Updating the Coils of Bahamut

[Semirhage]

If you want the story experience, just...unsync them? A level 90 tank or healer (or DPS with a little sustain) can solo all of coil with little issue. If you want the coil experience, get a group to do it.

While I'm a fan of the *idea* behind adding engagement to the duller old content, coil isn't dull. And I don't think older raids would improve if the modern Shadowbringers fight templating replaced their original design. Do we need yet another fight where the boss has Generic Raidwide That Comes Once A Minute, or Easily Mitigated Unthreatening Tankbuster? Boss That Teleports To Center And Casts For Ten Seconds? Yet More 8-Person Protean Waves? Okay Guys, For This One We Need Light Parties And Clock Positions?

[Iscah]

What I think might be neat is to keep the existing Coils fights—for historical purposes, and to leave it accessible for groups like the Retro Raiders—but to shift the story unlock over to an optional trial series—something akin to the Sorrow of Werlyt storyline in Shadowbringers, or the Four Lords in Stormblood. You don't have the weird dungeon-y fights, but you could take the truly memorable ones—Twintania, Nael, Phoenix, Bahamut, etc.—and make more focused, modern, up-to-date versions of those fights as trials. Once you'd cleared the trials version, you could unlock the original raids (e.g., the fights we have now) if you wanted to poke around in those, but the story would be entirely accessible through the trials series.

I'm not sure why you're thinking the story would need to be transferred over to a trial rather than raid format. I would expect that the overall structure would remain: three lots of four boss fights, just like all the other raids that have come since.

The main changes would have to be reconfiguring the cutscene placement so they play between rather than during the fights, and pulling out at least Turn 3 and possibly some of the other longer dungeony bits and turning them into Omega-style solo instances or even cutscenes. (Though it wouldn't be entirely terrible to leave at least some of them in, if only so Alexander doesn't look like such an outlier.)

[Gemina]

The main changes would have to be reconfiguring the cutscene placement so they play between rather than during the fights, and pulling out at least Turn 3 and possibly some of the other longer dungeony bits and turning them into Omega-style solo instances or even cutscenes. (Though it wouldn't be entirely terrible to leave at least some of them in, if only so Alexander doesn't look like such an outlier.)

I could get on board with that. I can't recall anything of significance that would prevent removing T3, and cutscene placement shouldn't be too big of an issue either. I think the most work would involve taking out the less dungeon-y bits, and under-tuning the bosses for normal mode. This would even everything out though to the standard 12 encounters, and make Twintania, Nael, and Bahamut the final bosses of their respective floors. Savage can stay as authentic as possible to the original experience, and less punishing versions with telegraphs and cast bars can be placed in the NM versions for those just wanting to experience the story.

I normally don't support reworking old content, but there are exceptions if the rework can enhance the experience for players and give life back to the content. If Coils were reconfigured, and made to have a normal mode, this actually would be new content for a lot of players. They'd still be synced to 50, but they likely wouldn't even care.

[vetch]

I'm not sure why you're thinking the story would need to be transferred over to a trial rather than raid format. I would expect that the overall structure would remain: three lots of four boss fights, just like all the other raids that have come since.

The main changes would have to be reconfiguring the cutscene placement so they play between rather than during the fights, and pulling out at least Turn 3 and possibly some of the other longer dungeony bits and turning them into Omega-style solo instances or even cutscenes. (Though it wouldn't be entirely terrible to leave at least some of them in, if only so Alexander doesn't look like such an outlier.)

Longer dungeony bits are what make 'raids' feel like the game is actually asking you to raid a hostile facility instead of just copying the terminology from other MMOs so the devs can advertise that they have it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Longer dungeony bits are what make 'raids' feel like the game is actually asking you to raid a hostile facility instead of just copying the terminology from other MMOs so the devs can advertise that they have it.

Other MMOs have had raids that were just one room with a boss, too. Just in WoW, there was Onyxia's Lair, Gruul's Lair (technically two rooms, but still), the Eye of Eternity, the Obsidian Sanctum, the Vault of Archavon, and a bunch more I can't remember. We have alliance raids for more dungeon-y runs.

[Vahlnir]

Other MMOs have had raids that were just one room with a boss, too. Just in WoW, there was Onyxia's Lair, Gruul's Lair (technically two rooms, but still), the Eye of Eternity, the Obsidian Sanctum, the Vault of Archavon, and a bunch more I can't remember. We have alliance raids for more dungeon-y runs.

Vault technically had 3-4 (pretty sure it was 3) bosses once they were all unlocked, but yeah. WoW made some pretty excellent single boss raids back in the day.

[vetch]

Other MMOs have had raids that were just one room with a boss, too. Just in WoW, there was Onyxia's Lair, Gruul's Lair (technically two rooms, but still), the Eye of Eternity, the Obsidian Sanctum, the Vault of Archavon, and a bunch more I can't remember. We have alliance raids for more dungeon-y runs.

Even as the shortest raid in the game, Onyxia had a long hallway with trash capable of wiping you. Gruul's had an antechamber with trash capable of wiping you. Almost all FF14 raids are even shorter than these, and the few that are the same length as Onyxia have just been nominated in this thread for trimming to remove the exact parts that make it feel like you're breaking into an enemy facility rather than stepping off a tour bus.

[Packetdancer]

I'm not sure why you're thinking the story would need to be transferred over to a trial rather than raid format. I would expect that the overall structure would remain: three lots of four boss fights, just like all the other raids that have come since.

Because asking them to do it as a modern raid series means—as you note—three sets of four boss fights. Right now, while Coils is 13 fights long, some of those fights are little more than tiny dungeons, lacking any actual central "boss" to fight. So not only would they be taking fights like Twintania and Nael and so on and making them more like modern fights—plus, likely, rebalancing them for what jobs have at level 50 now, because a level 50 kit now is fairly different than a level 50 kit when Coils came out—they're also having to come up with entire new fights to fill the other spaces out in the tier.

Turning it into a trial series means you can take just a handful of the 13 fights—e.g., the more memorable actual boss fights—and update them. Now the story can still be accessible to players, but you don't tie up the combat design team to make them do an entire raid series worth of content reworking.

I'm in favor of making Coils accessible to new players who want to get into that story. I'm also in favor of not tying up the combat design team with level 50 content indefinitely; that steals time away from level 90 content... which is content I also very much want.

I haven't healed them in EW, but when I last healed them (in Shadowbringers) I still had to manage MP. With so few abilities available I was healing constantly and just barely kept my MP up with Lucid Dreaming. Sometimes I had to use Energy Drain just to get some back.

When the Retro Raiders did Coils during ShB, realizing I was actually actively fishing for Freecure procs as WHM during certain fights made me feel so dirty—even if it was necessary, as literally my only oGCD heal was Benediction—that it drove me to finish the rest out as SCH instead. (The other healer was AST and was not going to budge.)

[Iscah]

Right now, while Coils is 13 fights long, some of those fights are little more than tiny dungeons, lacking any actual central "boss" to fight.

I'm pretty sure that Turn 3 is the only turn that lacks a boss. Some of the others have a mini-dungeon leading to a boss fight, but there's still a fight in the end.

[Packetdancer]

I'm pretty sure that Turn 3 is the only turn that lacks a boss. Some of the others have a mini-dungeon leading to a boss fight, but there's still a fight in the end.

Turn one, sure, Caduceus is a boss... [ insert "I GUESS?" meme image ]

Turn two is just a whole bunch of minibosses, though I guess the last ADS variant will use the abilities of the previous ones so has a bit more variety in attacks; you could count it as a boss.

Turn three, you yourself mention; it's a weird duck by any standard.

Turn 4 does not have an actual boss, as I recall; isn't it just multiple waves of adds? Even if you consider the dreadnought a "boss", there's more than one of them.

I will grant that the Second Coil and Final Coil are more easily adapted, but I feel like the Binding Coil is something of a mess; if the goal is to take Coils and update the storyline to play like more recent/modern content, if you target doing a full three-tier raid series again, I feel like it's not as simple as just "tweak the mechanics slightly, chop Turn 3 altogether, and call it good".