Chaotic Alliance Raid is a fun fight, but awful content

[Fuyuqi]

Chaotic Alliance Raid feels like a complete misunderstanding of why people wanted it to begin with and I feel like it fails to deliver on the idea of a "harder alliance raid" and is unsatisfying as a piece of content for multiple reasons. The main reasons being the actual fight design, and the reward design.

Fight design complaints:
- COD does not "feel like" an alliance raid. Single arena boss, requiring every alliance to split up for half the fight, and disappointing alliance-based mechanics (mainly just stacks)
- Designing a 24-man body check is kinda insane. Before I get told to "git gud", I already have 5 clears, some of which with not a single tower missed. It's not hard to do, even in PF, but it certainly feels like just a 24-man savage with even more chances to be punished for a mistake that isn't yours. Is that really what people were asking for when they asked for "harder alliance raids"?
- On top of this, designing a 24-man body check in a fight that can be accessed by ANYONE who has finished Dawntrail is insane. The last fight that had multiple strict body checks like this was P10S and you at least had to have cleared P9S. Even letting 1-4 people who just aren't yet up to standard raiding-wise into this fight is going to waste over 20 peoples' time. It's way too hard and has too much personal responsibility to not have at least some participation requirement (clearing savage tier, for example)
- What happened to being able to go in with a smaller party and practice mechanics? How are we supposed to practice a 24-man body check with 12 people?
- Having to split up alliances is also frustrating in itself because trying to give people raid buffs on the opposite corner is just impossible. Not that the dps check is tight enough to need it, but it's just frustrating! Why design a fight in a way where I can't use the tools in my kit the way they're supposed to be used?

Reward design:
- Bonuses only for the VERY FIRST TIME clear is crazy. It's like savage gear lockout but dooming it to just slowly die out over the course of the game instead of over the course of the week and reinvigorated the next week. Why punish the people who genuinely enjoy the content and want to regularly reclear it? A single demimateria II per clear with no new players is wild. What happens a year from now when the proportion of uncleared players goes down? Why does Square Enix continue to create content designed to be nearly completely dead later on?
- What happened to the bonus hours and bonus worlds thing? We haven't received any info on what those are. Are we supposed to guess? Can anyone please explain how they work?

Don't get me wrong, I love the fight, I'm addicted to the fight. But I can't help but feel disappointed in its implementation and how Square seems insistent on creating content designed for a shallow grave instead of content that will continue to be lively long-term

[Jeeqbit]

Alliances Raids splitting up has actually always been pretty common. Often we are given 3 routes, 3 bosses or 3 adds.

Most likely they don't have trash for the same reason as always. It's a waste of time when you want to get to the real boss and not have to go through it all again every time someone leaves. And people do leave this one quite often, so imagine if you had to go through a 20 min alliance raid just to get to the "real boss" every time someone left.

I don't necessarily mind body checks, but in such a large raid it can help for there to be at least a little tiny bit of leeway like 1 or 2 missed. From what I've seen though, there can be a few people making mistakes at any given moment, they just can't all be at once or it'll have a domino effect and wipe everyone.

[Fuyuqi]

Alliances Raids splitting up has actually always been pretty common. Often we are given 3 routes, 3 bosses or 3 adds.

Most likely they don't have trash for the same reason as always. It's a waste of time when you want to get to the real boss and not have to go through it all again every time someone leaves. And people do leave this one quite often, so imagine if you had to go through a 20 min alliance raid just to get to the "real boss" every time someone left.

I don't necessarily mind body checks, but in such a large raid it can help for there to be at least a little tiny bit of leeway like 1 or 2 missed. From what I've seen though, there can be a few people making mistakes at any given moment, they just can't all be at once or it'll have a domino effect and wipe everyone.

I don't think you understood what I meant by splitting up alliances. I mean people within the SAME ALLIANCE have to be split up. Because each side platform has 6 tower spots, and the middle platform has 12. So it requires separation of players from their own alliance. In fact, I would be looking for more things like you mentioned. Each alliance having a unique responsibility or mechanic to resolve and maybe having those mechanics interact with the others in some way (such as the baited beams in the Nier triple boss, or even Cerberus)

Also trash can be made more interesting as well, especially looking at criterion dungeons. It would help with the difficulty as well, allowing some out of combat "checkpoints" so that newer players aren't expected to be fully focused for 12 minutes straight and instead can learn more comfortably in shorter bursts of 4-6 minutes. If anything, multiple bosses would actually also discourage leaving, since you would actually be losing progress when you do leave instead of throwing yourself at the same wall from zero every time. If you've done any 2-phase savage fight or even DSR you'll see that effect. Sunk cost fallacy and all.

[Jeeqbit]

multiple bosses would actually also discourage leaving, since you would actually be losing progress when you do leave instead of throwing yourself at the same wall from zero every time. If you've done any 2-phase savage fight or even DSR you'll see that effect. Sunk cost fallacy and all.

Sometimes it can discourage leaving, but not always. There are also other factors why people leave: needing to eat, sleep or work. Especially with the sort of playerbase we have that mostly play 2 hours a day or so.

[Fuyuqi]

Sometimes it can discourage leaving, but not always. There are also other factors why people leave: needing to eat, sleep or work. Especially with the sort of playerbase we have that mostly play 2 hours a day or so.

I mean I'm gonna be honest I don't see how that's relevant. That has nothing to do with the fight lol.

The people leaving right away are the players who don't want to be trapped on the first 3 minutes of the fight over and over when they wanna prog the next 3 minutes of the fight. If it were instead 3 or so bosses that were 4 minutes long similar to a normal alliance raid, they would only have to get past the first few minutes ONCE to repeatedly practice the part they want to. Why would they leave when they'd just have to suffer getting past the first 3 minutes all over again?

Again, not sure why you're arguing this point about splitting the bosses actually discouraging leaving instead of encouraging it. In the first place, I just brought multiple bosses up because people in general seem to be unhappy with the 12 minute single boss being what we receive for "hard alliance raid" content when it doesn't feel like an alliance raid at all. It won't fix the issue of leaving that you brought up, but it certainly would make it a lot better on top of making it feel more like an alliance raid.

[CamuiKushi]

If it were instead 3 or so bosses that were 4 minutes long similar to a normal alliance raid, they would only have to get past the first few minutes ONCE to repeatedly practice the part they want to. Why would they leave when they'd just have to suffer getting past the first 3 minutes all over again?

This is what I hoped the chaotic alliances would be. It sounds like the way it is now is the same kind of frustrations I end up having with savage: I want to actually make progress and not die to a mechanic I have down perfectly because it's a body check.

[Fuyuqi]

Actually, thinking about trash packs similar to criterion made me start thinking about things that I personally think I would have preferred over the current implementation.

1. The same fight, but with more than ONE DEMIMATERIA II FOR A FULL RECLEAR and non-random bonuses
- would be less of a hellish purgatory for people who actually love the fight and WANT to grind it
- why would bonuses be random and different for people in the same clear anyway?

2. Something near identical to a normal alliance raid, but with every combat encounter including the trash redone
- would fulfill the idea of "harder alliance raid"
- would have 'checkpoints' after each boss so that progging is easier
- sunk cost fallacy, harder to leave

3. A sequence of 2-3 bosses that are 4-6 minutes in length instead of a 12 minute fight with one boss, no trash in between the different encounters
- less work for the dev team than the above option, but still closer to the feeling of an alliance raid
- allows for more variety of mechanics which is something that at least I personally enjoy in regular alliance raids

4. One boss similar to what we have now, but just less punishing body checks and shorter and hopefully more "alliance raid"-y. Basically just a single normal alliance raid boss but with harder mechanics
- more welcoming to casuals who just want rewards
- shorter fight and less body checks means easier to grind so only getting 1 demimateria II per clear would be less awful
- would just feel like a better fit difficulty and timing wise because honestly did we really need a fight this hard 4 weeks after fru? If it had to release now why not release something more bite-sized that hardcore players can grind and casual players can take a while learning? The current fight is both annoying for hardcore players to grind and for casual players to learn
EDIT: just adding, but another reason is I don't think character customization options should ever be locked behind 'prestige' content. Mounts and gear, sure. But not basic character customization.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't think you understood what I meant by splitting up alliances. I mean people within the SAME ALLIANCE have to be split up. Because each side platform has 6 tower spots, and the middle platform has 12. So it requires separation of players from their own alliance. In fact, I would be looking for more things like you mentioned. Each alliance having a unique responsibility or mechanic to resolve and maybe having those mechanics interact with the others in some way (such as the baited beams in the Nier triple boss, or even Cerberus)

The design is really weird. A and C can kind of stay near each other but B gets all split up. It may have been better if there were 3 platforms and the towers were aligned around those, so alliances could stay in the same area while still coordinating for tower mechanics.

And definitely support the idea of Alliance Unreal maybe being a better way to do this for their future experiments.

[Fawkes]

I assume they crammed all these rewards in there because they know they screwed up bad on Criterion in that department, but putting a hairstyle behind what sounds like essentially a savage fight really rubs me the wrong way. Casual-tier rewards and no barrier to entry and a first-timer bonus to encourage new people to do it, but then having a fight that casuals probably can't do? Seems like a recipe for the majority of players to be annoyed by this content.

[Fuyuqi]

I assume they crammed all these rewards in there because they know they screwed up bad on Criterion in that department, but putting a hairstyle behind what sounds like essentially a savage fight really rubs me the wrong way. Casual-tier rewards and no barrier to entry and a first-timer bonus to encourage new people to do it, but then having a fight that casuals probably can't do? Seems like a recipe for the majority of players to be annoyed by this content.

Exactly, I feel like Square has been having a hard time matching content to the expectations of the players who actually want to do it, if that makes sense. Most hardcore players I know care more about the new BiS gear and selling mounts/hair for gil than they do about obtaining the new items. And of course, being able to find a party of players at a similar skill level to actually clear the fight.