The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Colt47]

The issue with the mod discussion is that really it is coming down to the fact that difficulty should be a player choice because historically it has been a player choice. Both the gameshark / game genie (remember that guy?) and the easy / normal / hard difficulty paradigm are different directions for adjusting difficulty of content in a game so that all rewards are achievable by players. So why would people not try to do the same for a game that is an MMO?

The problem with end game in MMOs is that they are mixing people who want the reward for the sake of completing a look or feel of a character with people that want to do end game for the achievement of completing difficult content. This is happening because they have a system that literally has zero ways to separate or define the two, so they end up in the same pool.

At the end of the day they need to be tighter with controls and options for end game content.

1) Gear should be level synched to the min level needed for the savage.
2) There should be an option for echo that groups can turn on and adjust, with higher level of echo reducing the rewards available from the run.
3) Pentamelded gear needs to be restricted from these runs because unfortunately, level sync does not work with materia and it mostly just creates a gil wall for newer players who want to break into the tier. Also it probably is a headache for even HC raiders since they got to pentameld / megacraft now out of necessity instead of wanting to do it.

Like if a group just wants to get the stuff done, or just wants to learn all the mechanics of the fight, yeah let them flip on echo.