I agree with the OP, the point is that grinding raptors is BORING AS HELL. There's no challenge in it, it's extremely easy and fast.
If I have to grind for hours I'd rather do something engaging, not battles that make me sleepy, so I'm looking for something a bit harder and battles a bit longer that require the use of some skill, not just Multishot. But if those battles are giving me less sp then it's really pointless.
I've never comared FFXIV to XI, but in this case FFXI grind was fun, it required a good party, the use of a lot of skills and the average time it took to kill a mob was fine. The levelling process was too slow (at least when I used to play) but you had fun while grinding and you had a glimpse of the role of your class.

I have to say, I think guildleves grind was more fun than raptors, at least we had to do something different in every leve (necrologos, defending, etc) it got boring because of the Broken Water thing.