Your idea of a challenge.

[Francisco]

Salvage and Einherjar were pretty good in the challenge department... despite some bad drop rate in Salvage and some horrible mob selections (Dark Elementals mostly) in Einherjar.

Limbus was mostly pretty easy. Dynamis wasn't really hard - and I found the old way really boring (too long).

Pandemonium Warden @ 75 was a good challenge, but not an entirely realistic one.

As far as Abyssea goes, Rani and Raja (without brew) are pretty challenging. I like the Alfard fight... it's one of those fights that's either pretty easy (if you know what you're doing) or a total disaster (if you don't have a clue). Dragua was a good fight with four (MNK, NIN, WHM, BLM)...

What I don't think qualifies as a good challenge is when a NM just constantly afflicts you with (an) annoying status effect(s) and outputs ridiculous amounts of damage constantly and you can't do anything about it except have Cure V and VI spammed on you constantly. That's more annoying than it is "challenging". The best example I can think of this is Bukhis. He basically destroys your shadows every 3 seconds, takes your Max HP down, then hits you with powerful 3-4 hit weaponskills. And doesn't stop. Not as hard as Rani, but far more annoying. Also not a huge fan of the "absorbing damage during WS" phase of Glavoid... it's not the idea I'm against, but more how it starts immediately as the NM readies his TP move. Due to the inherit lag between client and server, there's a pretty good chance you're going to have an attack round go off before you manage to turn. And it's always a triple attack proc with two kicks tossed in on MNK. And they're all critical hits...

Also, the best challenge this game ever had (in terms of being realistic and balanced) were the Chains of Promathia missions before they nerfed them into nothingness because too many people complained they were too hard.

I miss the reports coming out with the missions... like for pre-nerf Ouryu... "six of our servers top JP are dead outside the entrance to Monarch Linn" ... only bad thing out of the hard CoP missions were the "broken" teleports in Promyvion (could spend hours trying to go up a floor) and the really crappy trapdoor portion of Pso'xja.

I haven't tried the Khimaria NMs or the Omega Weapon in Uleguerand yet... I hear they are pretty tough.

[Akujima]

heroic raiding in wow: cataclysm

This

What I'd consider a challenge: Something that takes skill, planning, and coordination. If someone messes up, there should be dire consequences. Also, taking a long time to do is not challenging.

And this.

[Korpg]

Something like Einherjar system, except not limited or based on undead-type monsters.

Having a bunch of Bugards beating on you, with a chance of Dolls, Quadavs, and/or Slimes in the next wave could be challenging.

Something that would require a specific set of jobs needed, with specific roles would be great. Like, one wave means you have to beat on one monster in a whole mess of mobs, and you have to defeat that one monster without killing any of the other monsters or you lose (either a penalty or a full ejection), but you can sleep them, or hit them, just can't kill any of the mobs other than the one specific monster needed to kill.

Another thing could be, support a group of NPCs against a wave of Beastmen, kindof like Campaign, except that you can't let any or a lot of the NPCs die, and you can't cure them either. That way, you have to have smaller groups of people kill the Beastmen before the Beastmen kill the NPC.

Stuff like that could be considered challenging. The only problem with that is, with casual playstyle, not a lot of people would do that, not unless there are great rewards that goes along with it. Being limited to 1 fight per day would suck also.

[Akujima]

Grull's Lair -> Lv70 WoW, Burning Crusade Expansion

The perfect example of a well thought out raid, with an excellent level of difficulty.

[Malamasala]

It doesn't matter what is added, someone will figure out the easiest way to beat it, and then everyone will do it, and people will complain it is too easy. They could of course try it another way, but then it wouldn't be the same because they'd make it harder than it should be.

Salvage is a perfect example. Enter with 12, free lot all cells. notice you can't win. Why can't you win? Because it is too hard. So then you just give 3 people all cells, and suddenly, easy mode!

People should stop asking for challenges and just go back and do old content without the easy routes.

[Leonlionheart]

CoP at release, and still somewhat at cap was challenging.

I don't want caps on battles, but it shows that someone working for SE knows how to make fights.

[Akujima]

People should stop asking for challenges and just go back and do old content without the easy routes.

"Easy Routes" should be weeded out while the content is being designed.

[Ravenmore]

CoP missions where never hard for the perfect job set up. Thats what pissed so many off was having to level up 3 or 4 jobs just to do it. Love wasn't hard at 75 unless you didn't know where to fight it. As for salvge what Mal said. You could all ways make thing harder if you wanted to thing is most of the player base didn't like farming pop sets and risking fails. Aggain nothing is hard once a strat is found to work look at kirin there was a time it was the hardest mob in the game. Didn't take long for any group to beat it. Unless SE completly wiped all the game mechics and started over nothing will be hard.

[Leonlionheart]

I haven't tried the Khimaria NMs or the Omega Weapon in Uleguerand yet... I hear they are pretty tough.

Abyssean NMs aren't particularly hard once you know what you're doing. Dhorme Khimaira can be ruined during the 30 seconds of red proc terror, and Apademak just needs a good stunner (BLM/SCH using alacrity and fast cast/haste gear could solo it) or stun rotation. Pankotrator is easy once you know how to not trigger it's 2hour too, although server lag can often cause wipe.

Rani is hard, but can be easy simply because he's predictable. Meteor is the biggest issue, and it uses it every 10% after 50%. You could easily cap out a MNK's HP at that point with afflatus solace and the Meteor would only take the MNK's HP down to 50% or so depending on merits/abyssite. Charm can get you though, and MNK tanking isn't always viable considering en-dispel. Rani is easily the hardest of the new age bosses.

Raja is pretty easy too in the end. I don't remember the fight much because it was so long ago, but I never died in the entire fight as MNK, and rarely ever lost hate (enmity douse and a good accomplice helped).

...

However in the end no challenge that SE can make will enevitably be hard unless the NM has something that goes through perfect defense, because you can always have 2~6 SMNs astral flow -> perfect defense a DD party and totally zerg something.

[Akujima]

However in the end no challenge that SE can make will enevitably be hard unless the NM has something that goes through perfect defense, because you can always have 2~6 SMNs astral flow -> perfect defense a DD party and totally zerg something.

Which is where SE has the crazy idea that Nerfing things is wrong.