The disapointment that is Alexander

[Xairos]

Really this is a post about timing. This game is trying to appeal to everyone. So savage and story, idealistically, should come out at the same time.

[FoxyAreku]

How is this any worse than first coil though?

First coil was a snake, a sphere, T3 (lol), a bunch of trash mobs, and a dragon.

It was incredibly underwhelming, compared to that alexander is amazing. It's just what you should expect from the first part of a raid honestly, the next part will be better.

[RiceisNice]

The only thing I'll give against Alexander is that it's story has absolutely no build up. Theres no sense of urgency (everything we've been told about what it can do is word-of-mouth). Unless the hinterlands start changing to reflect the circumstances (such as it actually being drained of its aether, they said it'd only take a matter of moons for it to be bled dry and devoid of life,) Alexander is just sorta....there.

Compared to binding coils (and I'll admit its an unfair comparison), it had an entire game's worth of buildup and backstory, and you have the sense of urgency and terror of what you're actively trying to prevent, because we've all seen what happened when Bahamut emerged from Dalamud, we do not want a repeat of that.

Difficulty aside, the atmosphere and level of tension is similar to that of The Crystal Tower series, which honestly I feel is like a wasted opportunity to make the raid environment something truly epic. Especially since they took aboard the concept of normal/story and savage difficulty, it would have been perfectly plausable to fit it into the MSQ (giving it plenty of background events, backstory and build up). Nothing in this game has come close to what the Aetherochemical Research Facility or Singularity Reactor has given, it's just a shame that they're flat lvl 60 dungeons without a higher difficulty setting.

[4gotmypassword]

In particular response to SDaemon/Tatsu Inaba, I have to disagree on a couple points.
Alexander's view from the outside is SIGNIFICANTLY SMALLER than even A1, let alone all the others. I think you were trying to point out that the arenas look smaller than Alexander could have within him, I just want to point out that the reverse is true. I've seen screenshots of people flying under the map in the Hinterlands and getting within Alexander's Bubble, and it's extremely clear that Alexander's outside model is very small.
The other one was that they said several times that Alexander drained the Hinterlands of the "vast majority of its aether in seconds", I remember Cid saying that EXACT thing, italics and all.
Not disagreeing with your post as a whole, nor agreeing, just wanted to point out a couple of errors.

[SDaemon]

I said that my gripe was the view of the outside didn't match the inside. The inside of Alexander is much larger than what the outside suggests.

I'll go back and see if I can find a recording anywhere, but I strongly believe they never said seconds lol. But even if they did or did not, I still feel that come the next batch of floors we'll see the impact Alex is having on the area.

[HReincarnate]

How is this any worse than first coil though?

First coil was a snake, a sphere, T3 (lol), a bunch of trash mobs, and a dragon.

It was incredibly underwhelming, compared to that alexander is amazing. It's just what you should expect from the first part of a raid honestly, the next part will be better.

Binding Coil was the first raid of the game, we had lower expectations then. Alexander is following Second & Final Coil which set the bar very high. And moreso, T1 had a large environment and its well enough to say that the boss itself was underwhelming, but the mechanics were all brand new. Meanwhile the only think unique in A1 is the shrinking of the bombs - even the use of the 0.5 Oppressor is a variation of the split mechanic in T1. T4 may be a bunch of adds but isn't A2 just that also? Meanwhile T5 offered a challenge to the general player base for ages, had a large environment, used unique mechanics & so I'd hardly call it underwhelming.

I do agree that the story is absolute garbage. Goblins? Really? That's what we're going with? One of the most incredible and powerful summons in the Final Fantasy universe is being centered around the most annoying comic relief characters in this game? Come on.

I do not agree on your assessment of Savage difficulty. Performing perfectly under intense pressure (at least before last week anyways. esoteric gear trivialized A1S pretty terribly) is legitimately difficult, and no matter how many people mindlessly regurgitate the worn out "artificial difficulty" phrase, it won't change that it is actually difficult for a lot of people. If it being "artificial" was truly such a bore, I feel like we would be seeing a lot more people with A1S clears, which is very clearly not the case.

Normal mode is... whatever. It's not relevant for anyone who cares about difficulty.

My assessment of the difficult is one that doesn't apply to the other savages (you'll see I edited it to reflect that my opinion of the difficulty of A2S could possibly be baseless). But I can say for A1S at least that the majority of the difficulty is the dps requirement - and while it is a legitimate difficult, the reason I call it artificial is because it doesn't have to do with the number of mechanics or their execution but just the raw numbers. You could nerf the mechanics to hell and back but most would struggle still to beat the fight because it's all about the dps. Meanwhile, for lack of a better word, more organic difficulty would be more akin to previous raids which had a nice mix of mechanics and dps checks to make them difficult.

P.S. something can be boring and still hard to do, just ask your average student XD

[VitalSuit]

Somehow T5 being on Bahamut's hand makes it better than A1-A4. That makes no sense, T5's arena was the most boring crap you could even look at, it was just an orange/brown ground with some large claws at the ends.

I'll go back and see if I can find a recording anywhere, but I strongly believe they never said seconds lol. But even if they did or did not, I still feel that come the next batch of floors we'll see the impact Alex is having on the area.

Actually they did say seconds. Alex just moving enough to breach the water was enough to drain the hinterlands of nearly all it's aether in seconds and it stopped moving because it ran out of aether to use.

[Xairos]

Why do people think that a work of creativity has to keep getting bigger and bigger in terms of scale? Did no one watch the Transformers movies? Quickly turned to pandering due to trying to be bigger than the previous one.

The only way Alexander would be bigger than coil is if the allagans built it. And to my knowledge, they didn't.

[Nadirah]

idk about you guys but I kinda don't want to go back to raids so full of trash the first thing the community does is find ways to avoid pulling it.

[zcrash970]

Why do people think that a work of creativity has to keep getting bigger and bigger in terms of scale? Did no one watch the Transformers movies? Quickly turned to pandering due to trying to be bigger than the previous one.

The only way Alexander would be bigger than coil is if the allagans built it. And to my knowledge, they didn't.

Wait for it...