My suggestion for 4.0 raiding, coming from a seasoned raider.

[Pyroclastic]

There are multiple reasons why raiding is unpopulair currently. Most of them (ilvl balance, difficulty) are getting fixed in the upcoming 3.2 patch.
But another reason why it's unpopulair is because of the lack of "lore rewards".

In 2.x coils we not only had gear as a reward, but also cool new cutscenes and another step forward into the story. This gave us a sense of mystery and accomplishment.

"What's going to happen in the next episode of FFXIV *insert raid here*? Stay tuned, untill the next bosskill!"

This whole reward system is now completely destroyed by the presence of Alex normal. It's handed to everyone on a silver platter atm, with zero effort required. (you can go afk and still clear it, literally.)

Now I do think a casual raid difficulty that you can do in DF 90 % of the time is great. However, what I personally would suggest is the following:

Make sure to not release both the normal and savage version of the same tier in 1 patch.



To take current alex as an example:

3.05: Release of Alex Savage Tier 1 (Gordias)

3.1: Release of Alex Normal Tier 1 (Gordias)

3.2: Release of Alex Savage Tier 2 (Midas)

3.3: Release of Alex Normal Tier 2 (Midas)

3.4: Release of Alex Savage Tier 3

3.5: Release of Alex Normal Tier 3



This, I think, will have multiple advantages:

1: Reduces burn-out (by not fighting the same bosses with different difficulties in the same patch).

2: This won't "spoil" 70% of the mechanics for Savage.

3: Gives mid-core and hard-core players that mysterious feeling back (we spent 2 weeks training on this boss and we FINALLY get to see the next cutscene + see what's next up in the next floor! Yaaay!!), instead of that feeling being destroyed by the story being handed to us on a silver platter.

4: Still gives the casual players who don't have time to dedicate multiple evenings per week to a static, a chance to see the story, just in a later patch.


Sidenote: Obviously 2 completely different raids in 2 different places with 8 different bosses, with 1 being "normal difficulty" and the other being "Savage difficulty", would be best case scenario, but this doesn't seem to be an option cause of the limited time the devs have.