Players since 2.0, how do you feel the raiding community compares now?

[KaldeaSahaline]

I haven't raided every tier, as I tend to go back and forth between this game and WoW depending on expansion/patch, but I do have extensive raid experience in this game and in other MMO's as well.

There are specific elements when discussing raids and the community that need to be identified up front that most people don't realize:

Cross world PF and external tools like ACT, FFLogs, & Discord are directly responsible for more people raiding than ever before and at a much higher level than they were previously.

What this point demonstrates is that things that used to be a challenge become less so over time. You have a larger pool of players who have on average more skill and they are armed with infinitely more information that they've EVER had previously.

With that elephant out of the way, now we can discuss encounter design.

I definitely believe that encounters are easier now than they were before. Most fights are so scripted in how you surpass each phase via generally only one correct solution. I felt like older fights had more "soft enrage" styled design where you you could try different things based on gear levels etc.

For instance I felt like you had more choice in how to approach the encounter and the choice would yield different results based on gear/skill level. Now, more gear/skill just means you cut off stuff at the end of the fight by not seeing the last phase repeats, etc.

[ZXSoru]

I definitely believe that encounters are easier now than they were before. Most fights are so scripted in how you surpass each phase via generally only one correct solution.

I disagree, even during SCOB fights were heavily scripted, take T7 for example, the game has always the same mechanics order and the only variances are who gets which debuff, ie curse shriek/voice, but even adds during that fight always appear at each cardinal point. The game has been always focused on learning "Simon Says" but the way the add and implement mechanics are what I prefer in this game compared to others, just watch many of WoWs legion raid bosses and mechanics are pretty simple, but then you have byakko with its shoot em up bullets, and who knows what we will get in the future.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I disagree, even during SCOB fights were heavily scripted so there's nothing to disagree with there, take T7 for example, the game has always the same mechanics order and the only variances are who gets which debuff, ie curse shriek/voice, but even adds during that fight always appear at each cardinal point. The game has been always focused on learning "Simon Says" but the way the add and implement mechanics are what I prefer in this game compared to others, just watch many of WoWs legion raid bosses and mechanics are pretty simple, but then you have byakko with its shoot em up bullets, and who knows what we will get in the future.

Don't get triggered by the word scripted, both then and now are scripted. That wasn't what I wanted to key in on; what is important is that the scripts feel like they only allow for a singular solution whereas before I FELT that the scripts were looser allowing different solutions to the mechanics.

You could feed slimes and melee LB super slug, or caster LB them all, or feed them naturally one at a time. It changed depending on gear and skill of the group. Similar to T1 as well with feeding slimes, burning down damage etc. Stuff like tower order for T8 too. Adds were not intermissions, but actually present with bosses and were checkfails, not instawipes. Stuff like T6 bulbs spawning randomly in the room and having to adjust strats on the fly. I mean hell compare tethers in T6 to the tethers we see now lol.

I raided almost the entirety of legion. The mechanics are no more simple than the stuff I deal with in current Savage and I'm progging O8S right now, fully via pugs. For what purpose do you mention Legion raids here?

I cleared Byakko EX in a pug in 4 pulls. I figured out how to manage the falling bullets in less than 10 seconds. What exactly do you mention this specific mechanic for?