There's a difference between wanting something to require relative effort for a relatively long period of time, and wanting something to require wrestling the seemingly sadistic workings of FFXI's Random Number Generator for a random period of time that may be forever.

Similarly, few people who want the former are huge fans of the latter. Check out threads about the Voidwatch item distribution thread for proof of that. Actually, I'm sure no small number of people would like the fights themselves to be more difficult but the item distribution system to make sense.

Lumping every kind of time or effort together isn't a good idea, and neither is lumping together everyone who wants stuff to require sizable time or effort.