The Aracadion Raid Series

[Bonoki]

The Arcadion raid series seems to be another tournament arc similar to the one from Stormblood. I'm unsure how I feel about having another raid series designed around the "best of the best" fighting each other. In some ways, it almost feels like an insult to Omega's raids, which involved battling every known strong creature in the universe, even the fictional ones. I hope at the very least, there's a crowd involved this time watching.

PS: You can see an Ascian Mask-like symbol on the left side of the image. I wonder if they are involved again.



Source: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/dawntrail/

[Jeeqbit]

I noticed that too. It's like a colosseum or The Masked Carnivale. So the story is likely gonna be as deep as Stormblood's raids or less.

[HyperiusUltima]

I want to expect it to be a far greater spectacle though, since in Stormblood's raids we had the entire planet on the line - high stakes, no survival for the losers. However, this time I don't think we're going to be fighting for the planet - it'll be more akin to spectacle for spectacle's sake, along with the thrill of battle that the WoL tends to enjoy. I really am hoping we get a live audience(and an announcer no less, since the Omega Raids in general had a far different tone than what this one is implying through the subtext we see for it currently).

In general I'm looking forward to it, but the way to disappoint would be for the fights themselves to be lame.

[Daralii]

I noticed that too. It's like a colosseum or The Masked Carnivale. So the story is likely gonna be as deep as Stormblood's raids or less.

Less. Omega was also a tournament arc, but it at least had some Asimov-lite philosophy and Midgardsormr/dragonstar lore. The blurb doesn't make it sound like Arcadion is anything more than the tournament arc.

[Roda]

I'm mixed on this really. I HATE tournament arcs with a burning passion in my media, and typically I find them to interrupt the narrative and be a lazy way of character development (typically boiling down to un-montage'ing a training montage). I much prefer story, character development, exploration, and discovery. So a raid story that's just "lmao now fight THIS dude!" with the obvious conclusion being "and now we know YOU'RE the strongest, hero! " really isn't my cup of tea..

Omega's fight designs/gimmicks and SB's job design was what made me enjoy the raid series. And I enjoyed reworked ShB SMN enough to carry me through eden (Which was also a kind of tournament arc with the "and now fight the primals again).

BUT!

With XIV's approach to "raids" going from being placed in a series of missions that required minor interactions with the world to navigate to a boss, with each series ending in a climactic boss fight, to a miniboss gatekeeper, maybe some gauntlets or a couple trash pulls, which all but the gatekeeper will be removed for the savage version, to having the traversal and trash pulls done in one-off solo instances, to finally just being plopped in front of a boss after some textboxes, or if you're lucky, cutscenes, told you you did stuff in between, the gameplay really can only serve a story that plops you down in front of some boss with minimal scenario-building context...

So I guess, they're finally bringing the story down to meet the content style they can handle.
Show up, kill one guy, get loot, leave. Hope they make the presentation over the top and lean into the unseriousness of sporting events. Make the raid loot merch!

But I also don't think that they don't have some twist up their sleeve. Maybe we'll get into some investigation shenanigans into potential corruption with the sport? But I don't see how well that can be conveyed through gameplay if they want to keep the story interaction section as easy to skip through as they have currently been doing. But they can easily transition us from "fight this guy" to "now fight god" with really any premise.

[Yencat]

Sounds good.

I didn't really care for the story of the EW raid series at all, so I don't mind something more self-contained.

[OgruMogru]

It's depends on how it's executed. If it's a gauntlet of references from previous FF games then I just hope there's some good taste applied in the writing and framing at the very least. I personally felt that even the framing in Omega was tenuous [even though I liked the raid series as a whole] so I hope it's not repeated again. I just hope the fights will be fun. I'm not feeling optimistic about the job system at large so it really is all hinging on these 3 raid tiers and the supposed new focus on encounter design. I can only be disappointed by the story aspects once but the encounters and how jobs feel doing those encounters is a repeatable type of disappointment.

[Roda]

I want funny signs in the background like you see at wrestling matches.

[mallleable]

Gonna bet it starts off as a regular tournament arc, but quickly reveals what the actual plot is early on. It will be cool if we face off against a contestant using cheats, and eventually we start fighting computer viruses.

[TaleraRistain]

That blurb mentions crowds howling and clamoring so there will definitely be an audience. I described it as Omega in a cyberpunk setting with an audience but saw someone point out it may near be lightning so we might get "Thunderdome" memes. I would expect no less from Koji if so.

I would love some solo duties between the raids like Omega again.