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.

[Adrameliya]

As a very casual and average player, I don't see any problem with that. If anything, it gives me some motivation to get better.

such as the old Steps of Faith before they nerfed it into the ground.

I miss the old Steps of Faith, I loved firing the cannons and dragon killer harpoons. It was fun and very chalenging, i'm still very disapointed they nerfed it so much.

[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".

[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.

[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.

[Iscah]

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.

I don't see a reason to see it as some kind of conspiracy - and given the number of complaints about too much Syrcus Tower in alliance roulette, I have a hard time believing it would be out of a need to increase participation levels in low-populated content.

They didn't force CT for 5.0 because - as much as it is highly recommended for story comprehension - it isn't needed to keep the sequence of events straight. (I'll spoiler-tag the rest of this just in case.)

The story will not reference side story events as having happened if the individual player hasn't played the story to "make it happen", which is why side content doesn't usually link back into MSQ, as the story can't build on something that might not have happened yet.

5.0 carefully steps around this rule because the time travel element negates the need for the player to have made those events happen at the point when the story plays out. It doesn't matter if the events of CT, Alexander and Omega are still in your future, because the Exarch has come back from an even further point in the future, so those events happened somewhere between now and then. (It's a flimsy excuse if you stare at it too hard and try to make sense of the altered timeline, but enough to scrape through.) The story can play out the same whether you completed CT or not, therefore they didn't force it.

Obviously whatever they've got planned will for 5.3 will be a different story. Something we'll be doing in the here and now will rely on the state of something changed by those events.

The obvious possibility is that we might need to wake up G'raha Tia again - which is rather hard if he was never sealed in the tower to begin with. So we would need to complete CT to ensure that has happened.

Or maybe the solution to our problem lies in the World of Darkness - and again, to ensure that world is in a particular state (Xande's covenant and the voidgate destroyed, Unei and Doga maybe still in there somewhere, Cloud of Darkness still rather furious at us?), we need to have completed CT.

Eureka would feel forced because it has had no direct recent links to MSQ. Its gameplay is also a fair bit further away from FFXIV's usual play format of story quests and battle instances.

CT isn't a "tough endgame raid" - it's practically a dungeon. Would you complain if 5.3 gave you a new MSQ chapter with three new dungeons to play through? Because level synch aside, this really isn't any different or more challenging. But put the label "raid" on a thing and suddenly it's something else entirely.

I think we had more wipes to the Mist Dragon when the Burn was newly-launched than I've ever seen happen in a single CT run. Even World of Darkness. Might get one or two on a specific boss, but people learn from mistakes and it goes better on the next attempt.

[Xtrasweettea]

I don't see a reason to see it as some kind of conspiracy - and given the number of complaints about too much Syrcus Tower in alliance roulette, I have a hard time believing it would be out of a need to increase participation levels in low-populated content.

They didn't force CT for 5.0 because - as much as it is highly recommended for story comprehension - it isn't needed to keep the sequence of events straight. (I'll spoiler-tag the rest of this just in case.)

The story will not reference side story events as having happened if the individual player hasn't played the story to "make it happen", which is why side content doesn't usually link back into MSQ, as the story can't build on something that might not have happened yet.

5.0 carefully steps around this rule because the time travel element negates the need for the player to have made those events happen at the point when the story plays out. It doesn't matter if the events of CT, Alexander and Omega are still in your future, because the Exarch has come back from an even further point in the future, so those events happened somewhere between now and then. (It's a flimsy excuse if you stare at it too hard and try to make sense of the altered timeline, but enough to scrape through.) The story can play out the same whether you completed CT or not, therefore they didn't force it.

Obviously whatever they've got planned will for 5.3 will be a different story. Something we'll be doing in the here and now will rely on the state of something changed by those events.

The obvious possibility is that we might need to wake up G'raha Tia again - which is rather hard if he was never sealed in the tower to begin with. So we would need to complete CT to ensure that has happened.

Or maybe the solution to our problem lies in the World of Darkness - and again, to ensure that world is in a particular state (Xande's covenant and the voidgate destroyed, Unei and Doga maybe still in there somewhere, Cloud of Darkness still rather furious at us?), we need to have completed CT.

Eureka would feel forced because it has had no direct recent links to MSQ. Its gameplay is also a fair bit further away from FFXIV's usual play format of story quests and battle instances.

CT isn't a "tough endgame raid" - it's practically a dungeon. Would you complain if 5.3 gave you a new MSQ chapter with three new dungeons to play through? Because level synch aside, this really isn't any different or more challenging. But put the label "raid" on a thing and suddenly it's something else entirely.

I think we had more wipes to the Mist Dragon when the Burn was newly-launched than I've ever seen happen in a single CT run. Even World of Darkness. Might get one or two on a specific boss, but people learn from mistakes and it goes better on the next attempt.

If you work in corporate world like I do, you would understand where I am coming from with my "conspiracy." Also, just because people run a piece of content constantly does not mean that it is popular among the majority. This was an argument that was applied against Eureka back when it was relevant. That argument can be applied here as well.

You assuming I would think CT would be difficult is misplacing my disinterest for the content. I did 18+ man end-game content for years in FFXI and raided in WoW for a few months. Due to the constant grid of that content, I ended up burning out and decided to not participate in anything greater than 8 man content when I joined FF14, unless I know I could end up enjoying the content (like Eureka). I knew before doing CT it wouldn't be difficult. It is completely possible to be just not interested in content beyond 8 man in this game. Just like it is completely possible to not be interested in crafting.

The hardest part of CT was pressing that skip option on the cut-scenes.

As for the MSQ and Eureka example, if you took in what I wrote then "recent story links" would apply in that scenario

[Mansion]

You assuming I would think CT would be difficult is misplacing my disinterest for the content. I did 18+ man end-game content for years in FFXI and raided in WoW for a few months. Due to the constant grid of that content, I ended up burning out and decided to not participate in anything greater than 8 man content when I joined FF14

That's not what they are asking though. The devs want you to do one serie of quests one time, not raid weekly, nor participate in something that would need you to gear up through that kind of means. Even when they are current content, 24man raids are never requesting high iLvl that would need you to grind gear. There are no real harder mechanics than a normal dungeon or 8man raid, the difficulty lies in 24 people being involved, otherwise it's the same "don't walk in danzer zone", "spread markers" and/or "stack markers" in different coats of paint.

I don't see any "corporate" gain either, doing the CT quests once won't keep you subscribed more than you currently are. It's a matter of a few hours, ONCE per character.