Quote Originally Posted by Alahra View Post
To suggest that the SE ignore "numbers and charts" in constructing the endgame seems pretty weird to me: content clear rates and player engagement with content are one of the best metrics they have to gauge whether a particular type of content is successful (or not, as has been the case with Alexander Savage). How else are they supposed to gauge whether or not something is working or not?
In my opinion, they've done a pretty horrible job of interpreting those numbers though. They've shown they have the numbers and it's great they even share some of that with us, but when they go on to draw conclusions it leaves me scratching my head.


Quote Originally Posted by Alahra View Post
They did a lot of that in ARR—a lot of the game's content structure is organized in such a way as to lower the barriers for entry for the hardest content. That's part of why the original HM Primals were required to unlock Coil, and why mid-range weapons drop from current EX Primals. It's why Tomestone gear is no longer immediately at the highest item level (as it was for Myth gear at i90) (Yoshi came right out and said they did this because it encouraged people to skip raiding).

Quite frankly I'm not sure what else they could do to get people interested in challenging stuff. Those that want a challenge will seek it, and those that don't, won't, and the latter group consists of a larger portion of the player base than the former.
The issue is that they have made a lot of content very easy, and content very hard with very little in between. There isn't a gradual progression that really should be present in a vertical progression game. One should be going from 1->2->3->4->5->6, instead we have 1->2->2->3->1->2->2->2->8->10