We are missing Content between Normal and Extreme. Wrong Audience for Chaotic

[Voidmage]

I was able to tank through half of the fight completely solo after everyone died. That was possible because Endsinger was extremely forgiving and recoverable and you could get through it with lots of rez. The hardest mechanic, in my opinion, was trivialized by simply following someone that understood where to go, such as the healer and if you got hit, it was just some little vulns on the wrist. There were also ways to mitigate tower mistakes such as tank mit.
I didn't look at a guide for Endsinger. But it can be hard to understand what is going on in some fights without recording the footage and playing it back slowly to see what happened while you're not busy doing a rotation.

Not when it was new if I remember correct.
Endsinger was forgiving in the results of a screw up but it was far too easy to get ones in the first place.
Those planets when you had to run across the whole arena for example.

But you may be right. Maybe I remember it harder than it was because I did it on BLM and boy was it not fun.

With the rest:
I agree that Esuna was probably changed because of this fight.
But I am less talking about the first phase and more about the second.
Yes someone can die by towers without wiping everyone but not in the second towers.
Dying there automatically means the death of one other player because of stack / spread afterwards which is already hard enough to do because you have to depent on someone not from your group in that moment.
That can snowball far too quickly if a tank dies and the add just straight up strats murdering everyone.

The worst thing there is the rezzing in that fight though.
Good luck if you are being rezzed in the middle while you should be outside because there is no way out and even tzhe other way is annoying even with the teleport mechanic because in the time you need to get back the next mechanics have already gone out.
The mistakes are probably part of the design but they honestly overdid them.
Many agree that the main problem is towers and stack / spread. Not from a emchanic but from the punishment.
Turn those down and the raid would be good.

I am honestly just miffed because this raid is not what was needed in the game right now.
Further down the line or at release sure but right now... I fear it will have the opposide effect it wanted to have.
Instead of getting players to stay in the game it might drive some away because they think square has completely abandoned them and the growing toxity in PF is not helping.
I have never blacklisted so many players because of one content tbh.

Could you elaborate on what in your view makes those raids midcore and the normal 8-man/alliance raids not midcore? I'm trying to understand your viewpoint but I'm not seeing that much of a distinction between the two based on your description of what you liked about them.

Sure.
Normal a raids have no punishment. You can afk plenty of them with only one party allive and still clear.
Bozja raids have enrage and CLL (and Dalriada in the beginning I think?) have exclusive fights that are more challenging than the others and usually took the best players to tackle them. If those players failed it was a wipe.
Normal A raids don't have that.
The first boss in CLL also had the party split up and time their kills with each other or it would also result in a wipe but it didn't punish the whole raid when a few people screwed up.
DR had the twice comes ruin mechanic where a mistake didn't kill you but several did and made it clear for the rest who knew what to do and who didn't.
It also resulted in mistakes not just being brushed away with a vuln or damage down stack that could be carried away by a healer ro other dps but punished you individually.

You can do that with extremes, people often form blind prog parties for fun. They're usually tuned so you can make several mistakes and still win.

Like I said. The whole debate is not made easier by the pure scale of Ex difficulty across the board.
Sure you can do all blind but some are almost autopilot easy and some are on the far harder side to graps mechanics, execute them and meet the dps check.

the community complained constantly about both exploratory zones at the time. It was only when they were missing from Endwalker did everyone suddenly loved their tune and claim to have them the whole time and demand their return.

That's not true.
The community mostly complained about Bozja being boring visually and yet another fate system.
The raids themself where mostly liked but the how to get into them pissed people off and not the raids themself.
The rewards where also lackluster in the beginning where it was almost useless to do CLL more than once.

[CidHeiral]

Sure.
Normal a raids have no punishment. You can afk plenty of them with only one party allive and still clear.
Bozja raids have enrage and CLL (and Dalriada in the beginning I think?) have exclusive fights that are more challenging than the others and usually took the best players to tackle them. If those players failed it was a wipe.
Normal A raids don't have that.
The first boss in CLL also had the party split up and time their kills with each other or it would also result in a wipe but it didn't punish the whole raid when a few people screwed up.

I see, thank you for elaborating. I assume the exclusive fights you're referring to are Lyon in CLL and the fire guy from Dalriada. Both are pretty simple, they just throw AOEs around the arena. It's more or less the same thing as Fafnir's wind phase in Jeuno, so I'm still a bit lost on why one would be midcore and the other not. Is it just the presence of an enrage timer? If so would you consider Jeuno midcore if it were exactly the same but every fight had an enrage?

Also, for the record the timing kills thing on the first CLL boss wasn't actually true, people just thought that was the case in the beginning and kept repeating it even after it was disproven. Killing one boss before the other just spawns infinite adds that are easy to kill. All you have to worry about is the overall enrage timer.

That's not true.
The community mostly complained about Bozja being boring visually and yet another fate system.
The raids themself where mostly liked but the how to get into them pissed people off and not the raids themself.
The rewards where also lackluster in the beginning where it was almost useless to do CLL more than once.

You say that's not true then list a number of things people complained about. I was here, I witnessed the numerous complaint threads. It's in the past so it doesn't matter now but it absolutely was the case.

[Havenchild]

That's not true.
The community mostly complained about Bozja being boring visually and yet another fate system.

The community overall absolutely complained about Diadem, but especially Eureka and Bozja, as being grindy, glorified fate trains. It was vastly unpopular content overall. Bozja ONLY escaped slightly from the negative sentiment because for a time period in SHB, it was the primary way of getting EXP, post them nerfing PVP EXP and before buffing dungeon EXP. But initially all were received poorly for both the fate system and in tangent, the requirements of the relic weapon being spam x dungeon/raid. This is likely why they forego'd an expedition in EW and also why Yoshi-P openly mentioned he was "surprised" that people actually wanted exploratory zones again.

People cry about anything on the internet, not really a new or groundbreaking point there. "You can mess up at least 2 towers at any given time, IF..." okay, not every raid will have shields ready to go for missed towers. Yes. The complainers DO want another alliance raid in general. Since, yknow, that's what was marketed. A harder 24 person alliance raid. Not a 24 person Savage trial thats Savage difficulty. The community is 100% a problem, but if you're going to forgive the developers blatantly messing this raid up in specific (which is ALSO a problem), then you as well are part of that problem.

Actually, news suggest....

Interview with Yoshi-P, Claims Savage difficulty:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...hida-interview

Official PLL Digest - Claims Savage difficulty
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/512088

Unofficial Translation of PLL - Claims initial goal was Extreme, but it's tuned closer to Savage 1/2 when factoring in 24 people. Note: this is the only place that mentions Extreme. Not that I'm saying it wasn't said but even then there's acknowledgement that it was tuned higher.

https://x.com/Nova_Crystallis/status...83007271219440

So all confirming knowledge we have of Yoshi-P and devs comments on the content was that it was in fact having an expected difficulty of Savage 1 or 2, not extreme. Community is gaslighting itself.

[Supersnow845]

The community overall absolutely complained about Diadem, but especially Eureka and Bozja, as being grindy, glorified fate trains. It was vastly unpopular content overall. Bozja ONLY escaped slightly from the negative sentiment because for a time period in SHB, it was the primary way of getting EXP, post them nerfing PVP EXP and before buffing dungeon EXP. But initially all were received poorly for both the fate system and in tangent, the requirements of the relic weapon being spam x dungeon/raid. This is likely why they forego'd an expedition in EW and also why Yoshi-P openly mentioned he was "surprised" that people actually wanted exploratory zones again.



Actually, news suggest....

Interview with Yoshi-P, Claims Savage difficulty:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...hida-interview

Official PLL Digest - Claims Savage difficulty
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/512088

Unofficial Translation of PLL - Claims initial goal was Extreme, but it's tuned closer to Savage 1/2 when factoring in 24 people. Note: this is the only place that mentions Extreme. Not that I'm saying it wasn't said but even then there's acknowledgement that it was tuned higher.

https://x.com/Nova_Crystallis/status...83007271219440

So all confirming knowledge we have of Yoshi-P and devs comments on the content was that it was in fact having an expected difficulty of Savage 1 or 2, not extreme. Community is gaslighting itself.

Bozja also still holds the record for “content not on the roulette with the most engagement” and it holds it by a whopping margin over everything else considering its engagement rivalled eden normal doing ShB,

They had complaints yes but if you are releasing optional content and it’s rivalling your core pillar content like the normal raid series despite taking 200 times as long to finish and your only response to that is to look at some forum threads and go “hmm people hated it” then you (general you not you specifically) don’t know how to read engagement statistics

Bozja can be described as nothing but a massive overwhelming success

[AllenThyl]

Official PLL Digest - Claims Savage difficulty
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/512088

Hilarious. After 1 week of "this fight is harder than was promised", turns out, it wasn't. No wonder there is so little interaction with the community, when even statements like "this fight will be savage level difficulty" doesn't translate to "this fight will be savage level difficulty" in people's heads.
Words matter, people. As does reading comprehension.

[Voidmage]

The community overall absolutely complained about Diadem, but especially Eureka and Bozja, as being grindy, glorified fate trains. It was vastly unpopular content overall. Bozja ONLY escaped slightly from the negative sentiment because for a time period in SHB, it was the primary way of getting EXP, post them nerfing PVP EXP and before buffing dungeon EXP. But initially all were received poorly for both the fate system and in tangent, the requirements of the relic weapon being spam x dungeon/raid. This is likely why they forego'd an expedition in EW and also why Yoshi-P openly mentioned he was "surprised" that people actually wanted exploratory zones again.

First:
I am not talking about Diadem.
Second:
You completely repeat what i said about the fates.
Third:
Bozja was absolutely not received poorly just criticized for some things which I already listed.
Fourth:
The RAIDS themself were overall liked with a few complaints here and there but mostly had the weakness of the entry being horrible and the rewards being crap.
Fifth:
It and Eureka have an extremely long engagement life so it is a succsess. So it can't be unpopular if so many people did it.
Sixth:
The forum is not the community overall.

Also to say that that was the reason we didn't get one in EW is quite a reach.
We probably didn't get one because they devs themself didn't want to make one and were doing criterion + IS and because the EW content was halfassed anyway.

Unofficial Translation of PLL - Claims initial goal was Extreme, but it's tuned closer to Savage 1/2 when factoring in 24 people. Note: this is the only place that mentions Extreme. Not that I'm saying it wasn't said but even then there's acknowledgement that it was tuned higher.[/url]

So all confirming knowledge we have of Yoshi-P and devs comments on the content was that it was in fact having an expected difficulty of Savage 1 or 2, not extreme. Community is gaslighting itself.

Or (and that is just a maybe like you already implied and not me trying to say it as fact) what Yoshida SAID on the live letter and what is WRITTEN here are two different things.
The unofficial translation translated everything even things he said while this here lists things that are prepared.
And the unofficial translation is what we have for the most part of the time.
People always say more than they intend even he.

[Lilapop]

The community overall absolutely complained about Diadem, but especially Eureka and Bozja, as being grindy, glorified fate trains. It was vastly unpopular content overall. Bozja ONLY escaped slightly from the negative sentiment because for a time period in SHB, it was the primary way of getting EXP, post them nerfing PVP EXP and before buffing dungeon EXP. But initially all were received poorly for both the fate system and in tangent, the requirements of the relic weapon being spam x dungeon/raid. This is likely why they forego'd an expedition in EW and also why Yoshi-P openly mentioned he was "surprised" that people actually wanted exploratory zones again.



Actually, news suggest....

Interview with Yoshi-P, Claims Savage difficulty:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...hida-interview

Official PLL Digest - Claims Savage difficulty
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/512088

Unofficial Translation of PLL - Claims initial goal was Extreme, but it's tuned closer to Savage 1/2 when factoring in 24 people. Note: this is the only place that mentions Extreme. Not that I'm saying it wasn't said but even then there's acknowledgement that it was tuned higher.

https://x.com/Nova_Crystallis/status...83007271219440

So all confirming knowledge we have of Yoshi-P and devs comments on the content was that it was in fact having an expected difficulty of Savage 1 or 2, not extreme. Community is gaslighting itself.

Extreme vs Savage difficulty aside, people asked for a harder alliance raid, not a 24 person Savage trial. Unless I missed the large amount of people demanding a 24 person Savage trial, which none of your links even begin to address. Which was my whole point.