Quote Originally Posted by Shougun View Post

But one of the problems with skill based content is that in all honestly (contrary to popular mockery) there are a lot of skilled players out there. So you wanted an item to be rare but all a sudden surprise its not rare at all.

With an MMO (persistent games) you have to introduce forced grinding because if you just went by skill we'd have already beat the game.

The longer it takes the rarer it is, certainly they could make more of the grinding involve skill and less boring gather over 9000 tokens but then creating that content could/probably would take a long time.

There is logic in FFXI relics - so to is there logic in just making a couple epic hard ass boss fights solo or not.
All they need to do to make a fight more difficult in it's current state is make fights less linear. There should be less known "phases" and more "random phases". If a fight was less linear, the difficulty would increase ten fold. To people who know a specific fight (such as garuda, ifrit, dungeons) the content gets stale and easy because there is a set order to how the fight works. Once this order is known, and a solid strategy is publicised - this is when the fight gets easy. Forcing more random events, basing it more of a reactional fight rather than a strategic fight - will alone increase the difficulty.

In regards to "a lot of skilled players in the game" - yes I totally agree, however the problem with the community at the moment is people who spend time doing mindless grinding are seen as the "skilled" players in forms of the "hardcore" and "casual" titles that get thrown around every 2nd post. My comments in the previous few posts I made was not based on the system itself, but how people perceive what is to be considered "difficult" or "hard to obtain".

I couldn't care less if I had a RARE item or not, what I care for is having a GOOD item. Sure I am fine with giving these mindless grinders these so called "rare" items, however I would hate to fall into the XI trap again of only making the "good" items accessible to those grinders. Something as big as a relic should not be given to those who necessarily have more time then others - but to those that have more skill. While they may become less rare, who cares? This isn't a fancy dress contest.