The game developers of FFXIV have always been very careful about balancing the difficulty of a fight with the people going up against it. They don't want to make the fight so hard that no one can beat it, but they do want to make fights challenging enough where it takes a lot of time, energy, and gear upgrades to easily win (for the average player of course). There is always a balance between fight difficulty and the capability of those facing it. Until now...
This was recently posted as part of a response to people asking if more random elements would be added to difficult fights: Also, we haven’t announced this yet, but we’re thinking to try something else new in patch 2.3. We’re considering preparing a ridiculously high difficulty encounter where the reward would only be a title. This would be at a level that the development team might not even be able to beat, and we’re interested to see what kind of players will rise to the challenge. We’re preparing “Something-Something Extreme,” but it may not be ready in time. The rewards will be the same that you would normally receive, except for the special title. Reference: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...98#post2159098
I am incredibly intrigued and excited by this idea. Adding a fight that is ridiculously hard would give people 'something to do' who have already conquered all the other content there is to conquer (perhaps we would see less posts on the forums from people who literally log in to do coil every week and then log out?). Plus, players who do not have the time or care to conquer this encounter will NOT be at a disadvantage because this fight will not drop any sort of gear. All you will get is a title for 'bragging' rights.
I believe this is a GOOD direction, and I fully support it. I would love to beat my head against this new encounter for hours and hours. How does the rest of the community feel about it? I assume there will be some mixed responses. In the future, I wonder if SE will consider adding purely aesthetic gear for encounters like this (that can be glamoured -- such as gear that mimics a primal's element), although that might be swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. I don't want people to feel left out, and any drops could cause some turmoil among the community because the fight would be literally designed to ONLY be beaten by a very small percentage of players. A title, though, would be okay in my opinion... especially with the new upcoming feature to have a title next to your name.