Question PSO2's difficulty since the game originally released

[MidiPour]

I tossed this question (or set of questions) in the quick question thread, and didn't get a reply, so thought it would be worth a shot to ask the question in it's own thread.

So I've recently redownloaded PSO2 with the awesome Tweaker, and am enjoying the grind with my gunner/bouncer classes in the beginning difficulty bracket. One thing that bugged me about PSO2 vanilla once I got to level 40 (and episode 2 as far as I played) is that the game never presented a challenge of an kind; in single player enemies were damages sponges, and in multiplayer I was just coasting through the game while listening to audiobooks. Has Sega made any additions or adjustments to change this up? Is there a legitimate endgame now once you get near or at max level?

Also, since the game has been out for 5 years now, what's everyone's motivation for playing the game otherwise?

[Zephyrion]

I tossed this question (or set of questions) in the quick question thread, and didn't get a reply, so thought it would be worth a shot to ask the question in it's own thread.

So I've recently redownloaded PSO2 with the awesome Tweaker, and am enjoying the grind with my gunner/bouncer classes in the beginning difficulty bracket. One thing that bugged me about PSO2 vanilla once I got to level 40 (and episode 2 as far as I played) is that the game never presented a challenge of an kind; in single player enemies were damages sponges, and in multiplayer I was just coasting through the game while listening to audiobooks. Has Sega made any additions or adjustments to change this up? Is there a legitimate endgame now once you get near or at max level?

Also, since the game has been out for 5 years now, what's everyone's motivation for playing the game otherwise?

most of the free fields and such are remnant of the past that, much to our dismay, SEGA has never been bothered to update

if you want challenges, you have a fair amount of them though but most of them are gated behind XH, level 75/75 or even 80/80 for rematch on the newest raid
You have solo PD, which while its HP and attack power has been toned down to adapt to being single player, is a decent challenge. you also have solo extreme quests which will require some good gear and solid play/strategies to win
At a lower level you can enjoy high risk SH Advance Quests. everything is at lv80 so fairly tanky, and you might have a chance to stumble on rare boosted bosses, which are pretty much how field bosses should feel like for someone with endgame equip

[oratank]

and phaleg

[Ezodagrom]

Pretty much anything below XH difficulty is even easier than it used to be, lower difficulties and older quests have never been updated for all the buffs that we've got since Ep3, but there's a few challenging things here and there for capped or nearly capped players, as Zephyrion says.

[blood13666]

what most posts here said......and Phaleg so far is the only one to have truly mop the floor with my face.....she challenge you to a duel after you finish clearing ep 4 storyline...for Solo PD I never gotten the S rank...believe I was 2-3 minutes away from that ?..forgot...been too long since that day

solo xtreme quests are pretty harsh and stage 4 and 9 credits cannot be mess up otherwise you get a near impossible stage 5(bosses take 90% reduced dmg) and 10(bosses take 90% reduced dmg).....Heaven and Hell stage 9 is the worse though...you get hit once and gl on stage 10 lol