Why do casual players seem entitled to cosmetic items added in game?

[Kaurhz]

Well, it's worse than that. The core issue is they forgot how to make engaging and fun content after slashing all the possible different things that someone can do with in the limited design space they have. They increased monster movement speed so kiting isn't viable, completely killed any kind of strategy with crowd control, and mostly turned the game into a slightly more complex rhythm game where the hard mode is hiding the notes from the player. And all the cosmetics and cool stuff is being added behind hard mode. When you remove the actual incentives, the game is completely boring trash at this point.

I mean I agree with this, but it's no real single issues. If one were to be thorough, they could probably have enough of a bucket list to effectively do a full thesis in bad game design at the standard required for an MSc.

I don't think incentives are inherently bad, but this one is so tone deaf it's almost difficult to believe that there's been a success for a decade. Like the way they implement feedback is kitchen sink style. Bad feedback? Don't think about it logically... Throw the kitchen sink at it.. It's how we ended up in this specific instance.. It's how we end up with a game that is a husk of what it once was, between simplicity and aggressiveness of QoL. It's how we end up with a game that doesn't know what it wants to be from one expansion to the next.