New Alliance Raid: Well done Devs

[MrKusabi]

... If they want to cater to the hardcore fanbase of this game, fine. Don't expect us long-term vets/casuals to stick around and deal with it.

Respectfully, they are not catering to hardcore. Other posters have pointed out that this difficulty is mainly due to it being new content and gear being a little low right now. I have never done a savage or ultimate, nor have I ever done an extreme on level. I am also middle-aged with vision problems. So I'm pretty much the definition of "turbo-casual." So this is not me talking down to you as a "hardcore" player or trying to diminish the difficulties you face. But with practice and better gear, this raid will go the way of other ones. It may never be as ridiculously easy as Crystal Tower or Myths of the Realm, but I imagine it will be similar to Nier and Ivalice. It's perfectly fine to see/try something and decide it's not for you, but it's a wee bit early to write it off entirely.

And as a turbo-casual, I quite enjoyed the difficulty. I like a wipe or two. It's fun to struggle some, at least for me. So it's also rather disingenuous to speak on behalf of the "casuals." While you personally may hate it and may believe it is beyond your skills or otherwise just not fun for you, that is not the case for everyone on the "casual" side.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Or, many of us will just not touch it and you can all enjoy horrible queues for the future 24-mans. If they want to cater to the hardcore fanbase of this game, fine. Don't expect us long-term vets/casuals to stick around and deal with it.

With respect, this is not "hardcore content" and I would not want the devs to look at this knee-jerk reaction as how they should design content. This is content that even blind in duty finder, people can push through and succeed in an hour or two on day one. A few wipes when most of the playerbase has no idea what the mechanics are in the first days of release, and also when most of us have not upgraded gear past 620 due to only getting coins now, is no indication that the typical casual player won't be running this raid very smoothly in a few weeks with more raid-wide gearscore and learned mechanics.

This reaction shows that the commenter above dislikes any difficulty and has a resistance to a willingness to learn. Some people also complained that the dungeons in 7.0 were too hard - and they are by all means easy already.

[Purrnauskis]

Just want to say well done to the devs for he new Alliance Raid series.

As a long time player of FFXI from it's UK release, I was blown away with how incredible the new Raid looked, and the characters were spot on. I was getting all nostalgic whilst running the raid first time, and even more so on the second.

I look forward to seeing how this Raid series turns out and what else the devs have in store for it.

Also - SE, if you re-released FFXI with THOSE graphics, I'll snap your hand off in a heartbeat

FFXIV players really so mazed they are happy about Sqenix recycling content from old games.

[Maltothoris]

For as much as I harp on this game, I will say the third boss was peetty great. It was nice having a genuine council fight compared to what the rest of the game has offered so far.

[Remember_The_Name]

As much as I appreciate all the material from FFXI, the music, the atmosphere, the amazing locations... I will have to call this raid Aglaia 2.0

Soon people will learn the mechanics patterns (they are simple and heavy scripted, as always) and stop eating vuln stacks. And without them - tankbusters barely budge tank HP bar, unavoidable damage (raid-wides) is scarce and incomparable to the raw healing output even one healer provides. Now imagine all of this, but with 730+ gear as time moves onward. The bosses are already melting damn quick, even with people eating mechanics left and right. And some mechanics already can be skipped (like Doom arc on last boss, raidwide+15s bleed DoT).

First week Aglaia raid also lasted ~35 minutes. Now it is a 15m speedrun where bosses doing literally nothing to the players. I belive this fate awaits Jeuno too...

Thankfully there are some intersting mechanics like interruptable Meteor and "Everyone explodes" attack from NIN boss in 3rd encounter. Thank you for remembering about interrupts, SE.

Special note: Last boss equipping armor, getting "Damage Up" buff (!), preparing a Tera Slash with a countdown (!!) a-a-a-nd.... hitting everyone with slightly harder than normal raidwide (???) left me really confused. Long gone the days when bosses ultimate attacks would obliterate squishy targets from 100 to 0 wtihout at least some mitigation.

[Volgia]

As much as I appreciate all the material from FFXI, the music, the atmosphere, the amazing locations... I will have to call this raid Aglaia 2.0

Soon people will learn the mechanics patterns (they are simple and heavy scripted, as always) and stop eating vuln stacks. And without them - tankbusters barely budge tank HP bar, unavoidable damage (raid-wides) is scarce and incomparable to the raw healing output even one healer provides. Now imagine all of this, but with 730+ gear as time moves onward. The bosses are already melting damn quick, even with people eating mechanics left and right. And some mechanics already can be skipped (like Doom arc on last boss, raidwide+15s bleed DoT).

First week Aglaia raid also lasted ~35 minutes. Now it is a 15m speedrun where bosses doing literally nothing to the players. I belive this fate awaits Jeuno too...

Thankfully there are some intersting mechanics like interruptable Meteor and "Everyone explodes" attack from NIN boss in 3rd encounter. Thank you for remembering about interrupts, SE.

Special note: Last boss equipping armor, getting "Damage Up" buff (!), preparing a Tera Slash with a countdown (!!) a-a-a-nd.... hitting everyone with slightly harder than normal raidwide (???) left me really confused. Long gone the days when bosses ultimate attacks would obliterate squishy targets from 100 to 0 wtihout at least some mitigation.

If this is the case, I hope we can make enough noise to make the subsequent floors keep the challenge in terms of damage. Dunno if it would go anywhere but its the least we could do.

[Miguel85NYC]

We need a 8 man version of this raid

[caffe_macchiato]

The issue regarding "fun" in these raids isn't the difficulty, but how that difficulty is done. This alliance raid, and the ones immediately before it, are all about throwing markers on the ground and having you run around in circles. It's "stand still and let resolve". Whereas, in the Crystal Tower raids, you had unique mechanics. You had to carry the orbs to the towers and or click on them. You had to chain the dog or get eaten by it. You had to kill the skeletons before the dragon. You had to SEPARATE ADDS! Even something so simple has somehow been abandoned. It's like WoW where everyone uses plugins so Blizzard just piles on swirlies to make it have some kind of challenge. Eventually, this AR will be cheesed by just standing in the spot. But because all we get is scraps these days, there's just enough improvement to make some people happy, which means we won't get anything more in the coming years. Min iLevel Labyrinth is still the pinnacle of Alliance Raids and will likely never be surpassed.

[Vyrerus]

I enjoyed the new raid. It does have part of my castle in it, at any rate :P

Will say too that I didn't find it particularly challenging. Some surprises sure, and I do have trouble remembering where safe spot is on third cleave during Shadowlord, but that's very much a me thing.

Kind of interested to see what happens when the interrupts don't happen. I did get to see Ark Angel Hume blow up the alliance, as I was on MCH and had been the only one silencing anything, and I was dead at the time waiting on a raise. The tanks were all off in lala-land I guess. Kinda funny.

Audio tell on gay Prishe was kinda cool. At first I thought I was supposed to be looking for a slight color variance during the wind up, but nah, it's audio telegraphs! Neat!

Also did not have deadpan dry humor jokes Bakool on my bingo card, but that's just my kind of humor.

A bit disappointed that they had us only walk through one half of a Tu'Lia island and put Despot in a way wrong place. We did get an accurate location for Laloff Amphitheatre, but it would have been cooler if they'd given us the main walk through the doll corridor where Despot actually spawns. It wouldn't have added that much time, either! I wish they were less afraid to make 24 man raids bigger, with variable trash in-between bosses with maybe, idk, the addition of alliance raid i720 accessories to be gained from trash. Make these big dungeons for big groups actually feel big!

Aquarius is a step in the right direction, but ultimately disappointing since he didn't take drastically reduced physical damage.

Also really wish the Shadowlord had been given a deeper voiced VA, similar to TG Cid's, but the VA he does have does actually sell infuriated nobility and reads the lines very naturally. I can really get into it!

Now as far as the story surrounding all of this goes... I suppose so far it hasn't offended, yet. Being a simulacrum of a real place made by electrope and Mamool sorcery means us XI vets can rest easy knowing that none of it has any real impact on XI's world or worldbuilding. THANK GOD! I don't have to burn down SE HQ.

Seeing all of the easter eggs and knowing all of them in my core has been delightful. Not so delightful on social media where people younger than XI itself attempt to clout chase the nostalgia and get things they're listing in threads wrong. But I suppose that's a time honored tradition anyway, as a lot of XI vets like to pretend they were playing the game since the time it was JP client only(2002).

[Fawkes]

A bit disappointed that they had us only walk through one half of a Tu'Lia island and put Despot in a way wrong place. We did get an accurate location for Laloff Amphitheatre, but it would have been cooler if they'd given us the main walk through the doll corridor where Despot actually spawns. It wouldn't have added that much time, either! I wish they were less afraid to make 24 man raids bigger, with variable trash in-between bosses with maybe, idk, the addition of alliance raid i720 accessories to be gained from trash. Make these big dungeons for big groups actually feel big!

When we step on the red teleporter pad there's not an inert red pad where we end up. Literally unplayable.

I also wish the trash pulls were bigger, it feels like we speed through most of the areas. I expected more, especially with the Dynamis mobs there should be like 10 times as many, at least from how I remember the pulls going.

Now as far as the story surrounding all of this goes... I suppose so far it hasn't offended, yet. Being a simulacrum of a real place made by electrope and Mamool sorcery means us XI vets can rest easy knowing that none of it has any real impact on XI's world or worldbuilding. THANK GOD! I don't have to burn down SE HQ.

I kinda got the sense that Elvaan Guy not remembering stuff but Prishe having her memory was foreshadowing that she's going to end up being the real Prishe. Which I would prefer over having her dissolve into cubes at the end.