Quote Originally Posted by The-Real-Link View Post
An interesting look back at when WoW: Warlords of Draenor came out, was that Heroic Dungeons (kind of like our Expert) were capped behind reaching a silver or higher rank in a solo trial challenge of sorts. You'd go to the Proving Ground (kind of like Hall of the Novice) but with mobs you had to interrupt, sometimes have particular kill orders in, dodge mechanics - everything that a real dungeon would have more or less). If you couldn't get silver, you were locked from the content. I don't know if it would work here. But boy, I sure knew people in WoW who literally couldn't do silver to save their lives and had others do it for them. But WoW classes are far more varied and generally broken than what XIV has, period.

Hard to say. Putting a requirement in front of people may just make them quit. The capable players will go through it. But it's that middle-ground that's tricky to get. But agreed, some kind of higher difficulty "Hall of the Expert" or a Primal simulation or something would at least help in assisting players with harder mechanics than in dungeons. Create a reward for doing it too and that is at least one method of incentive. That or some awesome solo-challenges would be great.
I'd be very hard pressed to argue that the WoD PG silver requirement for LFD actually improved anyone's experience. I cleared Endless 30 in MoP as DPS and never had difficulties getting silver, so it wasn't an issue for me personally. I can say though that I still ran with terrible players that were supposed to be kept out by this requirement, but heroics were easy enough from day 1 that it really didn't matter anyway. PG had individual mechanics found in dungeons, but as a whole didn't reflect a dungeon environment at all, making it poorly suited for testing aptitude for dungeon clearing. It then eventually became more difficult than the dungeons it was acting as a gatekeeper for, as it scaled and the dungeons did not. As you mentioned, many people still got around it by having others do it for them, but it definitely left them with a bad taste in their mouth regardless. I think the only people who actually enjoyed that arrangement were the low end elitists who both lacked the skill to actually make up for poor play by their group and tend to enjoy harassing players who don't meet whatever arbitrary standards they impose on them.