Dear SE

[BaconBits]

My feelings exactly. Drakengard would've been a WAY better crossover than Nier.

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't mind seeing a Drakengard alliance raid that explained what happened to Caim and the red dragon's home world after they flew through the portal in the final ending.

Maybe the locations in that game could of been in the First and they were consumes by the Flood of light long after the events of the first game.

[Controller]

I like the stormblood raids much better. Better music, fits into the world more and THUNDER GOD! The Nier raids wasn't bad but they aren't my fav. The best thing about them tho is we get to see the Real Ada Wong twice. That and the second raid had a DJ boss that had good jams. " SCREAMING INTO THE MIX.. ON B96!"

[xbahax92]

We didnt get to the amusement park. Its disheartening

[Vahlnir]

We didnt get to the amusement park. Its disheartening

This was something I was really hoping would happen but never did. We didn't even get the proper version of the music roll either. I thought it was way too iconic to pass up but apparently the devs (and perhaps Yoko Taro himself) disagreed. Easily the biggest letdown of the entire raid series for me. I enjoyed the raids well enough despite the story being a bit of a mess, but it would have added so much more enjoyment to it all.

[Hazmick]

Personally I think that smaller crossovers (Monster Hunter, for example) are great, but giving a significant chunk of an expansion (24 man raids) to a crossover is a waste - particularly in the case of Nier when the raid didn't tie in to the world of FFXIV all that much. It feels too disjointed from everything else that's going on imo.

[Fawkes]

I liked it a lot more than the Eden raid series. They gave us a tiny bit of FF8 up front and that just made me want more FF8. Then when we got a weird tree thing instead of Ultimecia it was a big letdown. Although even if I hadn't been expecting Ultimecia that boob tree would have still been a weird disappointment.

With Nier I didn't know what to expect and got most of what I wanted. I could still write a list a mile long of things they could have done, but at least I feel satisfied with what I got.

[Vahlnir]

I liked it a lot more than the Eden raid series. They gave us a tiny bit of FF8 up front and that just made me want more FF8. Then when we got a weird tree thing instead of Ultimecia it was a big letdown. Although even if I hadn't been expecting Ultimecia that boob tree would have still been a weird disappointment.

With Nier I didn't know what to expect and got most of what I wanted. I could still write a list a mile long of things they could have done, but at least I feel satisfied with what I got.

Yeah, I feel the same way. Sure, there wasn't much of a story, but I got way more enjoyment out of the Nier raids than I did Eden. It was good fanservice.

[ForteNightshade]

I think Automata could have worked just fine, if they'd gone the Ivalice route and adapted it into the setting and not just 'they came from anothe world.'

Just taking the raid series name: YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse, it could have easily tied into the final days of Aumoraut, or the bad timeline that the Crystal Exarch came from, to explore those things more. Probably the latter more so given that Endwalker will probably be delving more into the final days stuff.

The problem isn't that Automata couldn't have fit, but rather the direction they took with it.

This is precisely why I disliked the Neir raids so much from a story perspective. In terms of gameplay, I quite enjoyed the series and have spammed Tower more than any raid since Orbonne. The story though... is practically nonexistent. Things simply happen without much rhyme or reason offered save "they came from another world and these machines are eViL!!!!!!" The dwarves could be cut out entirely and very little, if anything at all, would have changed. And that isn't even touching on the nonsensical aspects like how nobody noticed this massive factory or how the world ending plot amounts to blowing up a small village no one but a handful of dwarves care about it.

On the whole, YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse felt like a giant advertisement for a different game. And not a particularly good one. At least the fights were mostly fun.

[TarynH]

I liked it a lot more than the Eden raid series. They gave us a tiny bit of FF8 up front and that just made me want more FF8. Then when we got a weird tree thing instead of Ultimecia it was a big letdown. Although even if I hadn't been expecting Ultimecia that boob tree would have still been a weird disappointment.

With Nier I didn't know what to expect and got most of what I wanted. I could still write a list a mile long of things they could have done, but at least I feel satisfied with what I got.

I'm the complete opposite. I haven't played FF8 or Nier, so I was able to come into both Eden and Yorha not knowing what to expect. I really enjoyed Eden. The fights were fun. They made sense in regard to the story, and they didn't have to throw in some gimmick like "hacking" to make it interesting. I didn't have to know Squall, or even the story of FF8 for things to connect. No rundown of FF8, or Googling was needed to understand it, or explain it.

Yorha left me with more questions than answers. Questions I really don't care to have answered, because none of it really sparked my curiosity enough to dig any deeper into Nier lore. I consider it done now, and I probably don't have to revisit it in FFXIV again. It was a cheesy they came from outer space story that never told us why any of it existed. Then it all just disappeared. (Insert quizzical Viera head tilt here.) I think it was solely used to increase sales of another game. It's easily forgettable. The characters that drove the narrative were faceless dwarves that are hardly relatable. There was no Ascian intrigue like the Eden raid. Nothing to connect it to FFXIV's lore or worlds. Both the protagonists and antagonists begged outside explanation, because they never took the time to explain their presence in the moment.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Nier. I can only guess that it is a very strange game that needs more than a three part raid to understand it. I wanted to like the raid on purely a content level. However, the story, visuals and pink balls didn't live up to what very little expectation I had going into it. I play FFXIV for story mostly, and got nothing impactful story wise from Yorha. So without story I turn to the content's fun factor, or how visually striking it is. I got nothing in that department either. A lot of ugly brown factory settings, contrasted with a lot of washed out white, and an alien(?) ship. It's an ugly raid, and the fights aren't exactly fun. Hundreds of androids, tanks, jets and pink balls later, and I still don't know what was going on in there.

Looking at past raids, they made them fit into the overall story of FFXIV. The Crystal Tower raids were taken from FF3, but they gave them a reason why they are in FFXIV, and the reason came back later for SHB. Same with Void Ark and Ivalice. The Ivalice story was continued into Bozja, while I'm thinking we might use some kind of Void Ark tech to reach the moon in 6.0. It might even be the tech behind the towers. There is a legitimate (and continuing) story and/or lore reason why they are all there. Yorha was a crashed satellite with... things(?) in it, that couldn't quite be explained. Some big white ball... All of the reasoning behind it poofed with a "thanks for all the fish" letter, and I'm pretty sure we'll never hear about it again in a future expansion. (Unless they need to sell another Nier game.)

[Ardyvald]

Personally I think that smaller crossovers (Monster Hunter, for example) are great, but giving a significant chunk of an expansion (24 man raids) to a crossover is a waste - particularly in the case of Nier when the raid didn't tie in to the world of FFXIV all that much. It feels too disjointed from everything else that's going on imo.

I feel the same here.
I may be wrong to think like that, but I consider Alliance Raids as "part of main content" (aka part of expected content in any expansion, and FF universe related) and collaboration as "entirely side content" (be it anything).
I was rather "ok-ish" with the introduction of the MH Trial because it is side content (did they have to cut main content to add this trial ? i'm not sure, so i'd be happy to hear more about it).
MH story-wise was... meh, but that was to be expected (all collabs feel disjointed, or maybe that's just me)

When they announced Nier Raid at FFF, I was confused : a Raid collab? Ah... I hope they won't cut "Main FF related raids" for th... They did it... but why, dammit ? What does it have to do with FF ?!
Since then, I'm kind of mad about it : what does a collab do in main content?

I refused to even start the questline because of that.
I feel "cut" from a chunk of "main expansion content". Yes, I know, I'm responsible from cutting it because of my refusal.
But again this is because I see collab as "side content", not "main content". and SE colliding the both of them just makes me grumpy.

And i'd be hell of mad if they just made that.. thing.. canon by weaving up a solid story around it (why the **** not calling "NieR" FF if it is one ?)
So, in a way, selfishly, i'm "happy" they apparently did a poor story about it (but so did the other collabs, didn't they?)

I can understand people are enjoying it. and i'm glad they do.
But I don't *grumpy*