What happened to 8-man raids? Binding Coils was so elaborate compared to now..

[DynnDiablos]

Well, in my opinion they aren't raids anymore. They're trials and should just be called such.

[Kes13a]

You know, recently going through Binding Coils of Bahamut and Alexander, and I have to wonder...what happened to Normal raids these last few expansions?

They used to have such intricate level designs, the story interwoven within those various raids, and they just were so much more elaborate. Now it is simply loading into a square or circle zone.

Why? I get budget constraints, but if they could do something as memorable as Binding Coils, why can't we get that back?

dont blame SE blame the people you play with.

as people have said, it was unwanted by a mass of people... so, unfortunately... SE listened. does it suck.. sure does. but as always, people ruin things...

[Impulsikk]

People complained about having to fight through trash for their reclears/prog and those complaints led to the development removing trash mobs after Alexander.

The problem with trash in FF14 is that you have a time limit to finish the duty. If you are progressing on a fight for multiple hours, it will be really frustrating to have to kill the same trash every hour and a half. If FF14 got rid of the time limit in pre-made groups they could maybe bring trash back.

[technole]

Coil Turn 3 was annoying because you had to clear that mob turn every week, meanwhile you and your party want to get to Turn 5 to keep progging, and here we are spending valuable raid time on trash.

We didn't have cooldown reset on-wipe back then too, so that's a lot of lost time for progression, not to mention you needed to use some serious cooldowns during Coil turn 10 trash mobs, that stuff hurt like a truck. They didn't even nerf the trash until it was unlocked.

Several people here probably did not do Coil when it was a weekly lockout like savage, only worse. Like until Final Coil you could only clear a floor once for the week, and you could not re-enter the fight until the following week on your toon. They didn't start the idea of having 0-1 chests until Turn 10 and beyond.

The problem with trash in FF14 is that you have a time limit to finish the duty. If you are progressing on a fight for multiple hours, it will be really frustrating to have to kill the same trash every hour and a half. If FF14 got rid of the time limit in pre-made groups they could maybe bring trash back.

YoshiP mentioned he likes the clock for several reasons but one of which was so everyone could realize they probably should take a break, or disband.

[Packetdancer]

YoshiP mentioned he likes the clock for several reasons but one of which was so everyone could realize they probably should take a break, or disband.

He ain't wrong, either.

When my static failed to get through P2S and I really wanted to get in a clear that week, I spent honestly way too much time in PF throwing myself at that fight in enrage/clear parties (or even like, "second channeled prog" parties) determined to get a clear in the last day or so before reset. And when we ran down the clock on an instance, that was when folks were like "okay, I need to take a smoke break/hit the restroom/get up and stretch/actually remember to eat".

[RitsukoSonoda]

Issue is gamers in general have been progressively becoming more lazy. Raids basically got downgraded to just being trials set number 2 because "raiders" wanted to farm rewards without doing the actual raid. Most 4 player duties have been homogenized to essentially be the same thing with a different coat of paint because players wanted weekly cap tomestones with as little effort as possible. MSQ solo duties nerfed to the point you can just stand in everything and push 1 button repeatedly and clear them because people claiming to be "casual" don't think they should need to actually learn how to play the game.

[Packetdancer]

Issue is gamers in general have been progressively becoming more lazy. Raids basically got downgraded to just being trials set number 2 because "raiders" wanted to farm rewards without doing the actual raid. Most 4 player duties have been homogenized to essentially be the same thing with a different coat of paint because players wanted weekly cap tomestones with as little effort as possible. MSQ solo duties nerfed to the point you can just stand in everything and push 1 button repeatedly and clear them because people claiming to be "casual" don't think they should need to actually learn how to play the game.

To be fair, I actually find these raids less frustrating for purely logistical reasons than I did some of the giant things in other MMOs I've played.

Because while to some degree I liked the "this fight is a longer story and we basically 'save' and and continue over multiple sessions" aspect, it was also super annoying that you could go into a weekly raid and discover the boss you wanted to practice against wasn't even there because the party leader had beaten that boss with a different group already. Or that if your main group failed to get far enough (for whatever reason) in a given week, you were at the mercy and whim of fate if you could even find a group to join up with that hadn't yet beaten the fight you really wanted to do. Or whatever other limitations that particular game had on progressing independent of your normal raid group.

Conversely, here, if my static has to cancel a session due to scheduling conflicts/RL emergency/whatever -- or if I have to miss a raid night due to same -- I can still go hit up PF and finish out the week without tearing my hair out.

I won't say FFXIV's raids are perfect; there's plenty of things about this design that annoy me. But I will say that their cadence and flexibility aligns a lot better with my "I am now an adult with a steady job and stuff" life schedule than what I did for the raids in some other games. :/

[Jybril]

Ngl, I've been calling them trials for a long time.
I hope they never take away the inbetweens in 24 man.
Those, imo, are actual raids and way more fun than this port here and chill in a single arena.

[Reimmi]

As a former wow raider, thank god for no trash and running back between pulls padding the repulls on bosses
Not fun at all tbh.

[spookiebruh]

I kind of think that this brings up a good point.
A lot of people do not want to deal with trash mobs and so they removed them and now the raids feel kind of like trials. The problem that I feel it creates is that the places we visit don't actually feel like places, just circle/square arena to fight the boss in.
I think that something in between these two approaches would be optimal. For example making all the bosses in the same instance but you still have to travel to them. There is probably a better solution to this but that's what I thought of of the top of my head.