Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
What exactly was difficult about XI's Relics?
At their peak Relics in XI required a few difficult fights and even DD (DPS) checks for certain NM fights, e.g the Ram, Yin/Yang (and by extension, Dynamis Lord) and your respective Animated Weapon/Shield fight. Remember XI also had a significantly different battle system (less face roll same 1/2/3 rotation) I'll just assume you did relics long after they became the norm when SE nerfed every step outside of reducing the currency needed.

heck Chimera was harder than anything XI threw at me...
This is why I make assumption. Especially if you take into consideration how Mythics required you to master many of the ground kings in ToAU and Einherjar content. Especially at their peaks before SE made the game much easier. Empyreans as well has pretty challenging fights at the peak of their introduction that later became cake walk.

though a large part of that was just because of lockouts (which are purely artificial)..
Welcome to FFXIV's end-game structure - It's easy to try to downplay FFXI when XIV isn't any better.

XI in general was only challenging if you wanted it to be, since you didn't have strict event requirements and could solo/lowman if you wanted.
This is incorrect if we're talking about the same FFXI. The XI you're probably talking about is 80-99 cap XI, when they made so many adjustments that allowed lowman/solo of most end-game content because back at 75 cap, the most you could 'solo/lowman' was Salvage, and that was if you were at the top of your game.