Please implement something to teach players how to play

[Shurrikhan]

I thought very much before I wrote it.

Thinking absolutely can be fun for some people. I'm one of them. I like solving puzzles.

But I also like other things. I don't want to be spending all of my time solving puzzles when that's taking time away from other things I also want to do.

Not everyone finds THINK to be fun. They just want to relax after a stressful day doing other things. But perhaps your own ability to THINK is too narrow to understand that.

"I want to relax, but I don't want to just do the things made to be relaxing, so I want the stuff that wasn't (originally) intended just to (continue to) be changed until it is similarly relaxing."

You realize this applies in the inverse, too, right? "I want to really cognitively engage in something, but I don't want to just do the content forms to which that engagement has been constrained (8-man boss arenas), so I want stuff to see some among the later iterations of content forms that haven't always been intended to be cognitively engaging to offer cognitive engagement."

But, alas, somehow the first, despite being the more reductive, is fine, while the latter would likely trigger uproar...

__________

There is content to be played while relaxing or to relax. No one is suggesting that such be removed, only that cognitive load not be increasingly restricted to Savage, Ultimates, and the occasional harder Extreme trial -- in other words, only to be found off the main road and in perfectly circular or rectangular rooms -- or divorced from the common player experience, per the trajectory of changes since the game's release, be that to the content itself or to job toolkits and playflow.

:: Many here would also add, if the game did a better job of situating its own tools (its stuff to be interacted with or made use of), engagement would be less at odds with relaxation, and vice versa.

For instance, look at endgame dungeons on ARR's release and shortly thereafter, such as pre-nerf Amdapor Keep or Pharos Sirius. Look at dungeons now.

Especially in the context of the job playflows themselves being so simplified, the norm has increasingly become one where cognitive load significant enough to be engaging for more than even just half the community is something you have to go out of your way for and is increasingly less diverse in its forms. And that trajectory appears likely to continue given the comments we've seen from the devs regarding the inevitable design constraints of "skill gap", for which they still solely blame the players, rather than their ability to facilitate or incentivize learning.

Even a request to keep things the same as they are now, then, is asking for a change to that trajectory, which others will then take as reason to get up in arms against "entitled elitists" for their wanting there to remain some semblance of diversity in content with cognitive load, or even just to not have yet another of their main jobs gutted. God forbid those "elitists" ask for further options with, for them, engaging cognitive load outside of merely perfectly circular or rectangular rooms. The horror.

Clearly, increased options in a direction that has more stuff available to interact with or make use of -- and to be used to the extent one has skill for -- would be horrid pandering to the oppressive elite. Meanwhile, steadily rounding up those forms of engagement and isolating them among Ultimate fights, while leaving the typical experience increasingly barren or shallow just so a select group doesn't feel as bad about not using the tools that would otherwise be offered them... is perfectly fine?