Forced to Raid?

[KitKatnip]

Are you originally from WoW or why do you have this kind of opinion? Whats so terrible about raiding?

I've played WoW in the past (WotLK through Cata) and did not care for raiding there. I've also played a lot of other MMOs over the years as well including GW1 and GW2, Rift, Aion, ESO, The Secret World, EverQuest and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

Raiding just stresses me out because it's so time consuming and there are a lot of people involved.

[Vahlnir]

I've played WoW in the past (WotLK through Cata) and did not care for raiding there. I've also played a lot of other MMOs over the years as well including GW1 and GW2, Rift, Aion, ESO, The Secret World, EverQuest and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

Raiding just stresses me out because it's so time consuming and there are a lot of people involved.

In FF XIV, 24 man "raids" are raids in name only. They are basically just bigger dungeons. I wouldn't really call them time consuming either. There's nothing to be concerned about. Seriously.

[TaleraRistain]

I've played WoW in the past (WotLK through Cata) and did not care for raiding there. I've also played a lot of other MMOs over the years as well including GW1 and GW2, Rift, Aion, ESO, The Secret World, EverQuest and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

Raiding just stresses me out because it's so time consuming and there are a lot of people involved.

I totally get you there. I didn't want to dip my feet in here either after being a hardcore back in EQ. But you can't even really call raids here raids like other MMOs. The 24 mans are the closest we come to those 72 people 10+ hour sessions and they're quick, easy, and have good stories. They have you progress through an instance like a dungeon with a handful of bosses so that's more like old school. The normal raids are only 8 mans and they're just a fight in an arena. The difficulty is scaled intended for people to be able to experience the story.

So if you like trials and dungeons, it's really just more of the same. You can easily PUG and the only time anyone really worries about someone being new is closer to launch. But then we're all new and dying all over the place anyway, though some people get butthurt when others don't catch on as quickly. So if you stick to sometime like now where we're waiting for the next expansion, you should get some pretty chill folks just filing in the time or getting their tomestones.

[Erakir]

I've played WoW in the past (WotLK through Cata) and did not care for raiding there. I've also played a lot of other MMOs over the years as well including GW1 and GW2, Rift, Aion, ESO, The Secret World, EverQuest and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

Raiding just stresses me out because it's so time consuming and there are a lot of people involved.

Alongside everyone else, I want to mention that the 8-man raids are also split up per-boss so far as the duty finder is concerned.
It's not like crystal tower or a dungeon where you clear boss 1-4 in the same sitting/same group. You'll queue for boss 1, kill it, leave instance - queue for boss 2, kill it, leave instance, etc.

You can think of them like 4 individual trial fights with story cutscenes between them. There's no similar time commitment like we had in EQ/earlier WoW. If you've got 10-15 minutes, you can do one and hop back into the next boss three days later, and they are not intended to be difficult "know it all or wipe/get kicked" content.

Not to try and force you to do them - but I'd hate for people to miss out because of the term 'raid' from other MMOs and the connotation it generally carries. Binding Coil in ARR is the only one that doesn't follow this formula with easily accessible/low time commitment story versions.