Can it still be called a "raid" anymore?

[Sieben79]

Well... Considering the around story the raid with Omega, it perfectly makes sense to not have trash in there...

Omega is literally throwing you into an arena to fight the bosses. It would be more awkward if it went "Oh, by the way, before you do that, here's some random things to fight."

Actually there were trash mobs during the solo instances

But don't misunderstand me: I like the "just boss" more

[Shurrikhan]

Here's another way to consider it:

<Like this post or the one below accordingly>

Would you prefer it if the 24-man raids had nothing but bosses, and instead simply teleported you from one boss arena to another, but still took just as long?

Or...

[Shurrikhan]

(See above.)

Do you prefer the 24-mans as they are now, a mix of bosses and non-bosses, assuming that the raid will take the same total amount of time regardless?

[Bright-Flower]

As an initial experience i like the alliance raids more.

But when it comes to farming particular drops I like the 8 man normal mode raids better usually. Because say I'm trying to farm a drop from Ultima, unless I get lucky and get into an in progress group I have to do the entire raid to get to her. Where as in the 8 man raids I can only focus on the bosses I need parts from for the week.

[Eli85]

No, the 8-player Stormblood raids are not "raids." They are lair raids. There is a lot to love about this game, but the complete lack of an epic, storm the castle feeling in the 8-player offerings is not among them.

[enthauptet]

It's definitely more interesting to have progression from one battle into the next and makes it more fun. Omega was interesting in concept but the story and fun totally fell flat and I feel it was probably a mistake for a raid theme. It has some okay battles but the rest of it is just terrible, I like Cid and Nero but even they can't hold up the awful storyline. Jumping through the bits inside Alexander was pretty fun, things like that can break it up a little bit so it's not just instance in and do x y z which is a bit dull imo. Having those sorts of things plus neat arenas and a feeling of discovery can add a bit to the fun too. One of my favourite arenas was Alexander 7 where you slide down the things into a little mini city inside alexander. Sorry these thoughts are a bit jumbled but I think you can probably get my feeling for the raids.

[Shurrikhan]

As an initial experience i like the alliance raids more.

But when it comes to farming particular drops I like the 8 man normal mode raids better usually. Because say I'm trying to farm a drop from Ultima, unless I get lucky and get into an in progress group I have to do the entire raid to get to her. Where as in the 8 man raids I can only focus on the bosses I need parts from for the week.

Doesn't that bring equally into question, though, whether the loot system, itself, should be changed? If you're being forced to thin out your content preferences just because of a grind being stretched too long... shouldn't the grind fall as much under scrutiny as the content?

[NocturniaUzuki]

I'm of two minds on this.

I don't want to have to fight my way to the main boss every time. However, I agree that making raids actually feel like raids would be nice.

Perhaps for a future expansion, they might consider making savage-difficulty dungeons that are non-linear. Players pick and choose what to fight.

That said, given the players' hopeless obsession with rewards, people would quickly find the "best" route and repeatedly spam it for rewards. So the whole idea of creating such interesting content is generally considered a waste.

At the very least, though, as the OP suggested, more raids like T1 and T2 would be nice.

[Derio]

Coil and some parts of Alexander were raids. Omega was just a straight trial after trial after trial.

Raids need to be what they are actually titled which is raids. A raid often consists of 2 or more boss fights along with trash mobs. Hopefully Shadowbringers brings some of that back.

[NocturniaUzuki]

Yes. Yes, it should.

Grinding loot should not be about thinking content preferences.

I'd love to see a system where all content offers tokens for the latest gear, in varying amounts based on the difficulty of the undertaking. If all gear came from tomestones (NOT chest drops), and you could get various types of top-tier tomes, for example.

Like right now we have Genesis. If they made Genesis the currency of Savage raids and extreme trials, then added a lower currency for normals that could be used on good, but not perfect, gear. Like how we have tome/raid gear now. Usually BiS is some mixture of the two. The normal time gear could occasionally be BiS, but usually the Savage tomes would bring in the best.

These special tome rewards would be given once per week, when you clear the content. There would be a higher tome cap. However, ALL content would give tomes. This means that while your first stop might be the latest raid tier, which might give, say 50 tomes for each clear, you could also get end-game tomes from old content. However, the amount of would get varies depending on the fight's general difficulty and its difficulty setting. If you set the fight to MinIL, you get maybe ~15-30 tomes. Again, locked to once per week (all other rewards are limitless). At standard iLevel sync, you could get a smaller amount, but at the cost of efficiency, as you still use your one clear for the week.

So to put into a less-ramble-like example:

- Chest system removed. All gear comes from tomes.
- Genesis tomes are used for top-iLevel BiS gear.
- Genesis tome cap per week raised to 2000 (from 450)
- Cost of Genesis tome gear increased to reflect increased cap.
- New tome type added: Helios (placeholder name)
- Helios tomes are used for top iLevel sub-BiS gear.
- Helios tome cap set to 2000.
- Cost of Helios tome gear reflects increased cap.

- Current Savage raid tier (Alphascape) rewards 40/40/50/60 Genesis per stage (O9/10/11/12s), respectively.
-Current Extreme trial (Seiryu) rewards 30 Genesis
- Old raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward 10~40 Genesis when cleared on MinIL.
- Genesis tomes are rewarded once weekly for each raid/trial cleared.
- All other rewards are do not have the weekly cap.

- Current Normal Raid tier (Alphascape) rewards 40/40/50/60 Helios per stage (O9/10/11/13s), respectively.
- Current Normal trial (Seiryu) rewards 30 Helios.
- Old Savage raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward ~30-40 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- Old Normal raid/trial tiers from 2.0~4.0 patch cycles reward 10~20 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- All mob dungeons in the game reward 10~15 Helios when cleared on MinIL, and 5~10 Helios when cleared with iLevel sync.
- Helios tomes are rewarded once weekly for each raid/trial/dungeon cleared.
- All other rewards do not have the weekly cap.