Quote Originally Posted by Brian_ View Post
If you think that the top raiders didn't complain about the difficulty of the content during progression, you weren't paying attention.
I was quoting a post that was trying to suggest that SE should never listen to "raiders", on the basis that "they" both complained that Coil was too easy and that Alexander Savage is too hard, and so they clearly have no idea what they want.

It was an intentional oversimplification to indicate that perhaps "raiders" aren't a single group with a single opinion, and perhaps the people who were complaining that Coil was too easy aren't the same people who are now complaining that their statics are falling apart because Alexander Savage is too hard.

Quote Originally Posted by Brian_ View Post
As for the two being night and day, they're obviously different in ways. But, you are getting caught up on details rather than understanding the actual point.
Your exact words were "it's no different", which was the crux of what I was objecting to.

I don't think you can just dismiss needing seven other people as just another detail. Reducing it to "That time also goes into networking" is a huge oversimplification.

Time and effort invested in leveling jobs is time and effort spent playing the game. Time and effort spent networking is time and effort spent doing additional work on top of playing the game.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how much effort it is, it's a completely different kind of activity, only tangentially related to someone's ability to actually play the game.