Raiding is becoming less and less optional

[-Mew-]

The bold part sort of invalidated your point because it comes off as a dig to "filthy casuals". For the record, I'm not upset about the new direction of this game, I just found it interesting.

If you read my OP I even said I've voluntarily gone back and done all the old raids just for fun. It's just odd that they would start requiring raids to advance in the MSQ, if they do indeed do more of that in the future.

Do you regard MSQ roulette as a raid? Since it's 8 man content that has multiple bosses and basically all the raid mechanics inside?

Is doing Savage Trials not raiding?

Just asking questions here to see what you consider a raid. Since technically savage trials, trials and MSQ roulette are not raids according to SE description.

[Hanayumi]

Genuinely cant actually tell if this is a troll or serious. Just about everyone does the 24m raids anyway cause they give tome upgrade mats. They've only been making the older 24m raids a prerequisite for other stuff for lore and character reasons but also to keep them active. Everything else like 8man raids, Ex, Ultimate, that all still optional, really dont see the issue here...

[Halivel]

This was a thing since ARR honestly - The Binding Coils of Bahamut are tied to MSQ deeply, and reveal quite a major info about the lore (also some food for mind for ShB summoners).

That said, Alliance Raids and Normal Raids, while aren't exactly casual (I would call them mid-level content, especially when they are freshly released), still are failry simple to clear. I don't think they ever would require Extremes or Savages for unlocking anything but even higher difficulty content, like Ultimates.

I can see why some people could be annoyed with MSQ closed behind content (when it's usually the opposite), but I'm myself not against. If anything, I honestly like it, because it means that topics from those raids will be brought up in story again, expanding the lore further than just "there's a tower that we visited and forgot about it after".

[Rasikko]

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."

Well you didnt need to do dynamis-anything(FFXI), to complete Zilart, and iirc you didnt need to do Divine Might. You didnt have to beat the gods/hnms etc. They werent pushed on anyone.

Several other mmos i played were like this. Except aion. In Aion you needed to do pvp to progress, and often you need... a lot of people.

Eventually the harder ones will be forced on us, and Ill have my finger on the cancel subscription button ready for when that happens.

[Mholito]

Well you didnt need to do dynamis-anything(FFXI), to complete Zilart, and iirc you didnt need to do Divine Might. You didnt have to beat the gods/hnms etc. They werent pushed on anyone.

Several other mmos i played were like this. Except aion. In Aion you needed to do pvp to progress, and often you need... a lot of people.

Eventually the harder ones will be forced on us, and Ill have my finger on the cancel subscription button ready for when that happens.

The only "harder fights" they realistically would have any reason to force us to do would be Coil. And I can say with 99% certainty that if it would become required, they would either make an easy mode, or nerf the fights to the point where anyone could easilly solo them by the time they became required.

[Iscah]

Eventually the harder ones will be forced on us, and Ill have my finger on the cancel subscription button ready for when that happens.

What are you defining as "the harder ones"? Listing things from FFXI doesn't mean anything to me.

If you mean EX/Savage, I don't see any reason for those to be forced on us eventually. All requirements thus far have been for story elements - from requiring the original hard-mode primals before the final events of ARR to ensure the questgiver Scions weren't left waiting at the Waking Sands forever, to building on the Ivalice plot line, to whatever they have in store for us in 5.3. EX/Savage has no additional story, therefore there is no need for them to become prerequisite for anything since you experienced it all in the normal version.

If they wanted to maximise what they force us into, rather than keeping it to a minimum, Omega could have easily been made a prerequisite for Bozja since it sets up (particularly for a non-1.0 player) the backstory of Cid's PTSD over the incident.

[Aldora]

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.

The main reason why they are doing this, is to "explain" the reason why an NPC is there to begin with or why a certain scene is happening. In this specific case, the events that took place in the Crystal Tower arc play a vital role behind the story of Shadowbringers. Since FFXIV is a storydriven MMO, they want to make sure that the player knows about what happened during the 2.x era (so that the events in Shadowbringers make more sense).

Because the Crystal Tower raids are roughly 5 to 6 years old, everyone will be able to breeze through it with the gear they have access to, by the time they get to the point where they would have to run the raid. Since a lot of people are still running the raids, due to the fact that they are so easy to clear, and reward a decent amount of XP and tomes, there shouldn't be a problem clearing it.

So, i won't really say that it's a "pattern" that team wants to enforce, but more like a means to connect NPC's and their background to the content they are presented in. Personally, i'm all for it.

[Crushnight]

There really is no cause to worry like at all that the developers would make stuff that be classed as 'hard raid content' mandatory for story.

CT has heavy ties to ShB as does Omega and Alexander the latter two are not becoming mandatory therefore it is safe to assume the stuff to do with them is not needed and if they ain't needed leading out of ShB they never will need to be.

Mhach series won't be mandatory until long after they reintroduce the redbills in msq so until you see Cait Sith in msq you ain't need to even think about them.

Ivalice and quite frankly it seems the whole of Western Othard looks to be all side content relagated to instances so until they have you meet resistence members in msq I doubt these will be mandatory anytime soon.

Do bear in mind it was advised prior to 5.0 to do CT raid series but are becoming mandatory in 5.3 so they gave you nearly a year to get these raids done until you hear we advise you to do x content you don't have to worry about it and when they do advise you safe to say you have a full year to get it done, would not be hard to do that.

Very much feels people making a mountain out of a molehill on this one.

[KDSilver]

I'm amazed by some reaction.

The game "forcing" you to play the game to actually keep going on the game.
How could they connect their stories within their lore and ask player to do a brainless content for that.

/irony

[Xtrasweettea]

SE should have made it a requirement in addition to completing 4.5 MSQ to do the Crystal Tower to unlock the first 5.0 MSQ quest, if the Crystal Tower was that important and intertwined to the story. Waiting a year on a "suggestion" and then making it mandatory past the 1 year anniversary of the release of the expansion tells me there's other reasons beyond lore.

Since SE loves not giving much money to FF14, some SE executives could be looking at these 24 man raids, seeing a completion and participation rate lower than what was to be "expected", and they could cut more funding and move resources around. FF14 leadership forcing participation could be a move to save the content. Then again, I work for a corporation that literally forces people (employees and customers) to use tools and applications just to have a high usage rate to justify spending money on resources to upkeep and make similar tools and applications.

Now for those scratching their heads on why people would be stating their dissatisfaction to now have to do content they were not interested in doing in the first place and changes from being from optional to required, let me just change just one noun in this scenario:

Instead of ShB being around the Crystal Tower, it is around the island of Eureka.
The Eureka storyline has many ties to the MSQ.
It will be required to complete the Eureka storyline in order to progress in the MSQ in 5.3

Would you not come onto the forums to state your dissatisfaction? Would you not feel like this is "forced?"

Most people don't like Eureka. I do. So would you appreciate me telling you to "suck it up," "your making mountain out of a molehill," etc. No, you wouldn't.

Granite, completing the story in Eureka is no where as quick and easy as completing CT. I am not going to pretend that it does. I am just giving a scenario to give those who are not understanding where some of those who are dissatisfied might be coming from.