Normal Raids aren't exactly Raids, are they?

[ItMe]

I liked them. Added flavour and scale.

Hey, don't look at me.
The devs said the ARR feedback they got overwhelmingly considered the trash packs (IIRC) "mendokusai," (troublesome, not worth it, pain in the butt) so they nixed them.

Also, I'm sorry to hear you've lost something you enjoyed.

[Iscah]

Good point. Trial means "main plot" and normal raid means "side plot". There's no optional trials anymore, and normal raids, are just optional trials.

Did you miss the Weapon quest line? It's still entirely optional.

[whiskeybravo]

The devs said the ARR feedback they got overwhelmingly considered the trash packs (IIRC) "mendokusai," (troublesome, not worth it, pain in the butt) so they nixed them.

Sure, and the ARR feedback about the raids not being hard enough nearly destroyed the game lol. People will complain about anything that costs them an extra 5 minutes, pretty much a given in-game or IRL. Besides that, the oddity of turn 3 probably contributed to some of those sour sentiments. But maybe it's time to revisit the decision.

Spending a few minutes per week running through an environment, killing some mobs to unlock a door to the boss or whatever.. Isn't there a reason some of us have this nostalgia over the old raids? Will Omega and Eden invoke the same feelings a few years down the road? Perhaps that's all part of it, that little bit of extra immersion and camaraderie between your group that helps create good, lasting memories.

I understand the story mechanism of Omega and Eden relating to a series of trials might have made it difficult to build an expansive environment that would differentiate it from other "Trials" content. But we're going to the moon now. If there is a facility/complex or ancient ruins of some sort which we'll need to eventually explore for the raid arc, I'll be disappointed if we get there only to find a few guards to solo, while Cid sets up an aethernet that ports us straight to the boss.

[Xuto-cxb]

Oh, let me jump in on this one, because I've been torn on how XIV does it's raids (nostalgia bias incoming).

Years ago, (years, I'm old now) I used to play EQ2. Was in raiding guilds for a long while. Did all the raid content from vanilla to the first three xpacs. Raids in there were VERY dungeon like. They were long. If memory serves, the easiest ones (lower tier, solid crew, max gear and spells) were a good 30-45 minutes? Longer ones took a solid hour. There was a LOT of trash, and a LOT of minibosses before the big bad at the end. Really neat zones that were very much connected to the world and area you were in. Cool art and art direction.

But trash in those raids wasn't like trash here. Trash was one pull at a time. One. There was no wall to wall. Mini bosses weren't pushovers either. And every miniboss would drop a chest with a significant upgrade for someone in the raid. Bosses at the end would drop a piece or two of gearsets and a spell or two. Depending on how the night went we would do 1-3 zones a night. And then we were locked out for a week. They were all 24 man.

XIV takes a very different approach. There are no spell qualities to upgrade. And instead of making them length zones with multiple bosses, they have just a handful of zones in each set with one boss each. Since Alexander, they've made a normal (very easy) mode, and a ballbusting savage mode for dedicated raid crews. So that's two sets of balancing. EQ2 didn't care. You were top tier or you didn't see the content. It was a second job.

Your options are either to make trash engaging to fight, or a waste of time. And even if you could do the former, you're looking at 30+ minutes a run. Do we add minibosses as well? What do they drop? This is a waste of time, IMO, and it's hard for me to say that. I LOVE the lengthy, artistic raid dungeons I used to run in EQ. But, I don't think it's a good use of time to make every raid like that. Having a few raids in that style per set I think is a good balance.

[whiskeybravo]

Your options are either to make trash engaging to fight, or a waste of time. And even if you could do the former, you're looking at 30+ minutes a run. Do we add minibosses as well? What do they drop? This is a waste of time, IMO, and it's hard for me to say that. I LOVE the lengthy, artistic raid dungeons I used to run in EQ. But, I don't think it's a good use of time to make every raid like that. Having a few raids in that style per set I think is a good balance.

Not really. Something like T2 mechanics where killing adds affected the final boss mechanics. T11 splitting the group in 2 to unlock the boss room. Faust even served some purpose as a DPS check, if you can't beat the door boss then you can't beat the real boss so go back and practice or gear up. Sure, if adds are just trash with no purpose then it's kinda lame, they need to be related to some minor objective. And even the old final turns didn't have mobs so you don't need them in every one, just as much as makes sense in the setting.

Adjust the instances to 120 mins to compensate and it's a win-win.

As for trash mob loot, this notion should really be dispensed with. A couple hundred gil a piece, that's all trash mobs are worth in any other (level capped) content.

[MellowMink]

It's true that the latest normal raids are basically just twelve trials, and then you have another twelve with notably unique presentations and mechanics for the savage versions. Normal raids weren't always that way, but the trial-like approach became a more popular design choice than having longer introductions with trash mobs... and excessively long cutscenes in the case of A Realm Reborn's regrettable non-alliance raid design.

[Illmaeran]

Your options are either to make trash engaging to fight, or a waste of time. And even if you could do the former, you're looking at 30+ minutes a run. Do we add minibosses as well? What do they drop? This is a waste of time, IMO, and it's hard for me to say that. I LOVE the lengthy, artistic raid dungeons I used to run in EQ. But, I don't think it's a good use of time to make every raid like that. Having a few raids in that style per set I think is a good balance.

My first raid experience was in Molten Core and boy do I have some nostalgia about it! Even running it as a level 80 in BFA I still enjoyed it for the fact that I remembered each trash pack being a challenge that required the entire 40 player group to overcome. Given time allowances, it may have taken us three or four days to clear. It was large in scope and the entire thing was a hefty challenge until fully geared up. To me, a proper raid will be one with that sense of scale, challenge, and need for constant teamwork.

I appreciate XIV raids as they're broken up into easy-to-digest segments or are short enough to fit my grown-up-with-responsibilties schedule. That doesn't mean I don't long for the heady days of proper 24-40 player raids that are epic in scope.