Quote Originally Posted by Ibi View Post
What I object to is the idea that the way to fix the game's reward system is just to stuff a ton of rewards into Savage raiding, because no matter how good they are the vast, vast majority of the player base still won't do it.
This is a very important point, but from a perspective I'm not seeing people take into account: difficulty of content and "cost" of entry.

The number of people actively raiding would grow if the content allowed for some leniency in execution (read: varied difficulty modes) and cost of entry was not that high. FFXIV's current systems of tomes and dungeon gear could easily accomplish the latter if the devs felt inclined to make it happen. The former won't happen without varying difficulty tiers and bigger raid instances.

The reason various difficulty tiers are needed is largely to ease people into the content, as not everyone handles jumps in difficulty the same way. Think of it like playing something on easy mode then working your way up in difficulty. Playing a game on normal and then trying hard is not really massive since you've already cleared the game and have an idea of how the mechanics work. Some people will obviously draw the line in their own progress (maybe someone decides to stop at normal mode, while others will push towards heroic for the better loot or because they want the achievement/mount), but the idea of raiding wouldn't be so intimidating to the average person, specially if you have guilds actively bringing people who are new to raids. And believe it or not, lenient mechanics at the entry/post-entry level do act as an encouragement to bring new people or non-raiding regulars because you don't run the risk of a wipe if someone messes up.

As the game's raids are right now, bringing someone new to something like Savage is like throwing a fresh lv100 at Mythic Archimond. It's largely unthinkable and obviously a daunting task to some.