Don't do chaotic raid again

[CNitsah]

Isn't it ironic? We asked for more challenging 24-man content for years, and now that SE has delivered, people are complaining that it’s not accessible enough for casual players. This feels like moving the goalposts—if we want challenging content, it can’t always cater to everyone. Isn’t the whole point of asking for difficulty to push ourselves beyond the usual? And yet, we wonder why the game is constantly dumbed down.

No problem with adding that by itself. The problem is that, in the vacuum that is the content for the past 3 years, players are starved for content and they jump on anything, even if it's not for them. In an ideal world, more casual players would have other things to do than running the Savage lvl content. But they don't. SE created the context for this to blow up.

How many people have never set foot in eureka (thus BA) are fllooding here for the haircut or because it's the only thing to do with some kind of novelty in it.

[Bonoki]

No problem with adding that by itself. The problem is that, in the vacuum that is the content for the past 3 years, players are starved for content and they jump on anything, even if it's not for them. In an ideal world, more casual players would have other things to do than running the Savage lvl content. But they don't. SE created the context for this to blow up.

I agree with your point, but I don’t think giving casual players other content to focus on would have changed much here. They’d still jump into this content because of its individual rewards. Let’s be real—slap a desirable hairstyle on something, especially one you can sell for gil, and people will flock to it regardless of the difficulty or intended audience. That’s just how it works.

[CNitsah]

I agree with your point, but I don’t think giving casual players other content to focus on would have changed much here. They’d still jump into this content because of its individual rewards. Let’s be real—slap a desirable hairstyle on something, especially one you can sell for gil, and people will flock to it regardless of the difficulty or intended audience. That’s just how it works.

Totally agree with that, my previous comment was about how SE seem to be obsessed with completion rates, and puting a haircut in a savage lvl raid is only there to try to funnel more players in the content to boost their completion rate, despite the fact you don't make a casual player into a raider magically.

SE refuse the answer "people don't engage with harder content because they don't want to" and are trying their hardest to make people do harder content, which is doomed to fail.

[Bonoki]

Totally agree with that, my previous comment was about how SE seem to be obsessed with completion rates, and puting a haircut in a savage lvl raid is only there to try to funnel more players in the content to boost their completion rate, despite the fact you don't make a casual player into a raider magically.

My perspective isn’t that the hairstyle is bait for casuals—it feels more like bait for hardcore raiders. The way the bonuses are structured seems designed to encourage experienced players to help new players clear rather than gatekeeping them. Likely, SE wants to foster cooperation between different skill levels. And for those who are inexperienced or struggle with the challenge, the option to buy the hairstyle acts as a fallback, ensuring they’re not entirely excluded from some of the rewards. Having raiders assist new players is tied to the aspect of completion rates.

[Absurdity]

My perspective isn’t that the hairstyle is bait for casuals—it feels more like bait for hardcore raiders. The way the bonuses are structured seems designed to encourage experienced players to help new players clear rather than gatekeeping them. Likely, SE wants to foster cooperation between different skill levels. And for those who are inexperienced or struggle with the challenge, the option to buy the hairstyle acts as a fallback, ensuring they’re not entirely excluded from some of the rewards. Having raiders assist new players is tied to the aspect of completion rates.

Even the "first time" bonus will be scoffed at when said hardcore players can just farm during "bonus time" and never have to carry anyone they don't want to.

The problem is that "carrying" players isn't a thing when the fight has body check mechanics.
Sure you can teach people but executing the mechanic correctly is still entirely up to them.

So when you have someone who is struggling with a mechanic, and said mechanic needs everyone to be alive and do it correctly or you wipe, there is nothing you can do to actually help the party succeed.

This is also why I absolutely loathe their approach of removing all difficulty from job gameplay and putting it entirely into fight mechanic execution, because now you have a singular failure point.
But that discussion has been going on for like 5 years now.

[Daralii]

SE refuse the answer "people don't engage with harder content because they don't want to" and are trying their hardest to make people do harder content, which is doomed to fail.

Which you'd think they'd know given how many MMOs have tried this approach, with some of them hitting EoS because of it.