It should be an option. Plain and simple. If you have a team of friends to do this with, more power to you. For those of us who do not have such readily available friends, we are effectively locked out of the raid content. This can only be a bad move for the longevity of the game's player retention. People have varied play times, and play styles. You can call it catering to casuals if you like, but I like to think of it as inclusion. Bungie should WANT as many players as possible experiencing their content. Don't make the mistake of many MMORPG's, and lock out the raid content to a tiny percentage of the playerbase - especially for those of us who are really not interested in the PVP end game.