Why do the bosses/raids in this game feel so lifeless?

[Nhadaly]

I have always thought about this, but why do the raids in this game feel so lifeless?

They just feel like a whole bunch of mechanics thrown together, i dont care about what im facing or who, none of the "epic" feel is there, i see WoW where stuff like the lich king and ragnaros felt so epic and awesome, from the voice acting to the feel, the mechanics made sense for the boss and the lore.

In this game none of that rings for me, ive been told that that feeling of epic was there for coils but it diminished quickly over time.

I just wish i could care more and feel more invested in what im spending hours each week fighting and trying to beat.

Maybe adding voice acting to all the bosses will help(but not like Suzaku please, more like Susano), or interwoving the bosses into the story? I dont know, i cant put my mind as to where the problem of "the bosses feel lifeless" is.

But as a raider that also cares a lot about the story each raid feels dissapointing feel and story-wise, the mechanics are good but it just feels like its just....there.

[Nanospartan]

Not sure, as someone who has completed Uldir heroic in WoW I can tell you its not better. Me and 2 other friends just jumped ship from WoW to FFXIV 1 week ago because of how bad it is over there. There is videos of a Tank soloing one of the newest raid bosses. The Lore doesn't make since either, its nice but everything is in the air lore wise and it seems like what you want or predict just wont happen. I would rather have a lack of interaction with bosses when it comes to voice acting or old day WoW mechanics then be complete let down or confused as to why in the world this crap is happening. Just my 2 cents.

[BillyKaplan]

interwoving the bosses into the story?

They do, though...?

[LauraAdalena]

I don’t see this as an issue. Especially since I don’t entirely get what you mean by “lifeless.” That being said, if you’re talking about just Omega I’d make a joke that that’s the point if you paid attention to the story (not like the story is amazing anyway.) Given the one example you did give, I’m going to assume it could be difficulty. I’m not entirely sure. That being said, I also don’t have any experience at all in WoW so the comparison doesn’t really work for me.

[Vidu]

I cant say that I share this problem, so your question might aswell be "Why do the bosses feel lifeless to me?"

While I agree on the Suzaku voice acting - I dont think the voice was well picked, but I also dont think the lines or the whole story were... seriously? It had to be a stupid lovestory thrown in there? - I dont agree on your overall notion.
So I would suspect a more personal reason why this isnt touching you - which is okay! Maybe all you can see is a bunch of mechanics there, but what I'm seeing are mechanics that are indeed related to a general theme of the boss in question - or that are refrences towards older appearances of the boss in question.

I dont know... to me this seems more like you probably caring more about the Warcraft than the FF-franchise, maybe? So you feel stronger about seeing bosses from those games than FF?
Or maybe you've farmed your heart out on certain fights? I can tell you that I stopped caring about the tragic story behind some primals after the 50th run of my tragic story of "no dog for you".

[Vrankyl]

Sure most of the bosses may not have voice acting beyond various ex trials but I wouldn't call them lifeless because of that. In fact for the most part abilities fit the bosses' themes very well, and aside from the Omega tiers and HM dungeons there is a lot of story going on as to why they are there and what they are doing. Hell one perfect example of an ability tied to a story piece is the ability Ahk Morn. This boss ability is used only by dragon bosses, all of whom either are or are tied to Midgardsomr and the First Brood. Bahamut, Nidhogg, and Midgardsomr are self explanatory. In the case of Shinyruu this was a primal born from the eyes of Nidhogg to be a calamity worse than Bahamut, so of course it is going to naturally have the First Brood's trade mark ability Ahk Morn. There are other examples and some not reused, such as Alexander Prime's time stop ability based on the fact that he is a primal capable of controlling time. So I'm not really seeing what you are getting at.

[Bright-Flower]

For me there are really only two things WoW tends to win out on.

1. Feeling like an enemy stronghold. Parts of Coil and Alex are beautiful, and given the loot reward structure it's nice that the floors are all separate so you don't have to say repeat Chaos every time you want to try and get a spring from O11. But it comes at the cost of making the raids feel like cohesive places. Even the Alliance raids, while pretty, suffer from hallway syndrome. Granted a lot of WoW dungeons and raids do too, but FF XIV will probably never get the same kind of feel that assaulting Ulduar, Antorus, Kharazhan or Black Temple did.

2. Voice acting. FF XIV doesn't tend to put voice acting into raids, with the last bosses of the Ivalice raids seeming to be the exceptions.

In terms of fights WoW wins in terms of quanitity but I don't think WoW beats FF XIV in quality of raid fights. Though I haven't raided WoW in a couple expansions now and I don't do savage in fF XIV so my perspective is limited at best there.

Boss fights in FF XIV feel generally more engaging for me. Partly because the game puts limits on how much you can outgear some content. You'll never smash through Mist Dragon in 30 seconds because you got a group with bis gear.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by FF XIV bosses feeling lifeless, but bosses tend to stand out more to me in FF XIV than in WOW, but again I haven't done serious content in WoW in a long time and I don't do savage in FF so limited experience for me.

[Roda]

For me, I was completely disconnected from this raid tier 'cause this is the only FF game I've ever cared about.

Everything was out of place fanservice that they didn't even bother trying to fit in with the world like every other bit of fanservice in the game. Alpha has definitely cemented my disinterest of any game with that style of chocobo with how horribly he was used in the raid's story.
All the primals/summons, Pheonix, Bahamut, Odin, Alexander and his pieces, Thordan and co, Cid, Biggs and Wedge, Yojimbo, they all have reasons to exist in Hydaelyn. This expansion though, every boss killed up until Omega was thematically pointless. They were fun fights, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't spare a single solitary care for any of the characters because they just never had any business existing in ffxiv's story until they were presented (except for maybe o3 and o11, but since the reason for fighting them is just Omega going "i wanna see you do the fight at them" I'm still not invested in actually fighting the monsters).

I'm REALLY hoping that for the next expansion they focus on showing us how great XIV and its setting/story is instead of riding on the coat tails of the previous games. XIV is better than that, and SB will forever be a disappointment for me because they decided to forgo building and exploring their own world in lieu of saying "hey! remember this guy??!"

[SenorPatty]

I'm not exactly sure how you can make bosses more alive than they already are. Maybe you problem runs deeper than the bosses? Maybe it's something you already know intrinsically but you don't want to admit?

[Hazama999]

As someone mentioned above, FFXIV raids lack a certain sense of place, and that's really the only issue I have with them. The Omega series was nothing more than a series of trials and, of course, the story to go with them was contrived to make them so. To me, the 24-man raids feel more like raids than the 8-man raids. The feeling of traversal, of breaking through a location and exploring it, is largely absent from this game.