Ok...let me level with you here SE...

[Dekusuta]

Perhaps SE does not understand the implications/cultural differences of people's ways of thinking.

To elaborate.

Before dynamis changes:
500k-1mil gil fee for the hourglass. Before you could justify/rationalize the help of 18+ people because if not for the funder to pay for the hourglass, the runs might not happen. So you could justify they getting all the currency. Granted yes this is not the way SE intended. Their vision was that every player contribute gil for the cost of the hourglass. The reality of it was that players did not want to do this way, at least in the North American region(as far as I can tell). This is why large dynamis shells existed.

After dynamis changes:
Dynamis is now accessible to anyone that can pay the one time fee of 50k. With this the player mindset has changed, because of this large dynamis shells have basically died. It's now all lowman, small groups. In the players mindset there is no justification of helping out and teaming up so 1 person can get an item.

So basically SE, IMO, brought this series of events on themselves. Because of the changes it only points to lowman groups for the North American/EU region. I believe the issue comes from cultural/upbringing differences between Japan and America/EU. That the Japanese players are more likely to team up vs the America/EU.

Granted now I'm only generalizing and stating my opinion. I for one continue to do dynamis to help those that helped me achieve relic from the days that required you to buy hourglasses. I do dynamis for basically nothing but to help those others that helped me get currency. I know not many share this way of thinking/loyalty but there probably are some out there that do have it.

I for one think that yes the final trial for relic should deal with something about teaming up. The way I've always viewed dynamis as a group of people teaming up for a singular effort. The more that stay with the group the more could complete relic in time. Back in the days of fee dynamis, I calculated with the appropriate numbers to kill we could complete a relic every 7 months. So "Ideally" yes, the final relic upgrade should have a team up aspect. Realistically though, with the way the game is now I don't really see it happening.

Too much cultural relativism. Japanese players do benefit from all being in the same timezone, but the the NA players had no problem fielding large teams back 3-4 years ago, some still do. But as a rule, most groups are smaller and play less now, and the differing time zones have narrowed the window of large groups playing together to a few hours a day, or even only on weekends now.

The fact of the matter is, the game has changed. People who started playing in 2004-2006 in school or university, graduated, got jobs, got married, had children. Or want to take it easy.

That is pretty much 90% of the message in this thread. Trying to rationalize SE's decisions with cultural relativity does the NA and EU community a disservice. Even assuming the premise you put forward is 100% true, which I don't think it is, We're not any less of a human being as consumers, just because the devs in Japan decided to make events that wouldn't suit us.

I do agree with you that the updates in the past 2 years have pointed towards a very different kind of game and for them to suddenly pull back and say 'oh by the way, you need to do 1,000 of these kills for 1 person's benefit' is callous. That I agree with you. They set themselves up for failure there.

At the end of the day, this game has a global audience and an aging one. SE appears to have not considered all the consequences and I'd hate for them to reconsider it by shaving off 10% off the trial requirements. That would be the worst case.

We need to push for a rethink