Raiding is becoming less and less optional

[Barraind]

I still empathize with the whole sense of 24 mans being a game of herding cats through a slag pit in an elaborate lemmings game, though.

CT is regularly opened by people speed leveling alts because it enables a roulette that sees you clear boss 3 before boss 1's loot force rolls and gives a huge chunk of XP.

You arent being asked to clear the current 24mans at min ilvl with everyone the same role (though thats been done with all 3), you're doing 3 3-group Praetorium runs, where youll spend more time watching cutscenes than fighting things, and deal with very few mechanics.

Bahamut is a main reason I always laugh at people who say this game is too easy. I never remembered a single raid in that game more challenging than T9. Even at level 80 in 480+ gear, it’s very difficult to solo

Uhhhhhhh, considering people were doing it at level 70 with significantly worse gear, thats more of a you problem there. Its not easy (shes more complex than her hard mode version, which is literally tab out of the game until she enrages then kill her fast), but theres some fights in the next tier that are significantly worse to solo because of their mechanics.

T9 for orch rolls and 10-13 for crafting mats for replica glam made me a lot of gil in SB.

[Rymm]

I played WoW for 12 years and I never remembered a single raid in that game more challenging than T9.

I’ve never been a raider in any MMO I’ve played.

[yukiiyuki]

~

Maybe he played on Youtube

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

CT is becoming canon because when we got to Shadowbringers, there was a huge amount of head-scratching over the Exarch's unmasking which was intended to be an ooooooh moment and instead was just an ehhhhh moment. I don't any of the other raids being connected except for Coils and maybe Alexander but I highly doubt those will ever be mandatory. I suppose we'll see though.

[Iscah]

I don't any of the other raids being connected except for Coils and maybe Alexander but I highly doubt those will ever be mandatory. I suppose we'll see though.

Other raids are also relevant:

Omega is the third piece in the puzzle alongside CT and Alexander - the third raid heavily involving the Ironworks, referenced in the Twinning (music and datalog 4.5) and also Tales From the Shadows, which reveals/confirms that Omega itself didn't "die" but transferred its consciousness into the OMG minion accompanying Alpha. Omega's control of the interdimensional rift is one of the key pieces of information that Future Ironworks needs to build their time-and-space machine.

Also, the Warring Triad. It's still to become actually significant, but has a number of elements that seem like they should be important: a survivor of the Thirteenth, continuation of Regula's story out of MSQ, another hint of what Elidibus might be working with... also dear goodness we need something to continue that plot line so we can get Unukalhai doing something more productive than hanging out in the back room twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the story. He's far too interesting for that - at a plot potential level, if not as an individual. Also the role quest finale in Shadowbringers seems to tie into some relevant information.

[Nestama]

There's nothing wrong with making 24man raids (and normal raids and other side-story Trials) a part of the story. They're all mostly easy with maybe one tricky (not difficult) boss thrown in to add a little spice.

Fights like T9, which is only really hard because of Meteors and Elementals, won't be required for the MSQ (and if it was, just get a tank friend or two to carry you through it as a duo/trio. If you mess up with Golems, grab a BLU for Level 5 Death cheese).

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I dont see the big deal, I think its good that Crystal Tower becomes mandatory, because it is Lore and Story Relevant. It actually has an effect on the games story.
I like that it wasn't a One-Off that isn't referenced or used later in the story like an Anime Movie.
Besides, people still run Crystal tower in the Alliance Raid Roulette, so its not like there will ever be a shortage of people to run that content.

ID be more upset if Content that doesn't effect the story become Mandatory, like if I need to run Copied Factory, or Alexander (<--Best Raid fight me) to continue the story and the events in that side quest dont effect the story, that to me would be an issue.

[Tsaranoga]

Still going on about the difficulty i see. Well let me tell you that without a proper combat system, there can never be any difficulty anyway. In games like this, you just know the mechanics befor you even enter or you die, or worse, die and take everyone with you. then when you know the mechanics, you just do the same thing over and over and over and over and... yeah. maybe it doesn't always go in the same order but that doesn't change anything. It's exactly the same as all the dungeons, except with a little extra.

The only reason the "difficulty" argument is so popular is that "i did the hard thing and (more importantly) got the reward and you will never get it Hehehe", Then you can pose with it or something. Would be interesting to see how many of you would do any raiding if you didn't get better stuff from it (we all know the answer to that question).

Of course, none of this matters, because the difficulty is still not the problem, and it's pretty obvious you all just slide over that fact on purpose.

In fact, now that i think about it, i'm curious do all of you people just follow some (shit)streamer who tells you what to do and what to think, is there some list on the internet that says "if someone argues this, answer with this", or did you just see someone else use it and copied it? Heh, thinking about this is pretty amusing atlest.

[Avidria]

If not difficulty, then what's the problem?

No seriously. What is it? That you don't like playing with that many people at once? That we might slide down a slippery slope to needing to do actual current endgame raids to progress the MSQ?

I seriously doubt they'll up and decide everyone needs to be a raider to see the story. There are reasons they haven't before, and they even waited three whole patches to require a massively outdated joke of a raid despite the fact that the entire expansion's story is inextricably tied to it. Shadowbringers literally can't exist without CT - and Alex and Omega for that matter, but those are closer to proper endgame raids, and are NOT being added as requirements at this time. Heck, if I had to hazard a guess, I'm thinking something is gonna happen in 5.3 that just flat out won't make sense if you haven't done CT yourself. Got my theory hat on, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involves going back to our CT on the source. Ooor it could just be them closing gaps in the story - considering the story is such a huge intrinsic part of the game, and they go to such lengths to keep it consistent with itself, they probably wrote themselves into a situation where the plot just doesn't work if you haven't seen CT.

So my question is, how is requiring CT any different from requiring a whole bunch of dungeons and trials in the MSQ? The MSQ already requires group content that's frankly more challenging and potentially more time consuming than all but possibly WoD. Heck, trials are closer to actual endgame raids than alliance raids are. I wiped more on my first Titania normal run than I do on my average LotA run. That took far more coordination than CT. Confession time, but I have literally spent almost an entire LotA run afk auto running because I was distracted by something else. Finished in ~15 minutes and got a comm, for some reason.

I mean don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy running these raids. I used to! But I've done them DOZENS if not hundreds of times, and they're such a memey facerolly joke that the most interesting part of them is when someone does something SO wrong (and it usually has to be multiple someones) that you do wipe to the maybe three mechanics that even matter anymore.

So it's boring outdated content, with a huge chunk of highly relevant lore showcased in it, that requires very little beyond sort of paying attention, following everyone else, and not pulling bosses before alliance A is in the room. There's maybe 3-4 bosses, same as any dungeon, and maybe 3-4 mechanics you actually need to be aware of (or at least most of the group needs to be aware of) to make the run smooth, but that's it. You don't need to be a proper raider, you don't need to know the fights, you don't need to even really know how to play your class. No planning or optimisation or gearing or communication required. Just go in and silently zerg rush the bosses, same as any dungeon, just with more people.

Maybe I'm just not getting it, but again, what is the difference between this and what they already ask of us in the MSQ dungeons and trials? Why is the term "raid" so taboo?