The new 24 man alliance raids are a disappointment (mechanic wise)

[CaedemSanguis]

The truth is that people will complain when it’s too hard, and also complain when it’s too easy, there is no middle ground to me, it’s either the alliance wipe («*too hard pls nerf*») or the alliance dont wipe («*its too easy pls we need harder content*»)

[CidHeiral]

I have been very critical of the past two alliance raids but I thought this one was a fun time. It was quite visually impressive, the music was great, and most importantly there were mechanics that actually made me think for a second. People were dropping like flies all around me so I guess the difficulty is about right for the average player. We even wiped on the last boss when the left/right dash mechanic killed most of the raid and I had to stop and explain it. I especially enjoyed the Llymlaen fight with its unique arena and watery wall of death. The post-raid cutscene surprisingly had me choked up as well.

Hopefully this raid series has taught them a lot and they tune things up a bit more from the start in the Dawntrail alliance raids.

[AnotherPerson]

I was in a full blind run - we had a couple deaths but no wipes in any of the bosses, so this was somewhat on the scale of Euphrosyne's difficulty, just with newer mechanics. The new encounter design is definitely a plus, and the bosses start hitting a smidge harder and frequently than usual (which is great to see) -- but damage is still really light otherwise, especially if we're getting gear upgrades. Most of the people I was running kind of expected to wipe at least once to the new mechanics, but none of that really happened.

Thematically, I enjoyed the aesthetic and the story. Mechanically, it's still lacking but I think it's better than the previous alliance raids as far as damage frequency goes. Tank responsibility felt diminished and mechanics seem fairly simple, so if they just had 2 different mechanics at the same time while maintaining the frequency of the mechanics, and maybe 2 additional threatening mobs for non-main tanks, with those changes I think this alliance raid would be pretty good at the current ILVL.

My thoughts on damage on certain Mechanics in particular while playing as a healer in a fully blind run:

The many Divine sprites exploding and doing global raidwide damage after being defeated is pretty good, gives me a bit more reminiscent feelings to ivalice's exploding mobs, but scaled appropriately for Lv 90.

There were a couple of DoT bleeds that did hit what I consider a good enough damage for a DoT bleed if you also take into account of its long duration at the current ILVL. Stepping outside of Llymlaen's stage will apply a uncleansable Drowsy DoT debuff that lasts for 21 seconds -- and while the DoT damage didn't hurt too much on its own on a healer/dps, it did a pretty significant amount over a long period of time, making it a good way to keep healers healing a bit more often but without too much pressure.

Torrential Tridents did too low damage landing down. The staggered intervals of damage is fine, but it barely needed any healing for the long wind-up time before the next run-around-and-dodge-aoe mechanic. Bumping up the damage per spear would be fine considering it already barely tickles at the current ilvl without mitigation and my cohealer just needed 1 rapture to bring everyone back to full hp after all the spears landed.

When Oschon was using Lofty Peaks, me and my co-healer sort of expected something more akin to P10N's Harrowing Hell's amount of damage, so both Panhaima and Liturgy of the Bell was used. What we got instead felt much weaker and more of a joke. Even the finishing attack Peak Peril couldn't break through the Panhaima shields (had over 3 stacks remaining) and liturgy was 100% wasted. Quite disappointing.

The Final Boss using Eudaimon Eorzea, just the channel before the cast finishes doing damage makes it much better in terms of damage frequency and heal check.

[Reap00]

Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but it's sadly accurate.

Go back to Yoshi's comments on the current relics. It's clear they want to see content clear rates go up, and they're willing to do that by any means.

While it's true they stated that they had a newer team working on the EndWalker raids, they also mentioned a higher difficult for this release. That didn't happen, and it's clear that they had no intention of making it happen.

The sad part is that the community will be thrilled by it. They'll see this as SE being widely accepting of everyone, when the reality is SE just wants to increase the number of completions in order to make it seem like they're producing good content.

They are producing good content regardless if it is your opinion or not. If you are unhappy go play something else or go outside.

[Nestama]

Criticism is a good thing, though. Without it, we'd probably still be dealing with ARR's weird 3 second tick latency thing that wasn't fixed until 2.1.

or heck, FFXIV would still be with 1.0 gameplay

[Fawkes]

I thought the wind lady in the ocean hole had a good amount of mechanics. And the final boss was kinda sensory overload level of mechanics, at least until I got the hang of the flow of it.


Also I really liked the one trash fight where all the NPCs were there talking, everyone assumed it was just boring filler scenery and were running past it but then it was a fight.

[Alec97]

The truth is that people will complain when it’s too hard, and also complain when it’s too easy, there is no middle ground to me, it’s either the alliance wipe («*too hard pls nerf*») or the alliance dont wipe («*its too easy pls we need harder content*»)

Of course there is a middle ground, you want the content to be hard enough to where it is a challenge but you don’t want the content to wipe the entire raid when a single person dies. It’s very easy to cater to one side of the extreme.

For me I thought the AR was extremely boring and took too long probably because I was extremely bored. I was sat there jaw dropped when I realised the first boss was only half health and it felt like it was taking ages to complete. The raid wasn’t that good looking either and the story was incredibly disappointing. This expansion is following the trend of killing anything cool or meaningful about FF14s setting.

The last thing I wanted was to help gods commit suicide, I feel like I’m playing an atheists wet dream, rather than a fantasy game. I’ve unsubbed again because the content quality is abysmal this expansion. I feel it really hard to continue paying when I go buy monster hunter world for 30 pounds which has really good content with forgiving yet challenging bosses, housing, online multiplayer, good and unique crafting etc and long term repeatable content that’s interesting with unique rewards with holiday events and it doesn’t cost me a sub.

I get Yoshi says go play other games but at this point especially this year there is no reason to play FF14 instead of other games and I have a social group who heavily plays FF14, so I wonder what it’s like for people who don’t.

[MikkoAkure]

It was disappointing that throughout the whole thing there’s no clever mechanics that make use of having three parties. I actually enjoyed the puzzle-like bosses of ARR and HW and players needing to run around and do other things besides hitting the boss without standing in the bad.

Splitting everyone up with forced party placement in the right spots like NieR did a few times was at least a good middle ground and I wish they expanded upon creative mechanics while retaining repeat sanity that has some common sense dummy proofing but still maintains some sort of edge. A stronger vuln-esque thing that more heavily punishes you for failing the same mechanic two or three times could be that. Outright death usually isn’t fun but polymorph or jail mechanics solvable by the failed players could be.


But the silver lining is that the boss mechanics are at least fun enough and re-running these for coins or in roulettes for years down the line won’t be as painful as previous iterations of alliance raids. The only frustration point is when people screw up the balance mechanic in the first one since giving 1 person the power to fail the raid for 23 other people is never fun, as others mentioned previously for TGC. Having difficult insta-wipe mechanics is fun or at least tense/interesting for the first few weeks, but when the playerbase as a whole has it down on farm and it’s no longer relevant content it just becomes aggravating when player You’dont Pay’my’sub runs to the wrong party spot, ignores chat, and wipes the party on content that is years old.

[NekoMataMata]

They are producing good content regardless if it is your opinion or not. If you are unhappy go play something else or go outside.

I mean I'm willing to accept that my opinion isn't fact, but you should probably be willing to do the same. You are perhaps one of the most immature and hypocritical forum users I've ever encountered here as you never offer anything constructive to any threads. You simply sit there attacking other people, telling them their opinions aren't valid, to leave, or to go outside(which, most probably go out more than you considering you're terminally online).

[remiff]

I did the blind raid with a friend yesterday, and we were really disappointed.

The raid is purely aesthetic, but mechanically speaking, it's as empty as Euphrosyne, except they added icons to exactly indicate where you need to position yourself in advance.

It's just the logical continuation of Euphrosyne.

I also found the raid's progression system very strange.

We walk a bit at the beginning, deal with trash mobs, and then we only walk a few meters between the first three bosses,
If you compare the progression system to all the previous raids, it's certainly the most uneven we've ever seen.

Also, in terms of HP balance, the first two bosses are literally getting obliterated.
The final boss is a recycling of E12, both in terms of concept and its 3D skeleton.