Now that the game is dying can we just have bots for all content?

[Amarande]

Incidentally, that's something some people may have forgotten about using NPCs; If you die, it's an instant wipe, which would make having an NPC practice mode for Extreme/Savage all the more of an effective training tool because the player will literally have to restart the whole fight on just their death. (IE: Quantifiable and individual "prog point" completely separate from the performance of others, bonus points if the practice mode leaves a marker everywhere they died per retry until they quit the practice duty.)

Or hell, even if they DID let players do the real Extreme/Savage with bots, the human player still can't coast if they're death alone is all it takes to reset the whole fight

This is actually a really neat idea, and I expect its only flaw will be when (as is likely) the human player community don't settle on the same strat that the NPCs teach the player.

I think Duty Support/Trust even has reduced rewards? So I could picture an NPC-powered Extreme/Savage that does the same thing. (Like say... never dropping mounts?)

I'm pretty sure that the rewards are the same with NPCs as with people, clear speed is the price you pay for using NPCs (although EX/Savage trusts would have to probably maintain the same damage output as average human players that clear, given the fact that we're talking about single fights with assumedly the same enrage timers) - it just rolls the loot automatically behind the scenes when you open coffers, so you only actually see the items that you won (Loot with NPC teammates in Guild Wars 1 worked in similar fashion).

If you could clear content with bots, how would the gatekeepers be able to maintain their self-esteem?

I should hope SE has an "eff them" stance towards those that actually gatekeep for ego.

The grumpy thing is I'm not sure that's the majority of people that gatekeep; with difficulty trending up and free time down, most likely have been put to curating their groups more tightly through experience (it's hard to "be the change" in rough content spells like this, it reminds me of Shadowlands season 1 from WoW where I started off trying to be a kinder player and invite pretty much anyone that didn't have completely paper gear, and I couldn't even reliably get my mythic+ key past something pathetic like a 4 ... eventually ended up thinking about RIOs like everyone else lol).

The fact that these people would no longer need to do so is probably something that all involved would be relieved at.