Normal Raids aren't exactly Raids, are they?

[ReynTime]

Responses like the ones in this thread almost me want to quit before Endwalker.

Why don't we just remove trashes, period? After all only bosses matter, and the game's combat is way too static and lacking depth without enemy/boss mechanics because you do the exact same things in every fight otherwise.

Let's remove monsters from the overworld unless they're quest spawns, hunts and fates. No one likes them because they're too much weaker than bosses. All 4~24 man dungeon should consist of boss arenas with tiny paths connecting them but no enemies.
No time for trash, no time to look for chests, no time to read notes, gotta hurry up and cross these pesky duties off my checklist asap so I can log off and do something else. I enjoy the pve content I swear.

[Vidu]

Responses like the ones in this thread almost me want to quit before Endwalker.

Why don't we just remove trashes, period? After all only bosses matter, and the game's combat is way too static and lacking depth without enemy/boss mechanics because you do the exact same things in every fight otherwise.

Let's remove monsters from the overworld unless they're quest spawns, hunts and fates. No one likes them because they're too much weaker than bosses. All 4~24 man dungeon should consist of boss arenas with tiny paths connecting them but no enemies.
No time for trash, no time to look for chests, no time to read notes, gotta hurry up and cross these pesky duties off my checklist asap so I can log off and do something else. I enjoy the pve content I swear.

Let me try to explain my point a bit "better", because you jump to extreme conclusions quite fast:

For me there is a fine line, a certain balance to all content - a balance between battles and rewards; between difficult and easy encounters; between exploring/scenery and battles. For each kind of content I expect and want this balance to tip to a certain side. I need to add here that FFXIV is my first MMO, Coil was my first raid, I have no experience in regards to "the good old times" from other MMOs and how they handled raids.

So for me, in this game, the mainpoint of the raid always was the bossfight "at the end" (since it actually was "at the end"). We'd spent hours just with this fight, the raid was this fight. Running up to the boss and clearing the trash took a couple of minutes out of an evening with hours of wiping, teleporting back to the bossarena and just... fighting that boss. The focus was: Kill that boss! And which each week that passed, that focus grew stronger. With limited time to raid, you want to spent as much of it as possible with actual progress - clearing the trash takes time out of your limited budget, but you dont progress - so you find ways to skip the trash, such as forming parties dedicated to clear the trash for 8 groups (1 person from each static, makes 8 people from 8 statics, clearing the trash, then returning to their statics and jumping the rest ahead).

...now this is obviously for savage raids (and Coil), but it coloured my impression of raids as a whole and is bleeding into the NM-raids aswell. I'm sorry, but "atmosphere", "story" and "lore building" arent good enough rewards to clear that trash in NM over and over again. Please dont get me wrong here: I love those things, I play for those things. And they're great... the first time around. Maybe the second and the third. Which is why I liked the Omega-approach: You get your trash, you get your "exploring" (as much as there was to explore anyways...), but you go through that once, as part of a story that you can enjoy in that moment and that doesnt get tainted by repeating it over and over again.

For dungeons my expectations and my "wants" are different - for me dungeons and raids are two different types of content. If they werent, why do we have both of them anyways? In dungeons trash has a place for me, its closer to the "main event", the time spent in a dungeon is more split 50:50 between trash and boss, it feels more like part of the experience and less like a hinderance on the way to the fight you're actually looking forward to - if that makes sense?

Oh, and I love the notes in dungeons - but I read them once, after that I dont really need to look for them again (...maybe a year later or so...). I'll always wait for new people to read them, if they want to - but I dont need to read them on a daily basis, should I run a dungeon with notes on a daily basis. Its not about "no time", its about "I've done this once, I'm done".

The reason not to remove those things period is - at least for me - that they do have a place. Just not always, everywhere and all the time. And you have to find a balance between "it adds to the experience" and "it doesnt add enough to the experience in the long run".