Challenges and balancing

First, let me just say I love the game and still have high hopes for it, but ultimately I have a problem with the challenges presented in it and feel they should be mentioned at least once now that we have this open line of communication.

I'll use the guildleve system as an example. Just about any leve can be done with incredible ease at 1-3 stars and you would be finishing at about half of the allotted time or less, depending on if you're doing one of those leves that require you to gather items/pages. No one would come close to death, and enemies die within a matter of seconds. Now, lets say that leve has you fighting imps and you decide to up the difficulty to 4-5 stars ... now the playing field is more leveled with their increased HP/ATK/DEF and you start to have a fun but you'll quickly realize trying to do this leve at that difficulty is pointless. Why? Impish Incantations. It appears that no matter how much you buff your party, or if your HP is full or not, you'll bite the dust. And they use this move frequently. Imps aren't the only mob class with this one-shot party killer, either.

Now I'm not saying they should super nerf these things to easy mode, but at least make them more manageable. A GLAD or MRD at full HP shouldn't die to this unless maybe they had no buffs, but for them to come near death is totally agreeable granted they are the appropriate level. Mages and other light-armored classes obviously would probably still die from this. I don't quite remember it well but I think the radius of these abilities were a bit too far, too.

Mobs in general should be more difficult. I seriously applaud them for being able to offer the casual audience things to participate in at any given time, but it just seems that the casual audience is -all- they are focused on right now. For each mob/quest/leve that can be done with one or two people, why can't there be something added for the people who like to party and challenge their playing skills within a group? I miss the strategy that was required in XI, from regular XP parties to the endgame activities.

Lastly, the current NMs in the game don't look -that- challenging either. Granted, I'm not rank 50 yet to experience them myself, but from watching the videos of them, there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency. It just looks like a more drawn-out battle that requires just a little more teamwork than the average beast. Maybe it's just that they are there to get our feet wet, or you just gotta be there and feel it for yourself, I dunno, but it doesn't give me the chills like I'd expect it to.

Sorry for the rant, if it seems that way lol. T_T; go easy on me!

The game is way too easy in general.

The NMs are jokes. Stupid LSs take like 30 people to do something that could be done with 6.

I think was SE was doing though is just making the game easy for the casual people to build a bigger player base before they release anything important.

Obviously the level cap will go up sooner or later. I feel the NMs right now are just a taste of what's to come to tide people over.