I hope the Nier raids aren't a sign of the future

[Stepjam]

Why are you capitalizing every word?

[AphraelAmarantha]

snip

Yeah this part is the hardest part for me in that whole raid because it just takes me way too long to figure out where the safe spot is. And most of the time I still have to just follow everyone else otherwise I’ll be too late. Also, what do you mean by shift? I’m not understanding you on that.

[Gula]

I feel Nier being an alliance raid is a little out of place. I don't mind small events like the Yo-Kai Watch stuff or Rathalos fight, but for larger things like alliance raids should be strictly Final Fantasy.

Why? It's limiting. Imagine Thearhythm without other SE titles as musical options despite being well within property rights. It's good content, and I like having the orchestrations playing in my estates.

https://youtu.be/hD-PfAmuPC0

[MicahZerrshia]

If they merged the nier raids into ffxiv as smoothly as they did the ivalice ones it would have been no problem. But the fact that these robots and these large piles of spaceship debris is just scattered over the first with no one at all knowing about it, is a stretch. I know some ppl want to say it was due to airships not being able to fly high enough or because it was buried, but airships do fly high enough, that's why one of the options to get to mount gulg, which is definately high enough to fly over the mountains and see what was there, was an airship and their were already mines leading right up to the bunker, which is under open sky, so the discovery was definitely nothing new. Let's also look at the fact that after the robots were able to blow away an entire mountain without batting an eye, there is miles of wreckage strewn about. Kindda hard to miss.

It just makes zero sense, you really need to stretch the lore and think the citizens of the first and the ascians themselves who would totally have utilized this for a calamity given the chance, are either super unobservant or just plain dumb enough to miss everything. It's nothing but fan service which they didn't even bother to try to integrate into the lore, which is why I believe so many have taken issue with it. Not only that, but it has been some of the worst story telling of a 24 man raid we have gotten yet. It was if Yoko Taro didn't really wanna do it but had his hand forced, so he slapped something together haphazardly. We know he is a much better story teller than this.

[Frizze]

Yeah this part is the hardest part for me in that whole raid because it just takes me way too long to figure out where the safe spot is. And most of the time I still have to just follow everyone else otherwise I’ll be too late. Also, what do you mean by shift? I’m not understanding you on that.

So the first-third times the mechanic is done, the pod appears right in front of a monitor that tells which attack it will be doing. Then the 4th time, the pods all have shift lines either to the left or the right. So you find the right monitor, and follow the shift lines to where they will actually spawn since it is no longer straight in front. As for it taking too long to spot, thats also a matter of luck. I had a run last week where for the 3rd pod set the safe spot spawned right where we were already fighting the boss. Then the fourth was on the far side and we had to sprint to make it(not everyone did make it, but we still cleared him well enough).

Maeka - I wasnt saying it was a good or bad mechanic, just that its easy to understand and that it has an in game tell if you know where to look. And i also disliked the camera games i had to play for famfrit. Him being a little shorter would have made a big difference on those tsunamis. Looking outside the arena for a mechanic also isnt a new idea, they just dont use it all the time. Thordan Ex had an eye that would do gaze attacks from out of bounds. Watching Ex-Death to see if he was interacting with the black hole helped you determine which version of his attacks were coming. Kefka had a statue outside the arena with different mechanics depending on the phase of the fight. Dodging Twintania(or Bahamut) divebombs is much easier if you spot the side theyre coming from. The first boss in Qitana Ravel has a statue that fires on one side or the other of the arena. Theres even a trash fight in Stone Vigil(as well as a boss fight - if i remember right one is story mode other is hard mode) where a dragon appears outside the window, and you can use a canon to drive it away and make the fight easier. I could come up with more examples, but my point was just that theyve done it before and likely will again.

[SnowVix]

The NieR Raids are cool, though I do have some minor beefs with them:

1). The boss fights take waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. I think they could have been sped up a little, to be quite honest. I like the content, but sometimes I cringe when I Q up for Nier because it's going to be quite a long dungeon, and by the end of it, I'm just glad to be done with it so I can log off.

They take long because we don't outgear them yet. Around 6-8 weeks into 5.4, when people have gotten some classes to 520/530 item level we'll start seeing a reduction in kill times for those bosses. Also, as people get better at mechanics and aren't DPSing with weakness/brink

3). Some of the mechanics are too obtuse, there's not enough clues as to what you are ACTUALLY supposed to do, especially the thing in the Command Room and all of those TVs on the wall and you're supposed to somehow magically know which one won't kill you in one hit, and if the rest of the raid has a bunch of newbies in it, you can't just use the "follow the others" rule when you got 3 groups going to 3 different places... yeah that doesn't exactly work.

Looking outside the arena for hints about the mechanic is already required in multiple story trials. Leviathan, Shinryu, Ifrit hard, Stone Vigil second boss. The additional information is directly on the screen, it directly shows the shape of the AOE that pod will spawn (line vs circle), or the number required in the tower (fill all the tally marks). And it gives you a good 10-15 seconds to process it.

4). Hit Detection on the pink energy balls is all kinds of jank. I've stood nearly ontop of one before, perfectly fine. Other times, I'm 10 feet away from one, and POOF, +Vulnerability and cue an eyeroll as there's no way in frick that should have hit me. And to exacerbate the problem, they love throwing whole rows of the stupid things where you're supposed to squeeze between them, in gaps far smaller than the margin of error and... yeah, sometimes you're just gonna get hit even though you shouldn't, and you were perfectly in the middle between two of them (which is the only place you coulda been, esp that stupid hallway of death). Other times you can just sprint through and not care and you never get hit. It lacks consistency something terrible.

The energy balls are terrible, not going to even try to dispute that. That being said, you never have to squeeze between the tight ones on the hallway if you're willing to go backward if needed.

[Yuletide]

Having cross-over raids is fine for me.. I like that we get cross-over content. I never saw FFXIV having a reliance on Nier. You can simply ignore that Nier exists if you choose to.

[MicahZerrshia]

Having cross-over raids is fine for me.. I like that we get cross-over content. I never saw FFXIV having a reliance on Nier. You can simply ignore that Nier exists if you choose to.

You can choose to ignore anything, but that doesn't mean the devs shouldn't take the time to integrate it into the lore of the world in some sort of fashion that makes sense. Especially in a game from a series that is known for its lore and its worldbuilding. That makes fan service of this scale lazily dropped right into the middle of one of the most well crafted stories that have told in this game yet, stick so much more.

Asking for something to make sense from a lore perspective is not a big ask.

[Blanchimont]

i think this was a great addition actually, like on the first boss of the new one, at some point there are no marks, you just have to remember to pay attention to the boss itself and its movements, and that gets you out of the habit of *learning the patterns and avoid the marks without having to think*

( and i want to add up that my statement is in no way directed at or trying to blame any kind of player )

I would agree if they haven't been standardizing indicators for 70+ levels. But the fact that they did is what makes it feel like they just gave up on the indicators.

[Iscah]

I've said before in other threads - aside of generally feeling like the series isn't a good fit with FFXIV at a concept level, a big issue with the raids we have had so far is that it feels like there is little or no effort to make the crossover interesting to FFXIV players who have not played NieR.

We are two-thirds through the story now and have barely met the NieR characters or spent time with them. I don't have any idea of their personalities or why I should be interested in them.

The raid series seems to be treated as an opportunity to continue the NieR story for the enjoyment of NieR fans without bothering to make it coherent as a stand-alone piece of storytelling. And when the constant re-running of alliance raids is such a big thing for FFXIV gameplay, it just reminds me every time of how frustrated I am with that storytelling approach, regardless of the game-quality of the raids themselves.