New Alliance Raid is severely undertuned.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Alliance raids have never been intended to be hard though...

Even then, second and third tiers have always ramped up difficulty. It's so strange to me when people act as if Void Ark, Rabanastre and Copied Factory were ever like "Very Hard" or something cause they never were. Unless you're new to the game, but yeah: all of this is how it's always been.

hard like extremes? never. at last not so easy that you don't even hot LB3? this is a first. like tell me how its ok that you can 1 party out of 3 kill any boss there.

[Hysterior]

Have to agree, I don't remember raids being such a smooth ride by week 2.

[SenorPatty]

I expected to die at least once per fight and to have at least wiped at least one boss fight and at the very least slug it out with one of the bosses (usually the first or third one) with lb3 maxing out.

I died only once

We didn't wipe once.

We didn't get to use lb3 until final boss.

Week 1 content, btw.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

one big problem the defenders of this easy mode forget is this a content SE expect people to run for the rest of the expansion.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

one big problem the defenders of this easy mode forget is this a content SE expect people to run for the rest of the expansion.

Surely, if it was longer, people would run it for fun whereas now they just run it for their loot. Yes, that's sarcasm. One big problem the defenders of this hard more forget is that people don't play for difficulty, they play for fun.

Getting it longer won't make it more fun, getting it harder may, but at the cost of more people finding it a bore.

Why on earth would you want normal alliance raids to be hard, except for gatekeeping purpose ? So you have fun as savage/ultimate raiders ? Alliance raids have always been that simple, and the mere fact Rabanastre was most notably known for his difficulty related to a boss that asks you "find x in 5 + x = 6" is enough to say that this community as a whole does not need harder bosses.

HW's Alliance raids have always been a walk in the park, except for the third one that sometimes got people killed, but it's only recently that Diabolos became a hard boss, for some reason. If you want savage alliance raids, ask for that, but please, don't turn our 40-50 minutes weekly bore to a 60-70 minutes weekly bore.

And don't get me wrong, I love the new alliance raid, and would love a savage version. But harder normal mode is just useless and a diminished QoL.

[Packetdancer]

one big problem the defenders of this easy mode forget is this a content SE expect people to run for the rest of the expansion.

It is not meant to be “current” content for the entire expansion, though. It is meant to be content targeted for a gear level that is only going to be current for a couple more months. Then we’ll be on to patch 6.2, a new raid tier, and an entire new set of combat gear, likely ranging from i610 to i630.

If they made something that would be a major challenge for the *entire expansion*, it would need to be a challenge in, say, i660 gear.

(Yes, we have ilevel sync. Ask the Labyrinth of the Ancients or Syrcus Tower how well that works consistently to maintain the challenge level. Has anyone actually seen the platform mechanics in Glasya Labolas in, say, the current geological era?)

As I said, I actually do think this particular raid might be a bit undertuned. But let’s not try to overcorrect here.

Anything else aside, people who raid savage like to see their gear improvements make numbers get noticeably bigger. If things are to be accessible to folks who aren’t doing savage, AND people doing savage want their raid gear to feel like it is a meaningful upgrade (as opposed to just “hey, now you can dye the gear!”), then the upper end of a gear tier is to some extent always going to trivialize content within that gear tier that isn’t targeted specifically at savage raiders.

[JennytheJester]

They'll never get the balancing perfect but people need to take a step back and really think who the odd patch content is dedicated toward. It isn't dedicated to those of us that can clear Savage or higher, it's meant for all of us to do once and enjoy the story, but the people who need to keep farming it either do it for glam pieces, or need to upgrade things. I have no reason to go into the AR unless I want to gear an alt quickly, it isn't for me, and even on that it just is silly unless it's the tomestone upgrade coin, all the non-tomestone stuff if gonna be Savage for me anyway. It's for people that clearly aren't able to commit to doing Savage, be that their work hours, anxiety, or in just some cases they feel it's a lot more of a chore than it actually is.

So think on that, it's dedicated for people that clearly aren't doing Savage. It can't be overbearingly difficult or it will alienate them, by being simple it only alienates the people who that should not be their endgame of content. Meaning the rewards from it are not actual upgrades, or that they find it challenging. For those of us who this is a curbstomp, we are meant to do it once and be finished. For the people who have to farm it, they don't want it to be an agonizing process. As far as I'm concerned I did it once and got my story development. That's all there is to it for me.

Bottom line, this is content that is meant to be easy. At times they miss the mark and make it too easy, or overshoot it and make it too agonizing and you end up with things like Cid. When it comes to that, Square wants to present a challenge to some sure, but they aren't going to try and make a challenge that pisses off the players that this is meant to be for where they don't want to do it every week. If you expected this to be like the newest Extreme or around that ballpark or even just the first trial of Endwalker on Extreme, you're clearly not understanding who this content fully is for. Yes, it is for everyone because of the story, but after that story what point do you have doing it? Glamour, and the coin. Do you really want to anger the people who this is their content to consume because it's lightweight but rewarding as in they actually need this stuff just so you can feel like it was harder the next week?

Furthermore, there's a large exodus of WoW players from last year. To those, this is their first time probably dealing with relevant content. Square is probably softballing them to find out what they're okay with, as they've always done in the past. Things casually ramped up, they didn't stay on a specific level. People got used to something, Square slightly upped the challenge on them. Not enough to spark a huge culture shock, but gradually enough that players didn't notice it but are now a lot more capable now than they were before. I say this as someone who actually started the game in late Heavensward but wasn't even max level until late Stormblood. At the end of Shadowbringers which was the first expansion I actually experienced from the start I took a careful note on how while it didn't feel like I was better at the game, I was very quickly able to identify things and react to them a lot better. I got better, but I didn't notice it because it wasn't an immediate thing. It happened over time. As such challenges have gradually gotten more difficult too, look at Warrior of Light compared to I dunno, Thordan. There's a lot more going on, but people are able to handle these things. Whereas if you threw Warrior of Light into Heavensward with how many mechanics it has, you'd cause a complete meltdown on the playerbase if they were expected to do that trial. Or an easier one since both serve the same purpose- Ravana and Titania. If you switched the two, people doing Titania when they're only as acclimated as you should be by Ravana it would be a huge sucker punch. A wakeup call for sure, but a big enough one that you would alienate people because they'd feel the game is expecting too much of them too fast. This was one issue that befell WoW, Square is keenly aware of that. Fights in WoW went from decently doable for most people to being nightmares that outright necessitated addons holding your hand for most people because Blizzard kept trying to make fights more convoluted to say "Look how hard our PvE is!" when instead of difficulty, they got overbearing and as a result their raid participation if you exclude LFR sunk like a rock. Then because of that the common gripe from casuals on WoW is feeling the game is solely catered to Mythic Raiders so they just don't engage with raiding unless it's LFR. If you never played WoW, LFR is even easier than our Alliance Raids despite being the same concept.

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Surely, if it was longer, people would run it for fun whereas now they just run it for their loot. Yes, that's sarcasm. One big problem the defenders of this hard more forget is that people don't play for difficulty, they play for fun.

Getting it longer won't make it more fun, getting it harder may, but at the cost of more people finding it a bore.

Why on earth would you want normal alliance raids to be hard, except for gatekeeping purpose ? So you have fun as savage/ultimate raiders ? Alliance raids have always been that simple, and the mere fact Rabanastre was most notably known for his difficulty related to a boss that asks you "find x in 5 + x = 6" is enough to say that this community as a whole does not need harder bosses.

HW's Alliance raids have always been a walk in the park, except for the third one that sometimes got people killed, but it's only recently that Diabolos became a hard boss, for some reason. If you want savage alliance raids, ask for that, but please, don't turn our 40-50 minutes weekly bore to a 60-70 minutes weekly bore.

And don't get me wrong, I love the new alliance raid, and would love a savage version. But harder normal mode is just useless and a diminished QoL.

ye people play for fun. when content is so boring the most hard thing is to no fall asleep then its not so fun. now i need to run it as the glams are really good and for the upgrades. but at this point it more of i forced to run it over i want to run it. i want it to be as hard as older ones not more . as it stands now its so easy we don't even hit LB3.

It is not meant to be “current” content for the entire expansion, though. It is meant to be content targeted for a gear level that is only going to be current for a couple more months. Then we’ll be on to patch 6.2, a new raid tier, and an entire new set of combat gear, likely ranging from i610 to i630.

If they made something that would be a major challenge for the *entire expansion*, it would need to be a challenge in, say, i660 gear.

(Yes, we have ilevel sync. Ask the Labyrinth of the Ancients or Syrcus Tower how well that works consistently to maintain the challenge level. Has anyone actually seen the platform mechanics in Glasya Labolas in, say, the current geological era?)

As I said, I actually do think this particular raid might be a bit undertuned. But let’s not try to overcorrect here.

Anything else aside, people who raid savage like to see their gear improvements make numbers get noticeably bigger. If things are to be accessible to folks who aren’t doing savage, AND people doing savage want their raid gear to feel like it is a meaningful upgrade (as opposed to just “hey, now you can dye the gear!”), then the upper end of a gear tier is to some extent always going to trivialize content within that gear tier that isn’t targeted specifically at savage raiders.

only we need to run it for upgrade tokens? for the 6.2 tome gear you need 2 of them. one from the first raid and one form the second.

[IdowhatIwant]

Surely, if it was longer, people would run it for fun whereas now they just run it for their loot. Yes, that's sarcasm. One big problem the defenders of this hard more forget is that people don't play for difficulty, they play for fun.

Getting it longer won't make it more fun, getting it harder may, but at the cost of more people finding it a bore.

Why on earth would you want normal alliance raids to be hard, except for gatekeeping purpose ? So you have fun as savage/ultimate raiders ? Alliance raids have always been that simple, and the mere fact Rabanastre was most notably known for his difficulty related to a boss that asks you "find x in 5 + x = 6" is enough to say that this community as a whole does not need harder bosses.

HW's Alliance raids have always been a walk in the park, except for the third one that sometimes got people killed, but it's only recently that Diabolos became a hard boss, for some reason. If you want savage alliance raids, ask for that, but please, don't turn our 40-50 minutes weekly bore to a 60-70 minutes weekly bore.

And don't get me wrong, I love the new alliance raid, and would love a savage version. But harder normal mode is just useless and a diminished QoL.

I would expect them to have some sort of challenge as they are post game content. How many games have you played where the post game content is as easy or easier than the main story content?
Also HW raids were pretty hard when they were released. Diablos did not recently get hard, groups wiped on him all the time as well as the boss before him. Heavensward had the highest stat jump of any expansion so they became a walk in the park over time due to this stat jump. So IMO making these raids easier is a diminished QoL. I would probably go as far to say that Lab was harder on release than this was.

It is not meant to be “current” content for the entire expansion, though. It is meant to be content targeted for a gear level that is only going to be current for a couple more months. Then we’ll be on to patch 6.2, a new raid tier, and an entire new set of combat gear, likely ranging from i610 to i630.

This is wrong, unless they change something in future patches which typically doesn't happen. We will have to run this for the rest of the expansion for tokens to upgrade gear, unless you do the savage content for the same tokens.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Seems like they either need to cap Ilvl off making some gear progression pointless or introduce one shot mechanics to sate people.
The harder the fight, the longer the fight, the more room for error and wipes due to players who may not be as good. The more complaining you'll do, and you'll still need to deal with the rng nature of drops.

That may sound like fun to some but not to me.