alliance roulette is just broken and infuriating at this point.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

WHAT! Ilvl locking didn't fix this!? I am shocked (°П°）

Did people really thought that’s going to fix? Lmao

[vetch]

During the Eden storyline we need to summon a creature of darkness to help offset all the light so we pick the Cloud of Darkness. Yes, this is optional content but it still references back to it and wouldn't make much sense if we summoned her with no knowledge as to who she is.

Post-Endwalker content has us returning the Void and assumes this isn't our first time there and already know what to expect upon returning.

Xande, Cloud of Darkness and the Allagan Empire are the reason why Azdaja is even stuck in the Void.

Amon, Xande's servant (and minor boss in Syrcus Tower) plays a major role as Fandaniel and causing the Final Days to return. This could be explained with some extra dialogue since the original boss is just a clone, but still helps to serve as a connection to the past.

We'll likely be going to Meracydia in a future expansion and the Crystal Tower and the fact that we were the ones that killed its greatest past enemies will likely have some relevance.

I'll give you the Cloud of Darkness one as tricky to write around after the fact, only because they made a raid boss model based on it. But that only makes CT a prerequisite of the Eden raids, not all of Shadowbringers.

The others could be covered easily or are speculative. The Fandaniel-Amon connection is covered and his reveal scenes don't make much hay at all from you having ever fought clone Amon.

At some point it just becomes annoying and time consuming to write branching dialogue and cutscenes all the time all due whether or not the player did a side quest.

Would that I could get paid millions of yen to be annoyed.

Plus it's only annoying to your imagination. This is the kind of minutiae that lorebeards go crazy over.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Did people really thought that’s going to fix? Lmao

It fixed a different thing altogether, namely the knowledge that people can manipulate and have manipulated their item level to ensure statistically even more duties end up being in Crystal Tower. It's still nowhere near ideal, but it was a necessary intervention, if for PR alone.

Let's not kid ourselves, just knowing there are people out there that did that was just unnecessary salt in a wound.

[Kuroka]

I was actually really looking forward to working with Gaius to help Garlemald when he was reintroduced at the end of Stormblood, but instead he just gives you a dumb excuse why he can't go, likely because it would be too time consuming to integrate into the quests whether or not you did the Sorrow of Werlyt questline.

Honestly i still feel at the end of any expansion they need to drop the hammer and make ALL side stories mandatory for the next expansion. So much wasted potential and lore... just because someone cant be bothered to do some raids or trials - which many end up doing anyways.

[Keichi]

Honestly i still feel at the end of any expansion they need to drop the hammer and make ALL side stories mandatory for the next expansion. So much wasted potential and lore... just because someone cant be bothered to do some raids or trials - which many end up doing anyways.

That could be countra productive.
Because, it can make it hard, to progress the story.
That would mean, that you need to do the Bahamut raid and the crystall tower, to go to HW. Or do Alexander and the arch in Hw, and do the 4 beast, the theater group and Omega, to go to Shb. And do Eden, Nier and the weapons to go to EW.

The problem would be: How should player do that? Its hard to find a group, to do any of this side content, if you are a newer player.
When i came back in shb, did i needed for the first few Eden raids up to 1 hour, to have a group to do that 1 time. The same, when a other person came back. Simply, because it became old content.
People would probably stuck in some storys, because it take to long, to find a group (or can the companion make the Substitut?).

Yeah, the story can be nice to know (i complained in HW, where Alisai is, when she never showed up, after she separated from Alphinau at the start from ARR, not knowing, that she allready showed up in the Bahamut raid). But the side content can simply be to hard to do, and arent important enough for most of the main story.
It would be even worse, would that mean, to do Boznjia and Eureka (or how the area from SB is named). Because, its nearly impossible to finishing that (and take to long), when the areas are as good as dead (are there even Player now?).

[Asari5]

i still think they should make the msq as if you've done all side content, but not making all of it mandatory. just put in some warnings here and there to let people know they could miss out on something if they didnt do certain quests. so people can decide for their own if they wanna have the full lore package or if they dont care about it.


for exemple. make the manderville weapons accessible to everyone without having done hildibrand. (it still bothers me how they put a relic weapon behind such a long quest line which depends heavily on your mood if you can enjoy it). but when you start the first quest a text will pop-up informing you how you miss out on some characters backstories if you dont do the hildibrand-line first.

[Emitans]

IMO they should handle it the way Granblue Fantasy does where if you try to play story that relies on a past story it gives you a popup and recommends you go play that first, but then lets you play it anyway.
Also remove the all role quests requirement to do the final quest in Shadowbringers. I cannot believe we just left those guys hanging in 6.2-6.5

[Lily_Winde]

Hello, I'm a new player. I've been playing this game for 1 month and a half, I'm lvl 90 and I've finished the Endwalker MSQ. I'm loving the game, but there are some issues that me and my friends that just started playing as well, believe needs a improvement badly.

Crystal Tower alliances and all dungeons and trials from 0 to 60 needs a reword badly. Everything is so easy, happens so fast, that I don't even understand what's going on. I just run like everyone else. It gets to the point that's boring and blunt. There's no emotion, no reason to run those dungeons AT ALL since everything dies so easy and fast. Please, consider increasing the difficulty from everything 0-60. The way it is today makes me wanna quit the dungeon just after I get inside and see is one of those boring ones, that me as a healer can fall asleep doing it.

[Keichi]

Hello, I'm a new player. I've been playing this game for 1 month and a half, I'm lvl 90 and I've finished the Endwalker MSQ. I'm loving the game, but there are some issues that me and my friends that just started playing as well, believe needs a improvement badly.

Crystal Tower alliances and all dungeons and trials from 0 to 60 needs a reword badly. Everything is so easy, happens so fast, that I don't even understand what's going on. I just run like everyone else. It gets to the point that's boring and blunt. There's no emotion, no reason to run those dungeons AT ALL since everything dies so easy and fast. Please, consider increasing the difficulty from everything 0-60. The way it is today makes me wanna quit the dungeon just after I get inside and see is one of those boring ones, that me as a healer can fall asleep doing it.

Fun fact:
A lot of the early dungeons had a rework in EW. Some of them was a litte more complex (in the second one, needed you to place the slime boss in bombs, to weaken him, as a dd, was you able to practicly sleeping in that fight).

They streamlined the dungeons, to make it compatible with npc (they wouldnt be suited for complex mechanics). And, to make them similary to the later ones.
A other reason, why the dungeons and early raids are easy are the item lvl, that most people have. The people are simply overpowerd (you can see the same thing in the first god raid, where it became common now, to beat the final boss, before he can use the scale, something, that was impossible at the start of the raid).

And the devs can barely change anything, because it would become to hard, would you have a group of new player with low equipment (esspecial in ARR have most people very bad stuff, most of them dont even have accessoires, aside of starting stuff, before they are 50).

Aside of that:
How did you manage to finish the game in 1,5 month? Has you skipped every cutscene and side content?

[Acelyn]

Wow, didnt think this thread would get this many replies.

So, here's another reason why crystal tower being so prominent makes alliance raids tricky, they dont allow the playerbase to learn the later raids mechanics/tricks.

yesterday i got lucky and orbonne monastery is what popped instead, you'd have thought it was launch day with how things went,

mustadio - 2 alliances died but we beat him, barely

agrias - wiped, defeated her barely afterwards

thunder god - 2 wipes, players left, ranks got replenished, time was spent explaining what needed to be done, beat him (this was actually fun, like old times!)

ultima - a rez fest, constant deaths, took forever, the definition of panic, beat her.

for me, it was fun, i like alliance fights because things can just cascade to pure panic, but from what i saw with all the sprout icons and death, players just arent ready or used to what content that isnt CT brings, the jump in quality fightwise from CT to even the mhachi raids is massive, then stormblood and shadowbringers brings more mechanics and more importantly, fights that take some time and bosses who wont roll over, plus you actually have a rotation that wont bore you.

I really wish devs would go play and see how these old fights go now since players are losing knowledge of what to do, ozma can still wreck people because they dont know how to place things, calofisteri can cleave whole alliances because tanks will panic and turn her, the nier ones can go hilariously wrong sometimes.

but unlike the dungeons which got simplified to handle the trust i dont think these fights need any changes, they literally just need to be seen more, and pushing crystal tower into main scenario would do that.

this would also help with future content i believe, the alliances of endwalker are imho too easy, were already skipping big parts of fights, there is no real sense of danger and some of the hitboxes of bosses are so massive its almost detrimental to movement

(look at the hit circle of oschon compared to sephirot, both bosses are big walls pretty much, but in sephirots arena movement is easier because his actual hitbox is smaller, oschon meanwhile your character has odd movement because "oschon" takes so much space)

if players were able to play the later/newer alliance fights they would be more accustomed to mechanics and the devs who make fights could make better/harder fights, just going back to stormblood tier difficulty would be enough, but right now players are so used to either waltzing through ct or no danger from the endwalker series that they dont know what to do in other content.