Risking to compare apples to oranges again, I’d still like to express my impressions from the early FFXIV raids of A Realm Reborn, comparing those (where appropriate) to WoW raids.
YES, I KNOW, I’m only comparing TWO FIRST RAIDS to my overall experience of many years raiding WoW! This limited view is taken into consideration for sure…
So, I’d like to talk to you about Crystal Tower raids – Labyrinth of the Ancients and the Syrcus Tower, which I generally quite enjoyed for what those are, but need to point out some specifics of FF14 raids compared to WoW raids, to help any other WoW refugees manage their expectations and potential disappointment.
📑 Table of Contents
00:00 – Intro
01:20 – Attunement
02:25 – No trash!
03:40 – Loading
04:30 – Boss detail
05:25 – Loot
06:15 – Effects
07:30 – Quick fights
08:50 – Massive race
10:00 – Kinda boring
11:30 – Still lagging
13:00 – Summary
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#FFXIV #WoW #Raids
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It is under system configuration. Turn off all but your effects. You will thank me when you get to our 56 player raid
Because there is a range of item levels allowed in earlier raids the case most of the time is that people are much stronger than what the raids were designed for. If you can get a group together you can run it min i level to experience the mechanics how they were intended, it makes for a much more rewarding experience. As for why they get run so fast- advanced players will run roulettes so the raids in public groups are unfortunately speed run almost exclusively. This is a double edged sword because if the roulette bonus wasn't in place there would likely not be enough people queuing at any given time. Additionally, for the current BiS weapons old raids are run for several steps in the weapon progress, again this comes with good and bad as it makes it so you always have experienced players in old content but this comes at the cost of new players getting to enjoy the raids as they were intended. These issues may be addressed with the stat squish that is coming in end walker and should in general be less pronounced from the heavansward raids going forward. They are also going to introduce a new data center for Oceania which should greatly improve your experience.
Absolutely. Lv sync remains "broken", it is why the best way to experience the old content atm is doing it min ilv if you can. There will be a lv "Squish" which makes me wonder if it will affect this problem in a positive manner.
This is problematic because all content is in rotation, and is played continuously. Veteran, returning, sprouts, all players sign up and find themselves together for these runs due to it being part of a daily roulette, bestowing a significant amount of current gear related currency. This mixture only harms the engagement of said runs the older the content is, as the sync fails to place the veteran on sprout level.
Hahaha. The first two are dumb easy. The final one is a sprout and mentor killer though. Sprouts for not knowing what to do and the mentor who wanted an easy ride and leaves the raid, World of Darkness. Hope your ride goes smooth on the final one because it ain't easy. On the vets still play old raids? Yes and they hope for the easier ones too. Once you beat the crystal tower raids it unlocks Alliance Raid roulette. Its the same type as lvling roulette and msq roulette. Great exp for people leveling other jobs.
The transitions were kinda a must. Remember that the game launched on PC and ps3 and they had to make changes for the ps3 version and have like one only version for the 3 platforms (ps3, 4 and PC). If you want more info on ps3 limitations its good reading material (they even had to remove capes on certain armors so the ps3 didnt lag)
ohh my. Might want to look at changing party effects to limited, the effects just become crazy as you get to the higher lvls. Yeah the fetch quests are pretty bad in ARR but they will get better futher into the game, the first 3 raids are kinda boring mainly as they can be rushed through this changes as you get to the 60 70 and 80 raids. the loot will never complete with tomestone gear as the alliance raids are used mainly to upgrade that gear. The alliance raids are not supposed to be super difficult they are used as center piece content and are supposed to be cleared by all players, the harder content are tied behind extreme trials and savage raids, 24 man raids are difficult at best when there is bad server connection. You may also find that the party and other player effects are having an effect in combination to the server lag making the game near unplayable ( I do not know what type of PC you have so the previous statment could be a moot point).
These raids, like all of the other older content are avalible to players through Duty roulettes, as they award decent amount of tomestones most people gearing up will run alliance raids everyday. I personally hate the ARR raids at its these raids that I end up having to do in the roulette 90% of the time, its a bit of a snorefest, not as bad as the MSQ raid roulette. I dont even do them at all as the cutscenes are unskippable, if you thought praetorium was bad you should have seen it before, you just got left behind. At least SE tried to improve that experiance but the could have implimented in a way that was not so unbearable to max lvl players 40 mins on a run for 300 tomestones and not able to skip cutscenes no thanks.
TLDR Fix your party effects, raids are only useful to upgrade gear, I hope the situation improves for you.
here is a link to a vid to fix your spell effects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F947W9j5cPk&t=18s
Turn off other player cast effects so you are not overwhelmed. Also make a group to do the raid the way it was intended at min ilvl. I agree that the roulette should be tuned for higher difficulty at all times and perhaps ilvl of loot increased to maybe 5 ilvl above poetics gear. With that said I think regular primals should be upgraded to hard with something between hard and extreme.
You can change your effects under system configuration. You should change cause later if you do hunt train, it will get worse. You can control how much effect or stuff you want to see.
As for raiding, to me – 24 man raid like crystal tower is really casual. It isn’t really a “raid” more like a big dungeon. But once u catch up, it gets a little bit more intense.
To me the real raid is like the 8 man raid – savage – ultimate which can take about 3 months to 6 months prog depend on the group. But right now you do a lot of stuffs are max level gear so things go really fast. If you want, you need to do min ilevel and no eco then it will get a little more intense.
Also there are some program you can use to help with the lagging. You can install it on PC and it will help (I am sorry I forgot the program name).
None of the "raids" on the MSQ are going to be hard. They're not really meant to be (or they'd gate progression). How the iLevel works in patches means most people there would have been at the maximum ilevel for that patch, which trivialises it (think running a first raid of a wow patch in BiS items from the last raid). And probably 80%+ of the raid were there on the Alliance Raid Roulette for the huge chunk of exp it gives. It does get better in later expansions, but never really goes away. Playing current 24 man raids is certainly harder, but is only really in the ball park of normal/early heroic. There's absolutely harder stuff (extreme / savage / ultimates) but it's not something you'd just casually do in duty finder (maybe the weaker fights near the end of an expansion)
Of couse at the moment you can use party finder to run old content at min ilevel + no echo and get ground to a fine paste by any of the older extremes / coils etc.
Itemisation isn't really as big of a thing as in WoW. Every tier has crafter gear that catches you up to the entry requirements which of course means at the end of an expansion you can wildly overgear all the earlier stuff. Until you're max level gear is basically just cosmetic (within the expansions ranges).
Any experience with Elder Scrolls Online on ur gamer record? Decided to do a few refugee weeks there on Xbox (was drawn by the opposite-to-PC-feel and my love for Bethesda's Oblivion back in the day) and been enjoying it as a breather from Azeroth so far. Havent raided there tho, still levelling so I cant compare it to what you say in this vid yet.
Khajiit "rogues" are pretty nifty. I'd be excited to see a FF "rogue adjacent experience" vid from you like you did with hunter. Anyway, keep on keepin on!
You have to remember that even if you are level synced, everyone still IMMENSELY overgears the raid. If you want to see how hard the raids were on release, you should see Asmon's min-ilvl run of Crystal Tower. Also, the reason why everyone is rushing is because a lot of people are just spamming CT for poetics, just like Praetorium and Castrum. It just so happens that the raid didn't age well due to power creep.
I was there when those raids were introduced and they used to actually offer some decent challenge. People needed to communicate for mechanics and fights took quite awhile. Nowadays I think the proper name for those raids are is obsolete content. The carcasses are still there, but I don´t believe that all of the original mechanics are still there.
Hi Gyro. So here are some things that you should know:
1) Alliance raids are not realy the "real" raid content. Each expac has 3 and are more seen as a additional way of getting gear. Other then min itemlevel there is no other difficulty level to them and they get harder with each Expac. The reason why it feels so easy and fast is the old 24 Man raids where not designt to many of the changed abilitys you now have and the non min itemlv sync is stil rather op at this point (Lv50). Some of the latter Heavensward and the entirety of Stormblood 24 man raids wipe people to this day xD. You run the ARR 24 man raids because they are now in the main story quest and because there is a duty roulette that mostly pops with ARR 24 man raids ^^.
2) The real Raids are in ARR the "Coils of Bahamut" – The "Alexander Raids" in Heavensward – The "Alpha / Sigma & Deltascape" in Stormblood and last but not least the "EDEN" raids in Shadowbringers. They are realeased in 3 parts a 4 Bosses so 12 Bosses per Expac. They have Normal and Savage ( HM – Mithic difc.) modes. If you are courious how the old raids fare at min iteml. there should be a good amount of Videos on youtube – spoiler if you try them that way you wil not be dissapointed ;-).
3) Trials. They have (Heavensward onwards) Normal and Extreme (HM in WoW terms) modes. Another way to get catchup gear for Savage tiers and quite enjoyable imo.
4) last but not least the Ultimate Raids. These are encounters that consist of a Boss gountlet that wil last up to 20 min and cant be outgeared. Seasoned Players that tryed them and also raidet mythic in wow wil tell you that these are the most challenging encounters that you can imagine xD. Only very few get to clear them. There are only 3 of them imo (could be 4 -.-).
5) There are additional Raid bosses in "Eureka (Seperate Map to grind your Stormbl. Relic Weapon)" and "Bozja (Seperate Map to grind your Shadowbr. Relic Weapon). These can also be realy challenging and have variable player counts.
As other people already mentioned set your settings at "Show only my Effects" and the experience wil be much better. Sad to here that your connection is so bad -.-. Hope this wil change with the new datacenter.
Loot: So loot in an FFXIV expansion works like thus and I'll try to keep this as simple as I can.
We have tomestone (notice how you've been getting Allagan Tomestones of Poetics) gear which the closest comparison is Valor Points I believe from WoW. These tomestone currencies occupy two tiers of gear generally. Nowadays poetics give you no fuss i130 gear in ARR, which is effectively the peak of that expansion's ilvl.
The catch up or beginner endgame set: Which is usually 20 or so ilvls below the following set
The weekly lockout set: Which is usually around the same ilvl as the 8 man raid set (in ARR's case the binding coil of bahamut) if you get the upgrade materials to enhance it to the same ilvl (so say it starts at ilvl 100 and upgrades to i110 which is the same ilvl as the 8 man raid of that raid cycle). This raid cycle roughly lasts 7 months on average, and the 24 man raids come out in the middle of it once the average player has gotten their weekly lockout set.
The 24 raid series, in ARR's case Crystal Tower, serves two function to this cycle. The individual loot occupies the middle of this tier. So in Sycrus Tower's case the starter set is i90 (Which is what your class quests give you today), the Sycrus gear is i100, and the full upgraded tomegear or 8 man raid set is i110. ilvls 90 to i110 was the ilvl ranges back when Sycrus tower was new content.
It also has/had a weekly lockout quest that requires doing the 24 man raid series to get an item that upgrades your tomestone i100 gear to i110. This was back in 2.3 while this tomestone gear came out in 2.2.
tl;dr: 24 man raids are catch up mechanics designed to give more casual players some chance to upgrade their gear after they've obtained their weekly lockout set for their main role or get slightly weaker gear to upgrade other jobs (i100 instead of i110). The old MSQ today is effectively designed to ensure you can speed through the gearing process and get through the story's content to get to the next one. Which is why class quests give you i90 armor today.
Regarding easiness: So ARR and to an extent HW suffer from various number changes that have been made to damage over the years and the lack of adjustments to older content, though they've talked about doing a stat squish so maybe that might help things a little bit. These raids sure didn't act like they do today, the average 24 man raid took somewhere between 30-40 minutes I'd say, now they take around 20 minutes with CT.
Stormblood and Shadowbringers don't really have this problem as much as they were made when most of these changes went into effect, but ARR especially suffers from this due to how overgeared (i130 in a raid that gives i100 gear…) and how big everyone's numbers are (for example your heavy swing did 150 potency, now it does 200 potency and that is just on a tank).
I wish you the best of luck with your latency issues bud, and do look into turning down player effects and names if those get in the way, their are UI settings in either system or character configuration for both battle effects (keep them to limited for allies, so you can see healing fields at least) and character names among other things. These adjustments will dramatically help you in larger content like this.
Alliance Raids (the 24 man dungeons) are all not particularly hard. They are more like a catch-up mechanic. Many people compare them with raid finder difficulty. Especially the older stuff gets cleared very fast, like 20-30 minutes per raid. You can use them for leveling, since there is a daily roulette where you more EXP for your first raid of the day and some drop unique armor designs that some people want to grind out, but they aren't really what most people consider end game content. Final Fantasy is more balanced for 8 player parties and the hardest content is generally in 8 man dungeons. You can try the extreme modes of older primals (like titan, garuda and so on) if you want a tiny glimpse of what raiding in Final Fantasy feels like, but I suggest you try it on minimum itemlevel and without echo. Sadly you'll need a premade group for those, but you only need 7 more people.
I will try to address your point:
Connection: I have hear Australia have a very bad issue with connection but its an issue of the ISP not of Square (someone may provide more insight here).
Effects: Many people have mention you can reduce the effects of others.
Rush: Its normally not welcome to not wait for a new people to see the cinematics (you can disable auto play on cinematic you have already see), but also this are heavily played along MSQ dungeons (praetorium and claustrum) which is why this is rushed
Easy fights: Each expansion has a cap on gear and when you synchronize you are to that level cap, on this case 130 while this raids where tuned for max ilvl 80 and 90. So yes people are a way over geared for this encounters.
ARR raids are quite simplistic compared to the later expansions because SE needed to figure out their formular. It's quite the same if you compare it to MC in WoW in your example. MC mobs are also just big hitting trash mobs 😀
Try to do those raid with friends at min item lv instead. It's when you find these raids fun. Everyone rush through these raids because even if gear synced their gear is way too high to do this raid the normal way and will skip a lot of mechanics from boss
Yeh man, the raids you're doing come up on daily roulette for players, that's why everyone's rushing -they've done it a zillion times before, and why things are dying so fast XD
There's plenty of FC's you'll find that do synched raids where they are at appropriate difficulty and you get to experience them properly!! Others have mentioned turning off party effects, definitely need to 100% for raids.
Loot in old content is only for glamor or transmog. Originally, ppl would have iLv 50 gear entering this raid, and loot rewards 60-80. These content at this time is only for story progression, the only challenge is from players doing challenge like Min iLvL setting (Asmon did it and they wipe heaps).
Your comments are accurate, it's a race to finish for most players since they done it many times already. They do it for the daily bonuses that max lvl chars get. It helps new players clear content easy & quick, but no sense of achievement since its too easy. If you want challenge, you setup a Party Finder group, set Min iLvl & no Echo, then you will have a good time. It remains like this until the latest xpac, since old xpac content is not challenging once ppl over-gear.
Just watch AsmonGold's first FFXIV stream and you will learn how to turn off effects immediately hahaha.
they are adding oceanic servers
Believe it or not it's better then it was before quest wise. Those crystals you collect used to be obtained by a certain FATE in each place you visit in the current version. It was bad, because they were a rare FATE spawns, meaning you often times had to force spawn it by clearing the zone of other FATEs and hoping it would pop. Corthas was particularly bad. I had spent two hours with a small group of other people that needed the fate cleared clearing out the zone in hopes it would pop.
The problem with lvl syncing is with each major patch drop the lvl cap gets raised. Even with an ilvl cap, the specs still get better and better. Making it easier and easier plow it with little effort.
With the stat squish in 6.0 we may see level sync being a bit better with runaway gear scaling, but yeah… old raids are more or less steamrolls due to future gear, youre pretty much running with the equivalent of everyone in all better than best in slot gear for the content.
When these were new, and people were in unscaled gear.. the fights were long and tough.
HW raids are kinda similar, since again… scaling puts everyone in better than BiS essentially.
Right now, people run the old raids for cosmetics or experience.
Min iLevel sync ARR Raids are no joke, since you are in ilvl 50 instead of 120 or so, I can't remember off the top of my head, for Labyrinth.
You have to be on your A game.
These are more or less LFR tier equivalent, you show up, get your rolls and then you're done.
Min iLvl would be regular raid difficulty imo.
It would be worth a shot trying out that if you are looking for a challenge.
As for spell effects…
Character Config > Control Settings > Character > Battle Effects Settings.
Set Party and Other to Limited or None.
I would suggest keep Party to Show or Limited and other to Limited or None.
I personally keep everything maxxed since I am insane… and have 11k hours of play time and have gained the ability to decipher what's going on lol. But then most of what I do is 8 man content where its a lot easier to tell whats going on even with all the glitter explosions.
i would suggest seeing asmongold's first go at the first raid it'll give an idea of how much the item level sync that is default skips the content, i would suggest some other stuff but the comment section has covered most of the stuff, have fun playing friend
First real MMO. First raid. I was super excited. I had the same exact experience but I'm a new to MMO player not a wow vet. Somebody at the raid clearly ran it many times and just wanted to clear it as soon as possible. I literally could have just stood there. I got lost because of the special affects and didn't see the elevator for a few seconds. Needles to say I missed a Boss fight but it didn't take me to the instance, so I was still lagging behind. Anyways not fun and looking forward having fun raiding.
What you were running reminded me of Raid Finder in wow. Brain dead runs for different currencies. I did not care for the early raids in FF either but I’m really liking the expansion and end game content. Fight transitions, mechanics, and music is all dope. I haven’t even gotten to the heroic/mythic type stuff yet (savage, extreme etc)