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

[Arkdra]

+1ing this. The fights are way too easy. They are easier than Euphrosyne and that was already a joke raid. Like I am not expecting them to be for real difficult but if I go into a brand new raid at 11 am on patch day and we get through with 0 whipes, I have 0 personal deaths, and we don't even have any close calls, then you've majorly undertuned your raid. Like damn, we had 1 whipe in the week 1 Euphro I did. The mechanics were cool enough, just either take 8 billion years to come out or hit for so little it doesn't matter. Also feel like they undertuned hp yet again.

[LuckShance]

I am a little confused to some extent. Do we want the attacks to be well telegraphed and legible without foreknowledge, or do we want people to have to wipe on their first runs to understand what's going on?

Let's be real for a second, the core gameplay loop of FFXIV content is to play your job, and to move from point A to point B so you don't get blasted. You see a telegraph, you parse what that telegraph means, you move to a safe spot, repeat.

If we want our telegraphs to be logical and readable without the use of guides or repeating the fight, then naturally they're going to be able to be completed by players on their first attempt. That's literally the point.

Is obscuring the mechanics actual difficulty? Or is it trial and error? Once you know what mechanics are, what they mean, it isn't really challenging. Anyone that's looked up MTQ's guides before a fight and cleared it on their first time with hardly a vuln stack to their name can tell you this. This goes for raids like Ivalice as well. Cid is easy once you know what things do and what they mean. The hard part is when you don't yet have that knowledge, but then what is the challenge in just not knowing what you're supposed to do?

I can understand arguments about mechanics not doing enough damage or having too much time, but I think the expectation that if the whole alliance doesn't wipe then it's not hard enough is a little silly. If the alliance wipes its typically because too many people were confused by the mechanic, not that they didn't have the skill to complete it. Nothing Cid does requires difficult execution, just an understanding of the fight.

Are raids no longer fun to play once you understand the mechanics?

EDIT: I should clarify I haven't played the new alliance raid yet so I can't speak on it specifically. Just that in general I'm not sure I agree that not having full wipes means the duty is too easy.

[KageTokage]

The final boss was really underwhelming and I was expecting actual variance/overlap with the mechanics it was reusing from the previous bosses instead of them being so spaced out that you can handle them exactly the same way as in the original fights for the most part.

I also understand wanting to "teach" people the mechanics but many bosses spend an unreasonably large amount of time doing that, like Oschon doing his basic shifting cone AoE three times in a row before he switches to using other mechanics.

[Nestama]

EDIT: I should clarify I haven't played the new alliance raid yet so I can't speak on it specifically. Just that in general I'm not sure I agree that not having full wipes means the duty is too easy.

When you get around to doing the raid, the complaints will make a lot of sense.
That said, I'd take wiping to new, never before seen mechanics over being taught that a Tsunami = (a very weak I must add) Knockback, Left Bank = Left side AoE and Right Bank = Right side AoE for the umpteenth time.

Also making tutorials the main gimmick of every boss means that we have to go through those tutorials every. Single. Time. Once everyone is i650+ (guaranteed once Dawntrail comes out), these bosses will die within 3-4 minutes and never exit their tutorial phase and the only way to see the fights beyond the tutorial phase would be to minimum ilevel it.

Edit: also to add, each cast is maybe 5+ seconds long and then the mechanic itself can take over 10-20 seconds to resolve. The boss could be doing auto-attacks to the MT, but otherwise there's no damage happening for a very long time.

[LuckShance]

I do think the game's got a pretty big problem with ilvl power creep on old content. Last patch we were able to kill Nald'thal before his weights mechanic meaning his whole cinematic transition cutscene is totally missed by new players. That shouldn't really be a thing that's possible.

Older content really has it bad. I mentioned I found it funny that they changed Praetorium to have real fights but also like not at all? They have actual fight mechanics now but nothing matters because nothing does vuln stacks or any damage, to the point you can beat it without a tank as long as your healer isn't asleep and its optimal for the DPS to just tank all the aoes rather than move out of attack range. Dungeon bosses are harder than this big climax of the game.

And Crystal Tower is in such a bad state that I have literally no idea what Glasya Labolas's mechanics are because he's dead before the fight is anything other than a tank and spank.

We need some stricter ilvl caps on these duties it feels like.

[fulminating]

I think prae/meridanium have less mechanics, design and teeth than a sensibly synced run of the old one. Which is kind of sad if you think about it.

Why doesn’t hal-1 have a stacking vuln auto? Why is that pillar phase? Surely if any of the bosses were to attack constantly until dead it’d be this one? Why doesn’t nophica have some kind of growth/scythe mechanic instead of whatever the hell flower field ddr is meant to be. Why does the maths dimension limit itself to triangles- even if Greek reference, they were into circles and Platonic solids too. Why is oschon’s bow bs so slow and empty. Why is the final boss so uninteresting and visually underwhelming. Why doesn’t it have a phase 2. What did nymia and althyk even do? Why must every boss recentre itself for no real reason. Thaliak’s trash mobs were pretty good though. Were there any body tells at all? - I don’t remember.

Very little changed how the game was played, one tank grabbed the boss and 24 people hacked away at its ankles. Thematic mechanics with some progression to the fight shouldn’t be a lot to ask. Afaik none of these were meant to be the gods of left right cleaves.

I have no desire to run it more for improvement’s sake, what’s the point when the first run was already effortless. I’ll also mention that my gear is not particularly good, still have abyssos boots and accessories so outgearing will only make it worse.

Edit: why wasn’t menphina all gaze attacks + magnet + red triangle stack with random person in the raid? Dalamud could have still been included as a phase change, maybe have his cleaves set off the moon beams or something? As it stands it feels awfully long with not much new happening.

[Sigvard]

I'm starting to think that everyone has a different definition of easy. While we had no true wipes, my first run was full of deaths and confusion. Many people understandably don't know new mechanics. Once you learn those mechanics through trial and error, watching others in your alliance, etc, you still have to have the reaction time to get to the safe spot of that mechanic. Assuming you have the knowledge of that mechanic, and the timing and positioning to get where you need to go, sometimes it doesn't even matter if you can't see the markers. Despite many here saying that this alliance raid is easy, I simply felt overwhelmed.

I don't do some of the harder content in the game. I'm not one for ultimates or savages. I don't think difficulty is the only way to derive fun from a game or encounter. Some level of challenge can be fun, but I wasn't having fun here. I think as an alliance raid, there's something wrong with the design. Ivalice and Nier raids are very fun and have challenge to them. But that challenge isn't entirely based on fast reaction time, which I think is becoming a problem in normal/casual content lately. I'm not sure why everyone expects an alliance raid to be on par with savage.

Somehow both casual and hardcore players seem upset with this alliance raid and I'm not sure what went wrong.

[ty_taurus]

I'm not sure why everyone expects an alliance raid to be on par with savage.

Who said anything about savage though? I don't understand why every time someone asks for more difficulty, there are people who interpret that as savage level difficulty. "It's not challenging enough" does not mean "why isn't everything in the game savage level difficulty"

[Nestama]

Somehow both casual and hardcore players seem upset with this alliance raid and I'm not sure what went wrong.

Two big reasons and then a few extra reasons.

One: HP appears to be scaled to the minimum ilevel (i625) and not something like... i640-650. So bosses die really fast.
Two: Bosses spend 3-5 minutes forcing us through a tutorial of their mechanics, rather than getting straight to the point and having us figure things out as they happen.
Bonus Round Three: Combine those two issues together and once people out gear these raids, all we'll see are the tutorial mechanics and not the "real fight." That's boring. With Ivalice we, Orbonne in particular, we still get to have an engaging fight.

Extra: Cast times are very slow and mechanics take a long time to resolve. There's no Alliance Raid or even individual responsibility mechanics in the fights at all (it's all just "don't stand in AoE"). There isn't really anything "new" introduced (something Alliance raids are known for). Etc etc

[Silverquick]

Cids mechanics weren't even hard. People just don't have eyes

Yeah seriously,
The mechanics in Ridoranna Lighthouse were actually harder. You can see it when you have a lot of newbies in the raid and how many die repeatedly on one vs the other.

Cid isn't that bad actually. It's more like Ozma it's just a tight space where you have to adjust to the specials.

But I was on Ridoranna last night and I swear we had 4 newbies in there and they spent most of the time face planted, I swear I should have brought RDM on that one because Resing that much with Summoner is painful. I usually run multiple Alliance Raid roulettes, even if i don't get anything for them because I generally find them fun. But honestly this recent Alliance Raid is so disinteresting to me I didnt' even bother to unlock it.

EDIT: Surprisingly though I don't get many Neir Raids as much as I get Ivalice Raids.