Raiding is becoming less and less optional

[Lium]

I’ve never been a raider in any MMO I’ve played. That included this one. But Shadowbringers got me into it a bit because of Crystal Tower. This has prompted me to go back and do all of the old raids, and of course I did Eden and Copied Factory.

Then when the relic weapon was announced, it was revealed that you had to do the Ivalice raids in order to do the relic quests. And now it’s been revealed that starting in 5.3, CT will be required to advance in the MSQ. Or something like that.

This can only be seen as a pattern now. Raid content, which was always optional, is becoming more tied to the MSQ as characters and events that happened in the raids are having more and more impact on the main story. I feel like going forward, certain raids will be required to unlock other content as well. This is an interesting design choice on the part of the devs since FFXIV is not a raid-centric game. Or at least it wasn’t. The devs themselves stated that most people do not raid, yet now they appear to be pushing raids on people.

It’s also worth noting that raids aren’t really optional anyway if you’re really into the story, like I am. I realized this when I went back and did Bahamut, CT, Alexander and Ivalice. I skipped Void Ark but I’m doing Omega now. In each one of these raids, there are major characters and significant world building going on that really fill in the blanks of the overall history of the Source.

So, I’m wondering if this is going to be a thing now for the foreseeable future.

[Moonfish]

The raids are casual content. I don’t see a problem with them being tied to MSQ.

[KageTokage]

I'm pretty sure that when the devs say most people don't raid, they're referring strictly to the extreme/savage/ultimate difficulty stuff.

Normal mode is very much intended as casual content (At least for post ARR, as the Binding Coil raids were tuned closer to what extreme/savage difficulty is like these days)

[Raltar]

I really wouldn't call Alliance Raids...well, raids. I mean, they are in the strictest meaning of the word, but there is no difficulty in them at all and the longest one lasts maybe 30 minutes. I welcome it because the raids have had pretty great storylines so far(except Copied Factory, but that one isn't finished...but I enjoyed the first step of all of the other series, so I don't have much hope for the rest in this line) and the more people that experience the story, the better. Gives the writers more stuff to work with down the line, as well. Though, I don't really see how they can get the yorha stuff to be relevant later on after we finish up on the First.

[Fynlar]

The devs themselves stated that most people do not raid, yet now they appear to be pushing raids on people.

Victim of the term "raid" applying to too much content in this game.

I'm almost 100% certain that what they meant by that comment was savage/ultimate stuff. There's way more people doing things like the 24-mans, despite still being officially classified as "alliance raids", largely on account of being nowhere near as hard.

[RicaRuin]

Normal Mode Raids aren't real Raids, either... they are more like a series of (Story Mode Difficulty) Trials.

[Iscah]

I think you're blurring the concepts of "doing content that is labelled a raid" and the activity of "raiding" which is doing top-tier content. (And as I understand it - though I avoid the harder content myself - that would cover doing EX trials as well even though they're not raids.)

Perhaps it's because I've got no prior MMO experience to set expectations, but there doesn't seem to be anything more daunting about raids than any other kind of content. It's just an arbitrary label for that format of "four battles per story chapter" content vs trials having one per chapter. And alliance raids are something else again - just large-scale dungeons, really. There's certainly nothing daunting about being required to clear CT at this stage.

I really appreciate the way they're tying more elements of those stories back into the overarching narrative. It makes the game feel like a big story-puzzle where you have to find and connect all the pieces to gain a greater understanding of what is happening.

If anything, they seem to be trying to nudge people into doing a lot of this content without directly requiring it. Relics are entirely optional, so they're not actually forcing people to do Ivalice to progress in the game long-term. Shadowbringers relies on the plot of several raids without actually requiring any of them - though I suspect CT might have been an argument between forcing it for story quality and avoiding it for game progression simplicity, and either they really hoped 5.0 would inspire everyone to do it voluntarily by now, or the writers weren't allowed to do it earlier but finally got the go-ahead to incorporate it.

It's possible they just didn't want to force it at the start of the expansion, especially for new people coming in. "Welcome to the game; we know you bought that Lv70 story skip and you're all set to play this critically acclaimed expansion... but we just need you to do this old Lv50 side content first."

[Avidria]

I sort of view alliance raids on the level of LFR in wow. It's not really raiding in the sense I tend to view it - like actual organized raiding, picking a time and going in with the goal of clearing or progressing through a raid. They are technically raids, but they're easy and require minimal coordination and arguably no real planning or preparation at all. You don't even need to know what you're doing to clear alliance raids. It helps if at least like, most of the people at least mostly know what's going on, but in general most fights are fairly forgiving with a handful of exceptions.

It is interesting to see some of them being tied more closely to other content, and I do wonder if that's a trend they'll continue. But it does seem like it'll give them a little more freedom with the story, so for now I've got no issues with it personally. Just interested to see how they'll handle it.

[MelodyCrystel]

-People who call themselves raiders surely don't refer to any 24-people-content or full-group-normal-mode-fights being cleared.
-Doing Ex-fights will also most likely NOT earn anybody the description of being a raider.

->Thus, when people are only raiders for doing Savage- / Ultimate-difficulty, then it's pretty obvious what counts as a casual raid and what goes as a raid-raid.

[Edax]

Raiding is becoming less and less optional

The Crystal Towers raids are so easy as to not be believed, I'm not sure that this is a problem.