About the new 24 Man Alliance Raid.

[Skyborne]

Honestly glad the Twelve are finally relevant, and we're finally out of the white/black/grey or rusty metal aesthetic. The final boss/area are also really what Ul'dah should've been like the whole time.

[LittleImp]

These encounters are a lot of fun compared to the Nier raids and I feel like SE is on the right track. Definitely my favorite part 6.1, along with character cards.

Sure, but like, the director said it'd be like Ivalice. Definitely wasn't. Only wiped once on second and fourth bosses respectively. Rabanastre would have raids disband on Hashmal and even Mateus when they first dropped. And while I died a fair bit, I attribute that more to trying to remember how to play Reaper mid raid (and therefore paying more attention to my hotbars than mechanics) since the devs decided to push those terrible SAM changes and ruined the job for me.

Difficulty at the individual level hasn't really gone down, it's more a matter of SE putting less mechanics that force the entire raid to wipe due to someone else's mistakes. It's simply easier for a handful of skilled players to carry and recover the raid.

Personally, I don't mind this form of difficulty because as much as I love TG Cid or Hashmal, the supposed 'difficulty' of those fights exclusively came from other people making mistakes on basic mechanics like the bleed bubbles or sand orb adds.

[Larirawiel]

Yes. Finally they experiment with asymmetrical platforms. Good for them.

Hahaaa, yes. This was the first thing i noticed. Not a square or a circle arena. But it is still an arena. They could get rid of it.



Cheers

[RyuDragnier]

Still waiting for that promised difficulty.

I saw the entire raid almost wipe multiple times and a few people carrying it. The mechanics are unforgiving if failed, but there's no big "raid wipe" mechanic from what I can tell. I died at least 2-3 times most bosses until I started noticing how they worked. I think the ONLY fight I didn't die in was Byregot, but that's because after seeing the individual platform sections moved I figured out how it worked. I won't deny Rhalgr, Nald'thal, and Azeyma took me a bit.

[Kaurhz]

Casual here... Personally I found it nice, definitely gave me a good kickin' the first time around, not as much as what Ivalice did, even when I did it an entire expansion late, but comparatively it's harder than anything outside of the Ivalice track if I were to say so. It was cruel to see a balance mechanic in there that resulted in an instant wipe (laughing).

[TaleraRistain]

There's a raid wipe mechanic on the final boss.

I really enjoyed the fights. People were dying all over the place. I saw times on some bosses two whole groups were dead but the raid was able to recover. There were no wipes until the raid wipe mechanic happened on the final boss, and then the toxic people came out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, I think SE is just going to have to stop putting in any mechanics that can wipe the raid because someone's new and misses something because the children in the community can't handle it.

[Broken_Wind]

I just don’t want the hoards of players crying that stuff is too hard either though.

Alliance Raids are the one area of FFXIV where I see standard MMORPG toxicity on a somewhat regular basis
The problem isn't with content being too hard, its with people not being able to deal with wipes.
People generally lack the patience to explain and coach and instead lash out

This is so much less common in other areas of the game thankfully

But its a very tough thing to balance.
Hard content invites toxicity
Large group content invites toxicity
Hard alliance raids therefore really make this an issue

[Absimiliard]

Difficulty is wonderful and all, but continually upping the ante on something meant to be cleared by the lowest denominator is going to create a lot of headaches down the line. The Ivalice raids already taught us how quickly drops and disbands start happening when a large group of people is expected to perform actual mechanics or deal with bosses hitting almost as hard as they did in ye olden days.

[Ath192]

Alliance Raids are the one area of FFXIV where I see standard MMORPG toxicity on a somewhat regular basis
The problem isn't with content being too hard, its with people not being able to deal with wipes.
People generally lack the patience to explain and coach and instead lash out

This is so much less common in other areas of the game thankfully

But its a very tough thing to balance.
Hard content invites toxicity
Large group content invites toxicity
Hard alliance raids therefore really make this an issue

I agree with all you said. That being said, I still want alliance raids on the harder side. They are the end game content for casuals so it stands to reason it should present a challenge a casual player should be able to overcome. And I have no doubts both are true for the moment, it is a decent challenge, and surely they can overcome it because its not too crazy.

This is where the community needs to decide the environment they want to foster and where we do our part. Don't be toxic yourself and if you see someone being overly toxic report them. They do ban people often and well, its a paid sub game so it hurts. I say hit em where it hurts because we shouldn't let the bad side of this community take our fun away from us.

[Lauront]

The difficulty of them was pitched much better, IMO, for where normal content should be. I enjoyed the Rhalgr and Nald'Thal fights, especially Nald'Thal's pretty abstract design, and they made good use of an unorthodox platform with Rhalgr. The group I was in didn't wipe on any but Azeyma, but there were quite a few near wipes on the others. It's one of those things of getting used to the markers and ability names etc. Nothing any decently skilled casual won't be able to learn and adapt to. It shows what the devs are capable of if they want to be.