Mediocrity should NOT be the standard for players in any content.

[Elladie]

Yes, yes it should if the goal is to push the player base to improve. You cant get around making the player base improve skill wise unless you put obstacles in their way that they must overcome. The only way to do this? Put in harder content meaning dungeons.

The goal isn't to push the player base to improve. People will improve if they wish to whether you push them or not. If they don't wish to, your pushing will make no difference. In fact I would argue to pushing creates toxicity. And people most certainly can improve without obstacles in their way. You said that the last dungeon of an expansion should be 'much more difficult' than the first; how do you suppose most people would feel about a dungeon - we're talking the MSQ here, right? - much more difficult than Amaurot? How long before SE had to nerf this 'much more difficult' dungeon because it was stopping people progressing? You are living in some fairy tale land if you think that wouldn't be necessary.

The self destruct concept is, by and large, a silly point. A few things: How long do you expect this game to go on for, how much more difficult do you expect the final and first dungeon to be, and what is the skill limitation, particularly if content gradually ramps up over a long period of time. By what youre suggesting, youre assuming that the first dungeon is gonna be 'sastasha' and the final dungeon is gonna be 'UCoB', when in reality itd probably be more like sastasha to AV at most, but the progression in difficulty would be there. This doesnt even consider that rebalancing lower level dungeons to keep them in line with leveling curves along introducing new mechanics, remaking classes, and etc would also affect difficulty overall.

You defined the difficulty level already. As before I will direct you to the statement that the last dungeon of an expansion should be much more difficult than the first.

Beyond this, your writing anecdote undercuts your whole point. Ill put out my own anecdote to show you the issue. I am an artist. I do art for a living and get paid for it, much like you and writing. But I am not done improving. There are always new challanges, new difficulties, new disciplines to master. Even when I think Im a master at something, I find there is more to it, slightly more nuances to address. I seek to improve every day to be better, and to do that I do it by challenging myself. I will not improve treading the same waters over and over. The problem with your own anecdote is you willingly acknowledge that you continue to improve, but that improvement only comes from adversity to something. Every time youve 'gone up a level' it has only occured because you got good at what you were doing and went to improve yourself by taking on new challenges. Growth requires challenge and adversity.

Growth does NOT require challenge and adversity. Growth requires self-motivation and willingness to learn. It is perfectly possibly to grow in skill and ability without challenge or adversity. Challenge can certainly provide a spur, but adversity is just as likely to have the opposite effect to the one you are anticipating. And it is possible to challenge oneself in order to learn without artificial difficulty being imposed externally in order to force someone to 'git gud or quit'.

If you read my post again, you will perhaps notice this time that at no point did I mention I have stopped trying to improve in either my writing or my gameplay. I am self motivated and proud of my accomplishments and the constant exercise of my skill in order to produce the best work I can in itself causes me to improve. I don't require some arbitary barrier to be imposed in order to motivate me, and nor do most other people, I imagine.

This is handwaving. It's the proverbial "It's a Game" argument to dismiss challenge being introduced into a game through increasing the skill floor. It's the "I play this game to have fun! Not as another job!" Also including the "Ive reached my skill ceiling" argument to round this out and yeah, this is why people dont improve. It's a lot of mentality issues regarding improvement. Again, you say that people work on improving their skills. Why? If theyre content where theyre at and will never be in the champs, why improve. Whats the point? It might be because people actually enjoy challenging themselves and improving and seeing hte rewards of those improvement. But if you offer nothing for them to improve on, and dont even try to nudge people to say "Hey, standing in pancakes isnt great" or "You didnt know how to play your class to do even moderate damage so you hit enrage", then how do you expect people to improve. We're up to 5.2 almost here and yes, I see people spamming 1 or two of their skills, or not even bother to move out of AoEs. I see the issues a lot of raiders complain about. It is an issue, and unfortunately when people point them out, what do we get: Its a game, You dont pay my sub, Im not a raider who cares, Its casual Content - I dont have to try. This mentality of not giving 2 cents is toxic to the game, as much as being overly elitist can be.

People don't improve because they don't want to improve. The kind of player you want is going to want to improve regardless of the skill floor or ceiling, and they will continue to work on that as long as they play. And when they reach their skill cap - which people do and certainly will if the game difficulty keeps increasing in the way that you suggest - if that blocks their progress, they will stop playing. Since, yes, it IS a game. I'm not sure you understand the term 'hand-waving' but calling a game a game certainly isn't it.

Much like anyone else who is opposed to increasing the skill floor, it is always assumed that its gonna go from 0 to 100 in the course of 1 patch. Thats not what is being advocated for. Whats being advocated for is some level of punishment for players who just coast. Any moderate player who has a basic understanding of rotations and mechanics that have been in the game since 2.0 should not have any trouble adapting to the new dungeons if they were harder than currently. Might die once or twice before going "Oh yeah, I remember this," or "Oh, it works like that," but thats ok. Heck, SE is softballing mechanics as it is. A lot of mechanics dont outright kill you if you mess it up, They give you a vuln stack, which is a soft way of saying "Hey you messed this up" and that kills you if you do it to often when a raid buster goes out.

Again, you're the one who said 'much more difficult'. If you don't mean 'much more difficult' but only 'slightly more difficult' you could just have said so instead typing an essay to rebut what I was saying. I mean, if you mean 'slightly more difficult', fair enough. But that is NOT what you said.

It's wierd that you bring up the MSQ when that MSQ clearly ramps up difficulty through out it, 'unceasingly, relentlessly' as you put it. That is until you hit level cap then it caps off in the more recent xpacs, if not getting easier cause people complain it was to hard. It's wierd, because people complained how hard the final boss on the Burn was, yet the mechanics from that boss were in HW, and arguably dungeons from HW and ARR 2.1+ had harder bosses. Dont misunderstand, the fight is a bit hectic, but reading what people were saying about it, people were behaving like they just got dumped into UCoB or 012S and told to learn it.

The MSQ ramps up the difficulty slowly, it doesn't go from - for example - The Aetherochemical Research Facility (last dungeon of 3.0) to 'much more difficult' by the end of HW. Yes, it's more difficult but the difficulty spike isn't huge. Again, you said 'much more difficult', I am not putting words in your mouth.

Finally, I think you do a great disservice by assuming most people will never 'be as great' as most raiders and theyre at the best theyll ever do. Its patronizing. I dont parse purples. I parsed greens or blues on average at best, but I cleared Omega 9S-12S. It wasnt cause I was 'that much better'. It was cause I didnt give in to the idea of "this is the best I can do." I practiced, I played, I asked for help, I read guides, I memorized mechanics. And like I said earlier, you dont have to improve overnight. Improve in very small bits and peices and yes, eventually most players can do savage. The fights are choreographed. Short of maybe a slight bit of RNG with maybe where a dot may go or RNG, the boss fights will play out the same way. And I can tell when people are trying. They dont say "this is as good as Ill ever do." They dont give the "You dont pay my sub argument." They ask questions. They create learning parties. They pug stuff. I dont see them fail the same mechanic over and over and over and not say anything or ask a question. I see them try to improve, even in one dungeon run. I have 0 problem with these players personally. I think it's cool theyre looking to improve. And I think it would be better for those players if we had dungeons that had difficulty curves built in to help them improve gradually and get into expert, savage, and ultimate content more easily. Im very cool with these people and have no problem doing content with them. And to be frank, I think this group represents a fairly large chunk of the player base and wouldnt be opposed to stepping up the difficulty over time in a small way.

A small way? So NOT 'much more difficult' then? Really you could just have redefined your original argument and apologised for the misunderstanding and we wouldn't have needed this discussion. And I'm not being patronising. I make no assumptions about anyone's skill level, and they are welcome to improve or not as they choose. I'm all for them improving. But I'm not going to start demanding artificial increases in the difficulty curve of the kind you first proposed to force people to 'git gud or quit'. You are saying now that isn't what you meant, but you are the person who asked for 'much more difficulty' in the MSQ in the space of one expansion.