I'm sick and tired of 8 man raids just being glorified trials...

[DRKoftheAzure]

I want to go back to when you had to trash enemies before fighting the boss to get to the next floor of the raid tier...


8 man raids being basically trials was boring in Stormblood, and it's boring still...


But I will say that we can still fight a boss on the first floor of future raids without fighting any trash enemies first so long as they have add phases to keep them interesting...


Just no more boss rush raids for an entire expansion... and if the devs still want to do boss rush raids, at least on the final tier for the expansion...


On the plus side I do like how loot drops was handled for the most part and I did like the first 3 bosses(though they did need to trash enemies in between fights for the group to fight like a min dungeon in between to build up the boss fights better).

[Vidu]

I'd like to remind you that everyone skipped the trash in the very first Coil (by forming a party of 8 people from 8 statics who would run through to the boss with each of them being then able to jump their group straight to the snake - T3 was also rarely done properly and instead just had everyone switcht o tank, run through, press the buttons and head out).

I never understood the appeal of trash in raids - fighting trash certainly isnt intresting and we're doing this enough in dungeons. I'm way happier with getting to the intresting, challenging fight with proper mechanics straight away instead of wasting time on AoEing down mobs. I'm totally fine with raids being closer to trials than to dungeons, because trials are a lot more intresting.

[SaberMaxwell]

I'd like to remind you that everyone skipped the trash in the very first Coil (by forming a party of 8 people from 8 statics who would run through to the boss with each of them being then able to jump their group straight to the snake - T3 was also rarely done properly and instead just had everyone switcht o tank, run through, press the buttons and head out).

I never understood the appeal of trash in raids - fighting trash certainly isnt intresting and we're doing this enough in dungeons. I'm way happier with getting to the intresting, challenging fight with proper mechanics straight away instead of wasting time on AoEing down mobs. I'm totally fine with raids being closer to trials than to dungeons, because trials are a lot more intresting.

I'll preface by saying that in general I agree with you. But having trash, and larger dungeon-like areas, can really help set an atmosphere and tone to a raid. Do these matter when the raid is on farm? Not necessarily, and I don't think they have a big place in Savage.

In normal mode however? I think Alexander struck a good balance, the trash mobs in general stayed in Normal Mode, and Savage kept the boss only generally. I think that's a good goal to aim for regarding this.

[Leareaux]

I don't think trash necessarily have to be throw away mobs. I found the T4 gauntlet of Coil to be pretty fun when it was first introduced. (Mind you, this is before anyone knew how to dps and posed more of a challenge because of it.)

[Bright-Flower]

It's a mixed bag for me.

On the one hand, it can be neat the first time.

But if I'm doing the fight for the 6th time that week because I'm aiming for a certain drop, I could see the preamble trash getting old.

[SleepyFox12]

I'm kinda on the fence about this issue.
On one hand fighting trash is generally a boring timesink. But on the other hand, as the OP said, it feels like a glorified trial, not a raid.
I do like the Eden bosses, especially the 2nd and 4th. They're fun fights and i'm looking forward to savage, but they're not "raids".

I don't have any suggestions on what could be done to reconcile those two sides but i'd like them to at least try instead of just going for the easy solution.
If you're going to make trials don't call them raids.

[VargasVermillion]

I generally agree and think that HW had the right idea, dungeon sections in normal mode and pure bosses in savage with the current design. However I'd mention that if SE wanted to make them into dungeons with actual mechanics they could very well do so, they just won't. I would prefer if they were smaller versions of the 24 mans with higher difficulties, so rather than just having 'trash' you essentially manage the mobs around some mechanic like in 24 mans. Either way whichever you prefer they should stop calling them raid 'dungeons' under the current design philosophy.

[Besame]

I'd like to remind you that everyone skipped the trash in the very first Coil (by forming a party of 8 people from 8 statics who would run through to the boss with each of them being then able to jump their group straight to the snake - T3 was also rarely done properly and instead just had everyone switcht o tank, run through, press the buttons and head out).

I never understood the appeal of trash in raids - fighting trash certainly isnt intresting and we're doing this enough in dungeons. I'm way happier with getting to the intresting, challenging fight with proper mechanics straight away instead of wasting time on AoEing down mobs. I'm totally fine with raids being closer to trials than to dungeons, because trials are a lot more intresting.

All trash mobs are is a time waster, nothing more.

[The-Real-Link]

While trash can certainly help set the atmosphere, as others said it's generally a time-sink. Maybe as was said, some included in normal mode would be nice but leave Savage for Bosses. But if I wanted to kill Trash, the Game, I'd do a WoW raid. So much trash between bosses sometimes.

[Vidu]

I don't have any suggestions on what could be done to reconcile those two sides but i'd like them to at least try instead of just going for the easy solution.
If you're going to make trials don't call them raids.

If the main-problem is that what we have right now doesnt match some definition of "raid", I'm all for changing the name if thats whats gonna make people happy!

After finishing Eden myself by now, I cant see how adds would have added much to the atmosphere - aswell as how I cant see adds fitting in to well with Omega for example. They had some sort of a place in Alexander (with the theme being that the primal was a city inhabited by the Indigohand, so it would be natural for them to be there and fight us off) and Coil. I also didnt mind the "trash-mob-fights" (T4 and whatever the one in HW was... A6, perhaps?), but I feel they need to fit in naturally, so to speak. I dont want to see the devs having to come up with the mandatroy trash-mob-fight each tier.

For me atmosphere can be set by a lot of things - and depending on the setting trash-mobs dont contribute to that all that much - yeah, I got it, there are goblins here, I fought them several times already, I'm a master-goblin-slayer because I had to run this duty 20+ times this week alone to get the loot I want. For me tehy actually hurt the atmosphere and the content more than they conrtibute, due to repeating them over and over again and just getting annoyed by having to fight a bunch of boring adds before getting to the real fight.

If not having to fight boring trash-mobs makes them not-a-raid, by all means: Lets change the name!