Are you happy with the current raiding structure in this game?

[cryptic_angel]

I could rant for paragraphs on end why raiding in this game is some of the worst end game content ever released in a game. I will start off by saying selling coil t6-t9 is a lousy excuse to defend lockouts. SCoB sales have been going since June. My static, this week, was talking about selling T9 next week for 30 mil. The only way removing the lockouts will impact sales is in the price and frequency of selling SCoB.
I will just list all the problems raiding has in this game.

Four raid bosses per tier (roughly six to seven months)
The amount of raid bosses averages to eight raid bosses per year. This is a small amount of raiding content for any game.

Two chest per Raid boss with gigantic loot tables
People will go an entire raid tier without getting a vanity set, BiS, or their HA weapon. This would not be a big deal if ilvl110 gear had more intrinisic value, but since ilvl110 gear has been put on a welfare styled reward system, rewards from SCoB have been diminished.

Lockouts
Lockouts serve no real purpose in the face of hunt rewards. If we are supposed to be in "catch up" mode and everyone is supposed to have full ivl110, why gate raid gear behind lockouts? Seems kind of pointless to allow people to grind hunts til their eyes bleed, but raiders only get eight chests to open a week. Those eight chest are also subject to repeat loot and have to be split with eight other players. Again, lockouts serve no greater purpose when players can just hunt spam to ilvl110 gear.

Raids have very little value in this game past the first clear.
Once you beat T9 and see the cut scenes, what is the point of coil after that? There really is none. The gear ilvl from coil is not enticing at all. You can just spam hunts and get the same ilvl gear. BiS is not a reward because it is so RNG dependent. Only one person in our static has a BiS set and we have been clearing coil for a few months now. You can go an entire raid tier without seeing some gear ever drop since loot tables are gigantic. BiS is only a reward if you are lucky enough to get the drops you want. The same is true for the "HA vanity look." People argue that HA gear has a distinct look that you can wear as a reward. While there is truth to that, you still need to get the right drops to glamour your armor into a HA set. I still have not seen a caster body drop in T8 for the three plus months that my static has had t8 on farm. The HA gear skin is only a reward depending on your luck. Contrast these facts to any other raiding MMO and there lack luster treasures of ff14 tarnish even further.

Look at wow: they add differentiated ilvls based on difficulty, mounts, titles, way more bosses per raid tier, exclusive hard mode bosses, gems, recipes, and BoEs all just from raiding.

To summarize the above paragraph, the only meaningful coil rewards for the last two months have been BiS, HA weapons, and Vanity gear; however, all those rewards are heavily RNG dependent and equate to very poor rewards if you compare ff14 raiding with any other game.

Sharp difficulty curve
Raids should have very easy intro bosses paired with insane final bosses. I think Rafflesia should be much more easier and accessible to the general game population. The first BCoB should have been nerfed into the ground, including t5. There is a reason pugs worked out much better in the BCoB raid, the first two bosses were much easier. You hardly see any pugs for SCoB. This is an issue! People should be able to pug the first few bosses of a raid tier without much difficulty. These sharp difficulty curves end up as a deterrence for people to break into raiding.

Fights are poorly designed
Turn 7...... Turn7 is the perfect example of bad encounter design. There are other examples out there though. Ifrit ex is great example as well as Levi EX and Turn 8. You can see fights break down when your group has high performing DPS. Phases get skipped, mechanics become wonky, and artificial enrages are triggered when a raid group has very high dps. In ifrit EX, you can wipe if you damaged ifrit too much before the 3rd nail phase. In turn 8, you either hold dps for like 30 seconds or deal with allgan field much earlier in the fight. In Levi EX, phases would get skipped or happen simultaneously if your dps is too high. Then there is turn 7, where you have to stop dps every phase change to make sure you get a cursed voice to re-petrify the renauds. High performance should not be punished by poor encounter design.

This game is not for raiders. This game is for a more casual gamer. I think most raiders, myself included, would find other games and their raids much more fun and rewarding. If it was not for my friends and FC, I would have unsubdued awhile back once it was blatantly obvious that SE will always cater to the lowest common denominator.