Keeping Content Hard and Helping People Learn

[Shurrikhan]

I genuinely do not understand how saying "You can achieve your goals if you keep practicing and reach out for help, because people are willing to aid you to help you improve," gets labeled as ableism, condescending attitude and "dripping with narcissism". Can someone explain this to me, please?

Depends entirely on how it intersects with other conversations. In many cases, though, it's just the other side of the coin from an equally common talking point:

"I'd like content more like X?" --> "Why? You already have all this other content (that doesn't particularly match what you just said you're looking for) if you'd just play it."

Here, it's coming from someone who'd like something more in the realm of dungeons and similarly "casual" content, but with less of the growing focus on DDR mechanics, since they've said they're bad at them and some hundred different runs of such hasn't shown any improvement (making it seem to him more than just a matter of "putting in the effort")... who is then promptly reminded that there's tons of Extreme, Savage, Ultimate, etc., content to play if they just "actually tried".

Elsewhere, it comes from those who want their Ultimate raid and feel there's nothing (enjoyable) for them to do... and are then told that there's tons of achievements, collectables, beastmen reputation ranks, etc., to get if they just "stopped being so damned narrow-minded".

They're simply opposed desires. Some need a difficulty of at least X to feel engaged. Some need a difficulty under Y to feel engaged.

Granted, sometimes a given piece of content can allow for both at minimal increase to development time, hence...

• the nearly every-expansion requests for Savage dungeons as a simple variant (rather than needing entirely new content that is then almost never run due to being relegated to side-content that a large portion of players haven't unlocked even at level cap),
  
  
• the frequent requests for Minimum Item Level runs and/or variants in general to be to use matchmaking and additionally option syncing to have rewards increased proportionately to stats thereby lost (far higher mount drop chances completing a level 60 Extreme at level 60 than at level 100, making old content that much faster a grind and that much more worth stopping by for new players with each additional expansion)... and some skill shuffling to make the 1-70ish experience more engaging for all,
  
  
• the occasional requests for further improvements to High End Duty Finder (and perhaps even the occasional reward bump to briefly push players towards it so it isn't DoA) to remove the step of waiting so long for a party, for getting past people lying about their progress, disincentivizing early disbandment, etc., and/or to be able to queue as multiple jobs to shorten said queue times for all, helping for whom each minute of waiting for content feels so much more annoying than any minute of actual content,
  
  
• the occasional requests for the option of combo consolidation even while making rotation less rigidly linear (so that a DRG's 1111122222 would be non-optimal but better than what would be lost to distraction for a particularly undexterous or anxious player),
  
  
• etc.

...but other times, there's going to necessarily be a bit of butting heads, especially when the pickings seem to keep getting slimmer.