Would you improve if the content required it?

[Cenerae]

Depends on the kind of difficulty we're talking about.

Are we talking about real difficulty (mechanics are challenging), or are we talking about putting arbitrary timers on things to force you to be good enough with your job and have enough gear to pass?

The former I'm all for. The latter is something that really annoys me. Not that I hate the idea of 'gittin' gud, scrub' or anything, but being unable to beat something soley because I didn't go and grind enough gear ticks me off.

Not that I'm saying gear should never be a factor either - but for example, I don't have any motivation to challenge most of the superbosses in the Final Fantasy series. Because I'd have to spend hours grinding just to get strong enough to be able to fight it. For a payoff that's not worth it. In FF14, if I had to grind for hours to get strong enough to do basic stuff like MSQ scenarios, that wouldn't be worth it.