I miss HW

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

It's an unfortunate state of affairs. Those fights lose something when you don't have to fight tooth and nail just to reach them, I feel. There's no passing through a vast technological complex or the crumbling ruins of a city. They're basically just glorified trials.

The problem with the journey in raids is that if the journey provides no rewards, people will skip it. People got a DRG or NIN to skip T10 journey to boss. People sac pulled T1 to get to boss. People skipped T3 entirely. People immediately ran to boss room in T8, skipping as many adds as possible.

I'm sure many skipped by getting shortcut carries off other groups.


They can't make trash give drops, because people will just farm trash. And if they make the trash actual fights, then you need longer in the instances because you have to prog multiple fights, or clear multiple longer fights. If every floor has a "door" fight and a "boss" fight its just a big mess IMO.



Just look at Alex and the plethora of Fausts.

[Renathras]

I'm not so sure it had to be either-or, though.

I mean...this is modern gaming.

For better or for worse, we're not in the era where MOST players enjoy "the experience" of a dungeon crawl. Criterion is only one step up from "hallway", but people don't want to do it for "the experience"; they want rewards and they want greater rewards for more time spent. So the Devs are going to lean more towards the less time spent instead. (It's a similar though distinct argument to the "I demand more reward for more work" "Okay, so we're going to reduce your work, happy now?" situation)

And the thing is, this gets even worse when it's content that's consumed repeatedly. Coils was neat. But can you imagine most raiders today enjoying having to go through the hallways (even if we skip out Turn 3 weirdness)? We had Fausts in HW and people complained about it, and some of them were kinda tough. It being "serious trash fights" would only be novel for a bit before people felt it was a slog. "WHY do these TRASH MOBS have so much health and mechanics?" "Can't we just go to the boss and get our loot already?" "SE isn't respecting our time! This is an insult!" "The point of this raid is the boss fights, right? Why are we having to spend so much effort on this stupid trash?"

...and so on.

And you know this. People complain if a Tank isn't doing wall-to-wall pulls. Trash would have to be borderline boss fights (note the Pantheon minibosses have some boss-lite mechanics), and if they're too hard, people are going to complain because they aren't getting rewards and it's a "waste" of time keeping them from the boss. Especially once fights are on farm.

I DO think it would be better if they did this, mind you, but I'm telling you why they won't. Because people that raid would absolutely complain about it. Yeah, a lot of people would probably find it novel and enjoyable at first, but after several weeks of farm, MOST would probably be complaining about it. That's why they shifted to the "boxing match" format in the first place. Because people complained when they didn't.

.

All your solutions are "make it more difficult", but I contend it wasn't the difficulty that makes Coils what it is - as Snow and others have said, it retains this feel even going in unsynced at level 90 - it's the environment ITSELF. "more challenge" isn't the answer. Sure, more danger can help, but just making trash that plasters the average party isn't going to give the Coils-like experience, I don't think.

Honestly, I think the best form of this is legitimately Eureka/Bozja raids. The boss mechanics are interesting, they're challenging but fair, BA and DR Sav have "perma-death", etc. They feel like you're delving into a dangerous dungeon, even after having done it a couple times, and they seem to have good staying power with the community. The answer is right there.

The problem with the journey in raids is that if the journey provides no rewards, people will skip it. People got a DRG or NIN to skip T10 journey to boss. People sac pulled T1 to get to boss. People skipped T3 entirely. People immediately ran to boss room in T8, skipping as many adds as possible.

I'm sure many skipped by getting shortcut carries off other groups.


They can't make trash give drops, because people will just farm trash. And if they make the trash actual fights, then you need longer in the instances because you have to prog multiple fights, or clear multiple longer fights. If every floor has a "door" fight and a "boss" fight its just a big mess IMO.



Just look at Alex and the plethora of Fausts.

...basically, this.

[Shurrikhan]

They can't make trash give drops, because people will just farm trash.

They could as easily time-gate those drops, too...

And if they make the trash actual fights, then you need longer in the instances because you have to prog multiple fights, or clear multiple longer fights.

And? So what? Yeah, the Normal Raid floor would last more than a mere 6-8 minutes, but... is that so bad? Commensurately reward the difference and I doubt you'd have anyone hating on principle facing a different sort of challenge than just reduce boss HP to 0 while doing DDR in the perfectly circular or rectangular room.

If every floor has a "door" fight and a "boss" fight its just a big mess IMO.

It's a mess if and when the "door" fight just feels uninteresting and tacked-on. But bosses that themselves feel uninteresting or whose mechanics feel limply tacked-on aren't any better. It's just a matter of the quality of gameplay, not necessarily whether they're "the boss" or "pre-boss" or what-have-you.

I'm sure many skipped by getting shortcut carries off other groups.

Which doesn't have to be a permitted feature anyways, not that it'd be an issue if the other parts of the raid other than its embedded Trial were actually interesting and reasonably rewarding. And that is entirely doable. The devs just chose not to even make that attempt, leaving it as a mere dull chore they then had a good excuse to remove.