Seriously devs - the balance

[Chriscoffey]

You have to add and change features of classes peroidcally or things get stale. This means old challenges get easier and room is made for new challenges. If you leave the old challenges hard, it gets harder and harder for newer players to play catch up. Part of the reason newer players can get into things and be up with us so quickly is they don't have to spend as much time on the older stuff. It's good for the existing players too because they get fresh blood infused more quickly. Basically, leaving everything like the good old days means things just get boring. Of course, not everything has to be changed, nor does it all have to be changed constantly.

By the way, the famous HNMs were never all that hard. The only real challenge was beating claim bots to the punch. The monsters themselves have not changed (much), we've simply gotten higher levels and new abilities that make them easier. In exchange, we get new stuff to challenge us. That's just how most MMOs work. Your "underlying problem" isn't really the underlying problem. The real problem is when we don't get new challenges or those challenges are too inaccessible or not rewarding enough to get enough of a following (e.g. voidwatch).

I think you would be incorrect in your comparison to say jobs (I.E. warrior/samurai) of 03 is anything even remotely close to those of today with all the changes. This in turn made the HNM a harder challenge in itself because they were never really adjusted other than rage mode for all those years. The wyrms were always causing problems with people on all levels of playing unless you had the best teamwork available before.

I agree with you on some points but if there wasn't a huge difference in educating how one plays to say they are "easy" then you shouldn't have had people still taking an hour to beat "easy" mobs like Fafnir before abyssea came out. I just don't agree that people who complain from that group determine what "end game" is for someone like me who did FFXI end game with ease and wanted an update to this. I saw no reason for the ones taking longer to beat mobs not to "learn" to be more efficient in a team like the rest of us did so they could be more effective in a group alliance.

I am not stipulating there should be no updates and we are fighting the same HNM for years and years with stagnation occuring. I am saying that as far as a challenge goes they got progressively easier to the point that they weren't anything close to something i would consider end game anymore. There wasn't anything really added after to give a fresh outlook on the end game scene either other than Einherjar/Salvage. I did enjoy Einherjar before it was crapped on with new content.