How many friends do you need to have before you can start at floor 101 instead of having to slog through 51-100 first?
My "dedicated group" consists of 2 people that I met in the game and have no contact with IRL. None of us have ever stepped foot in a savage raid and we're usually blocked out of EX primals until matchmaking is added for them. 101+ was added to cater to people like us who have a small friend base but still want to be challenged. I wouldn't call making friends "hitting the lottery". Work on your people skills if it's that difficult for you. For the record, Im not against matchmaking. I just think that SE was trying to cater to a mid-core audience here, and I certainly wouldn't call it a terrible decision on their part either. This content is there to promote teamwork and making friends. Instead of complaining about it, you could try to step out of your shell a bit and meet like minded people. The achievement is much more rewarding when you do it with friends anyway. But I digress.
Agreed with the OP. This is horrible design. I loved nothing more than matching myself up with others and experiencing the true challenge of making it work with what we got. To me easy mode is going in with a perfectly balanced and fine-tuned party. Where's the challenge there? I've been looking forward to this since it was announced, because I love running PotD. But these draconian restrictions just kill my desire.
What's crazy is Yoshi-P pitched these deepest floors as so difficult he expected few players to clear it ever, but people have in under a day.
I think this just confirms that everyone's opinions of what is truly casual in this game is subjective then? So that's why I disagreed with him and gave the reasons why I think that way. Obviously others in this thread feel the same way about this specific piece of content, otherwise we wouldn't all be posting here about it.