Only one crucial thing you're missing: that's content which isn't cleared with your linkshell but with random people. Random people will always want X of this and Y of that, to make sure their alliance performs as well as it can under the premise that you get a bunch of complete strangers under one leadership to kill a somewhat challenging NM.
However, it's very different when you do it with your own LS. I'm not talking about HNMLS, I'm talking about your everyday casual linkshell. Friends and family. People who will want to play with you regardless of gear. And yes, I cannot disagree that if absolutely everyone in that LS sucks then they will have problems completing that content. But if even one person is skilled in the bunch they can help the others out. They can educate them and show them what to do. And unless you found a group of ~20 completely ignorant and slow people, then you'll get better as a group. I know this because I've been through it more than once. Four times, to be precise. In my very first linkshell, in my second and longest lasting linkshell, in my Dynamis linkshell (which was a very good example of that) and in my current linkshell again.
And from the hundreds of random people I've played with and helped with and tried to teach about the game, even despite meeting some sad displays of lack of mental direction, I've still seen them move ahead and most of them got to participate in events, either with us or other people.
So you complain that someone who doesn't want to invest time in easy to obtain items won't get hard to obtain items?
So you rather mindlessly grind for months with some idle chatter along the way? Personally I don't see the benefit, but to each their own. I don't think this applies to the majority though. The casual people I know who do relics prefer to get them over with as soon as they can. The others are usually not bothered enough to even try seriously and just take it on a case-by-case basis. There's hardly any middle ground.
(Oh and you can still FC with a linkshell. We also did that for many people in our LS.)
Those factors already limit them, and they always will, in any game ever.
I never really argued your opinion and I don't intend to. Most of what you say is dead on. You just seem to think I want content like Legion v5, that absolutely no one except the absolutely most hardcore people are able to clear. Which is not the case. I want reasonably hard content. Content that is challenging yet not out of reach for anyone.
I specifically mentioned both of these things, twice. I said I was happy with the game as it is, if it wasn't I wouldn't be playing. Neo-Einherjar and Legion are great additions. The only reason I'm not doing them with my casual shell is not that I don't wanna try it, but because people were less and less interested and I couldn't muster up the people to actually do the events. It was a simple manpower requirement we couldn't match.
Which is why, in my previous post, I said that I'd approve of a scaling mechanism. Something that scales in difficulty with the number of people you bring. That would definitely bring my LS up to that content as well. Sadly though, I don't believe SE can pull that off with any reasonable result.
I'm not sure why any of this comes as a shock to you, this is nothing new. I said all of that in previous posts.
I also said that I don't know the OP or his motivations, and I'm not agreeing with him, I just found his proposal interesting. And I didn't (and still don't) read what you do into his posts. Sure, some of his posts seem a bit overly aggressive, but I'm willing to attribute that to being provoked by mindlessly insulting replies of certain ignorant parties on the other end of the spectrum.
As I said above, that's the VW mentality. Shout groups of complete strangers. They don't know you, so they don't know how you perform. Having a relic or empyrean does not guarantee you performing well, but it does indicate that you're invested in your job which increases the likelihood that you're a better player. That's why they're asking for those things. This does not apply to a social linkshell, and I do believe that that content should be able to be cleared by social players with practice and patience.
I can tell you why. Because she was in my previous linkshell and is in my current one and she can confirm what I said. Casual people are able to clear hard content if they don't approach it alone. I told you we had almost exclusively casual players (we didn't have any relic players until the end of the 75 era, when one of us got it). Yet we cleared almost everything level 75 had to offer (except HNM, which we didn't even attempt due to competition and spawn hours), with the aforementioned casuals. We did all Dynamis zones, killed everything in sea (except AV) and sky, every ZNM (except PW), Limbus all the time and had several smaller statics for Assaults, Nyzul and Salvage runs. And I know of plenty other linkshells who did similar things.
You must be really desperate to grasp at straws like that. You'd take any excuse to invalidate our opinions, wouldn't you? Not that it would invalidate them if she was any of that, but I know you'd like to think so. Sadly, I can't find an equally convenient explanation for your lack of logical comprehension.
All she's done is give you an example of exactly what I meant. But it seems you don't deal well with criticism.