Can it still be called a "raid" anymore?

[Hakuro89]

Why is it still called a "raid" when it drops you straight into a circular/square room with the boss in it? Isn't that a "trial"?

I think 8 man raids need to take a page out of the 24 man raids' book and make them actual raids again. When you queue in and it just drops you into a fight with the boss, it's boring. You could structure it to have multiple bosses, each with it's own loot pool. 1-3 mini-bosses that drop minor things like upgrade tokens or rare crafting materials, just to name a couple things off the top of my head. Alternate paths that change the way the raid works, maybe even optional puzzles or battles that reward you with additional cool stuff for clearing them. I think the last time we had a raid that legitimately felt like a raid was, well, T1 & T2. The first had a mini-boss as a gatekeeper with actual mechanics you had to pay attention to, some trash between it and the boss, and honestly what I considered an interesting fighting area with multiple platforms at staggered heights. The second had alternate paths that changed the way the boss at the end behaved depending on the route you took, which is something I'd like to see more of.

Alexander tried to follow this shtick to a degree with Faust & some trash mobs (plus an entire trash pull for a "boss", but we don't talk about that), but Omega completely dropped the ball on this. Every fight was just a boss fight by itself and nothing more.

I'm sure some are going to spout something like 'that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot', but personally, I find the way raids are currently structured to be extremely shallow & lacking, no matter how colorful the actual fight is. I just wish they'd do something to spice them up a bit, or at least not just give us a trial fight and call it a raid.


Edit: For the record, spicing up raids =/= more bland trash. It feels like some came to the conclusion I wanted more useless trash, and I don't. I would, however, like pre-boss raid combat to be rewarded, be it with drops or mechanics that carry beyond those battles themselves.

[Rhus]

Hmm personally ... that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot

[NekoNova]

Hmm personally ... that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot

And that's exactly why all this is happening

[Laerune]

And that's exactly why all this is happening

I wish they took a page from their single player games and add puzzles etc to the raids.

[Shurrikhan]

Hmm personally ... that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot

Killing the boss takes X time, yet it's usually considered commensurate to the reward.

How would, say, taking Y time to kill mobs prior to the boss and X-Y time to kill the boss thereafter make it somehow "wasting time"? If progress on all parts -- not just the boss -- are reset with each death, it's literally just variation in the style of the encounter, much like add phases, but with more movement and greater variation in scenery.

Thus far it's only been used to flesh out the raid setting -- to better sell you on the ambiance and raid concept, so to speak -- and would do probably far better if all CDs were reset upon entering the boss room so that people could have fun with popping early CDs rather than feeling hesitant to use them or obliged to suicide at the beginning of the boss fight for the CD reset, but it doesn't have to be only that.

[Ayer2015]

Hmm personally ... that's too much wasted time, just gimme muh loot

I agree. Why should we even have to do the raid... just give us daily login loot.

[Rhus]

They should do away with the fight next expansion. Just queue up into a room containing the loot boxes. We open them and can re roll on them as often as possible with the higher numbers having less of a chance of appearing. Now do you keep rolling or stick with that 62? Only then someone claims "I rolled a 84" ... congrats you just entered SAVAGE. You got 2mins left. Now go for your clear! xD

Oh and I do agree with the original point of the post. Alex had this to an extent and was good. Omega offered nothing the four lords couldn't. In fact line the four lords story up and it's very little fldifferent to omega. Story - fight - story - fight. Yet we got that set up twice in stormblood

[Jaggerjack]

i wish there were more raids like Obs sanctuary,

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Imagine doing a raid like one of World of Warcraft, just to name one Ice Crown Citadel.

If I remember correctly it was 12 boss in the same instance. Well the timer in this kind of content is useless xD

[Kalise]

Imagine doing a raid like one of World of Warcraft, just to name one Ice Crown Citadel.

If I remember correctly it was 12 boss in the same instance. Well the timer in this kind of content is useless xD

Something more akin to WoW's Naxxramas would probably make the most sense.

Where it was 14 bosses in the same instance. But 4 different paths from the start taking you down a wing that each had 3 bosses down it (Along with some Trash between)

With completing all 4 wings unlocking the "Final" path which has just 2 bosses and no trash in it (Unless you count the start of the final boss's encounter where you fought trash before the boss deemed you worthwhile to actually pay attention to)

As far as "Muh lewt!" goes, in WoW they also had it so that trash could drop loot. So it wasn't just a waste of time to clear them, because you could get some epics drop from them (Which sometimes had progression raids that were struggling actually set aside some time to just farm trash and reset the instance to farm more trash in order to try and get some of this loot to then help them for the following week's lockout)

To be fair, the main limiting factor in FFXIV's raid design is how everything is done on that timer. So you can't have deep progression of a raid because once the timer is over, that's it to re-enter you start again from the very beginning...

Even Eureka is on a timer (Albeit as a persistent zone, so you can leave and re-enter the same one with a new timer)... So the best they can do is maybe have Deep Dungeon style "Saving" of progression, where you can clear trash/mini-bosses and then save your progression after beating the boss ready to continue on from that point (Or reset and start from the beginning again to farm the boss)