Amusingly one of my LS contacts did quit FFXI purely because he could not beat Maat and everyone else left him behind. It was funny because he was pretty terrible at the game (constantly AFK during fights, which was actually really punishing to everyone else) but he never ragequit from us telling him, only giving up when the game itself told him to try harder.

If I could beat Maat (I did) then it's not cripplingly difficult. Just nicely challenging.

I think a trial like this can easily be balanced to be challenging. But I don't think we need the artificial level cap restriction; it can be handled through regular job quests. Just make some really sexy AF gear and/or abilities locked behind really punishing quests, to give us all something to work on instead of crushing the job quests without even noticing and collecting our rewards.