Chaotic is a masterpiece of content but points out other issues with the game.

[Post]

I appreciate that the Chaotic Raid is fun to do and repeatable for the purposes of gear and loot over the week, especially as it's not offering higher item level gear (though some pieces are technically better than savage/tome gear due to itemization). It offers 'catch up' rewards, and incentivizes players who might otherwise not be playing during an odd numbered patch to join PF.

I seriously found the Arcadion Savage fights to be downgrades from their normal versions in terms of how fun they were to do, and it's tedious to have another weekly thing on the list for months and months if you're just interested in gear.

It might be frustrating for players unaccustomed to their mistakes affecting the whole group (normal and alliance raids basically stopped being designed this way after Heavensward, shifting focus to "if YOU don't dodge, YOU die" from Stormblood onwards), but my experience has been that it's pretty easy for even fresh, completely unfamiliar with the fight players to form a group for Chaotic and jump in, and that there's plenty of communication within the party once it begins. So, it's easy to enter and discuss issues. It's on players from that point if they want to try and overcome their personal challenges.

It may not remain this way and might join the ranks of BA and DR(S), requiring significant organization to run at all after its release patch, but the fact that there's no special unlocking requirements for it and the fact that you can do it down at 12 players might mean it's easier to return to in the future. I think it rewarding relevant gear rather than purely weaker gear helps this a lot, and I think it's a good idea for FFXIV to do this because lord almighty the savage fights are not nearly interesting enough to grind for 12+ weeks trying to get gear for every job if that's your thing. Usually you get one or two fun floors while the rest are a light party/pairs/clock spot repeat endeavor for 8+ minutes with maybe 1 pain point, so infrequent that players are totally inept at offering advice and helping each other and much quicker to just jump ship given how convenient PF, macros and raid plans are.

Objectively, their reward structure for a patch's max ilvl gear was developed in patch 2.2, back when their release schedule was 3 months, and their "midcore" extreme fights back then were harder and offered additional items beyond just a catch up weapon. Gear checks existed as mitigation was more limited and you could not craft more-than-sufficient gear to clear a raid tier from the moment the patch dropped. The release schedule is now 4.5 months +/- the time they readjusted to get back onto a summer release because of Covid delays, they're making time-consuming content like relics less involved and staggering their release. There is less to do. The content they put out must survive longer. I believe one way to achieve that may be better for more fights to be designed to take a little longer to clear. As Chaotic offers max ilvl gear for the patch, it also offers ways to enable players to try different jobs in the same fight, and by having an even more giant arena than some in EW, it manages to make even EW/DT 2min jobs feel a little more different to play when considering when and where one aught to buff their Alliance or debuff the boss.

I'd say Chaotic sticks out far worse to players because its design is challenging the culture of a lot of the streamlined elements of especially the easier to middling difficulty encounters. If the designers don't relent too much and stay mostly on their course, I'm confident most players interested in more challenging and varying content design will appreciate it, our culture will adapt and it won't be that bad in hindsight.