What happened to this game's challenge?

[Afania]

I knew this was going to happen. You can never say "this is challenging" without someone saying "lol no it's easy". That's been how the game has been forever.

1) New endgame activity is introduced. It is thought to be challenging.

2) Organized and skilled linkshells figure out how to clear it, develop a strategy, and clear it regularly.

3) The endgame activity is declared "not challenging" and usually people start to prefix "lol" to it.

I very distinctly remember this happening with Vrtra, Jailer of Love, and Dynamis Lord back in the old days.

Challenging doesn't mean "it's very difficult for people to do this". Challenging means "you can't take a random assemblage of strangers from /yell and mow it down effortlessly". I gave up on Delve when more pickup groups failed than succeeded. People scoff at how easy Tojil is, but every Tojil I've done seems to fall apart the second he gets off a single AOE attack.

See, you said that these things are not challenging because you have an easy time with linkshell associates and friends. I don't think you realize what a big condition that is. Non-challenging to me means that you can just take any group of people in moderately good starter gear and any combination of jobs and just do stuff without breaking a sweat. Like last week when I killed jailers in Al'Taieu for the Records of Eminence objectives (the higher tier ones including Jailer of Love and Absolute Virtue). I took 7 people, told them to come as whatever they wanted, didn't care about gear, and we still mowed stuff down effortlessly.

Well, obviously easy/hard is subjective and relative to other contents. However in my statement I did said easy/hard is based on comparison between current events and previous events.

Certain events such as Ein T3 or legion used to need an organized endgame ls, current delve and incursion can be done with PUG, fact.

I've done delve and incursion with PUG many times, I can't do the same with Legion/Ein nor most lv 75 endgame event such as salvage, fact.....and yes you can totally do delve with PUG if you 1) gear and experience check 2) explain the stragegy better. Most PUG fail to do so, that's why they fail.

I'd say current delve is still slightly easier lv 75 era endgame events, and incursion almost has no difficulty until you set a goal like "kill all NM on lv 135!" or something.

[Dale]

Doh and Woh Gates have higher level monsters for you to challenge. You may be able to solo Woh Gates monsters, but it would be comparable to most IT monsters at level 75.

I checked out those areas and you were right and I finally found some monsters that weren't easy prey.

It's just strange to me that there is no in-between. Everything seems to be easy prey or very/incredibly tough. Why no decent, even, or toughs anymore?

Luckily this game has trusts now (which is one of the cooler additions) so I have been able to manage the very/incredibly toughs even when solo. Thanks for pointing me to them. Appreciate it.

It's nice to fight something that actually makes me want to use my spells so I can get some skill ups, rather enemies I can auto attack to death while in the rest room.

[Dale]

Honest question, why?

I personally always hated when areas were full of IT++s, it just fostered the behavior of sneak/invising through an area. That was far more boring of an exploration than everything being EP-T, which only happens once you've got some decent ilvl gear.

Everything I've seen so far has been incredibly easy or easy except for two zones where I have found very toughs. And I wasn't asking for the entire zones to be filled with IT++s. I was just trying to find something that wasn't easy prey. And I had to really look for them to find them.

And it's easy to get spark gear. So I think the game needs to be balanced with that in mind.