... team up with Mide with the scar of the mysterious and dark past to... shut down Alexander, because he's sucking aether from the land? How is this any different than any other regular primal story? Meanwhile, the goblins are still being portrayed as comic-relief characters instead of a legitimate threat that needs to be taken care of.

Alexander's story hasn't done much to grab my attention so far, and I too am hoping it picks up with the subsequent raid patches. It probably won't one-up Coil, but trying to match its sense of urgency would be nice.

[RyuRoots]

Alexander's storyline is a train wreck.
We see and experience no immediate threat from Alexander but we're force fed lengthy exposition about how Alexander is dangerous and draining the aether from the land BE SCARED OOGAHBOOGAH.
We're not treated to any deeper discovery or mystery by travelling deeper into Alexander.
Our guide is an annoying single-faceted forced character that has no involvement in the raid or story beyond "Hey look! A throw away character to explain the plot!" - all I can do is think she'll be going the way of G'Raha Tia & Moenbryda.

No emotional attachment at all. No invested interest.

Blegh.

So a character you don't instantly know everything about is one-dimensional? We're not really supposed to know much about Mide yet beyond glimpses, and they're obviously setting her up for future Alexander patches. I also can't fathom the complete and utter lack of joy and imagination it must take to gain absolutely nothing from exploring Alexander itself. THAT is the discovery within it, and again, it seemed pretty obvious. As for the setup about the raid being "force-fed"...I suppose if you don't see a bunch of explosions your brain can't wrap itself around a concept as a threat? Eeesh. I'd hate to see you try to read a novel.

[Marxam]

Coil was relevant to 2.0's story. It was a closure of 1.0 with some relation to the future of 2.0 and Alphinaud and Alliase played a major role in both. It also has some good character development and some of the best raid mechanics in a fight so far. Imo SCOB was the most balanced in terms of raid difficulty, gear progression, and story. Pushing phases and pausing for phases originated from this turn. Not to mention its the only turn where mechanics were so hard and punishing it was nerfed to the ground.

Alexander is just a side story with no relation (at least for now) to the main story outside of just being another primal that we need to take down. The goblins and Illuminati aren''t helping the story either and I find them annoying (for now). This is one of the reasons I stopped raiding after AS dropped. I like my story and dyeable gear is not enough incentive for me to work around a raid schedule again.