Would you improve if the content required it?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think this one nailed it. Steps of Faith was never a hard fight, but a lot of people were willing to invest more time in the forums to get the fight nerfed rather than talk to their teammates and get the fight down.

Granted, I do believe that Story Mode content should be somewhat easy, but the community reaction back then was absolutely ridiculous.

Because there was little incentive. Steps of Faith was long, somewhat tedious and any job with positionals just had a bad time. Compare that to say, Shiva, and people outright dropped out because it wasn't worth doing from a reward perspective. Weeping City, on the other hand, was the only option outside Savage if you wanted to upgrade your gear. If Stormblood made it so dungeons were challenging from the get go, people would grudgingly get over it because if they wanted to cap tomes efficiently, they have to.