FFXIV: Ridorana Wipehouse
Each time a new 24 man raid comes out, I hope that it might take us back to the days when I could say to just about everyone, “Oh, this is fun, and not too hard end game content for a large group to enjoy together.”
Every time, this game moves further and further away from this very thing.
In fact, and you might laugh, the Lighthouse has me questioning whether my hand-eye coordination and reaction time can physically keep up with the demands of the bosses at this point. It’s not just about figuring out mechanics and patterns, it’s the speed at which mechanics stack.
Maybe for younger players with lots of twitch-response time, this stuff is fun and challenging. Again, I feel it’s something that has no business being here if the intention of the raid is to be a “catch-up” for gearing alt jobs.
After my first run, I said I’d probably not do it again. I found nothing fun there. We’d won and I got a drop, but I felt totally defeated by the place.
When Amoon needed to run it again last night, I sighed and buckled down to do it again. I came out with a much stronger understanding of mechanics, but a deepening hate for the final boss.
The big issue I have with this raid is that it just takes too long. Every fight is tough, fast-paced, punishing and lethal. Every fight draws out forever.
For example, last night’s fight with Construct 7 took us 25 minutes to beat… without a wipe.
We came close to a wipe, and people started rezzing back at the start thinking it was over with. But we pulled through and did end up finishing it. Thankfully, people can opt to come back into the boss arena now, instead of remaining locked out. Once they realized we weren’t giving up… and we were in fact learning mechanics quite well… the raid rallied and came back at the fight.
It still took 25 mins to complete one boss. And that’s just too much.
In fact, our tank had to leave right before the final boss because he needed to go to work. Just not enough time to make it through the whole raid, which was a shame.
Part of the problem is that the mechanics demand you to constantly be disengaging to stay alive. DPS can’t put out damage if we’re always running for our lives. And just about every fight is about running for your life.
Will it get better with ilvl increases? Probably.
Are the mechanics learnable? Yeah.
Will I try it again? Probably, yeah.
Is it fun? Not for me.
Like the Royal City of Rabanastre before it, I won’t ever run this by choice outside of simply doing a weekly for the coin or drop. I probably won’t do it more than once a week, whether I get a drop or not.
This whole forced-Greed drop thing makes running this raid even more of an RNG crap-shoot than it already was. If I can’t walk away from it without at least a little reward, it’s seriously not worth the stress and time sink.
It’s a shame because the location is stunning and beautiful, the music is fantastic (Tactics FTW) and the mechanics are actually interesting. They’re just so punishing.
Oh well. More time for crafting. (An update on that later!)
