Difficulty format for Normal and Savage will remain in 4.0

[Sparktacus]

The fights are based on memorization from a design standpoint. the only thing it takes to learn a fight any fight in this game is to go in there and see it but our community basically gates seeing the fight behind "are you in a static you need to join a static" The biggest challenge to raiding as anyone will tell you is getting into a group if you weren't at gear lvl day one of a new raid cycle. the point I was making is that japan's clear rates are higher due to them being able to PUG them for the most part there is a cultural difference as they feel since its there they have to do it.
And lets leave the personal stuff out of this as you're just flat wrong I'm speaking as a raider. This is a community problem not saying the community is bad just that it needs to do better.

I will just put this here again...

the problems that raiding in this game faces is more community inflicted than design choice inflicted.

This is blaming the community, not subtly suggesting that it might be part of the problem but is in fact a majority of the problem, coming from a raider. I used to raid too until Gordian tore my 2 year team apart. People I came to consider dear friends. Oh wait, maybe I should blame the community for that too?

Because I suggested you might have had a few run in with bad eggs does not equate to a personal attack.

Next lets bring up the fact that its hard to get into a group after content has been out awhile. This has a lot more to do with the DEVELOPERS making their content obsolete at an alarming rate. Many people are stopping to even put in effort because they know within a few months they can show up and upgrade themselves without much hassle. If the DEVELOPERS made their content last, people would be running the same things still and taking people (non raiders) with them.

-May I englighten you with a system I loved that was out for years called Voidwatch in FF11 (Im sorry its my most played mmo so its the best example I have). In Voidwatch, which had already been out for two years when I started up again, and was incredibly popular still, it took 18 people to farm a triggered NM. After defeat everyone got their own coffer with a very small chance at super rare armor or relic weapon upgrade. Their was no skill ceiling involved, just job distribution as you needed specific attacks to Proc weakness on the mob. Anyone could join as long as their was a need for the job. This system was going strong years after its release.-

And I want to touch again about the clear rates since you wanted to bring them up again. Japan PF is also better because they tend to stick to one given strategy for a fight. There is no variation so everyone is on the same page. They don't go in with 4 or 5 different strategies. Someone made an excellent point about this earlier, saying that in the end while its awesome we have content creators like Xeno and MTQ, the NA scene could really do with a consolidated strategy for fights to help alleviate some of the issues you describe. These are differences in culture (not community) and it is not inherently good or bad as in I think most of use would rather have access to guides and such. In the end only around 6000 people have cleared M8S with a good portion of those being alts. Lets say for arguments sake , that 1.5k is NA/EU and 4.5k is JP since this falls in line with being 3x greater clears. Why on earth would any DEVELOPER continue to stick with the same tragic raid formula with those kind of numbers, and how can you expect the community not to react to some degree.

But again, blaming the community is incredibly short sighted. Is it perfect? No. Is any? No.