one thing most of you havent considered is this game isnt built like FF, monsters can and will kill you, they expect you to dust yourself off, an fight again. Adding real difficulty to this game, also has to contain abilities which can kill you, FF has always had skills which could probably own you (doom 5) skills that take you to 1 hp, etc. Now, most people will never use content, or complain about content which takes away their progress. Like in ffxi, most people were pansies until they reached level cap.

The answer to making the game more challenging is having more skills, which if handled wrong can lead to death, also making it so that deaths really increase the chance of a wipe. This is more counterproductive if people are afraid to fight that content, unless the reward is extremely high, people will take the safer route. People will kill crabs that take longer to fight and have simple patterns rather than beastmen who have less hp, but are more difficult much like in ffxi.

You are not improving the game by encouraging pansified play.