Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Someone that had only run Thuuga or Protectors Realm (I am keeping this to 2008/2009 content so it is directly comparable to Ulduar) would potentially have that opinion, but that content is the equivalent of WoW LFR raids - my guild was running this content before any of us were even at the new level cap the expansion introduced.
If you knew anyone that was raiding in EQ2 in 2008 or 2009, they were telling you to get your arse to that game, as that is the point in time the games raid scene was at it's best - and we all knew it.
Perhaps you knew someone that was raiding in the games original release, I would agree that the content there was slightly sub-par, even if there was a lot of it. However, we are now talking early 2005, not 2008/2009. If you had friends that turned you away from EQ2 in 2008/2009 and knew what the game was like at the time, I would question how good of a friend they are.
I am, as you know, not going to compare EQ2 raids to FFXIV, as FFXIV has no content that I consider a raid - a raid needs 12 people minimum imo, as a raid is as much about leadership and people management as it is about the content.
What I will say is that FFXIV probably has the best PvE group content of any MMO.
Fair enough.
You could be right about all of that.
Since we are off-topic anyway. Why not consider 8-man groups to be raids?
It's just a term that tends to mean something like: "larger than a normal group.". Why make 12 players a hill to die on? Especially when a lot of the time 10 and 8 man is harder because there is less room for failure(at least in my experience). In 8 and 10 man, everyone really has to pull their weight or there will be enrage.
The reason why I fell in love with FFXIVs endgame "raids" is because the balance is so tight and everyone really has to show up and preform, or you will never clear. You can't just carry shitty players, especially on a new raid tier or min iLVL sync.
Often times in WOW I felt like some of my raid was getting carried even though we were clearing well enough. You see the same 2-3 people dead at the end of a fight in a 25 or 40 man and think... gee did they need to be here? At least in WOW I have seen that a lot. The 24mans in FFXIV are a joke too and I don't care about them.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
As I said above, raiding isn't just about the content, a successful raid is as much about management as it is about player skill, and 8 player content just doesn't call for that.
I agree with you that top end content should be tight, but that in itself does not make a piece of content raid level - it makes it top end content. Tight content like this can exist in raids, but also group and solo content. I doubt you would argue that tight content for a solo player would qualify as raid content.
Agreed, it is much harder to manage. I'll give you that. I just never think of it as a "raid skill", more like just a pre-raid hassle that everyone has to deal with.
I guess the line has to be drawn somewhere. If there was a game where the party size was three(tank,dps,healer) and a raid was six... I would feel pretty strange about calling that a raid.
People/FFXIV just uses the word raid for lack of a better word. I mean, there is the word "full party" in FFXIV, but it doesn't roll off the tongue like raid.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.