Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
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I entirely reject this line of thinking. This is the mentality that made Chains of Promathia and later expansions in XI much less impactful than they should have been. Locking people out of expansion story content through "challenging" (read: static-only) content is the absolute last thing the devs should even ponder. That 95% of players in your example are more likely to wait for content they can do and for SE to eventually dial back the difficulty of said story content. The clear rate of CoP was abysmal for years and many players simply abandoned all hope of finishing the story, if they even bothered with Promyvion. There's no way in the world Team Yoshi should even consider making 4.0 content as difficult as that just so a small number of people can strut around like peafowl.

Weeping City was challenging without being cheap (i.e. one-hit KO mechanics that can't be stopped or mitigated, AoE attacks that take up 90% of the field and go off in <1.5 seconds) or unforgiving to the point of frustration. If certain posters had their way, this raid would be nigh-on unplayable by anyone who doesn't have cat-like reflexes and a DARPA-grade internet connection. If SE takes Weeping City as a template for future endgame content, I'd be more than satisfied.