Why is Yoshi P turning his back on the playerbase that loves this game the most?

[Dzian]

I would question if that's not the entirely wrong reason for playing. The reward isn't the gear, it's the defeat of the boss. Gear helps towards that goal, and the subsequent fights against it. The tools shouldn't be what's the driving force behind your motivation, the actual destination should be. I don't contest that this is a common mindset though, but I will continue to protest people shouldn't be so overly glorifying of what ultimately are just a means to an end. Don't misunderstand either, getting gear is a great feeling, but to say it's the ultimate goal is quite backwards.

in it's current design the gear is the ultimate end. it's designed that way. otherwise what you'd then have is players who smash a piece of content once, and its done forever. because they've beaten it. if the destination is simply beating it then the journey is almost instantaneous. rewards are the driving force. the very game is designed that way.

if you took away all the rewards hell even all the tomestones for dailies what would happen. queue times would go through the roof. this is basically exactly what happens with content. once the rewarda aren't worth it. no one bothers..

Don't get me wrong though I do kinda understand your sentiment, but I feel that what you refer to better fits the idea of character growth. defeating that boss makes your character feel more powerfull. yet in the current design system where Yoshi doesn't want characters to grow but rather gear to grow, it a philosophy that just doesn''t seem to fit.

the other issue is that the "value" for want of a better term of defeating that boss loses all significance over time. defeating that boss might make you feel more powerful today but tomorrow that boss will be a face roll with better gears / nerfed mechanics and an echo bonus.

coil is an example of this. felt quite proud of myself after beating bahamut in t13 in 2.5 there was a sense of power. and it's now gone. helping people clear coils in anticipation for 3.4 it's quite saddening facerolling your way through bahaumt with 3 people.

this game is built around gear growth and as a result of that rewards are what matters. this is why no one raids the rewards aren't worth it. and the difficulty is meaningless

[Zojha]

the very game is designed that way.

Mhm...Yes and No.

PvE, as such, no matter in what game, has this issue. Every PvE game is necessarily scripted and therefore, repetition causes enjoyment to fall off much faster than in PvP games for example.
Take single-player games - in many of them, everything you do and did becomes entirely obsolete the moment you kill the final boss because the game "ends". Oftentimes, you can't even return from the final dungeon. Nevertheless, people actively strive to attain this obsolence. Strange, right? Not all that strange because people don't actually care that it all becomes obsolete - they want to discover the end, the enjoyment lies in the discovery. And after that? The only option is to start anew entirely. Some will do that, of course, but if the game doesn't actually have much variance over the playthrough, it will get dull fast, since there's not much left to discover. Meanwhile, games like Mass Effect or Chrono Trigger tend to get played through several times.
And what goes for a game as a whole naturally also applies to its parts. If a dungeon has no real variance, either in theory because there are no options or in practice because people only ever want one option, it gets dull fast. Say hello to Dino Island as an example of a practical lack of variance.

And that wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't an MMO where people rely on other people still playing that content and forming groups. "That" is where you put in rewards that people enjoy. Commonly, two things: Progression, aesthetics. People like me will be far more enticed by aesthetics, while other people will be more enticed by progression and some might actually just want to stroke their ego with exclusivity. Motivation can be varied!

Gameplay as such also plays a role. Discovery, progression, aesthetics etc are all nice and dandy, but if the game plays clunky, unresponsive, too complex and otherwise frustrating to play, all that goes down the drain. Repetition compounds that issue as well.

Bottom line is: It's a bit more difficult than only "rewards".