Quote Originally Posted by Sicno View Post
Again, what you've described can be found in Coils of Bahamut, the first raid series implemented in XIV, from which moving forward they've trimmed the fat over time, removing elements that weren't so popular and focusing on the meat of the raids that keep the people coming back.

Here in XIV "raiding" is synonymous with "challenging content", and it's more associated with the savage raids than their normal versions. For such purposes the trash mobs, the long walks, etc. are not a challenge the more dedicated players care about, so they're deemed a waste of time and what everybody really cares about is conquering the mechanics of the bosses. That's where the meat of the raiding is here. Doing a one-time walk and aoe spam on trash is a pointless chore when you'll spend the next 3 hours wiping to the 8th minute of an encounter you're progging.
1. I completely agree; Coils had a lot of the features I described and I still think of it fondly for that reason. Coming from multiple other games where raids were in the old-school Grand Dungeon style, I appreciated Coil and the Syrcus Tower raids for being large immersive environments.

2. I stopped raiding in other MMOs circa 2013 so I can't speak to how raiding in other games has changed aside from being aware of Mythic+ in WoW. I understand that Raiding here in XIV generally refers to the 8-player, non-Alliance content. I enjoy the non-Alliance raids for what they are, understanding that times change and with it, a game's content. That being said the Trial > Cutscene > Trial > Cutscene pattern no longer seems like raiding to me. It's interesting and enjoyable content with cool story progression but they're not the Epic-In-Scope Dungeons I, in my old-school mind, associate with raiding.