So something that I haven't seen discussed is that this feels like a FinalFantasy MiniGame (MG) to me.
In FF7 there was a MG that required you to snowboard down a mountain. I can't remember what else you had to do, catch balloons or something? It was an arcade game in the middle of this JPRG where you're not using ANY of your characters normal abilities -- those are walled off -- your mana doesn't help you, whatever. All you've got is sliding along and trying to avoid and/or crash into things. The chocobo races were similar as well, in that they were an MG that walled off all the character development you'd been doing. Nothing you equipped and no levels you gained actually mattered.
So the thing about those MGs is that some people actually loved them. They went nuts for them. They had a game saved at the top of the snowy mountain or they spent weeks breeding chocobos to win harder and harder races.
But other players, who were there for the RPG and loved FF7 as much as anyone hated them. They were playing a game that required levelling up, collecting weapons and manna, finding effective combinations and then using them in battle against nasty, magical monsters. What was it with the snowboarding?
This new raid is not SWGOH as we know it. A lot of people are upset and/or just dislike the raid. That's fine. I don't at all know how I feel about it yet. I'm giving it a little time. And to me that makes sense, because this raid is like a brand new game of a completely different character that they're slapping in the middle of SWGOH. Maybe you hate it. If so, it was a swing and a miss on CG's part, sure. But there were people who bred chocobos for WEEKS. Seriously. I think adding a MG to SWGOH wasn't a weird thing to try.
Not only that, but when I needed to snowboard down that mountain when I played through the game again about 10 years ago, I just called in an expert: my 7 year old. She did great and had a great time even though she didn't have the attention span for a play through of the whole ff7 game.
For those of us with kids, I can imagine logging in, slapping on raid mods, and then handing the game to our proverbial 7 year olds who aren't stuck on the way SWGOH "should be" and are still entertained by the simplified rules and reduced kits they find in the speeder bike MG. I know several people who play SWGOH with their kids, handing the game off to the kid for a battle during GAC after starting it or just letting a very young kid press a button while the parent watches.
Yeah, that's not the kind of excitement most of us were looking for in a new raid, but in a world where we're often so separate from each other, actually playing the game WITH your family instead of away from your family can be a really nice thing.
Anyway, as I said, I'm giving it more time, but maybe -- whether you want to play with your family or not -- thinking about this as a MG instead of a raid will help. There's a long tradition of splashing MGs into the middle of larger games, and it's possible that a few of us (not all of us, but a few) will find their Gold Chocobo on Endor.
