There's 9 difficulties above r1 that a person can do in heroics if one wants to up the challenge. And if you find r10 whisperdoom too easy, then you too can ask for more challenge on the top end. I personally believe that existing difficulties shouldn't be ramped up for existing/new players as it makes it harder for them to catch up on past lives/etc.. I also think new harder difficulty settings (like event champs, prior season HC champs, etc.) should be added for those who want more challenge via toggles on the instance window; then no one is forced to struggle more unless they opt in.
This is exactly what I am referring to.
"Existing difficulties shouldnt be ramped up" as a blanket statement is a great recipe for power creep to trivialize quests. Since the dev agrees with your position, this quest will now be ramped down to 2007 levels of mob challenge, but we have 2023 levels of character power.
This is precisely what causes the "push" crowd to rant that the game isnt challenging enough - AKA "elite is too easy" because people fought tooth and nail against ramping up elite, necessitated reaper, and by now, there have been several "R10 is too easy" threads, where people are asking for R11 - R20.
Being unwilling to adjust the current game challenge hierarchy upward as character power increases is the issue. Its why adding 10 more difficulty settings to the previous C,N,H,E hierarchy was needed. This divides the player base up even more. It wasnt bad enough that in heroics we have to group in a 4 level range (difference of 3 levels between highest and lowest) and then divide that up between 4 different settings, so now we need 14 settings, for an even lesser headcount populace to be divided amongst.
No, we don't need a series of toggles for difficulty setting that looks like an old school pilot's dashboard. We need the same/similar ramp up in challenge amongst the current difficulty settings as we have ramp up in character power. This avoids turning settings where (dev words here) "the DM is actively trying to kill your character" into a trivialized zombie-esque mindless grind - to which the ForumDDO™ response will be to demand more chllenge, and more reward (aka even more power creep) /rinse repeat ad nauseum ad infinatum.
I was on the losing side, but I sure as heck aint on the wrong one.