Quote Originally Posted by KarstenS View Post
No. The lootsystem was the most unrelevant reason for the "big exodus".

It was the very high demand to player and groupskill, that killed so many groups.
Which the server raid communities would have had no problem coping with, if they weren't hard-locked into whatever group arrangements came out of the musical chairs game prior to the tier launching. Unless you're telling me other servers somehow had fewer capable players than Mateus does.

When you can't get subs because nobody wants to screw their group out of loot - you lose nights to one absence or a bad level 3 day, you can't consider replacing a weak link, you can't convince people to stick with the server when someone else gives up, and so on. The "players must commit to one group and only one group" dynamic was a critical element of the problem.

In the extreme case, if the tier had been unlocked in 3.1 save for needing to clear A2S to unlock A3S etc., there absolutely would have been multiple A4S clears and a much healthier community.

In the very minor case, even if they had simply chosen not to impose a chest penalty on prior floors when someone enters A3S or A4S, the leading groups could have borrowed the better members of the slow ones to build a pool of people progressing on those fights, instead of silo'd groups that were completely on their own.