Player Drop Off and Accessibility/Diffculty

[aiqa]

The intent of that design is so people doing it when it's brand new get a bit more challenge, while players who get it in alliance roulette years from now will have a relatively painless experience (since a critical mass of players will know the fight and everyone's gear will be synced to well above the content's ilevel). I do wish the interesting mechanics happened earlier in the fights, and I think the FFXI raids have been trying to compromise on that, but yes they are spicier when players aren't as good.

I'm a weirdo who thinks alliance raids are the most fun when they turn into mass casualty events though

That might be the intent, but it doesn't work like that. If you have a bunch of savage geared players from the same time where the alliance raid was released, the team can already easily skip those mechanics. Or when people get one tier higher tome/crafted gear than when the alliance raid was released. Or even if you just have a group of mostly good players with contemporary tome gear/crafted gear.

If they want the most recent alliance raids to be a challenge, they need to restrict ilevel far tighter, and even then place the tricky mechanics a bit earlier in the fight. And they can loosen the ilevel cap when they want players to start skipping things in later patches.