New Alliance Raid: Well done Devs

[DynnDiablos]

I think the raid is brilliant and sets a good and wild precedent for the remaining 24-mans of this expansion.

Yes, there is a big learning curve, but I do not think the curve is unreasonable. The raid will also get much easier over time thanks to gear creep and thanks to veterans learning all of the tells.

Until then, it's nice to have a raid that has teeth. Even once gear creep rears in 7.2, it will require more focus to survive.

Or, many of us will just not touch it and you can all enjoy horrible queues for the future 24-mans. If they want to cater to the hardcore fanbase of this game, fine. Don't expect us long-term vets/casuals to stick around and deal with it.

[MrKusabi]

... If they want to cater to the hardcore fanbase of this game, fine. Don't expect us long-term vets/casuals to stick around and deal with it.

Respectfully, they are not catering to hardcore. Other posters have pointed out that this difficulty is mainly due to it being new content and gear being a little low right now. I have never done a savage or ultimate, nor have I ever done an extreme on level. I am also middle-aged with vision problems. So I'm pretty much the definition of "turbo-casual." So this is not me talking down to you as a "hardcore" player or trying to diminish the difficulties you face. But with practice and better gear, this raid will go the way of other ones. It may never be as ridiculously easy as Crystal Tower or Myths of the Realm, but I imagine it will be similar to Nier and Ivalice. It's perfectly fine to see/try something and decide it's not for you, but it's a wee bit early to write it off entirely.

And as a turbo-casual, I quite enjoyed the difficulty. I like a wipe or two. It's fun to struggle some, at least for me. So it's also rather disingenuous to speak on behalf of the "casuals." While you personally may hate it and may believe it is beyond your skills or otherwise just not fun for you, that is not the case for everyone on the "casual" side.

[Volfe]

I've played this game 11 years. It's us casuals you can thank for this games success because without us it wouldn't exist today. If Yoshi P wants to keep catering to the 5% of this game's population, let's see how long you all have this content to enjoy when us vets leave.

And you're going to be the death of it with that attitude, people are getting tired of the baby difficulty. Most people asking for a challenge are casual players, including myself. This isn't even close to hardcore difficulty, the only relevant 5% here is the amount of people bothered by the difficulty at MOST.

I loved getting pulped by the new raid and I'll be trying again, thank you very much.

[Vyrerus]

I enjoyed the new raid. It does have part of my castle in it, at any rate :P

Will say too that I didn't find it particularly challenging. Some surprises sure, and I do have trouble remembering where safe spot is on third cleave during Shadowlord, but that's very much a me thing.

Kind of interested to see what happens when the interrupts don't happen. I did get to see Ark Angel Hume blow up the alliance, as I was on MCH and had been the only one silencing anything, and I was dead at the time waiting on a raise. The tanks were all off in lala-land I guess. Kinda funny.

Audio tell on gay Prishe was kinda cool. At first I thought I was supposed to be looking for a slight color variance during the wind up, but nah, it's audio telegraphs! Neat!

Also did not have deadpan dry humor jokes Bakool on my bingo card, but that's just my kind of humor.

A bit disappointed that they had us only walk through one half of a Tu'Lia island and put Despot in a way wrong place. We did get an accurate location for Laloff Amphitheatre, but it would have been cooler if they'd given us the main walk through the doll corridor where Despot actually spawns. It wouldn't have added that much time, either! I wish they were less afraid to make 24 man raids bigger, with variable trash in-between bosses with maybe, idk, the addition of alliance raid i720 accessories to be gained from trash. Make these big dungeons for big groups actually feel big!

Aquarius is a step in the right direction, but ultimately disappointing since he didn't take drastically reduced physical damage.

Also really wish the Shadowlord had been given a deeper voiced VA, similar to TG Cid's, but the VA he does have does actually sell infuriated nobility and reads the lines very naturally. I can really get into it!

Now as far as the story surrounding all of this goes... I suppose so far it hasn't offended, yet. Being a simulacrum of a real place made by electrope and Mamool sorcery means us XI vets can rest easy knowing that none of it has any real impact on XI's world or worldbuilding. THANK GOD! I don't have to burn down SE HQ.

Seeing all of the easter eggs and knowing all of them in my core has been delightful. Not so delightful on social media where people younger than XI itself attempt to clout chase the nostalgia and get things they're listing in threads wrong. But I suppose that's a time honored tradition anyway, as a lot of XI vets like to pretend they were playing the game since the time it was JP client only(2002).

[FudoMyoo]

I enjoyed the new raid!

Loads of nostalgia memories from FF11. <3 This will be best Alliance Raid ever created. (For FF11 fans).

[ZephyrMenodora]

Or, many of us will just not touch it and you can all enjoy horrible queues for the future 24-mans. If they want to cater to the hardcore fanbase of this game, fine. Don't expect us long-term vets/casuals to stick around and deal with it.

With respect, this is not "hardcore content" and I would not want the devs to look at this knee-jerk reaction as how they should design content. This is content that even blind in duty finder, people can push through and succeed in an hour or two on day one. A few wipes when most of the playerbase has no idea what the mechanics are in the first days of release, and also when most of us have not upgraded gear past 620 due to only getting coins now, is no indication that the typical casual player won't be running this raid very smoothly in a few weeks with more raid-wide gearscore and learned mechanics.

This reaction shows that the commenter above dislikes any difficulty and has a resistance to a willingness to learn. Some people also complained that the dungeons in 7.0 were too hard - and they are by all means easy already.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

We had an entire fresh alliance, or almost entire one, on dynamis on release night. We had no wipes, though some bosses were hairy.

Anyone who thinks this was too hard just needs to get used to the fights, as they are slightly different.

People really don’t remember how labyrinth went on release, or syrcus tower, or wod, or wiping city, or dun scaith, or orbonne.

[ZephyrMenodora]

We had an entire fresh alliance, or almost entire one, on dynamos on release night. We had no wipes, though some bosses were hairy.

Anyone who thinks this was too hard just needs to get used to the fights, as they are slightly different.

People really don’t remember how labyrinth went on release, or syrcus tower, or wod, or wiping city, or dun scaith, or orbonne.

At the end of the day, it's helpful to just view fights as memory puzzles.

Our alliance probably had about 8 wipes the entire run, but most of the alliance was starting to recognize patterns and it wasn't too hard once someone called out what a mechanic does.

Also with all the heavy scripting the fights are designed around, over time you eventually just mindlessly react to what's coming.

[Fawkes]

A bit disappointed that they had us only walk through one half of a Tu'Lia island and put Despot in a way wrong place. We did get an accurate location for Laloff Amphitheatre, but it would have been cooler if they'd given us the main walk through the doll corridor where Despot actually spawns. It wouldn't have added that much time, either! I wish they were less afraid to make 24 man raids bigger, with variable trash in-between bosses with maybe, idk, the addition of alliance raid i720 accessories to be gained from trash. Make these big dungeons for big groups actually feel big!

When we step on the red teleporter pad there's not an inert red pad where we end up. Literally unplayable.

I also wish the trash pulls were bigger, it feels like we speed through most of the areas. I expected more, especially with the Dynamis mobs there should be like 10 times as many, at least from how I remember the pulls going.

Now as far as the story surrounding all of this goes... I suppose so far it hasn't offended, yet. Being a simulacrum of a real place made by electrope and Mamool sorcery means us XI vets can rest easy knowing that none of it has any real impact on XI's world or worldbuilding. THANK GOD! I don't have to burn down SE HQ.

I kinda got the sense that Elvaan Guy not remembering stuff but Prishe having her memory was foreshadowing that she's going to end up being the real Prishe. Which I would prefer over having her dissolve into cubes at the end.

[Buktagwa]

I really enjoyed this Alliance Raid, and I'll definitely look forward to doing them weekly for this raid and the next two installments if they have a similar difficulty. So long as the mechanics difficulty stays around Stormblood and Shadowbringers Alliance Raid difficulty, I'm happy. This felt like it was on par with The Ridorana Lighthouse and The Orbonne Monastery, which happen to be my two of my most favorite Alliance Raids to take part of during release.

The Endwalker raid series were far too easy to read, and too formulaic with their long cast times and static timelines. IMO, the difficulty is perfect when a blind run has several near wipes, and a wipe or two on each boss. Gear and knowledge will make these wipes almost non-existent within half a year, but the raid itself will still be engaging and fun with the current difficulty level.