Dear SE

[ItMe]

At least other crossovers were done in a way that blended them well into FFXIV.

This one didn't. It felt like it was coming from an entirely different game (because it was).

Speak for yourself.
I thought the Ivalice raids were pretty terribly integrated.
Almost like the awful exposition to desperately try and establish it all somewhere in 14 was just a bunch of artificial hoops to establish 2 other games settings within 14 (because it was).

14 has a pretty terrible track record with alliance raid storylines imo.

[SieyaM]

I never played Nier and really felt like I was missing more than half of what was going on because of it. They really relied on people being familiar with the source material to tell parts of the story. Sure it was spelled out enough what was going on with the dwarves and what not, but the imagery and the things that happened inside the raids were a complete mystery. Who was that last boss, where did they come from, why was the last dungeon designed the way it was so differently from the previous two? Maybe I just wasn't smart enough but the actual raids themselves were a complete bewilderment to me.

[ItMe]

I never played Nier and really felt like I was missing more than half of what was going on because of it.

Really the only thing I can think of that's maybe not explained in the raid is that the flashback where the white dwarf is crushed established that the one you've been speaking to all along has been a clone.

[Kyrj]

Crossovers have their place and it's not in raids. Keep them as side activities for fates or duties like Monster Hunter. The Nier raids do nothing to expand the in game world/lore and are completely pointless.

[TaleraRistain]

Please never do a 3 part cross-over raid ever again. If this was supposed to make me want to play Nier it achieved the opposite.

They just shouldn't let anyone near XIV content who doesn't actually care about the game. The raids make no effort to integrate the setting into XIV, like Crystal Tower and the Ivalice raids did. Those raids had easter eggs for people who had played those games, but they are our own special versions of those places fully integrated into XIV lore and history and even affecting future content like CT ended up doing.

Someone said Yoko Taro doesn't like or care about XIV and, man, did it show.

Whereas Matsuno lovingly crafted his foray into the game.

[Vahlnir]

14 has a pretty terrible track record with alliance raid storylines imo.

Crystal Tower has probably been their best so far story wise, at least in my opinion. I've personally had way more fun in the Nier raids though than I have with any other 24 man before it, even if the story was mediocre in places. The bosses are fun and the mechanics are engaging, but it was clearly fanservice for the most part and little more. Nothing wrong with that unless you're looking for a good story. FF XIV has suffered from its own writing more than once. Heavensward's opening patch was good stuff, but just about everything before and after that was...bland at best, at least to me. Then Shadowbringers came along and blew everything else out of the water with its MSQ and Sorrow of Werlyt storylines. Bozja's got a good story too but I know not everyone enjoys Bozja.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I wasn't a fan of how... disjointed that Nier raid storyline felt. With the prior raid storylines, they felt like just more FFXIV story. We were finding out more about the lore and history of the world, and in the case of Ivalice, it felt like we were really affecting change in the world. But the Nier story feels completely disconnected from FFXIV. How come Eulmoran airships or Amaro riders flying over Kholusia didn't notice the Copied Factory? You have all of this amazing technology that would have been reverse engineered (like how the Allag tech we discovered in the Crystal Tower raid was later reverse engineered, giving us the Crystarium cannons and the city shield we see in Shadowbringers).

The Nier raid doesn't feel canon or jive with FFXIV at all. I also felt that the actual story of the Nier raids was very unsatisfying. I didn't know what was going on or why it was happening really. You discover this white android, and then you follow her into a factory and the fight robots that are inexplicably hostile, and then fight a black android for... reasons, and then white android betrays you for some reason, and then you and a black android chase her and find that there are a ton of white androids, and they morph into a ball... I just don't know what's going on, and I don't care. Never had this problem with the prior alliance raids.

Only thing I really liked about the Nier raid were the glamours and the Dwarf comedy.

Ivalice >> Crystal Tower >>> Mhach >>>>>>>>>>> Nier

[Vahlnir]

You discover this white android, and then you follow her into a factory and the fight robots that are inexplicably hostile, and then fight a black android for... reasons, and then white android betrays you for some reason, and then you and a black android chase her and find that there are a ton of white androids, and they morph into a ball...

This would be your typical Tuesday in the Nier universe. I think anyone who understands THAT was able to follow things a little easier, mostly because we didn't question it. lol Though to be fair, there's usually an actual reason for things happening in Nier, no matter how weird things get. The story of these crossover raids wasn't really there to begin with.

[Absurdity]

I rather enjoy the ivalice raids Nier was kind of meh...

I would go even further. The Nier raids were probably the worst of them all.

I get it, people love NieR but the plot was a nonsensical mess...maybe it might make sense if you played NieR but sorry, if your storytelling requires external sources to explain what is happening then it's not very good storytelling.

The environments were, diplomatically said, uninspired grey-in-grey.

The mechanics were...okay, a lot of them were basically mechanics we've seen several times already with just a new coat of paint but it had some interesting ones here and there. Except Copied Factory, that was so uninteresting that you start playing "how many vuln stacks can I survive?"

On top of that it just doesn't fit into the "universe" of XIV at all and unlike previous raids there isn't even an attempt to make it fit. That's fine for a small crossover event like the XI or XV events but not a 3 part alliance raid spanning ~2 years.

The rewards are the best we got out of a 24man so far I guess.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I hated the Copied Factory. Just...felt like it took to long.
The other 2 I freaking loved though

And....yeah sadly I just couldnt care about the story. Halfway through before you get The Puppets Bunker, I just said...I dotn care anymore and skipped everything. Same with 95% of the story for the new one.
Only thing I watched were the Dungeon cutscenes, and abit of the story after the raid is done.