Can it still be called a "raid" anymore?

[Bright-Flower]

It's a mixed bag for me.

When I ran through Alex at the end of HW, I did appreciate the scenery and atmosphere provided by the lead ins to fights and not just being plopped into a boss arena. It was a really cool place.

On the other hand... when I think about fighting Omega 8 times in a row trying to get a spring to drop for me, and I imagine putting 5 or 10 minutes of trash in front of that boss EVERY TIME I want to try again for my weekly loot...I feel like that it would wear out its welcome VERY quickly. It's all fine and dandy in say WoW where you're expecte to clear a boss no more than once per difficulty in a week, but here where you may have to farm over and over and over to get the piece you're after....that time adds up.

On the other hand it is a bit odd that the only thing really separating raids from trials now though is the way loot/reward structure, and raids coming in sets of 4 while trials are standalone.

Honestly I'm not sure why the game has extreme and savage as terms for the 'hard mode' of content instead of using one or the other for both.

[Stanelis]

It's a mixed bag for me.

When I ran through Alex at the end of HW, I did appreciate the scenery and atmosphere provided by the lead ins to fights and not just being plopped into a boss arena. It was a really cool place.

On the other hand... when I think about fighting Omega 8 times in a row trying to get a spring to drop for me, and I imagine putting 5 or 10 minutes of trash in front of that boss EVERY TIME I want to try again for my weekly loot...I feel like that it would wear out its welcome VERY quickly. It's all fine and dandy in say WoW where you're expecte to clear a boss no more than once per difficulty in a week, but here where you may have to farm over and over and over to get the piece you're after....that time adds up.

On the other hand it is a bit odd that the only thing really separating raids from trials now though is the way loot/reward structure, and raids coming in sets of 4 while trials are standalone.

Honestly I'm not sure why the game has extreme and savage as terms for the 'hard mode' of content instead of using one or the other for both.

Then just design the content so people don't have to run a single floor N times each week ?

[Bright-Flower]

Sure it was a tournament arc but they could have had more. Like for example on O5 imagine if we fought through a few train cars before fighting the train itself. Or 06 fighting through the haunted mansion. They could in theory have still had places to fight through to get to the boss. IN practice however...

Part of the issue though is that unlike Coils and Alex, there was no unifying theme to share assets between when it comes to the area we're in. Sure, 07 and 08 are both in Kefka's Tower, but the phantom train and chardanook are in entirely unralted locations. So it may have been more intensive to have environments to see before the actual boss fights compared to Coil and Alex where it was all in the same location, with a unifying aesthetic and reusable assets. So in Omega it may not have been feasible to do this for all the different unconnected environments. tournament arc or no.

Then just design the content so people don't have to run a single floor N times each week ?

They could but I doubt SE will.

The raids are in an odd spot. They don't want people to be able to farm them in a week and be done with them, so they have one piece per fight per week per character. But they don't want it to be one and done either, so they don't guarantee you a drop so that you'll have to run it more than once.

Personally i wish each fight dropped a unique item that could then be traded for a part that would normally drop from that fight. IE a 'Alphascape McGuffin 1' could be exchanged for a bolt, chain or petal. 'Alphascape McGfifin 2' would be used on bolts, petals or lens etc.

But I'm not expecting SE to shake things up with the loot system since it wasn't really changed from HW to SB, but we'll see. Personally though I would like it if they had more to the raids but also let them be one and done per character per week.