Raiders, why do you raid? None riders, why not?

[Glenfiddich]

I don't raid because of the annoying RNG. I've read about players never getting their chest piece or weapon. And I for myself had similar experiences, too.

[RikkuNox]

I was a Raider once.. but I wouldn't do it anymore, because I go work five days a week and I am never be home before 5/6pm.
And I love going out at weekends with friends and doing things in rl.
Raid costs a lot of time.. its almost scary..
Well, thats my experience with raid. The time I raided I stayed home all we and it wasn't even hardcore raiding.
When I think about that I am just shocked.
Also I almost lost a dear friend because of raiding and the lack of time.
Now I am happy I won't do it anymore. Just casuel playing and enjoying it when I have the time and want it

[Kitfox]

It's because raiding can be considered as serious business by most players and always brings endless drama to the players inside and outside the static group themself.

Raiding is what you make out of it, and endless drama is definitely an exaggeration. Virtually none of this is true for my group, all of those points are signs of bad leadership.

A raiding group has to be founded on a common goal or mindset. It's virtually impossible for everyone "to do whatever they want", because that's going to cause friction between members with different goals, aka drama. That being said, as long as people agree on the ideology of the group, you can be casual or hardcore or anything in between, everyone just has to be on the same page.

The more casual and vague people are about setting up the group, the more problems and drama it's going to cause down the line, maybe that's why it seems like being casual is not an option. The more clear and elaborate the rules and expectations are, the easier it is to approach everything with a rational mind. The rules can be made out to be as casual as people want, like only raid once a week for 2 hours, but everyone should be dead serious when negotiating with the group and then properly hold on to the agreements. That is really the only way for a group to function in long term, casual or hardcore alike.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about raiding is to figure out what exactly it is that you yourself want out of your time. Once you figure that out, the rest is just about finding or establishing a group that matches your preferences.

[Iromi]

I used to raid in 1.x (sr5c) and then in 2.x, my fc did all the coil raids and it was so much fun...but quickly we realized how the gear goes obsolete way too fast and the reward for the effort and time put in..its just not worth it. Also not a fan of team jump rope, one shot mechanics and lock outs.

Also not a fan of how its just bosses in a square or circular room. There is no interesting zones to fight in along with ugly gear rewards and stats are meaningless...there is no true "need" for raid gear. I can clear all content easily with other gear so I just don't care anymore :/

[Silica-chan]

I don't raid for a few reasons.
- I'm not patient enough and get mad really fast
- Raids feel like bashing your face against a wall for hours until you break it....just to get to the next one to repeat the process all over again
- I don't like stuff where I have to rely on 7 other people to do everything pixel perfect just as they have to rely on me to do so aswell. Don't get me wrong I'm not scared of stuff like that but I prefer doing that alone
- I dislike coming home having to play a certain game/content because of shedule. I prefer to come home after work and pick a game I feel like playing or do something with my psn/xbl friends
- There is no real incentive for me to do them
- I'm mostly not skilled enough to perform the necessary button inputs to overcome them
- I have yet to find people that may make this fun, though after the Thordan Ex disaster I highly doubt I could ever be motivated to give raids/ex trials a chance again

[Voltyblast]

My first reason for not raiding is that my server is american but I'm european, so times are making it hard for me to join a static. I could find an european static but I'm not done with the reasons.

The second reason is that I dislike FFXIV raids because they have only two mechanics: OHKO and dps racing. I raided in other games and only few matches were pure dps races, while the others were all about "proper positioning" and such. OHKO were also present but you usually have more than 8 people with you (usually 10 or at least 20) and even if someone dies you can still recover. I never felt this in any encounter in this game, resulting in a "domino effect".

I raided coil and it wasn't fun at all and while some fights weren't heavily about dps races, OHKO just turns me off for generally being a cheap difficulty spike.

And my third reason is...why even raid when I can get the best gear in the game for free every week? Yeah not all are BiS but it's still higher stats than a 260 gear!

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I only raid for fun. I didnt do much alexander since i didnt really find the fights fun. Coil waa great, and hopefully omega will be good.

[Gemina]

There's a lot of reasons why I don't raid, and the difficulty isn't on the list.

- I'm not level 60, nor anywhere near the required iLv to participate in relevant raids
- Refuse to run older raids unsynced
- I am too much of a butterfly to commit to progression raids. I like my freedom to do what I want, and go where I want as I please
- I have so much other stuff going on: Maxing out beast tribes, progressing through 3.0, and crafting/gathering activities take up the time I do have to put in.
- BiS gear is not important to me.

All that said, I'm not opposed to endgame. I just have to get there first. As in other MMOs I have played, I do raids solely to test my own ability and lose interest after the clear. Repeating them is more to help others at that point.

[Mirateski]

I raid because I enjoy the challenge. I'm hella casual, though. I wanted to get into raiding in midas but only caught up gearwise in the catchup patch, and nobody wanted tanks. Raid finder was a lifesaver until my fc/friends list got big enough to put a group together (even if some of them are always late. grgr)

I enjoy challenges though, I wanted to clear all the lv50 primals synched and I was interested in doing coils synched, too, but I'm a tank and I have the MAD tanxiety. It feels like if you go into anything hard and something goes wrong, people always blame the tanks... and so I get nervous and actually do mess up, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It annoyed me that I felt like I HAD to raid in this patch as a tank though, because the shire gear was a pile of piss. But I didn't clear the tier anyway so I suppose it doesn't matter.

tl;dr I do raid but I may as well not raid because I never got past a10 orz

[Elim]

"pls this game too ez"

Lets be real, raiding is easy on this game. Raids in this game are mostly memory and DPS checks(barring the latest set). Most— not all—savage floors have been (almost completely) solo healable, even on day one of release. I think the only time I felt truly challenged as a healer in this game was back in T1-T5 when I was in darklight and not comfortable with the game yet.

I honestly miss SWTOR raiding where I felt like a real healer, not a DPS healer hybrid, but the SWTOR dev team stopped creating raids for over two years and my whole group moved here. I'm NOT saying I don't like FF14 raiding btw, I just wish healing was challenging in this game.

Anyway, I raid because I enjoy hanging with my friends and it's something to do. Back in SWTOR my raid group competed for server firsts, but in this game my raid group is casual.