Alliance Raid Now iLvl Locked, Why??

[Havenchild]

Unironically, I have gotten CT the most so far still since patch dropped. What's everyone else's experience like so far?

It's going EXACTLY as I thought it would. CT is still popping up overwhelmingly cause it's tied to MSQ but now slightly slower runs, other alliances outside of EW Raids feel non existent? But too early to call since it's EW alliance rush. Have did 9 ARs so far, 5 CTs, 4 EW (Dropped into all 3 at least once).

Give it about 2 more weeks to see how it really feels but I think it's going to go back to majorily CT raids. The fact that it's tied up to MSQ is one of the core reasons it pops up so much. The ilvl cheese was only the tip of the iceberg for why CT is so likely and probably even the least impactful imo. Adjusting the Ilvl requirement does nothing to combat 2 other main principles.

1) CT Is unlocked by ALL of the playerbase. It is also the most queue'd for.
2) CT is REQ by MSQ. See point #1

Unless you force everyone to unlock and complete all alliance raids before participating in Alliance Roulette, you cannot solve the main issue of CT showing up as often.

[Boblawblah]

Unless you force everyone to unlock and complete all alliance raids before participating in Alliance Roulette, you cannot solve the main issue of CT showing up as often.

As someone that jumps in very late in expansions usually (sometimes multiple expansions late), I can see why people don't unlock raids other than CT. It's not clear what exactly you're getting in to, you have another whole expansion waiting for you, so you want to get to that, and the story usually feels very obviously like a side story, so there's no real incentive to unlock them all. For the veterans who have done most content, it's just obvious, but for more casual players, they don't even realize it exists.

For me personally, unlocking something like Eden when Shadowbringers is long done, feels really weird. I don't particularly have any attachment to characters like Ryne anyways, why would I care about unlocking an old raid she's part of? The story is already done for me.

[Toutatis]

As someone that jumps in very late in expansions usually (sometimes multiple expansions late), I can see why people don't unlock raids other than CT.

Indeed. There are many reasons to not unlock raids other than CT including:


1. Some people tolerate CT because it's beyond easy and just want the rewards but are not fans of Alliance raids.

2. Several people don't even know there are other alliance raids (like to someone doing their MSQ, there's no real reason to go to back to Kholusia after you've finished the MSQ and talk to that Dwarf at the other end of the map. It doesn't even say the quest will open on an AR and the same is true for the other AR series. All alliance raid series start with a series of blue quests and when you are new, you have no idea where this will lead.

3. Unlocking the ARs takes a lot of time time and waiting in queue. It's not bad when you are present at the time of release but for any new player/character, it's a lot of content. I bought a story skip on two alt characters and there are other priorities before starting to unlock raids. The story skip does just that: unlock MSQ, no extra content, not even glamours and chocobo fighting. Most people who buy that want to prioritize the latest expansion.

4. People might unlock some raids but not others for a variety of reasons. I personally do not unlock Nier 3 on any alt character as it gives me a headache and eyestrain because of the white background. I abandon it whenever it pops on my first character (and it kept popping regularly before the last patch).

If SE doesn't make the raids mandatory, it should at least make them easier to find and unlock. Moving the initial quest givers to obvious and visible places and give them a different quest marker to identify quests lines that will unlock Alliance raids (not just another blue marker). For those that buy a story skip, provide an npc you could talk to to unlock past alliance and normal raids by expansion. The point of a story skip is well, to skip story and be ready for action, not to backtrack to unlock old things by doing endless quests.