How to make the 3rd raid difficulty work

[Mindiori]

Obviously there's always a huge disconnect/back and forth, with the politically correct 'don't offend the casual gamer by gating content' sentiment in these discussions.

I regularly hear the excuse that; 'People don't want to pay for other people to enjoy content they can't complete. Especially if they feel that content takes a lot of developer attention off of other things that they can'.

Yet we play a game together. One that lives and dies on interaction and community. Subsequently why wouldn't everyone want every demographic to be catered to - in order to preserve the game and help it grow? Everyone benefits from that.

I'd imagine the most effective way to deal with a challenge tier is to incorporate a separate progression system into it of some kind. A little like PoTD. In past games, developers have implemented mostly vanity rewards to, 'i achieved that, can show it off but - it doesnt physically make me more powerful'. It works. No reason that cant be built upon further.