More Horizontal Progression please

[Velhart]

snip

Exactly, people should be asking for multiple forms of hard content, not ways to create longevity through mindless grinds. To be fair to developers, they only have but so much time to put into making content before patch dates. I would suggest balancing content in other places. Like I said in a previous post, making Alex(Normal) on Final Coil level and Alex(Savage) harder than it currently is a good start. Going more in depth with treasure maps, do ZNM content like you mentioned, make EX Primals more challenging, and so on.

Was really awesome how 2.0 handled the ilvl80 relic weapon quest. Involving hard(at the time) boss fights like Chimera and Hydra. Then having you fight Ifrit > Garuda > Titan during their prime to get items. Sure some padding, but it was well paced and not that frustrating and took a good while to obtain. Now developers think all you should do now is slam your head on a rock till you get an item to progress.

There is a major imbalance in this game right now. Everything up to Alex(Savage) is faceroll easy, and makes content boring because everyone has beaten everything else to death at this point. 3.1 will come, people will faceroll Void Ark and the next EX primal and be back here complaining they are bored again. It still disappoints me that we have to make end game content so ridiculously easy except one piece of content. People and developers should go into the mindset end game that if they cannot handle what is given to them, then they need to wait till the next patch to get it nerfed. I am likely the unpopular opinion on that, but I don't recall people playing video games to have everything handed to them, people play them to be challenged. That is why I think things like a ridiculously easy Alex(Normal) is terrible game design and can't believe developers catered to the people who don't want to be challenged.

It is understandable everyone is at their own skill levels and all should be catered to a certain extent, but as we have it right now is horribly balanced towards people not wanting to put the effort. The content should be hard in it's prime, then worked down to be easier over time with higher gear and echo buffs/nerfs when they are no longer in their prime.