Quote Originally Posted by Cilia View Post
If you make it too difficult you're going to alienate and fail to draw in people who primarily (or only) care about the story. An MMO is different from single player games, in the sense that MMOs require other people to also be good at the game. If other people aren't good (and let's be honest, encountering somebody who's not paying attention or just not good at their job in game is inevitable) you're going to have a hard time clearing content. You have to depend on other people, rather than your own skill (or luck, or patience grinding).

MMOs are different beasts. Even XI, which was / is an old-school MMO with the more grind-heavy mindset that was common of it's time, requires other people to "git gud" for you to have fun. There's a reason that game design went the way of the dodo.
Some people argue that if the game increases in challenge (for the MSQ content that is), it will increase the skill of players and motivate them to do and play better, thus also promoting an increased challenge in future content as well. I have no idea how convincing of an argument that is, or how logical and true it is.

I do think there are just some dungeon bosses that miss the mark completely. Aitascope wall-to-wall pulls are more challenging and deadly than any of the dungeon bosses, sans maybe having a full team of newbies against Amon who don't know to hide behind Shiva's ice. And the second boss from Vanaspati is an absolutely joke and a half, as is the first boss from Ktisis. Tower of Babil is not even worth mentioning (outside of Anima's '' follow the target '' attack that always seems to kill a healer).

But then I think there are some great boss designs each expansions as well, EW included. Tower of Zot is quite excellent, and the last boss is lovely and engaging. Granted they don't hit like a truck so you are given the opportunity to fail while dodging their AoE spam, but still, it's fun and feels rewarding when you don't get hit at all. Ra'La on the other hand has pretty easy to dodge mechanics, but if you get even one vuln stack, you are almost as good as dead because Ra'La hits like a truck with everything, especially the team wide, so there is little room for error. The entire Dead Ends is just well executed imo.

So to me there are hits and misses, and there is varying amounts of difficulty, and where that difficulty stems from (hard-hitting attacks, new unclear mechanics or AoE spam).