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

[Thurmnmurmn]

What are you talking about?

The fights were a blast with some new mechanics that haven't been in MSQ stuff before (or...some in ANYthing before), and the last fight was just an insane blast of "What mechanics do you want in this fight?" "Yes."

Some people cannot be pleased. I'm sure if you're an Ultimate raider, it wasn't bad, but the vast majority of the playerbase are not Ultimate raiders. The fights were not "treated as a baby with keys being jingled". God the hyperbole. See sig.

The fights were fun and there were new mechanics. You don't have to praise the devs if you don't want to, but they literally delivered on those things.

EDIT:



What?

These are not Ultimates.

"One hit from anything and you die!" is terrible game design.

I know I say it all the time, but good gosh...

So I'm not a savage raider. The highest difficulty I've done is extremes. I found this to be a joke.

Sure there may have been some new mechanics, but they give you far too long to react to them. And even if you get hit, it does barely any damage to you.
I don't agree with the guy you quoted about everything needed to one shot you but at least make it do SOME damage.

As I said in another thread, the difficulty progression in this game is backwards this expansion. What other game do you have that the content gets easier the higher lvl you get? People stay sub par at the game because they have no incentive to actually get better.

[Raven2014]

What?

These are not Ultimates.

"One hit from anything and you die!" is terrible game design.

I know I say it all the time, but good gosh...

And that actually is the case btw. I wonder if the people here have never queued into a 24 in anything but less than top gear, because mechanic definitely can kill you in a hit or two. It's not something that should be dismiss with a "yeah I know they have BiS but ... " with a simple handwave. There is no but. 24 men is a raid where the people going into it can wear a full set of BiS to people who wear only dungeon gears and everything in between. If something hit hard enough to kill a BiS in 2 hits, or one shot a BiS that has a couple vulstack ... that will absolutely destroy anyone that has less gears.

As someone who usually do it in minimum gears since I treat 24men raid as a good environment to play on jobs I rarely play, I can definitely tell you that you can die ... a lot.

[Renathras]

So I'm not a savage raider...

I mean, my run had plenty of people die. So clearly the mechanics can kill people. "barely any damage" isn't accurate unless you have a SCH/SGE constantly shielding you or a party actually using mitigation. As far as I can tell, the encounters DO "some" damage. The only exception is Tanks, but that's true of all content in the game that aren't OHKO stuff.

And you're complaining that mechanics gave people too much time? How long is the "correct" amount of time to allow people to react to mechanics?

~2-5 seconds is Savage. Generally 5-10 is Extremes (less than 5s are Savage level Extremes that shouldn't be Extreme fights in the first place). So for casual, non-Extreme content, how long should people be allowed?

I agree that there needs to be some difficulty between casual and Extremes, but base 24 mans are casual, not that mid-level. As a rule, anyway. Not to mention this is the last patch, so there is only so much outgearing.

As for "What other game": Literally every other game with gear that has ilevels sees content get easier as you get higher level gear. That's part of the point of getting higher level gear. Having instances that slay people left and right but that people are forcing themselves to do for the rewards (sub-par gear and one upgrade token per week) isn't going to incentivize people to get better. They're still going to be bad, just now YOU have to drag them through every encounter and encounters take 2-3x as long to the point you'll shift to only doing premades. We had this same discussion in the thread about making dungeons harder.

Stuff that people are going to grind a lot can't really be super hard because what happens is the good players will get tired of carrying people and start doing only premades, then the content is too easy for them, meanwhile, the people not doing that won't be able to clear, and will demand nerfs or leave the game. Then nerfs will happen, probably after some have quit, then the people doing the premades are even more upset because things are TOO easy for them in their premades, and they quit. It's a system that is self-reinforcing to get worse and worse.

Yes, we desperately need a medium difficulty. The BASE difficulty of 24 mans isn't the place for it, though.

EDIT:

And that actually is the case btw.
...
As someone who usually do it in minimum gears since I treat 24men raid as a good environment to play on jobs I rarely play, I can definitely tell you that you can die ... a lot.

Exactly.

I don't know what groups these people are in, but my groups had people dropping like flies. We lost a complete party at one point, and it took two other parties trying to get them back on their feet while dodging mechanics to recover.

[Thurmnmurmn]

snip

So part of my complaint is that people are just bad at the game due to the game not teaching you or giving you any incentive to get better. Saying "but people died in my run!" doesn't prove anything. It can legit be used as an argument for both sides.

The issue with how you view the game is that FFXIV doesn't do fights like other games. FFXIV treats fights like a telegraphed dance. You practice it over and over again to get better and it doesn't ever change. You died to something? You know the exact same thing will happen next time at the exact same time (I know there's exceptions to this). So learn from your mistake.

As for the ilvl thing. I'm talking about the difficulty of an alliance raid that literally just came out. We can't out gear it cuz it's brand new. This is still way easier then previous alliance raids even today.

IMO something they could add that would force the worst players to improve is just small enrage timers to every boss. Doesn't have to be a big DPS check, but at least make it so people have to do some damage. That on top of just bosses doing more damage.

Also, you say this isn't the place for the middle ground between casual and extreme. As it stands right now, what other content can be placed between those two? Unreal is previous extremes, variant is meant to be casual, criterion is savage difficulty. There is nothing that can bridge that gap right now. Alliance raids are a great place to introduce some harder content since you're in there with 23 other people who can pick up the slack if you die a lot.

[Thurmnmurmn]

I think the biggest difference between those who say this is hard and those who say it`s easy is weather you believe a wipe means the content is too hard or not.
If it`s the first time running something, I 100% expect to wipe since no one knows what will happen. If we can clear without a wipe on the very first attempt with a group full of randoms, yes I believe that is way too easy.

[Renathras]

I guess the point of "people died in my run" is that you cannot say both people are bad AND that the mechanics hit too lightly and don't kill people when the mechanics are clearly hitting hard enough to kill people.

Hyperbole isn't useful in discussions.

I'm also not sure this is the easiest on release 24 man in the game's history. But I think that's a pretty subjective thing.

Hell, so is most of what we're talking about.

.

All I'm saying is, those things don't get players to improve. They make it where good players avoid randoms and premade run everything, bad players quit the game in droves forcing nerfs anyway, and mid-level players spend 1.5+ hours in runs. No one wins under this system.

For my part, "clear without a wipe" means "mechanics were well designed and understandable". I don't by the "you have to wipe or stuff is too easy". Not everything is Dark Souls, nor should be.

[Elkanah]

As a warrior wearing full tome gear and an upgraded tome body (from doing hunts)-- I stood in everything to test the likely hood of me dying. Even with pushing a defense cd every now and then--I didn't die from any mechanic. I recorded it just so I could watch it and play it back later to learn the mechanic on pause/rewind for next weeks run

[Raven2014]

So part of my complaint is that people are just bad at the game due to the game not teaching you or giving you any incentive to get better. Saying "but people died in my run!" doesn't prove anything. It can legit be used as an argument for both sides.

But claiming the raid doesn't hit hard enough to kill people is not the truth either. In my raid today literally half the raid die at each boss but we never wipe. My entire Alliance also got wiped once down to the last person, but the raid itself still didn't wipe.

If you says Alliance raid is easy because it doesn't wipe enough, then that maybe true. Claiming it the raid itself doesn't do enough damage is "paternally" false, or at least a very skewl argument. Plus, it's impossible to use damage done or damage taken as a metric for 24men anyhow. For example, the current raid will allow people with ilvl as low as i625 to get in, all the way to i660, how can you tune the balance for that wide of a range?. Like I said, if it hit hard enough to kill a i660 in 2-3 hit, it can absolutely gimp someone in the 625-630. If you add enough a DPS check to give the 650-660 a "challenge", the 625-640 group gonna have a bad time. And given the type of content of 24men suppose to be, it's reasonable to assume it will be tuned for the lower end.


I'm not saying Alliance can't be made harder, but damage done and damage taken ain't it.

[Nestama]

Or it's just easy because the mechanics aren't really new and there's no party responsibility like in previous raids (even Crystal Tower has these) AND the bosses take an extremely long time to cast their mechanic, which then also take a long time to "conclude." You're given so much time to dodge something, even when you're not in the safe zone.

The bosses spend most of the time being tutorials on things we learned in dungeons and Trials, rather than actually being a raid boss.

[AnotherPerson]

So I'm not a savage raider. The highest difficulty I've done is extremes. I found this to be a joke.

Sure there may have been some new mechanics, but they give you far too long to react to them. And even if you get hit, it does barely any damage to you.
I don't agree with the guy you quoted about everything needed to one shot you but at least make it do SOME damage.

Yeah, the mechanical difficulty is a lot less this time around. Some parts just didn't do much damage if any. Torrential Trident doing 3k on non-tanks unmitigated for 6 hits in 10 seconds. If you add the +4 second cast time, it's a total of ~24k damage in 14 seconds. Lofty Peaks is in a similar boat, but felt even weaker in comparison.
Basically the healers needed 1 aoe heal each (or less if you applied mitigation or dps helped out) and tanks/dps did nothing but dps in place. Not a lot of hard movement or mechanical execution, just waiting until the second part where aoes explode (which wasn't much movement at all if you just plopped yourself in the right location). Rather than heavy damage from pure mechanics, most of the fight was just making sure your healers properly healed instead of afked by increasing only the frequency of heals and lowering the amount of mechanics every player has to handle individually. As expected, players will really feel the lack of complexity and overall reduction in gameplay when they just make it so you don't need to move much when executing mechanics and it's mainly just raidwide damage. They really needed to double up that mechanic with another mechanic or at least increase the damage and give the other tanks a bit more to do so it doesn't feel bad to feel like your role doesn't matter much, while simultaneously ensuring healers have something to heal when people can do mechanics.

The map pushback and sprint was interesting in design and heavily favored Expedient and gap closers. Eulogia did have more mechanic frequency but the First Form to Third Form telegraphs... you have plenty of time to dps and just wait until it happens. Not very difficult in execution or felt much of an alliance raid. The AR bosses aren't too bad of a boss design if placed in trials/normal raids and buffed up a bit more, it just didn't fit in as well to an Alliance Raid where you don't want 2 other tanks to just be there for decoration or only to soak a tankbuster.