Why I have no interest in Coils more specifically, T9.

[Ashkendor]

Ive never done T9. I looked up a guide and it looked incredibly boring.

Secondly, even if I did have issues with it it would just me be saying "Well, **** I dropped the stupid meteors in the wrong place." or "Great, the boss did the thing thats inevitable going to wipe us."

Is that fun? Is messing up at the very last second just to do the same exact thing over considered entertaining with absolutely not change up what so ever?

Yes. Yes it is fun. It's fun to get together with seven people and take on a challenge. The first time you set foot in a turn, it's fun to watch all the ways you fail. I can't tell you how many times I died to things like autoattacks in T13 while our healers got used to the insane amounts of damage that are heaped on the main tank. The entertainment there lay in the fact that the boss would then go to the highest DPS and obliterate them with Flare Breath or Flatten. People ran around and carried on ("Noooooo why meeeeee? The bard looks tastier, eat him!") as the boss ate the rest of the party one by one, often with them actively trying to get each other killed and be the last man standing.

You all die in the end. Okay! You can't view every death as a failure to clear. Instead, you should view every death as a learning experience. The fight resets and you buff and start again. After a few tries, you don't die to that same thing anymore. You learn to deal with that thing. You progress. You die to something new that you hadn't seen before. Sometimes it's frustrating when you slide backwards and can't get past Phase 1 for some reason. Sometimes you need a break. If you enjoy the challenge, you will eventually come back to it. Soon, you make it to a milestone point in the fight where you can start learning the final phase. For T9 it's Heavensfall. For T13 it's Teraflare. You see that and you think to yourself "Oh boy, shit just got real." It's the home stretch in your learning process. You know victory is close.

Funny story, the first time we got to Heavensfall I murdered our entire party by standing in the wrong place. Nael dives down on the MT, and out of nervousness and a bit of confusion I stacked on the party because I didn't remember what to expect at the phase shift. They all died, and I was left fighting the boss alone. There was a chorus of "What the..?" and "Oh shit!" then laughter as the boss ate my face. I made a very obvious blunder. You know what? I've never made that mistake again. And yes, we had fun with it. They still occasionally tease me for it to to this day.

The first time we got past Teraflare in T13, both tanks died seconds later to the first Akh Morn because both of our healers were already dead. It was inevitable. We 100% knew we were going to die to it, but we wanted to see the mechanic anyway. It helps to get an idea of things like what it looks like, the timing of when it happens, and how fast the individual hits go off. It's information that helps you next time you get there. Bahamut obliterates both tanks, eats the rest of the party, and then we reset the fight and pat ourselves on the back for a good run. We died to something new. We made it further than we ever did before, so let's do it again. We know we can, because we just did.

Eventually you start to learn how to deal with it when Shit Goes Wrong™. That's when you know that you aren't operating on simple rote memorization, but that you truly understand how the mechanics actually work. In any case, it's not about beating your head against the content. Yes, it will sometimes feel that way but usually that's a case of being hungry or tired or cranky about something else and just needing to address the other problem. We take a break, we get a snack, if people are tired we wrap it up for the night. Those of us that enjoy the raid content will come back over and over again to learn it. If you want something, you have to go get it. Clears aren't going to be dropped into your lap. If it was easy, it wouldn't be so rewarding to beat it. Let me tell you, getting your first clear feels like a million bucks.

[Jamein]

Snip.

Absolutely perfect, this is why end game raiding is fun for me. There's no sense of achievement if you down it one shot.


That clear, where you've made it further than you've ever made it before, where you're all in a strange state of focus and somewhere between calm and downright insane and you see the boss for the first time hit 1% and you know its coming, you can see it coming, you can feel that damn clear you can taste it, and BOOM....................... you get wiped the fuck out by something and the boss is left standing and laughing at you. You all sit in silence in vent/TS before someone says 'wow you're all a bunch of noobs' and the laughter starts. You take a break.

Then you do it again, you get that rush because you've just been so close and you know you can do it now, focus x1000 kicks in, and when that 1% turns to 0% and the boss goes down and you hear everyone on teamspeak go nuts, that was worth all those wipes.

The best part is, no one gives a fuck about the first loot drops, no one cares that it's all dragoon items and no one even has a dragoon alt, it's all just an amazing amount of fun.

This is why I love hard content, I get far more joy from this than anything else in the game.

[Anneliese]

People like you make me not want to do coil even more. Anyone who doesnt do it or has no interest is automatically "ignorant". I dont see the need to use that word so much other than to give yourself a sense of superiority.

lolno, not being interested in coil doesn't make you ignorant. coil doesn't have to be everyone's cup of tea, and that's completely understandable.

Making assumptions and statements such as not challenging, pure memory tests, boring, blahblah without actually trying it yourself is ignorant.

You are no different from the "real elitists" that bash on the things that causal players do that hardcore raiders don't typically enjoy, except on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.

[Wournsfeik_Untawhasyn]

...

Not to mention all the friendships you can make along the way of people who are just super chill and want to down this content. You start to trust them, you learn about the community, maybe not about the best of the best if you're not on the edge of progression, but you learn about the part of your community that loves to push themselves completely. And you'll always wave to one another as you pass in Mor Dhona. And when you get into a party with someone you recognize as someone you've suffered through T(X) with you just sort of smile and remember what you did with them.

But that first T5 and T9 clear will always stick in your mind. Because those ones were hard fought and won.

[Ashkendor]

That clear, where you've made it further than you've ever made it before, where you're all in a strange state of focus and somewhere between calm and downright insane and you see the boss for the first time hit 1% and you know its coming, you can see it coming, you can feel that damn clear you can taste it, and BOOM....................... you get wiped the fuck out by something and the boss is left standing and laughing at you. You all sit in silence in vent/TS before someone says 'wow you're all a bunch of noobs' and the laughter starts. You take a break.

Yes! We've had so much of this in T13. We had a wipe to enrage at 4%, then a clear, and then we struggled to get the second clear. For two days worth of raid times we bashed our heads against it and just... weren't with it. Mistakes were made. People died to divebombs that hadn't been doing that for weeks. It turned out I didn't really understand the tether mechanic; I'd simply been following what I'd been told to do and it worked on our first clear because we got lucky in the tether placement. I wasn't sure how to adjust for things going wrong, so we had a lot of DPS deaths to twisters. We all sat down and had a talk about it, and said we'd go into the third day with a clean slate. I went out to Reddit and Youtube looking for information on the tether mechanic, and came back knowing what I needed to know.

We strolled in there Thursday night and one-shotted our second clear with no deaths. It felt incredible. For that single, shining moment we were completely goddamn flawless in our execution of mechanics and we got to flip the bird to a boss that had been a thorn in our collective paw for two days. We sat there and absorbed that for a few moments before someone piped up, "Was that with no deaths?" We thought about it, were mildly surprised that yes, there were no deaths, and basked in it for a few minutes. Then we dove right back in and got two more clears. :3

Not to mention all the friendships you can make along the way of people who are just super chill and want to down this content. You start to trust them, you learn about the community, maybe not about the best of the best if you're not on the edge of progression, but you learn about the part of your community that loves to push themselves completely. And you'll always wave to one another as you pass in Mor Dhona. And when you get into a party with someone you recognize as someone you've suffered through T(X) with you just sort of smile and remember what you did with them.

So much this. The two original members of my static that are left are among my best friends in the game. One of my real life friends joined the static at some point along the way too, making a core group of four that hangs out a lot. We do tons of things together, everything from roulettes to relic grinds to pony farming to just derping around. We talk in Mumble daily. We genuinely enjoy each other's company and the game would be so much different without them there. I've run into other people that I've downed content with, and it's always awesome to talk to them again and see where they've progressed to. Sometimes it turns into a raid party for old times' sake.

[KarstenS]

[Wall of text]

Very nice written. Thats what endgame is for raiding people. Thats what the OP and his sympatisants don't understand or don't want to understand. There are people, many people, a not unimportant amount of people, that want challanges like this and no "you should be able to beat it first time when entering blind".

[XionAvalonArcadia]

So far I see people complaining about responsibility and being able to not be lemmings. You still want the loot or to do the fights that people worked for without actually doing the work.
"Mechanics are all the same."
Then you should have plenty of practice and have no problem beating it.
"Mechanics are too boring."
Then you should have no problem beating it.
"Coil is just a memory game."
Welcome to the wonderful world of not everything is designed for you.
"You are just being an elitest!"
I am sorry if saying Coil is perfectly fine for a small few to beat but not the majority. That is why it wasn't designed for the majority to beat. This separates 8 man groups and 24 man groups. It is also the difference between people working for stuff or groups just face rolling through new content DAY 1 like the Towers. God forbid they make something people work for in a video game.

[Mercutial]

Thank you Jamein and Ash for absolutely nailing why endgame progression is so fun.

[Jamein]

Thank you Jamein and Ash for absolutely nailing why endgame progression is so fun.

It's hard to put into words, but as raid leader and someone who spends a lot of time finding new ways and researching the fights trying to help out every member of the group if they are struggling with something even though it's not my class, it's damn rewarding to hear everyone so happy at the end of a first clear and it's worth all the stress that can sometimes come with it. I'm probably the loudest in the group, I'm always the most vocal, but after a clear I'm probably the one that's silent, I just listen to them go nuts and i'll congratulate them and sit back and smile for a good 15 minutes.

Then we go in again and wipe!

[Kallera]

Mind you I'm still worried about what I want to say about this because I do want to clear coil, I want to experience the same joy that you received.

But I'm on the content before most statics start recruiting. And I don't have time to make and lead one.