Would you be against or for rewarding good performance in parties?

[Lynart]

I think there should be more difficult gates that people have to hurdle. If you want the standard at one measurement, you don't set it well below there and hope people self-motivate to reach it. I think that is largely the problem... lazy players get a pass because, well, you don't really need them. What do you think that tells them? Do you think making content easier will make them any more likely to press buttons in a logical, meaningful way? Nah, it'll just encourage more people to perform at a lower standard because it is now permissible.

Despite being an overachiever myself, I completely understand why modern MMORPGs go for the lowest common denominator.

Back in the Final Fantasy XI days, MMORPGs had a really high bar for progression, even leveling. If you died, you'd lose 10% of your exp. DPS would literally wait 2-6 hours for a party. Travelling from the party creation to leveling camps could take anywhere from 5-30 minutes. Nobody wanted to fail because if they did, they'd effectively waste a few hours. These "mechanics" greatly lowered the # of bad players because bad players simply wouldn't play or end up with such a bad reputation no one wanted them in their parties.

The downside of the above is that MMORPGs catered to a very small crowd due to the amount of time required for progression. I was in high school at the time. If someone released an old school RPG now, I would not play it, and we know, for certain, many others would not. World of Warcraft revolutionized the MMORPG genre by greatly lowering the bar for entry. However, as you've stated, by lowering the bar, the quality of players also dropped tremendously due to the increased quantity.

Lets all be honest here, it's far easier to be carried than it is to carry.

It would be financial suicide for Square-Enix or any MMORPG publisher to raise the bar for progression. With that said, I'm certain there are a noticeable amount of either old school players or natural over achievers that would greatly benefit from the proposed system.