Put back Extreme trial on raid finder again...please

[aleph_null]

Let me make this explicitly clear: you're right. Having bad players in your group can derail the group. I acknowledge that. Can you acknowledge that removing that risk is not the only effect the duty finder has?

However, I realize that there are implications of a system that allows that, and those implications can be dangerous. I'm not even entirely sure the downside for new players outweighs the upside for farming, but I'd like to at least acknowledge that there is a downside for new players.

For contents below certain level of difficulty yeah maybe new players can slip in without knowing anything and get carried through it and get an easy clear, you can consider that a good thing I guess? The problem is that a lot of ex/savage contents, despite being obsolete, don't allow such thing. Even fights outgeared by 30-70 ilv can be impossible to clear if certain players don't know how to execute the mechanics properly. I guess in most cases they're more forgiving to dps not knowing mechanics.

Look at a6s-a8s DF queues, or maybe a4s, do they even pop? Even if they do, will you have any reasonable chance to clear it? If you're able to filter based on clear status maybe many if not all of previous savage floors will be farmable for glamour/mount/achievements.

The mental gymnastics in this thread justifying that no, this is actually better for new players, are interesting to watch, but they don't do much to convince me.

Well I'm not going to argue for/against that, as I've said there are contents where you can know nothing and expect to get carried after all. Though personally I think the harm of not having clear filter in difficult contents is a bigger problem, since that'll pretty much make the single queue unusable except for early phase practice.

The JP data center community worked around it by agreeing that you should join DF queues when you're ready to clear (watched guides, practiced, whatever), so at least the DF is usable despite not having clear filter. On the other hand in NA/EU data centers DF queues for hard contents are pretty much only usable for first phase practice, which pretty much means you won't have any reasonable chance to clear. I guess it's subjective but I'd prefer the former, even if I have to exclude newer players or be excluded in contents I'm behind.

Keeping players subscribed is important, but so is growth, and the game can't grow if new players can't complete old content. (That said, new players don't have to do Extreme primals so I don't know how important it is that they stay relevant. But I have no doubt that's why the mounts were implemented.)

Now this is something I don't really agree. In a vertical progression MMO like this you don't have to complete past contents to be able to reach current end game. I started in 3.0, I never had to look back at coil to learn how to play my job at lv 50 to be good at lv 60. I have friends who started raiding at 3.2/3.4, they didn't have to clear gordias/midas savage before starting in midas/creator savage. Gear dropped in those old contents are obsolete for current raids/trials, and it's not like the raid difficulty curve starts low at gordias and grows higher throughout midas and creator. Heck it's the other way around, gordias and midas are much harder than creator savage.

I completely agree that the game needs to encourage player growth, but I don't think helping them slip into old content queues and get carried will help them grow. I personally think this game needs to give some sort of feedback on new players' performance level and a smoother difficulty curve, starting from easier contents like dungeons, normal trials and raids, 24 man raids to harder contents like ex trials and savage raids. Right now the gap between the difficulty of dungeons, normal trials/raids and ex/savage is too big. People may not even know how "bad" they are until they step into ex/savage and fail miserably.