Quote Originally Posted by Gormogon View Post
Personally it boils down to.

A.) Those that want content to be joyful.
B.) Those that want content to be exclusive.
Having content be difficult has nothing to do with being exclusive. Some people have fun overcoming something as a team. My most memorable and satisfying moment in any MMO was when my raid took almost 3 weeks to learn a fight, at 2-3 nights/week of attempts on that boss (Lady Vashj from WoW). Completing the fight not only put our skills to the test, it forced us to learn to work together, trust each other, and how to organize our strategies for each players strengths. After clearing that fight future fights were all much easier and quicker to learn partially because of the group cohesion we built up during that incredibly difficult fight.

Keeping a certain level of difficulty on content does also have the benefit of giving the game a smoother difficulty curve. If T4 was a bit more difficult, and T2 couldn't be done enrage method, then Coil pt.1 would have a very steady difficulty curve and T5 would not have been nearly the culture shock that it is.

Providing content to cater to players who like overcoming challenges is not a bad thing, and making it easier as time goes on to make it more accessible is not a bad either. SE is doing everything they can to balance their demographics with not only the content easing, but also alternate paths to gear of almost equal quality such as Novus and Crystal Tower.

Whether your a hardcore player who has cleared everything, or a more casual player who is stuck on a fight waiting for the next round of CT/Echo, its a slow process and takes patience.