Don't do chaotic raid again

[caffe_macchiato]

I do find the casuals vs. hardcore player debate interesting because the hardcore player base hates that us "filthy casuals" are even in the game, when XIV's success was built on the casual player base. If we all quit and leave because they start to only cater to the 1% of the player base that likes this content - good luck. The chaos raid is just not accessible. It's already difficult to get groups together, PF is already gatekeeping hard on who can join and if you go into Raid Finder you could wait 8+ hours and never get included in a party. Then locking the cosmetics behind it, at the end of the day, this raid (which let's get real, is a 24 man TRIAL) will be dead within a week or so.

The hardcore players don’t care. When the game starts dying they’ll just say “it’s an old game anyway” or “at least it has more players than ARR”. They are self-destructive, and once they burn out, will just move on to the next MMO to poison.

[Rueby]

This was my first blind/day 1 progging stuff, the experience initially was really fun until we hit P2....which led to frustrations. I thought it's just day 1 thing, I joined a PF that had discord required because you're more likely to prog in a somewhat organized environment. I'd always go for that though I personally prefer the non-commitment of PF, however you'll be held back alot. I don't mind prog on smaller scale but 24 man is hard to manage, people might leave and you reprog again. You need your alliance to execute stuff to prog but you also need other alliance not to blow up their towers.

I think these are growing pains of day 1. Mechanically after sitting on it, I don't think it's that hard, what makes it hard is the body checks imo...

I was really excited to prog this in PF....I even dreamt I was progging it today, I was struggling with some stuff yesterday but I made some /echo macros to help me abit.....I woke up only to see alot of P2 groups are locked to ilv725...I only have ilv723 right now which put a damper on my spirits. I can execute things fairly well up until the swap/spreads, I never saw beyond that because at that point usually people are dead and you can get double hit from spreads which kills you.

I enjoyed the times when our alliance is executing things perfectly but then PF disbands cause 1 guy leaves...

I can see RDM/BRD being frequent picks in this raid, especially RDM.

For now I'm just disappointed that people are ilvl locking it and seeing people advocate for like clearing savage for this when this isn't even beyond savage. The only content locked behind savage and rightfully so is Ultimate. I see people locking high ilvls for Sphene because of laws of ice, I understand why people want/do that, but it feels like if you're requiring 'only raiders who cleared current content' can join us it's abit telling that perhaps the mechanics are abit too unforgiving. (or just PF in general is bad)

[AllenThyl]

However, for people who primarily play normal content, this will be far more than a challenge.

Yes, of course, for people who have spent thousands of hours in a game learning absolutely nothing along the way and making no conscious effort to improve, everything above "dodge this 3 second telegraphed AoE" will feel like an insurmountable challenge. If the only measure of "success" one had during all that time was "clearing one way or another, even if dead on the floor for 80% of the fight", that's the player's own fault. Even normal content has lots of different mechanics that can be learned if anyone actually wants to learn. However, experience tell, that just dividing up into the alliance groups and having 4 people stand on the Atomos platform is too much to ask of players with triple digit clears of this dungeon.

A significant portion of the playerbase has used the fact that the normal content is tuned to be forgiving, as an excuse to not learn any mechanics ever. Alexander raids regularly wipe groups because expecting to learn which platform to pull the adds to, or when to turn into a gorilla, or how to freeze a tornado, is toxic elitism. Aetherochemical Research Facitilty features a 2 person enumeration tower. But why learn that, when you could just let the person explode? With current gear scaling most will survive with a sliver of health, or can be rezzed otherwise. Even dead healers are no problems, tanks at that level can solo. And since "completion" is the only quality measure, there is no difference. Same for the Eden raids, just let the enumerations explode, sacrifice some dps instead of soaking their tether. Just heal and rezz through it, never learn.

Dun Scaith? Who even knows how to do the mechanics there?! I mean, why bother, someone will do them and rezz. Burst the boss' shield down so that it stops critting the tank? Actually healing the tank? Why, someone else will do it (hopefully).

That's why Bozja is no different, more on that below.

No, you're a masochist. The Baldesion Arsenal, Castrum Lacus Litore, Delubrum Reginae, and The Dalriada are medium-challenging content and actually scale down if you go with the half the max that they allow you to do. Delubrum Reginae (Savage) is a bit below Savage in terms of difficulty with escalating mechanics, but you can be carried if you aren't completely incompetent and the Zadnor lost actions make it bearable.

This is savage-tier difficulty, it has body checks and personal responsibility mechanics that hurt other players with damage downs and doom if you mess them up, something that's worse in 24-man content than 4 or 8-man.

It's not savage level, it's EX, for the very reasons I outlined earlier. Even the body checks aren't hard body checks, 1 or 2 failed towers can be survived. What they aren't though, is trivial content where a few higher skilled players can carry the majority of slackers like in normal content. And that normal content includes CLL, DR and Dalriada as well (I haven't done BA, so I cannot judge it's difficulty).

Bozja is not "midcore". A group of 4 semi competent people can clear every CE while 20 others lie dead on the floor. There is nothing "midcore" about it. The reason Red Choctober wipes so many groups so often, is because at some point, you don't even have 4 semi competent people in the whole instance anymore, or even 1. All the "midcores" repeatedly die to Red Choctober the same way all the "casuals" repeatedly die to it, by not ever having bothered to actually learn the fight. And that fight has exactly 3 mechanics. 3! Repeating! Mechanics! The same is true for the raids inside them. The bosses required "coordination" which amounts to "please split into two groups, a bit more dps and people bottom please". That's a laughable level. And even then, the main difficulty becomes "stop dpsing please". And even then, you have 3 minutes after one boss is dead to pick up the slack. 3 minutes! That's 2 whole burst windows!

You say that people can be carried in DRS. But the same is true for the Chaotic Alliance Raid. It's just that only a few people can be carried, you cannot have a majority be the one wanting to be carried all the time! As far as I am aware, that is also true for DRS.

"personal responsibility mechanics" - Yeah, good, welcome to adulthood. Stop being a slacker expecting a carriage. In Bozja, one can soak a single lane, or 3-5 (depending on class / loadout). The more each individual applies themselves to soak the damage, the less the armor is damaged, allowing for more leeway. Same is true for baiting the AoEs before going into the big line stacks, instead of mindlessly going into the AoE area potentially killing others. Or just properly equipping lost actions and using proper essences. It's personal responsibility all the way down. Always has been.

[Yodada]

It's not savage level, it's EX, for the very reasons I outlined earlier. Even the body checks aren't hard body checks, 1 or 2 failed towers can be survived. What they aren't though, is trivial content where a few higher skilled players can carry the majority of slackers like in normal content. And that normal content includes CLL, DR and Dalriada as well (I haven't done BA, so I cannot judge it's difficulty).

Go in with the intended Ilvl of 710. Then the Towers will be a problem You are comparing a 710 Ilvl Raid you are already outgearing and which you are nearly be Ilvl synched too. So of course its "just" EX cause you have wiggle room for failures. The Standard PF wont have these luxury.

[AllenThyl]

Go in with the intended Ilvl of 710. Then the Towers will be a problem You are comparing a 710 Ilvl Raid you are already outgearing and which you are nearly be Ilvl synched too. So of course its "just" EX cause you have wiggle room for failures. The Standard PF wont have these luxury.

Ahaha, yeah, you got me there! I also went in without food, had broken gear, used only AoE abilities and we didn't mitigate at all. Turns out, that made it all very hard. Who knew?!

My man, this content isn't released in a vacuum. The fact that better gear allows for more leeway is intentional by the developers. It's to reduce the necessity for proper execution and planning of mitigations. Further, it's been more than enough time for people to get the 720 sets with tomes, upgrade at least some pieces with the AR token tp 730, and to upgrade the 710 crafted set to 720. "Luxury", when the game throws gear at you left and right. But true to this topic, even the most basic of effort is too much to ask.

[Havenchild]

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

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.

Social anxiety can get tremendously worse with a single negative encounter. It is not safe for mentally damaged individuals to engage with strangers on the internet who may explode on them over a silly mistake. These things do happen and people with anxiety know that, this is why they protect themselves from such situations. .

So which is it? I'll let ya'll decide among yourselves. Can't you simply "switch off" Discord, and if so, how is it a issue if comms are needed that you don't need to participate in? How about growing a pair and just being like "f this" if you have a bad encounter?

Not only that, but voice comms aren't usually needed again, it's more to schedule timing for it. So again, IF you have such socially crippling anxiety that you can't even spend time to find a scheduled group for things like BA, DR or BLU Raids, then why does it matter if the content is not active? You clearly don't care for the content and you also don't deserve any items it rewards. You play an MMO that is going to force you into party situations. If your crippling anxiety doesn't allow that, then what is the point about complaining about content since you aren't intent on doing it?

The contradiction is glaring.

The people on these forums are hilarious. The moment you tell anyone they have to work alil harder, they tell you how they are part of LGBT, have a mental issue or some sort of physical impairment. It's ridiculous already.

[caffe_macchiato]

Yes, of course, for people who have spent thousands of hours in a game learning absolutely nothing along the way and making no conscious effort to improve, everything above "dodge this 3 second telegraphed AoE" will feel like an insurmountable challenge.

However, experience tell, that just dividing up into the alliance groups and having 4 people stand on the Atomos platform is too much to ask of players with triple digit clears of this dungeon.

A significant portion of the playerbase has used the fact that the normal content is tuned to be forgiving, as an excuse to not learn any mechanics ever.

Etc.

Why are you here? Why do you play the game? Because you have such a seething contempt for the average player. If this game is making you that unhappy, maybe you need to reconsider why you play.

[Mawlzy]

Can I introduce you to the tragedy of Wildstar MMO that had the best housing system ever created but drove everyone away with how hard to access the endgame content was? Not saying that FFXIV is at that point yet, but not catering to your casual crowd is how you KILL MMO's. But I reckon they rely on new players to be hard stuck in the 1000000 hour MSQ story rather than creating more casual and approachable or innovative content. As crap and a bloated system as WoW is today, its initial success was made because it was approachable for the casuals and at least TRYING to innovate along the years.

It's why I rarely watch any FFXIV creators, all they go on about is parsing and how some potency changes affect their clear times in this immensely boring system of a dodge dance fight system where you spam a singular rotation. As a tank I'd love to kite a boss to locations, Line of sight a boss, have something mechanical as a tank to do in raids and dungeons aside from dodging mechanics and spamming damage, waiting for the boss to reset to a middle location. Think about itemization more than spamming the same materia in slots, the gearing seems immensely boring without any excitement of discovery or rng drops to it too.


Look I'm not a endgame player, but I don't NEED to play it to see that the system is BORING and UNINNOVATIVE. ANything can be made fun if you do it in a crowd of people you like, sure, theres' that. But I think they need to start shifting the systems to be more interesting. Or at least make the casual content more prominent.

So much this. When combat design is limited to such a small subset of potential design parameters, the primary way to differentiate content is through speed, mechanics overlap, and boss health/damage. (And I guess aesthetics, which are frequently overemphasized at the cost of gameplay.) And because 14 has to look flashy, this approach also introduces accessibility issues due to the visual mess 24-person content in particular creates.

It's like the devs locked themselves in a cage and threw away the key.

[Mawlzy]

So which is it? I'll let ya'll decide among yourselves. Can't you simply "switch off" Discord, and if so, how is it a issue if comms are needed that you don't need to participate in? How about growing a pair and just being like "f this" if you have a bad encounter?

How about showing a little compassion rather than living in the 1950s?

[Voidmage]

If PF gatekeeping is already happening then the content is a bust. I thought this was going to be something akin to a BA/DRS where people were rewarded for helping each other clear and you could queue whenever you wanted. Harder content but doable. Instead it's a 24 man trial that forces you to use PF (I tried DF and was waiting for longer then was feasible, though some of that is probably due to this being released using the holiday week), and while the game wants you help newbies out, I expect the "only join if you've cleared" PFs and something that rhymes with farce runs. And then I already see a lot of the people who normally raid in Savage not even bothering to get on, because not only is it again the holidays but there's literally nothing else in this patch they are interested in. And don't even get me started on having to use Discord to find parties, you shouldn't even have to do that.
Somewhat nice to me that I see the Japanese side agrees with some comments over here.

Thats already happening. Those PF already exist.
People do the same as always in PF.
You have now about five different raid plans for the fight, words in PF no one who hasn't doen Savage knows what it means, people just not helping and so on.

I am now at Phase 3 to enrage and man.
The fight is a really fun savage fight but absolutely not what it should have been or probably what was intended.
Body checks, strange pair and split mechanics with visual cluster tells and worst of all shuffling of the raid teams at one point so you land in a different position.
Enrage also seems pretty rough for what the ilvl is and how many mistakes actually can happen.
Those who cleared early were mostly bis but now you have all kinds of ilvls and in PF the ilvl locks are starting to appear.
This fight is straight up harder than the Eden cloud of darkness fight and honestly I am also miffed about yet another high end raid even as someone with savage experience.

Overtuned for what it should be but I guess the streamers will celebrate it because they are mostly high end raiders and Mr. Ozma can give himself a pet on the back for yet another 08/15 savage fight designed (just another boss trial) because apparently he isn't able to do anything else anymore.