Quote Originally Posted by Kailok View Post
I would be happy if they released raid content for catching up that are easy enough for a PUG group and also have progressive raids that are difficult but not unforgiving for a group of players that regularly raid together...
They already do this. They release a PUG version of Alex, and a dedicated group version of Alex. Your issue doesn't seem to be with the difficulty of fights, but the type of fights. Each fight was unique in there own in Alex, but they also couldn't make different bosses for the PUG version (otherwise it's not the same content in PUG mode, it's completely different and people will complain that fights are locked behind raiding again). Similarly, they couldn't make anything else for the pug version otherwise it would be too difficult for a PUG and they couldn't clear it in one go. Look at T2. It was a reasonable fight, and it was not a fight you pointed out as an arena fight. But as soon as they released the pug version, people didn't do the fight as intended, they wanted to destroy any difficulty that was in the fight. They realized that it was a waste of time to make fights that had some decent mechanics on the DF because people will just exploit what they can. They decided to skip the "find the easy way to exploit the fight" version and just release the easy version. Also as a poster above noted, dedication is not desired. The masses want fights so easy that they can clear in one go, the find what they can do to appear not AFK for the following runs.

Alas, content only lasts as long as someone with reasonable time is able to complete it. They gave everyone unlimited law. People can get all 180 gear playing in 2 weeks. Casually (dungeons drop a lot and the gear cost is low). Therefore this lasted 2 weeks. They put a literal cap on the next set so this can't happen. People complain that it was capped, as if they wouldn't just farm for 2 weeks, get all the gear and say the content doesn't last long. Anything that takes 3 months to do (i.e. some high cost item) people will complain that it takes too long and you can't complete in reasonable time if you wanted to take a break. They have weekly caps and lowered cost to alleviate this and people complain that there are caps. Any content that doesn't take that playing every day for 3 months to complete will, obviously, be completed by people who play regularly in less than 3 months. Then people will complain that the content doesn't last the whole 3 months.

I can guarantee you that SE learns from their past mistakes. They cannot make Exploratory Missions last more than a single patch cycle. If old, "invite as many people as you can so we can faceroll it", content remains relevant when a patch releases, then no one will do the new stuff. Like hunts. Especially considering the next patch will likely be a cap increase. They better not make new stuff in old content, or else this is hunts 3.X style all over again.