Don't do chaotic raid again

[AzumiH]

Not only are 24-player body checks awful this early on, but the only guide going around in NA absolutely blows. Misses half the mechanics actually in the fight (namely tells for things like stack/spread, donut/cross, etc) and doesn't actually explain anything.
Both of these will fix with time (hopefully), but it is killing the most crucial time for a new raid.

[ForteNightshade]

Savage being midcore content is the greatest lie being told on these forums, and people truly believe that. Its incredible.
Just because you can clear a tier after months does not make it "midcore". Most people can clear any game if they keep banging their head against it and practice playing. That is the player improving/learning, not the game being easy/midcore/casual.

As for whether Unreal and Extreme are midcore - that is definitely debatable. To me, they are not, because they require a certain amount of organization and are not simply "drop in" content.
All these examples though, Unreal, Extreme, and Savage, have a trouble with replayability and longevity.

What this game is lacking, imho, is repeatable, unorganized group battle content. Where you jump in, you do your thing without needing any pre asigned spots, and then its GG and leave. In that vein, I have yet to do more than one lockout of Chaotic, but it seems like at least in P1 you don't exactly need to organize yourself with other party members. A lot of personal responsibility there however, and its very punishing if you make a mistake. We'll see how that develops in the future.

With the exception of the 4th fight, you can certain argue Savage is midcore content, albeit on the higher end of that proverbial spectrum. It requires organization and far more consistency than something like Bozja but with rare exceptions is still very approachable even for pretty inexperienced players. I mean, my group cleared P1S back in EW with 7 deaths (one of them brick) and 27 damage downs. Yes, some of those resulted in deaths so they don't, technically, count, but it just goes to show how forgiving the earlier fights are. This was week 1, by the way.

While I get the idea of midcore being "drop in" kind of content, when you stand back a little, Eureka/Bozja are relatively easy. You can die but said death is often insignificant. Heck, I've seen four people finish off the Red Chocobo after everyone else died. That usually isn't what people would consider midcore, where your death can happen yet doesn't have much of an impact. I think the bigger problem here is the casual side of the game has become too casual, which clouds perspective. A lot people wouldn't consider casual content to be "Fisher Price levels" either, but that's where dungeons and the like have landed.

For example sake, let's look at Baldur's Gate and its difficulty options. Everyone considers Balanced to be the "casual" playthrough. It's relatively easy but still forgiving whereas Tactician ups the stakes a little. Very few considered it challenging, hence what let to Honor Mode. Which can also be made easy... if you already know everything about the game or look up strategies before. Going in relatively blind, you will almost certainly die to at least a couple Legendary Actions. Some require very specific tactics/builds to trivialize, or good adaptive habits.

Applying this analogy to XIV, you have a pretty reasonable "Casual" (Balance), "Midcore (Tactician) and "Hardcore (Honor Mode) philosophy. Except there's one more option I haven't mentioned yet: Beginner. This widely buffs the players and makes the game incredibly simplistic. You'd have to go out of your way to lose any fight. The BG3 devs have even commented they added that mode specifically for story focused players who want limited stress or dislike combat. Sound a little familiar?

The MSQ, dungeons and the like aren't casual content but essentially XIV's version of "Beginner." And it's this slide that has caused such a rift in the community. Now I do think Chaotic might be a touch too difficult if it's intended to be a long term fixture even if I do like it myself, but the problem, in my opinion, are the lack of any long form content, period. Making Chaotic easier wouldn't accomplish much because you'd farm the rewards quickly and have nothing to do again, much like what happened with Jeuno. Instead, if it released alongside say, the relic grind. Everyone has something to, hopefully, enjoy. That's what XIV has been terrible at. Not at all helped by only servicing one side of the playerbase.

The company's had multiple consecutive quarterly reports with a significant decrease in earnings. They either don't care that they're losing money or have their heads too far up their asses to try and fix it.

While Square Enix as a whole is failing, FFXIV has remained profitable pretty much since it's revival. Dawntrail was still boasting around one million active subs as of the last unofficial census. It has noticed dips, particularly from how few people came back during the free login campaign (worst in the game's history) but still nowhere near enough they'd be panicking. So as it pertains to XIV itself, Menriq is correct: money talks. And enough people are still content with the game. Speaking anecdotally, many friends of mine don't feel there's anything wrong with XIV at the moment. They just quietly play other games and are content to pop on XIV to run roulettes, RP or whatever. Meanwhile, a couple closer friends and I have repeated complained how bored we've been and how DT may be the last expansion for us.

Suffice it to say, opinions are very divisive but people are still playing.

[Voidmage]

Towers might literally be the one bottlenecking mechanic in the entire fight and I got to it in 30m of prog on pf and past it in the same instance. It's not that hard to get to or get passed assuming everyone's alive. Alternatively, once you get to a certain point where you are good with prog, jump to another party at the next phase. PF is moving fast through it with clear parties already present so clearly its not that bad.

Yeah no. 30 minutes to clear phase one blind with 24 new players AND get past towers is absolutely not normal here. Even streamers like Mr Happy didn’t manage that.
I’m not saying you are lying but that is absolutely not the average Pf experience. From my runs it’s joining a phase 2 party and get annoyed because people still die to petrification or the lasers or dropping the doom hand in the middle of the arena.
Then people leave and you wait again.

Anyway I gave my feedback on the raid.
In itself it is a good raid with fun mechanics but it needs fine tuning imo like doom being unnecessary, the Hand mechanic being a headache with bad ping or just the unneeded Bodychecks in a 24 man.
I will still do it for the hairstyle but I already fear the arrival of the typical “insert content creator guide, brain dead strat, etc”. And in contrast to normal raids 24 man will be much harder to get blind runs in the future so if you don’t rush it now good luck doing it outside discord.

My final verdict is:
The feedback here would probably be better if this wasn’t yet another high end raid content or if at least there had been something else like the field zone before it.
Right now the game feels like becoming a glorified boss rush that exclusively caters to the raiders since EW (because island sanctuary and variant dungeons very pretty clear afterthoughts).

While I get the idea of midcore being "drop in" kind of content, when you stand back a little, Eureka/Bozja are relatively easy. You can die but said death is often insignificant. Heck, I've seen four people finish off the Red Chocobo after everyone else died. That usually isn't what people would consider midcore, where your death can happen yet doesn't have much of an impact. I think the bigger problem here is the casual side of the game has become too casual, which clouds perspective. A lot people wouldn't consider casual content to be "Fisher Price levels" either, but that's where dungeons and the like have landed.

Tbf while I think you are more or less correct, the midcore in Bozja imo is more things like CLL or Dalriada.
Content where while you have to coordinate a bit is still doable by jumping in but still well above in difficulty than normal raids.
The final bosses there were even on Ex level I would say.

Also… P1S was already a joke on week 1. xD
Half the difficulty came from PF not deciding on what strat for the crystals to use.

[SerephinaBlossom]

I think the main issue is that is it kind of thrown off the casual player base in how difficult
we have the Normal>extreme>Savage>ultimate
with half the casual player base joining thinking its a Extreme based 24 man fight (which its not)
this bad boy should of been locked behind something Savage related, i hate gate keeping content from other players.
it's just a rough one as well , as a lot of savage raiders don't get anything out of it but a mount. (which we can just nab later on down the line either way.) we already have either BiS or 730
Raid is fun i love it, what i don't enjoy is the casual player base thinking its a extreme and sooking about it. It's tough, its alot of co-op moves and team work and if you can't cut that because you like playing solo
this isn't for you.

[Voidmage]

I think the main issue is that is it kind of thrown off the casual player base in how difficult
we have the Normal>extreme>Savage>ultimate
with half the casual player base joining thinking its a Extreme based 24 man fight (which its not)
this bad boy should of been locked behind something Savage related, i hate gate keeping content from other players.
it's just a rough one as well , as a lot of savage raiders don't get anything out of it but a mount. (which we can just nab later on down the line either way.) we already have either BiS or 730
Raid is fun i love it, what i don't enjoy is the casual player base thinking its a extreme and sooking about it. It's tough, its alot of co-op moves and team work and if you can't cut that because you like playing solo
this isn't for you.

Many people just want the hairstyle. That’s why you see people tackling it while it’s being outside their league or experience.
Gatekeeping that would be the wrong way because it is in our interest for MORE people giving things like this a try. If you lock it behind savage you just widen the rift and with the hairstyle also the animosity between the fractions.

The entire reward structure tells that they WANT to have more people clear it.

[Mawlzy]

Many people just want the hairstyle. That’s why you see people tackling it while it’s being outside their league or experience.
Gatekeeping that would be the wrong way because it is in our interest for MORE people giving things like this a try. If you lock it behind savage you just widen the rift and with the hairstyle also the animosity between the fractions.

The entire reward structure tells that they WANT to have more people clear it.

I think that's a key point, but where do these extra people come from? You can't conjure new raiders out of thin air. And the nature of organized progging in a 24-man likely just guarantees those new to raiding who do try it will conclude it's a complete PITA and never try it again.

[Dakimakura]

Don't know what you are on about, but I had a blast going in blind with half my FC and the rest randoms.

In one lock out we learned most of phase 1, how the hands of doom work and when the boss stores aero and death casts. Phase 2 tho, still not sure on that. Definitely looks "chaotic"

Doesn't look like it will be hard once guides for reliable clears are out tho.

Wonder what other chaotics they will do.

[Havenchild]

Not wanting to use Discord to run in-game content doesn't make someone anti-social. It means... they don't want to have Discord a required use to play the game?

Funny, because you don't need discord to do this content either, but it definitely speeds up the process of finding a group versus sitting in PF for awhile. If you want to go the long way, you dont NEED discord, it just significantly saves you time in recruitment.

I don't appreciate you attacking me for having an opinion different from yours. For your information, I suffer from social anxiety, and it's not something I can just simply turn off. I do join Discord tho and power through my anxiety but at some point, I get really tired of having to join 50 different discord just to be able to find a group to clear content in the game for glam. I stand by my point "What is the point of PF if we have to use discord to even for this type of content." Either way, maybe next time don't be so rude to someone you don't know.

Ahh yes, the classic retort, complains content is dead or hard to recruit -> someone suggests joining active discords that still prog this content -> materialize the social anxiety answer.

If Discord, which really is just a time saver here, is such an inconvenience for you, then frankly you don't deserve any of the rewards. Let your anxiety roadblock you for as long as you let it. I will never get the social anxiety excuse, while playing a massive multiplayer online game which tends to have goals oriented around party play... talk about living an oxymoron.

[Zumi]

I did 2 duty finders of this fight and it did not go well. Savage seemed easier than this. Not sure how you are even suppose to clear it, and one of the best hairstyles is locked behind it.

[Mawlzy]

Funny, because you don't need discord to do this content either, but it definitely speeds up the process of finding a group versus sitting in PF for awhile. If you want to go the long way, you dont NEED discord, it just significantly saves you time in recruitment.



Ahh yes, the classic retort, complains content is dead or hard to recruit -> someone suggests joining active discords that still prog this content -> materialize the social anxiety answer.

If Discord, which really is just a time saver here, is such an inconvenience for you, then frankly you don't deserve any of the rewards. Let your anxiety roadblock you for as long as you let it. I will never get the social anxiety excuse, while playing a massive multiplayer online game which tends to have goals oriented around party play... talk about living an oxymoron.

Have you ever bothered to ask, or do you prefer to just mock?

Many people who suffer from social anxiety are attracted to MMOs. The fact they are socially anxious does not mean they dislike others. Frequently it's quite the reverse. They crave connection with other human beings, which is difficult to obtain IRL when social situations produce not only fear but in some cases profound physiological effects.

An MMO is for many such people a safer environment for the simple reason that if things get weird, there's an off switch. Getting on Discord voice with complete strangers is a very different experience from doing a DF dungeon.

Really shocked at such a callous attitude, particularly at this time of year.