I think the point for such a challenge is basically rather meaningless due to the tiny little fact that it's how they want it to be so there's nothing for them to prove, really. Not getting up there is how it should be, you see?

Dynamic- I mean Random battlefield == Fun.
Random + Time-sink == Challenge.
Put those all together and we get Balance!

Seriously, I will never understand such fondness for random and luck based progression.
It's not fun, that is all.

Obviously there is a need for time-sink, for people to stay playing but the way it's mostly done in FFXI is in my humble opinion wrong, so this is nothing new, but I would have expected the new things to learn from the old, and not make them worse and now I'm starting to into rambling_mode, saying things said a thousand times to no avail so I'll just stop wasting my time now. ^^;