I agree with most ppl here in some of what they are saying, personally i think there should be HNM's in FFXIV. I wouldn't care if they were FFXI style pop times but i do fully understand how inconveniant they are. But if FFXIV used the same style i think the system would suffer as this is not going to be appealing to the people this game is aimed at.

As said a few times already force pop would be the way forward, maybe earn some kind of currancy/pop items from dungons that would be used to pop them like ZMN's.

The fights shouldn't be a walk in the park either they should be a test of the players skill and ability to work together, with any drops being a luxuray item. Better then others of the same rank but not so much so that ppl wouldn't invite you to events w/o it. The KC (i know it's not a HMN drop) comes to mind here, not really a great item (unless you we're DRK with BW ^^) but it was one hell of laugh to use.

as for the the comments on bots, you can't say that any FFXI system was falwed because of the use of bots but rather SE was flawed in thier ablity to stop them. bots existed every where in FFXI, fishing, crafting, Sky NM's, HNM, teleport bots the list goes on and on. any problems caused by bots should only be blamed on SE and not the system that was being bot'd. The STF worked hard to stop bots (that made me lol ^^) but their policys were crap, if you reported a bot to a GM they said "report it on the website" becase all they can do is move stuck players, you report it on the website and maybe when the STF lookes at it in a month or more later the'll get banned.

this game is a long way from true endgame content atm, but if dungon raids is all we have to look forward too, it doesn't matter if you are a hardcore or a casual player this game will suck big time. To some it may not seem like it now but trust me it will. it'll be about as much fun as beating on a lvl 1 Marmot with a R1 class char for the rest of you FFXIV days.