Quote Originally Posted by Renato View Post
WHY would they lock raid fights behind something like this?
Because that's those stage's entire reason for existence, to be difficult? You can argue the existing fights are already easy enough, but that's neither here nor there. The story of the raids is easily accessible to everyone, including the premise for the Savage fights - unlock them, just don't run them. Literally the only piece of content you're locked out on is what the boss looks like, but the only reason why that's even in the game in the first place is to be that difficult.

Hopefully this isn't something SE plans on continuing with.
The only time they deviated from it was in the Coils, where they locked not just any story, but the epilogue to ARR behind Savage-level content. Since then they split the story and harder fights, for a mercy.