NM gear

[Amas]

Nah, my LS was mostly made up of old HNM retirees, and no one wanted to camp since that whole system was messed up.

When something new (e.g. DI) came along, we'd own it for a couple weeks, make a fat pile of gil on it, then do something else once it became a bot/campfest. Why sit around doing nothing for 3 hours for a chance at a Nidhogg pop when we could spent 30 mins 2x a week clearing out Einherjar, and then do an Odin every 3 weeks or so and get them that way?

Competition is what drove most good endgame players to quit... because no amount of skill or participation on their part would yield advancement. If you weren't willing to break the rules (bot), you effectively had no chance, and instead some no-skill noob with a huge ego could afk in Jeuno/Whitegate in his new Adaberk, and still be completely useless.

If you want competition, go play an FPS game. Or try to beat hard content before someone else who isn't as good.

Edit: And there's no reason instanced/non-competitive content has to be gimmies. SE made the 400 point leves too easy and the drops too crappy. The nice thing about instances is much more freedom to script the environment and encounters to make them HARD and require entirely new and different strategies, while any competitive content has very strong limitations placed on it by the open world.