Raiders, why do you consider raiding just not memory games ?

[Voryn]

I generally enjoy raiding because in rather than only remembering things they also require (to varying degrees) good awareness, execution, multitasking, and are also an enjoyable social activity to me.

We’ve all heard people say “all you do is remember the strategy and just do that! Raids are so simple and boring!” But you’ve already seen that raids have variations in their mechanics that make us have to look at the screen and pay attention. Even though EX3’s wind phase has you go to the same spots for healer stacks and breaking your chains, you have to pay attention to the AOEs as well. The amount of variation depends on the raid: in UWU the only time you have to “look at the screen” in Garuda phase is if you’re a tank and need to see where the clones spawn, but in the current Savage tier there’s variation involved in almost every mechanic.

I enjoy the execution of certain mechanics, like how in phase 2 of ex3 we have to dodge the exaflares, then the half room cleave near the boss, and then as tank I press my mitigations and get into the tower immediately after. Other favourites are M2S’s Alarm Pheromones 1, DSR’s entire Nidhogg phase, and P5S’s Devour. If a mechanic is done the same each time but is fun to do (like dodging exaflares in DSR’s last phase) then to me it’s like how I feel when playing a fun song on guitar. It can be the same each time but is still fun to do.

And all the while there’s the matter of multitasking to try to play my job as best I can. How do I keep my GCD rolling while moving around to do the mechanics? Can I pay attention to my resources to be as perfect as I can with them? How do I handle the fact that sometimes during a burst window there’s tankbusters (like in EX3 after earth phase, or right at the start of M3S if not using invuln there) or mechanics (like in EX3 phase 2 depending on the phase 1 killtime, or a few times in Savage)? The raiding experience involves both doing the mechanics and playing your class well, especially in the third or fourth floor of Savage close to release, or an Ultimate that’s not old. I play a lot of tank so my rotation is often the same every time, but it’s still fun to me when I play DRK or GNB. I’ve been dabbling in healer and RDM and really enjoying having to get better at slidecasting, using my movement tools, and paying attention to the procs as RDM.

And I’ve also met friends through raiding and keep playing with them so that makes it fun too. Most people I play with aren’t like what Red-Thunder is describing, but there is the occasional crappy person out there that ruins things for others and gives people bad impressions about raiding or raiders. Everyone I’ve (personally) met who cares about getting 99 or 100 parses is well aware that it’s primarily about being competent at your job and then just getting a good killtime and good crits.

[UkcsAlias]

Yes. People think it's a miracle cure-all but blind prog is only fun for one tier.

To me its fun the first day on extremes. Just because of the discovery aspect. A lot of the things are well predictable when you see them. No baiting or a lot of hidden/short debuffs, almost everything has a clear cue.

Its also a good practice because while a guide can be nice, getting the feeling for general flow of mechanics is a good thing to build, and blind progs can do this well. But that realy only works on day 1, as there is always that person that already watched a guide instantly explaining mechanics. By doing this, you are more likely to catch onto mechanics even after watching a guide, as a lot of fights do involve visual cues which in savages become even more important.

Just watching a guide doesnt realy train you to watch for these, blind progs do. And best of all: people wont complain in these unless you are realy bad at it. The expectation is that you dont know anything yet. A good blind prog party will kick the moment someone tries to explain a later mechanic that you have barely seen at all. Thats not blind at that point anymore, thats spoiling. And this only works on day 1.

This is also an aspect i dislike of savages. You can do 1/5/9 blind on day 1. But rarely do you beat it early enough to go for 2/6/10 blind, most of the time when you reach those there are already very extensive raid plans that people demand. Its that bad i dont even care about blind progging in raids. Its only causing harm in the long run as it delays the completing even more, and once behind its a huge pain to catch up. The longer you wait, the more of the decent players already completed the raid.

[Xapapetsu]

The way I look at it is the same way I look at sekiro. I love going into fights blind learning the mechanics, figuring out the best ways to move in the fight and the best buff windows. Sekiro is similar, you learn the bosses pattern, and then you can optimize from there. It's not the fight itself I love when it comes to raiding, it's figuring out the fight which is the fun part.

[ovIm]

This is exactly how it is, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it is still quite fun if you enjoy that kind of thing. The higher the tier of difficulty you go up, the more you and your team have to work to win. It's the same reason why some people love the Souls games and some people hate the Souls games. At its core, the game just presents you with attack patterns you have to learn how to navigate while doing as much damage as possible. Some people even decide they want to speed run those games, which would be akin to farming a fight in FFXIV. Everyone knows that, say, waterfowl dance is just a series of attack patterns you have to memorize and dodge, but that doesn't make it easy. And the sense of joy you get when you finally succeed is still every bit as real even though it's always the same.

There is a distinct thing where this comparison is lacking though - in Soulsborne games, you learn attack patterns, yes, but they do not always loop the same way, and are generally shorter and smaller.
Whenever I engage, say Malenia (since you mention waterfowl), the fight usually never plays out the same twice in a row. While her attacks have a pattern, the entire fight is more interactive. Did I get hit? If so, can I heal without provoking a heal punish from the boss? Whats my own build, how do I tackle the fight, do I tank some attacks, focus on dodging, or generally try and use ranged attacks primarily? Etc etc.
The fights in FFXIV are a lot more static in comparison, and imho, lack the same excitement in learning those learning patterns and applying what I learned. YMMV, of course.

[GrizzlyTank]

Yeah, randomization is one thing WoW generally does better in it's raids. FFXIV is superior on the choreography. Best would be a sweet-spot for both things, wow has a bad habit of mixing what markers does, as well as throwing in green on green. FFXIV has a habit of being too rigid, including on the more fun gimmicky mechanics.

[Starrya]

There is a distinct thing where this comparison is lacking though - in Soulsborne games, you learn attack patterns, yes, but they do not always loop the same way, and are generally shorter and smaller.
Whenever I engage, say Malenia (since you mention waterfowl), the fight usually never plays out the same twice in a row. While her attacks have a pattern, the entire fight is more interactive. Did I get hit? If so, can I heal without provoking a heal punish from the boss? Whats my own build, how do I tackle the fight, do I tank some attacks, focus on dodging, or generally try and use ranged attacks primarily? Etc etc.
The fights in FFXIV are a lot more static in comparison, and imho, lack the same excitement in learning those learning patterns and applying what I learned. YMMV, of course.

They obviously have some differing aspects, not the least of which is speed. By virtue of the fact that eight people have to do the dance at the same time in FFXIV compared to one in Souls games, everything is slowed down, which might make it feel a lot more boring to some, but while you are learning the fights, questions very similar to the ones you have to ask for Souls games come up in much the same way. The same mechanic comes up each fight, yes, but this time I got the red debuff instead of the blue one, or I got the tether this time instead of the marker. Did someone die to avoidable damage? Oh, I don't have swift, can I res them without taking avoidable damage myself? I'm playing on a different role this week, now I'm a tank. Do I know where to position the boss? Do I know where I need to use my mitigation? Should I use my invuln here or there? Do I sacrifice some uptime to be safe on this mechanic that I could just do from range as healer, or go for the extra GCD? Wait, tanks get a GREEN debuff! What's this? I've never gotten it on my healer clears.

I agree that especially in normal and even extreme content, you'll probably be able to plug in your formula to solve the fight, and once you do, it may lose its luster faster than a Souls boss, but there are still quite a few interesting decisions to make while you're learning.

[CuteBucket]

When I was first looking to get into doing higher end content in this game, I asked a veteran friend what it was like. He explained it to me as it's like learning a choreographed group dance. And...yeah, for the most part, it is. Some people are going to dislike that and find it boring. I'm a former theater kid who loved learning big group songs and dances, so that immediately sounded like fun to me, and I have indeed enjoyed raiding ever since I started.

It's a little more complicated than that, of course. Unlike a routine, most of the harder fights have a certain amount of variation, where one of X many patterns can appear and you need to adapt accordingly, or one of 2-4 mechanics will happen at a certain point. You can't really just braindead these fights--there are several variations that you have to be ready to adjust to on the fly. So yes, it's mostly just a choreographed dance and memory games. I guess that's exactly how it was presented to me by my friend though, and I like those kind of games, so I'm still having fun. Your mileage may vary.

[IceEyes]

Because raiders don't see raids like you do, op.

The problem with difficult fights in FF14 is that it almost completely nullifies your past gaming experience.

Don't get me wrong, you can still do well in a rotation or tank/support role, but 90% of the fight will not be between you and the boss, but between you and the arena and your partners.
And if some of the patterns remain familiar and can be responded to, then many of the mechanics of many bosses have extremely unobvious attack patterns, more like solving a rebus by committing suicide.

Considering that they are almost always fatal to the entire party, it is not surprising that they will never go beyond the niche of optional/low-popular content.

By the way mentioned Sols again, but did not emphasize the main thing. Your past gaming experience is not invalidated. If u was good in parry or avoiding attacks on any boss, u still be fine on it in most situations.
In FF14, almost every battle is training from scratch. This is most terrible thing of raids. But some people like it, and they even manage to have fun and compete with each other. Cant judge them for that...

... until they start asking why raiding isn't fun for me and trying to convince me to try others jobs, because my main isn't fun...

[ovIm]

They obviously have some differing aspects, not the least of which is speed. By virtue of the fact that eight people have to do the dance at the same time in FFXIV compared to one in Souls games, everything is slowed down, which might make it feel a lot more boring to some, but while you are learning the fights, questions very similar to the ones you have to ask for Souls games come up in much the same way. The same mechanic comes up each fight, yes, but this time I got the red debuff instead of the blue one, or I got the tether this time instead of the marker. Did someone die to avoidable damage? Oh, I don't have swift, can I res them without taking avoidable damage myself? I'm playing on a different role this week, now I'm a tank. Do I know where to position the boss? Do I know where I need to use my mitigation? Should I use my invuln here or there? Do I sacrifice some uptime to be safe on this mechanic that I could just do from range as healer, or go for the extra GCD? Wait, tanks get a GREEN debuff! What's this? I've never gotten it on my healer clears

None of those things change the order of what happens though, is what I mean when I say the encounter is much more static. The debuffs always come at x Seconds passed, y Seconds later you get tethers, z Seconds later there is a tank buster. Always, and every time, without fail. Sure you may get tethered to another player than before, but that does not always change your movement. There may be a body check that just stops progression until everyone is perfect. Every group worth their salt pre plans their mitigations too, mapping out exactly what defensive to use, so thats for naught. All offensive cooldowns are already mapped because of the 120s damage buff mold of each class.
A some point, you will have experienced every minor variation (if there even are some). Then the fight plays out always the same, its predictable in a way Soulsborne bosses are not.

So really, learning a fight in Soulsborne Games and learning a fight in FF14 have almost nothing in common imho.

ETA:
its not just that, the examples I have given are not just how you interact with the encounter, it also changes how the encounter reacts to you. FF14 bosses do not really react to you outside of giving you the occasional debuff for standing in stupid. Yet, the distance you have, the attacks you do, all change how a boss interacts with you as the player. Malenia simply sidestep-dodges magic if you just spam it, for example. Its an entirely different experience to FF14 raiding.
The most interactive thing I have seen in the past few years in this game is Llymlaen giving you a spear shaped middle finger if you dare to /dote on her.

[NaoSen]

I'd probably do hard content if a different raiding type existed (The current is enjoyed by many, no need to take that away from them), my perception in progression makes me class a static as essential yet at the same time I don't know if I'd either have the will or be fresh enough to commit to a statics schedule so I don't raid. That's a me problem though, EX3 would've been perfect for me if a prog point existed before ice for example.

My view on the FF raid experiance.


General Progression Experience:
Mechanic A's success rate sits at 0%, group clicks and gets excited when seeing Mechanic B for the first time.
Morale increases, sense of achievement kicks in.
Start seeing Mechanic B happen more and more, achievement enjoyment starts to drop.
A thresholds hits where this enjoyment is no longer there, what was once enjoying to pass is now annoying, you're basically guaranteed to get to Mechanic B now.
Frustration of Mechanic B is amplified by Mechanic A having become trivial.
Pass Mechanic B
Mixture of relief and achievement, potentially happier that no longer stuck on Mechanic A than passing Mechanic B
Either duration of group or just brain getting tired from repetition kicks in
Start failing mechanic A again.
Call it for the night
Repeat

Group Cascading Failure:
The more points you have to progress through the higher individual failure's impact becomes, this can cause experienced people to leave statics or clear it with other's instead which in turn makes the original static's experience potentially worse if a less competent replacement is found.

The PF Experience:
Success only if entire groups competence is high enough, person RNG becomes a factor now.