Quote Originally Posted by Demon6324236 View Post
As for this argument...Not really, thats exactly what the OP made the idea sound like for the "hardcore" difficulty, that cruor buffs, atma, atmacite, Abyssite, and temp items, would be unavailable to the player. This simply means, don't use them, and ta da, you got what you asked for.
Wrong, it's not what we asked for and it's not the same. We want to be able to use the tools SE gives us. That's what the entire game is about. We want content tailored to us, not tailor ourselves to the content. SE is designing the game.

Harder gameplay should also be rewarded adequately. There should be an incentive to do so. Soloing NMs in Abyssea is fun, don't get me wrong. I even do so myself on THF and SMN. But it's definitely not the same. I get nothing out of it and I have no reason to do it other than boredom. That's what SE could (and should) do about it. Actually challenging content, that requires us to use whatever we have available to beat it. Not limiting ourselves artificially by allowing/disallowing what we can or can't do.