Alexander: The Next Tier of the Father (Wishlist)

[HeavenlyArmed]

So throughout the community there's been a lot of discussion about the current state of the game, and raiding in particular. Extending from that, a lot of different ideas have been thrown around as things we'd like to see in the next set of Alexander floors, both from the standpoint of encounter design and from the standpoint of how it fits into the game as a whole. I'll be getting to both in this wishlist, but I'll start off within the instance and discussing how I'd like to see things work from the inside.

More Varied Environments

I get it, we're in this giant robot which was built by people who had a specific culture and aesthetic. But that's no excuse for every boss room being nearly indistinguishable. These boring rectangular/circular rooms with the same patterns on the floor and backgrounds with not much of interest going on could be improved so much. It's sad that the most interesting things about the rooms in Gordias are a static pool of electricity and the fact that in A4 you're on a platform that you can place AoEs outside of even though you can't fall off. Even Binding Coil was more interesting, with each area looking different and boss rooms that weren't just a basic circle or rectangle. Give us more varied environments, at least to the point where I can't look at the floor and ask "Is this A1 or A4?"

Environmental Mechanics

Building off the previous point, I'd like to see more interaction with the environments of the raids. Back in Coil we had rooms effectively shrinking throughout fights, rooms where you needed to go to certain areas to activate certain mechanics, rooms drastically changing visually depending on how far into the fight you were, rooms where the safe place to stand constantly changed, just... rooms that had more interesting environments than "these things that slows your movement down will drop occasionally, just don't stand in them." Please SE, bring this back. Show us you haven't forgotten how to make environments that we have to interact with in some meaningful way.

More New Mechanics in Savage

Put simply, moving from normal Alex to savage only one fight saw a really significant number of new mechanics. A1 was pretty much the same to where the only things people may not have expected were Resin Bombs staying on the ground and the tank buster. A2 was basically "these couple things hit harder now, and we've rearranged a couple waves." Even A4 didn't change all that much. A couple extra legs, a group stack mechanic to follow Discoid, some other interaction with Nisi (which people cheese past anyway) and these Dolls behave a bit weird. Sure they made it harder, but they didn't really make it any more interesting. I'm not saying every fight has to be completely redesigned to be indistinguishable from it's normal mode, but at least give them something to feel more interesting.

More Types of Encounters

Thus far, there really hasn't been much variety in encounter design. We have seen a couple gauntlets, with waves of moderately tough enemies needing to be dealt with before a time limit, but besides that most encounters are a single boss (or two bosses which are functionally identical) with phases based on time or HP and a set rotation of skills which typically change very little between phases. There are plenty of other things they could do. Council fights, where it's 3-5 bosses and perhaps they rotate, and each boss functions differently from the others. Heck, that could even be done with 2 bosses. Gauntlets that actually feel like they have a boss of sorts, or gauntlets with some RNG where you don't know exactly what mobs are going to spawn every pull. Fights with non-static phases, like Shiva EX except implemented in a less faceroll way. There's just so much unexplored territory here, and it's baffling that SE seems to just want to leave it there.

Better Job Viability

The second you read that, you pretty much knew where this would be going. I know SE has in the past tried to make content that could be completed with any composition, but look at Savage Gordias. What are the big things we see when we look at this raid? High DPS checks and lots of magical tank damage. The big issue I have here is not that there was a preferred tank between DRK and PLD for each fight, but that the ratio wasn't even between the two. The scariest hits in A1, A3 and A4 are all magical, as is most of the damage in those fights, which gave DRK a shining place in the sun. Meanwhile PLD has a larger benefit in a total of one fight, and even there it has some drawbacks compared to its competition (since its AoE threat move does no damage). PLD was of course not the only job to suffer. Monks saw less usage among top-tier groups because their primary utility was no longer needed with a DRK in the group. Rumors of a bug with Hypercharge in A2 made groups very hesitant to take a Machinist, and with healer dps being boosted by Foe's and healer dps being such a big thing most groups would prefer Bards anyway. How do you fix these things? There are a few ways to do this. First off, shake up the current tanking meta by giving tanks and healers more damage to deal with outside of predictable burst damage. If healers had less time to dps, the gap between Foe's and Hypercharge would shrink and more groups would look at Machinists, as well as looking at Paladins who are the rightful kings of mitigation. Also, a monk could easily be made viable alongside a PLD if there's still raidwide magical damage going out. These are just a few examples, but you can see how it wouldn't be terribly hard for SE to give other jobs a chance to shine like they did with DRK in Gordias (though obviously to a lesser degree).

More Encounters

At this point, I think most people can agree on a few things. One, Savage Gordias had a difficulty curve that was more like a difficulty wall. While I personally don't think A3S is quite as hard as people make it out to be, I can't deny that it's a huge leap up from A2S. The thing is, with only 4 encounters it's not easy to create a proper difficulty curve. On top of that, 4 bosses feels a bit small anyway, so I'd like to see at least one more boss added in. Of course there's the issue that with the small size of the team they may not have the resources to add in an extra boss without making us wait even longer between patches, but keep in mind they did cut out an entire dungeon from each patch to expand development in other areas. Perhaps an extra boss or two could be one of those areas.

Harder Normal Mode

Raise your hand if you felt challenged by Normal mode Gordias! ...Wait, no one? W-What about that guy who DFed A4... His third pull? Well then...

Yeah, there's a lot of talk about how this game has no mid-core content, as well as a lot of complaining about how Alexander just doesn't feel epic like Coil did. There are two parts to solving the latter issue, and the first part is actually making Normal mode feel engaging. Obviously I don't think it should be as difficult as Coil was or anything, but at least give us something along the lines of what we were promised: Coil with Echo. Specifically something like T8 with Echo, where you wouldn't normally go in expecting a DF group to clear it, but it wasn't so hard that a moderately organized group would go in and have much trouble with it. Give players something that feels more engaging, and they will be happier. And while we're fixing the epicness issue...

More Urgency in the Story

Here's where the other half of the epicness problem can be fixed. Basically, Alexander doesn't feel threatening. The goblins want to fully awaken him, sure, but they're so goofy that no one thinks they'll pull it off. This storyline is so far one of the weaker ones in the entire game, despite being about this massive entity that could completely drain the Hinterlands of aether. While I'm not sure how to fix this, it definitely needs to be addressed, because Alexander deserves a more epic treatment than he's currently getting.

That's everything I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more I could ask for or talk about, but I'd rather hear what everyone else thinks. Am I asking for too much? Is there anything I'm missing that you'd like to see?

tl;dr: There are a lot of ways I'd like to see the next Alexander raid improve over Gordias. What do you think of my suggestions?

[Divine_Jump]

You've basically listed all the major requests and concerns of the general raiding public. I myself would only disagree with asking for a Harder Normal Mode, it exists solely for the overall community to experience the story of Alexander and high difficulty is not necessarily required. Besides, people are still wiping in the current normal Alexander so it's at a good medium at the moment.

[Madjames]

Give me raids on the size of Ulduar, ICC, and Nax and I will be happy. Give us an actual raid and I will call them raids. What this game's raid is nothing more then primal 1 boss encounters. No trash, no continued progression and 4 bosses per end game content is lackluster. I personally don't even consider them raids. Ulduar for example had 14 bosses in their raiding environment. The raids had no timer on them and would reset once a week. What ever you did Tuesday night would carry over to Wednesday and so on. If you cleared the whole place by next Tuesday it would reset.

[HeavenlyArmed]

Give me raids on the size of Ulduar, ICC, and Nax and I will be happy. Give us an actual raid and I will call them raids. What this game's raid is nothing more then primal 1 boss encounters. No trash, no continued progression and 4 bosses per end game content is lackluster. I personally don't even consider them raids. Ulduar for example had 14 bosses in their raiding environment. The raids had no timer on them and would reset once a week. What ever you did Tuesday night would carry over to Wednesday and so on. If you cleared the whole place by next Tuesday it would reset.

I'd like to eventually get to this point, where the bosses aren't instanced away from each other and that we have the feeling of a big epic raid (or even something on the level of CT in terms of scale), but I don't forsee it happening until at least the next expansion.

[Starkbeaumont]

stuff

For someone that never got so far in WoW to be able to raid, what exactly was so much different in those raids you mentioned? (pls without nostalgic feelings)

[HeavenlyArmed]

For someone that never got so far in WoW to be able to raid, what exactly was so much different in those raids you mentioned? (pls without nostalgic feelings)

While I never played WoW, from my understanding is those raids were actually connected, similar to the CT raids, except with less linear paths, more trash, and more bosses.

[dejavutwo]

I would like to see normal removed from a raider's regular gear progression path - i.e dropping gear no better than 210. Completing this tier of savage should give me good enough gear that I can go straight into the next tier of savage.

A smoother difficulty curve instead of a difficulty cliff, preferably with more fights.

Having normal mode as part of the trial roulette would be nice.

[RiceisNice]

More Varied Environments

As someone mentioned, we went from fighting inside Alexander to...fighting in someone's basement. Sometimes I forget that we're inside Alexander, and this is partially due to the fact that the instance itself is fairly limited. As you mentioned, even with Coil, all the bosses were in distinctly unique environments, and especially SCoB that gave you a vibe of mystery with some of it's turns (Dalamud's Shadow.) and the concept of putting in the yalms gave you an idea of just how far you were into the progression outside of the literal term.

More Types of Encounters

This requires thinking outside of the box (which honestly, they need to do if they want to keep players tided over until the next update). Again with the coils, your bosses ranged from Dalamud's internal defense systems,, remnants of mericydia, wildlife that have been severely affected by Dalamud's fall (and mind you that this is all in just BCoB), and onward. As of now we only have four floors, and they can all be summed up as gobbie-defense countermeasures. Though I'll also point out that unlike the coils, we are not exploring something totally unknown versus tackling a known enemy (the gobbies).

More Encounters
More encounters can definitely breathe a little bit more into variety. This also means that they don't necessarily have to be cutting edge. Having 8 fights that can theroitically keep the players occupied for 6 months due to variety is a lot better than keeping them occupied with 4 bosse sfor 6 months (the latter being incredibly prone to burnout since it usually means you need to tune the fights so that it doesn;t immediately get cleared. What this also does is that you can still keep gear check fights for the second half or even the final, since players will also be getting more gear per week if there are more bosses they can potentially down.

Harder Normal Mode

Honestly, I was on the side of "players should be able to see important story" in the context of the coils, until they released FCoB where I felt they had hit the line perfectly. They can always nerf the content down or design it in a way that it gets easier as you overgear it or even with echo (which unfortunately, cannot be said for pre-nerf SCoB; no amount of overgearing and echo would prevent deaths from petrification, and this also seems to be the case for A3 and 4 with the heavy emphasis on mechanics). FCoB's design was perfect in that sense that all the fights would get somewhat easier as time passes, due to gearing and the eventual addition of echo.

That said though, now we have a normal mode which accomplishes what echo/overgearing did right from the bat, without the need to overgear or echo. I ultimately feel that they won't add echo or nerf savage because it was meant to be hard. Which rounds back to the problem that it's not nessescarly the level of difficulty the majority players wants (the middlegroup)

More Urgency in the Story
The threat is all but only mentioned in text, and thats it. They'll probably expand on it as we get more patches, ideally changing the hinterland signifcantly as you progress through the story (much like how you don't see Alexander's arm until you finish the MSQ, the Hitnerlands could start dying off with trees wilting and wildfire changing., cause you know, they'd mention that a primal of this size would drain the land completely dry in a matter of days.)

For someone that never got so far in WoW to be able to raid, what exactly was so much different in those raids you mentioned? (pls without nostalgic feelings)

In a nutshell, the raids in WoW were one, gigantic instance. Here in FFXIV, you can easily summerize most (or all if we're talking alexander specifically) a overglorified boss corridor. But at least with the coils, the environments were still interesting and varied to look at. Compared to Alexander, it feels incredibly clausterphobic, monotonous, and ultimately does not really capture the feeling of you transversing a gigantic robot.

[RayneBoemir]

For someone that never got so far in WoW to be able to raid, what exactly was so much different in those raids you mentioned? (pls without nostalgic feelings)

My memory might be hazy but the difference mainly is the raids in WoW was one huge instance with all bosses included vs the ones in this game being basically a Primal Room which is strange as we already have trials. Why do we need the raids to be the same?

The scale of raids in this game is very much toned down. Like when I go into Alexander Savage it doesn't feel epic at all. All I think is another primal room.

[Madjames]

My memory might be hazy but the difference mainly is the raids in WoW was one huge instance with all bosses included vs the ones in this game being basically a Primal Room which is strange as we already have trials. Why do we need the raids to be the same?

The scale of raids in this game is very much toned down. Like when I go into Alexander Savage it doesn't feel epic at all. All I think is another primal room.

OMG your so right.

The raids in wow were epic. Ulduar was 10-14 bosses in just about all the same instance. There was no stupid raid timer. You had 7 days to clear the whole place. If you say cleared the first 3 bosses and the trash associated with it, none of it would reset until next Tuesday.


FF14 raids are just not raids, sorry. They are primal fights end of story. I want my raids back. I mean you would think a gigantic robot would have a lot of small packs of things to protect its self with. There are NONE. I sum it up in my youtube video for a little in depth look if you want to watch it. These sorry excuses of raids are not acceptable.

My youtube video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoX9...ature=youtu.be