Does anyone else miss coils raid design

[Supersnow845]

Now I’m saying this rather broadly and including most aspects of things people would generally consider aspects of coils raid design that fell away in Gordias and never really returned (just as a side note here I did coils on patch you don’t have to tell me that jobs are extremely different now and a lot of transition would be messy)

For me there are three things coils raids did that they did better than anything after it

1) pre fight mechanics- coils raids actually felt like what you would imagine when you think of raids, they had mini bosses, they had trash packs, they had hidden treasure chests, less so in final coil but the raids felt like they had a real sense of progression in physical space, in eden and omega specifically you just feel like you are being teleported around randomly but in coils you feel like you are making real descent into the depths of the coils; this is somewhat made both better and worse by T3 but I’m willing to overlook T3, however for most other fights it really adds to their scale. Think something like turn 11, the giant dalamud replica you have to traverse to get to the boss gives the boss a far larger scale than say just teleporting into shadowkeepers arena that looks like it’s in some random ruins in Lakeland

2) interesting and different mechanics- now you can make the argument that every mechanic is a new mechanic in the games first raid tier (I’m not counting original rivenroad here) but coils has a lot of mechanics we have never seen again and mechanics that do not fall into the traditional mechanical sense we know today, think mechanics like turn 11’s boss hitbox being a death field forcing you to rotate around him, or T6 leaf storm these mechanics are just so different to the dance we have today and they rarely felt like they got as boring as the raids we have now

3) adds phases- what is it about post HW design that means square cannot make good adds phases anymore, coils had fantastic adds phases and they were all Meaningful with unique mechanics that made them worth doing

So yeah coils just feels so different to anything after it and I feel like 14 is missing that kind of uniqueness in design, however I know coils completion on patch is rare these days so most people probably never experienced it and like our current system, I just think it could add some more diversity to 14 raiding to have more T1/2/6/7/8/11/12 style fights we really see nothing of these days

[Oizen]

Isn't that basically just what Criterion is now?

[Supersnow845]

Isn't that basically just what Criterion is now?

Criterion is more like DRS than coils, I’ll give it that criterion branches out in its mechanics more than traditional savage which is definitely a point in its favour (though it’s hard to replicate coils mechanics with 4 people)

I wouldn’t be against more criterion since it’s about the closest to coils we have; but it’s still quite different

[Kaurhz]

I've only done normal modes, and Coils and the tragedy that was Eden's Verse, but yes I do miss it, IMO it should be prevalent especially in normal mode when you are primarily doing it for a story - For it to have that element of intrigue.

I wouldn't say they feel like true raids, but Coils were the closest that you got since it felt like you were progressing through something, in that you would have some element of exploration, especially with the Avatar turn, and the first 2 turns in the Final Coil. For me, it was still present in Gordias but it feels like they wanted to be very minimalistic, I guess to cater to the 2-tier difficulty.

I mean I'll be a little bit contrarian and say that I don't really think FFXIV has ever had anything close to a raid outside of BA, DR, CLL, and Dalriada, everything else from my experience has just been an over-glorified trial. I mean for something to be a raid for me it needs to feel like I'm actually venturing into something. It's just so poor quality for me these days that I haven't even done the normal mode. It starts dreadfully slow and you don't even have that thrill of feeling like you're exploring something. At least with Coils, it had a small taste of it. Could at least have the courtesy of making story-mode version feel like a venture.

[Saraide]

As far as I am concerned trash packs can stay where they belong: in the trash.

[Supersnow845]

As far as I am concerned trash packs can stay where they belong: in the trash.

Trash is definitely a controversial subject (nobody likes turn 3) but I think it worked well in turn 1, the trash was dangerous and played into the fight (as did the mini boss) you could even elect to fight some extra trash for more chests which could hold interesting upgrade materials

[Jeeqbit]

1) pre fight mechanics- coils raids actually felt like what you would imagine when you think of raids, they had mini bosses, they had trash packs

That's intentional though. They know that raiders aren't going to struggle with trash packs and would get annoyed going through them every time they re-enter, so they kept trash in the story version for Alexander and then put them as part of the quests and battle instances for Omega so that you only defeated trash once.

the raids felt like they had a real sense of progression in physical space

Even the earliest coils are still split up into instances though.

this is somewhat made both better and worse by T3

T3 is one of the best for "progressing through a raid", actually. Because progressing and fighting trash is almost all you do.

[Supersnow845]

That's intentional though. They know that raiders aren't going to struggle with trash packs and would get annoyed going through them every time they re-enter, so they kept trash in the story version for Alexander and then put them as part of the quests and battle instances for Omega so that you only defeated trash once.

Even the earliest coils are still split up into instances though.

T3 is one of the best for "progressing through a raid", actually. Because progressing and fighting trash is almost all you do.

Well that’s sort of what I mean, when people say “yeah but trash is trash” can’t you apply it to say E9’s opening, who dies to anything prior to brambles, should we remove stuff like that because nobody is ever going to die to it, the trash and the long instances (like physically long) make you feel like you are actually “raiding” a space, rather than just being teleported into a spot that may or may not make sense from a lore perspective

Yes they are split up into instances but you feel like you are making motion due to the size of the instances (T3 helps here despite its other weaknesses) or T4 being on a moving elevator that reaches the bottom in the cutscene of T5, or the fact that each of the areas’s zone names include how many yalms deep the current location is

Idk it’s just the little things that make them feel like “raids” not just over glorified trials

[Oizen]

Trash is definitely a controversial subject (nobody likes turn 3) but I think it worked well in turn 1, the trash was dangerous and played into the fight (as did the mini boss) you could even elect to fight some extra trash for more chests which could hold interesting upgrade materials

People don't like dealing with add phases or mobs because it hurts their fansite numbers, like a lot of things is how we ended up with every savage being a mix of Spread/Stack/Lookaway with very little variance.

[vetch]

That's intentional though. They know that raiders aren't going to struggle with trash packs and would get annoyed going through them every time they re-enter, so they kept trash in the story version for Alexander and then put them as part of the quests and battle instances for Omega so that you only defeated trash once.

Problem with this approach is that it doesn't help sell the 'raidyness' of the raid unless the trash is actually dangerous. Normal mode 'raid' trash in Alex/Omega is even easier than some MSQ battles -- and this is optional content! Enemies that die effortlessly are forgotten effortlessly, too.

The only raid trash that makes you feel like you're breaching a facility is in Coils/A2S/Exploratory Zone raids.