New Alliance Raid: Well done Devs

[lucatracy]

Thankfully, it's completely optional and I will NEVER have to touch it in order to access higher level gear. This was a slog for me and not enjoyable whatsoever. Happy I will never have to touch it again.

Here's to hoping everyone else that can't tolerate slightly-harder-than-usual content adopts this mindset so the rest of us can have fun

[lolnotacat]

Maybe it's because I don't have FFXI nostalgia, having only hit level 20-something before giving up, but I thought the AR was a boring slog. It also may have been because we had like 5 or 6 PCT and tore through the fights like a lightsaber through butter.

[TheGrimace]

I think the raid is brilliant and sets a good and wild precedent for the remaining 24-mans of this expansion.

Yes, there is a big learning curve, but I do not think the curve is unreasonable. The raid will also get much easier over time thanks to gear creep and thanks to veterans learning all of the tells.

Until then, it's nice to have a raid that has teeth. Even once gear creep rears in 7.2, it will require more focus to survive.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[DynnDiablos]

Here's to hoping everyone else that can't tolerate slightly-harder-than-usual content adopts this mindset so the rest of us can have fun

I've played this game 11 years. It's us casuals you can thank for this games success because without us it wouldn't exist today. If Yoshi P wants to keep catering to the 5% of this game's population, let's see how long you all have this content to enjoy when us vets leave.