The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Packetdancer]

That and due to the rewards, the savage tier looks like a continuation of the normal 8 man raids when it is not supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the truth is actually sort of the reverse; the Coils of Bahamut raids were basically what would now be considered savage, but people complained (and admittedly, understandably so) that what was functionally the epilogue to 1.x -- and thus potentially very meaningful story for 1.x players -- was locked behind very difficult content.

Hence why Alexander and onwards have the story for the raid series attached to scaled-down versions of the fights, and then have the actual progression raids be wholly optional content.