I'm sick and tired of 8 man raids just being glorified trials...

[RayneBoemir]

I enjoy trash mobs but they have to make them interesting all trash is forgettable.

[VargasVermillion]

There are examples of trash done well, just take something like labyrinth of the ancients for example, you aren't just fighting trash but also working around the environment trying to kill you, like with the rising poison pulls or the atmos sections, dungeons like the quitana ravel, aurum vale and neverreap having some kind of stage hazard, you could also have enemies with actual gimmicks to them that don't just do autoattacks, enemies like minotaurs/cyclops and chimeras are some examples.

[DRKoftheAzure]

On farm, yes trash can be a non-factor and just having a hard mode where it's just bosses that spam their abilities more frequently is a good balance to farming since it would have the same rewards as normal mode, since you would need to clear the normal mode first, but this does create it's own balancing problem if Normal and Hard modes do not share the weekly lockouts.


And yes I do think that trash mobs do need to be interesting by having mechanics that are related to the boss that you will be fighting. Even fighting the trash around stage hazards is also interesting by itself.


And since Savage mode is basically for the more hardcore players that want the best loot they already don't need to share weekly lockouts because Savage mode already drops the best gear in the game.

[Kaitoo]

i mean op has point
doesnt matter if you dont like corridors and trash. There is 0 gameplay or design difference what current entitles a trial and a raid. its almost like an placebo, lol.
I guess its for marketing reason so it doesnt look like pittifull in direct comprassion

[Hasrat]

Nah. Taken individually, sure, the sections are effectively trials. But you could also view it as the first few are the trash leading up to the fight of that particular area. Or it's a series of boss fights (trials) with a story tying them together.

Maybe instead of changing the terminology, change your expectations. Just because "raid" in some other game means something different doesn't mean it's set in stone and the same definition must be applied to all other games using the term.

Omega was kinda nice in that it had you fight the trash pack once in a solo duty to get to the bosses.

[Shurrikhan]

I never understood the appeal of trash in raids - fighting trash certainly isn't interesting and we're doing this enough in dungeons.

Fighting poorly made non-boss enemies makes for trash content.

Fighting interesting encounters that rely on large compositions of enemies arranged in interesting ways and with interesting synergies makes for fun content.

There's nothing about having a single central enemy that makes a fight inherently more interesting than literally anything and everything else.

In either case, though, skipping trash altogether denies other aspects as well, such as the ability to flesh out the aesthetic of the setting of a raid. You know, anything and everything outside of the mere circles or rectangles that pass for raid areas in XIV?

[Vidu]

Fighting poorly made non-boss enemies makes for trash content.

Fighting interesting encounters that rely on large compositions of enemies arranged in interesting ways and with interesting synergies makes for fun content.

There's nothing about having a single central enemy that makes a fight inherently more interesting than literally anything and everything else.

In either case, though, skipping trash altogether denies other aspects as well, such as the ability to flesh out the aesthetic of the setting of a raid. You know, anything and everything outside of the mere circles or rectangles that pass for raid areas in XIV?

I get what you mean and I liked what they did in HW and SB: Putting those areas either only into the NM or into solo-duties while unlocking the NM, but leaving them at least out of Savage.

Its not that I dont enjoy the fleshing out of the setting and the places, but in the long run the trash fights hurt more than they add - I think I can explain this best using T10: The first few times we went in and actually fought our way through the maze; then we learned that you can sneak around the enemies and we messed around with that for a while... and then we only sent our ninja in who did the sneaking.
My point is: trash-mobs and paths to walk might add something to the atmosphere (if they fit into the concept/atmosphere of the whole "raid") and they might be enjoyable the first few times (I really loved the one in Alexander where you jump on those sliding... things and suddenly see the whole city down below), but once you do the content over and over (and lets not kid ourselves: many people will do that) they become more of a hinderance and less of a storytelling device.

What I could imagine are either:
- bossfights that are designed like trashfights (T4, A6, second boss of Amarout)
- solo-duties for the fleshing out (maybe with the option to return?)
- trash-mobs that present both a challenge and a reward - maybe one that only appears under certain conditions, like stunning an enemy or killing certain mobs fast enough before they can destroy a chest.

My current problem is that in the long run trash-mobs take away more enjoyment than they add (at least for me).

[Shurrikhan]

What I could imagine are either:
- bossfights that are designed like trashfights (T4, A6, second boss of Amarout)
- solo-duties for the fleshing out (maybe with the option to return?)
- trash-mobs that present both a challenge and a reward - maybe one that only appears under certain conditions, like stunning an enemy or killing certain mobs fast enough before they can destroy a chest.

My current problem is that in the long run trash-mobs take away more enjoyment than they add (at least for me).

Admittedly, examples of "trash" done right are few and far between in MMOs. I can only think of a dozen or so examples across all of WoW, Rift, B&S, and GW2. But, in the rare event they were done really well, they were sometimes more entertaining than even the boss fights surrounding them. What each had in common, additionally, was usually brevity in individual engagements but a connected overall challenge and both short-term and long-term danger (such as via a timer before a mini-boss could enrage and wipe the raid but with multiple elite mob packs guarding said mini-boss or eventually overwhelming numbers against which one must balance both short-term safety and an ending objective or means of curtailing enemy reinforcements). This effectively turned the "trash" into a mini-boss encounter unlike any we get to see in the actual boss fights, but no less challenging, especially given how novel they were -- usually fairly short compared to a full, challenging boss fight, but no less sweat upon completion.

[Canadane]

More raids need to be like baldesion arsenal.

[yukiiyuki]

Completely agree, we need actual raids, with big zones to explore, some jump puzzles and traps. Something, that might take preparation before going there, raid that will take at least 2 hours of your life. Im playing since hw and seeing big dungeons aka alliance raids and just trials on flying discs in nowhere aka 8 ppl raids.