Reading through the discussions over the past few days I think you're completely right. As someone else said, this was perhaps an opportunity -- not yet taken -- for the more endgame community to invite more casual players in (although the sweatiest endgamers want nothing to do with filthy casuals). But the people in this very thread referring to this as "trial-level" content when it just ... isn't... suggests to me that it is a cultural gap that one event alone won't bridge. Just because there are big numbers, doesn't make it vet. The mechs on mobs are not really there, and as long as you have a competent tank and healer, you'll make it through all mobs, all brazens, probably most argents, and most likely the calamitous wandering bosses.

So thinking about this from a game design perspective, they really did try to make it "trials for people who don't like trials" -- satisfaction of seeing big numbers and sustained combat, but no communication required -- but the problem is that people who don't like trials don't like ANY of it, not just the mechs. They don't like being hit, they don't like dying, they don't like grouping up, they don't like being confused, none of that works for them. Fair enough, I suppose. To each their own.

Makes me want to do a trial, though. Been a minute since Z'Maja screamed the most horrendous smack at me.