Catering to the Majority

[Feln]

could you please cite something in XI wich you thought was hard? all i seem recall was 5 minute fafs 30 second kirins and 10 minute tias, or maybe you mean getting goldsmithing or clothcraft to 100

Hmm. Just off the top of my head, and this is before everything was watered down -

Riverne sites. Both of them. Difficult to get through, even with a full party.
Promyvions. Did you do those?
Uncapped Avatar fights.
Red Mage head piece quest.
That big undead thing you fight in the woods outside of The Boyada Tree, for the Zilart Missions.
High-Tier BC/KSNMs. Even some of the low-tier ones were pretty easy to get destroyed by, with a single mistake.
Divine Might.
Sky/Sea gods.
Motherf*cking Ouryu in "The Savage".
The Three Mithra fight.
Omega/Ultima in "One to Be Feared.
Certain bosses with pieces of equipment that really shone for their level bracket - Simurgh(Trotter Boots), Kreutzet(Sirocco Kukri), Amikiri(Kamewari. Seriously, f*ck this guy.), That manta thing(Joyeuse. F*ck this guy too.).. Seriously, I could go on.
WSNMs.
Dynamis.

All of this, all of these things were things you needed team and coordination for. Advanced coordination, since everything wasn't so easily read. There weren't giant red circles or cast bars. You had to pay attention, know your distances, be fast on that stun with little to no tells for certain abilities that could potentially crush/cripple your efforts.

Seriously, if you didn't play back before the level cap increase and difficulty decrease, you don't know what a challenge the game -used- to be. Even with groups that knew everything a certain boss/mob could do, there was the element of randomness/surprise that kept you watching every corner of your screen. There were extremely punishing ends to small mistakes, which really separated the bad from the good, and then again separated the good from the great. It took a long time to accomplish grand goals, and it brought together long lasting communities within a communities. That challenge created heroes and leaders; ones that you would look forward to watching in action, or follow on youtube to see what amazing things they could pull off with their extreme amount of knowledge, luck, and personal dexterity.

I'm getting off topic here.

That all said, this game is it's own game, and I do like it for what it is. It's just not at that epic standard. Not yet, anyway. For all we know, it may turn around and surprise the hell out of us with some crazy content that gives me the rush that XI did in my earlier days of gaming. SE is wholly capable of it, and even though it's not that likely to occur, I'll keep my fingers crossed.