Unpopular suggestion: Make raiding (great) rewarding again.

[Warlyx]

Make raiding FUN.

and then who cares about titles , gear or anything.....

[Vantol]

and then who cares about titles , gear or anything.....

It cannot be made fun because battle system. This game has the most blank and mind-numbing battle system I have seen in many many years of my gaming. Also stats. That's why it is viewed by players as obstacle that you must overcome to get reward. The havier content relies on battle the more unfun this content is. Raiding is 100% battle orientiered. So until devs decide to redo core mechanics of this game, it can't be made fun by itself. The only interest is what you get by going through this suffering.

[Zojha]

Before some weird people rush in yelling at me that the challenging experience itself should be reward - Ok, pick a random dungeon of your choice that doesn't give any rewards and run it 3 hours a day, 4 times a week for atleast 2 months, then return and we can talk, minimal itemlevel of course so you can get a challenging experience.

Translation: Raiding sucks.
More news at eleven.

I just don't get why you go from this to:"It needs more rewards" rather than "SE should reduce raids even further/change raids". You're describing the raiding experience as a terrible chore that nobody in their right mind would willingly put up with here and yet you want to keep it? Even incentivize it? Seriously?
"It sucks, change it" should be the message, not "It sucks, please pay me more to endure it".

[FeliAiko]

So at what point during this game's raiding tiers did you feel SE had it right with their reward system, that you feel has since been lost? Because a lot of the elements across all tiers have been the same.

- Tome and Raid gear have always been equal ilvls to each other
- Raid weapon has always been +5 ilvls above the Tome one (exception was Gordias, and Binding Coil before they changed it)
- Titles per boss was only exclusive to Savage Second Coil (which currently remains a one-off concept). Yes T13 gave you a title, but I view that as a reward for clearing the whole Coil series (since you needed to clear T5 and T9 respectively in order to access Final Coil). There's a chance clearing all Alex tiers will give a similar reward.

Only elements that weren't present in ARR are the token system (which I recall many asking for), as well as the gear being dyeable (a feature people wanted with the Savage Coil gear).

[aesteval]

...the ex primal requires an ilvl that only raiders will have (until 3-4 weeks when the tomes catch up). This way, there's some exclusivity and a challenging boss that only raiders will be able to access for a while...This also comes with the added bonus of there being learning parties for the ex primal content for a longer period of time because people will be getting the gear for the fight over a longer period of time. Right now, anything after the first couple weeks is farm, first wipe = kick.

So you want to timelock what is considered easier content behind clearing harder content? That seems backwards. And any extension of a learning parties is facetious given the first part of that window being locked for a majority of the player population who wouldn't be eligible to participate. The normal learning window would still be only a week, just a month later. This doesn't solve any problem for anybody.

[Vantol]

So at what point during this game's raiding tiers did you feel SE had it right with their reward system, that you feel has since been lost?

At point when Yoshida told us, that "2.0 is just a test", that he understands how fast ilvl raises and that it will slow down in 3.0, plus there will be horizontal progression to some degree. So i expected FCoB gear to stay highest ilvl at least till 3.4 (excluding Alex gear) and that it will be absolutely necessary for 1st Alex. I actually farmed sets for half of classes. Imagine my surprise when it got replaced in first 3.0 dungeon. This day I dropped raiding in instant and still have not a single desire coming back.

P.S. And titles got irrelevant with this unsynch thing - no one excpeted that too. But that's another problem.

[StrejdaTom]

So at what point during this game's raiding tiers did you feel SE had it right with their reward system, that you feel has since been lost?

I think that every long time raider's answer would be T1-12. But I am no selfish person, I understand that casual people want to enjoy "raiding" too, story too, etc.
I just want to return to the T1-12 as close as possible and feel atleast a bit like a special snowflake!

I know we did't have mounts and titles (except savage), but we won't get exclusive story too, so I am improvising here.

[zosia]

So at what point during this game's raiding tiers did you feel SE had it right with their reward system, that you feel has since been lost? Because a lot of the elements across all tiers have been the same.

- Tome and Raid gear have always been equal ilvls to each other
- Raid weapon has always been +5 ilvls above the Tome one (exception was Gordias, and Binding Coil before they changed it)
- Titles per boss was only exclusive to Savage Second Coil (which currently remains a one-off concept). Yes T13 gave you a title, but I view that as a reward for clearing the whole Coil series (since you needed to clear T5 and T9 respectively in order to access Final Coil). There's a chance clearing all Alex tiers will give a similar reward.

Only elements that weren't present in ARR are the token system (which I recall many asking for), as well as the gear being dyeable (a feature people wanted with the Savage Coil gear).

This is not a debate about what once was. This is a suggestion thread that the current raiding meta is poorly rewarded and that it should be fixed.

I agree with the OP. Raiding gear should have distinct models from normal gear, not just be dyable. All savage gear should be at ilvl 245 (or higher), not just the weapon. There should be a cosmetic reward off of each boss.

Savage Cosmetic Rewards:
1st boss should have a minion
2nd boss should have a title
3rd boss should have furniture drops and crafting mats (these mats could make BoE raiding gear)
4th boss should drop a mount

Savage Gear Rewards:
Distinct gear look from normal mode
Special gear effects, like wisp animations or glowing edges.
A higher ilvl than vendor gear, ilvl245 imo
Progress can be made on you relic via raiding again.


Those rewards should be put in every new savage tier. Those are all pretty standard raid rewards that are seen in every other game. There is absolutely no reason not to have this type of structure in this game.

[loreleidiangelo]

I don't think it's possible to make raiding in this game "great" again for me. I'll either try to start a group up in Legion or just play both WoW and XIV casually. The reward structure has nothing to do with it - XIV's raid issues are almost too numerous for me to list. Inflexible difficulties, inflexible group sizes, insta-gib cheese mechanics with no room for adaptation if someone screws up, corridors and circular arenas out the wazoo, poor buildup to the raid conflict within the game's own narrative, and in Alexander's case, some of the worst raid boss music I have ever had the misfortune of hearing.

Don't get me wrong, the reward structure is also crap, but I agree with Zojha when he/she says that rather than focusing on a bigger carrot, we should be reducing the size of the stick.

[FeliAiko]

This is not a debate about what once was. This is a suggestion thread that the current raiding meta is poorly rewarded and that it should be fixed.

The subject title is "make raiding rewarding AGAIN", which implies that it was once this way but isn't anymore for whatever reason. Plus the OP hardly suggested anything substantial, but what appears to be simple glamour-related tweaks.