Tell me you haven't played during ARR or HW without telling me you haven't played during ARR or HW.
ARR: Keep in mind that this is entirely based on pre-2.1 experiences, it obviously got easier with the later patches.
- Chimera: Players felt the need to cheese the fight by pulling him out of the cave, because fighting him on a sloped area was rumoured to stop Dragon's Voice from hitting players.
- Amdapor Keep: Some parties actually had issues with the dps check on Demon Wall.
- Hydra: Tanks could die to Triumvirate, because it initially had to be shared between tanks. Fear Itself could become an issue if players decided to drop fire/ice puddles in the center. Adds could sometimes be an issue if they lived long enough to buff the boss.
- Ifrit HM: Groups at the time often wanted a caster LB2 or 3 for the nails.
- Garuda HM: You couldn't actually dps through the Suparna/Chirada buffs, and they had to be tanked away from Garuda.
- Titan HM: The fact that groups could make a decent amount of gil for boosting people through this fight should tell you enough about how tough this fight was for the average player at the time. And that's without mentioning the netcode issues.
HW: 12 fates? 6 if you are lucky? You needed 3 of each crystal back then. That's 18 in total. With a 10-20% drop rate.
SB: I'll give you this one. I forgot about the Antiquated version technically being considered the first step.
ShB: You obviously didn't need to enter Bozja to obtain the first Resistance weapon. The zone wasn't added until the 2nd step. The very first one was also free after doing the easy solo duty.
This makes it pretty clear that the initial two were nowhere near being "just as easy" as the more recent relic weapons.