NO MORE ALEXANDER(NM)!

[Belhi]

That isn't enough to keep 8 people going into it a few times a week, or it atleast seems so from all these 7/8 6/8 statics recruiting daily for A3 or A2.
And the fact that there will be same gear level available sooner than majority of raiding groups (not every FF player, just raiding groups) will even get to A4 doesn't help the popularity of Alex too.

They should have made one easy story mode raid connected to MSQ and one savage raid with its own story not connected to MSQ at all. That way raiders could still raid like in 2.X and people who don't raid wouldn't have story locked behind raiding (I mean savage raiding, NM Alex is on hard primal difficulty).

Your right that it would be easy. It would also be time consuming and mean less of something else.

The blunt reality is that the Hardcore playerbase is a small portion of the playerbase and it makes little sense to cut the large majority of the players out of storytelling from a development standpoint. One of the major complaints I saw about Coils back in 2.x was from players who didn't have the time or skill to commit to structured raiding and as such missed out on some of the best storytelling in the game. Lets be clear here. It's about denying players access to story, not making content they don't want to do. Even if a hardcore player doesn't really enjoy casual gameplay, there is nothing denying them access to any story behind it.

I think its perfectly viable to argue that glamour and such should be put behind savage. I don't think you can put story behind it though without pissing off more players than you would mollify.

[CosmicKirby]

Snip

What quality of the story makes it less reasonable to gate behind a difficult challenge, than gating gear behind the same challenge? Clearly there must be some difference between the two for you to be okay with the latter, but not the former being behind difficult content.

If I purchase a book, am I entitled to understand the intricacies of the plot, characters, story, and the like, simply by virtue of reading it? Am I entitled to also be able to read spin-offs without paying further, what if they were started in the original text?

I'm being rhetorical because I don't see the reason why the story isn't alright to gate, but the gear is, other than entirely personal preference. Which is fine, but you seem to imply otherwise. Do players enjoy story more than gear?