Plan to remove benefit for failing leves?

[Altano]

However, even with the poor design people still abuse it to the 5th degree, and what I like to know is and my question to all of you:

Do you find Failing leves enjoyable?

and

When you hit R50 do you feel accomplished when you reach that rank?

I have two answers for you:

Yes and yes.

I love the complaints from people who object to ranking up in this way on some "ethical" grounds and get all upset when either a) they aren't ranking up as fast as others or b) other people don't want to party with them because they don't have the most beneficial means to rank up.

There are plenty of systems in MMOs where failing an objective can be planned for various benefits. I ask FFXI vets how many times they went into some of the endgame events with the pure objective of farming gear and other item drops, rather than actually completing the objective of the zone. "But that's different! They're not getting ranks!" It's not as different as you might think, actually. If you have a small-ish FFXI Dynamis shell, for example, good luck getting the most gear drops in Xarcabard if you actually intend to kill DL.

Aren't you "supposed" to finish out that quest? Sure, especially if you conceive of it as a ridiculously long 3-hour leve, which isn't a huge stretch. But people don't always finish the main objective. Why? Because it takes away from the good stuff they can get and the good feeling of finishing it simply isn't worth the trade off when people want tangible rewards. Is that exploiting? No. Is it a poor game design? Not even that. It's allowing players in an MMO to have a bit of flexibility in the way they play the game and design their own objectives to an extent along the way.