Quote Originally Posted by Cabalabob View Post
It would greatly incentivise players to do better if the loot was locked behind challenges.
Quite the opposite in fact.

Wildstar's "Gold or Bust" era was a prime contributor to its downfall. The game's instanced content had a team success rating: Gold, Silver, Bronze. The rewards for anything less than Gold weren't worth the bother and all it took was a single death or people getting hit by a one or two mechanics. So people started abandoning failed instances. It took far too long for Carbine to make adjustments and their population bled out.