Players input is often detrimental to the health of a game.

How is a player that is giving an argument to support another player that has legitimate questions considered "complaining"? This is a forum for discussion, isn't it?

If by similar you mean a completely separate and unique system that was only used for LDoN and then totally abandoned in favor of the new system, then yes.

I think ti's the Achiever mindset to blame for raiding, gated content and other "elitism." Look up the history. It's part of the "Bartle taxonomy of players types." There're four altogether: Achievers, Socializers, Explorers, Killers.

From the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

Achievers...

Explorers...

Socializers...

Killers...

Typically every player is a combination of all four, usually with one being the dominating type.

I find that these're reasonably consistent but by no means the end of it.

Here's another website trying to pin down game psychology:
https://quanticfoundry.com/#motivation-model

A piece of research for further inquiry:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262413983_Player_Types_A_Meta-synthesis

Perhaps my post was too long and thus easy to build an argument by selective observation. Sorry. I will attempt to keep this short(er).

If there is a point, it might be that the game devs would do best as a business to attempt to create a tenable balance between exclusivity and accessibility.(sorry to reiterate but some people aren't pragmatic and took offense?) Casual players really don't give a F*** about your gear and your hard work. You don't speak for them and its not all about you, as much as you may think it is. The majority of casuals don't come to these boards, let alone post complaints. They just want to have content they can play in for their money. Casuals/non raiders understand that it is on them if they want to get the full immersion or not. Its ridiculous to place emphasis only on raiding, however. That tends to create situations where even the more mainstream content gets locked up behind some unreasonably difficult progression gatekeeper or other such nonsense that worked 10-20 years ago. PoP was great back in the day but does not need to be revisited.

Frankly, whats killing MMO's is the passage of time and the inevitable change it has on society/humanity/individuals etc. There are easier ways to get that dopamine rush without the investment of time or structure that is raiding in an MMO. Blizzard understands that if they still want to rake in money from a decades old franchise in a genre that is past its prime, they have to provide for a wider player base. Consistently. None of this vacillation between challenge and ease that is every other release like in EQ. That player base is in reality the same base they have always had. Many people derided for being "casual" probably used to raid but just can't fit that in to their lives anymore. So they are not n00bs by any stretch. You can't BS them as easily.

Should they just hang it up? Probably, and most did.

Still some do want to continue to enjoy the game, be it at a truncated level, for whatever reasons. They understand that a raider and a casual both pay the same cost for an expac or sub but the raider obviously will get more in trade for their increased effort. Again, the issues arise when one player type demands the game be only structured to them. EQ really could be geared only for the hardcore but who knows if the game will remain economically sustainable at its current price point by completely alienating the casuals. Guess that means we all have to co-exist and find some mutual tolerance, if not respect. To say get along is a bit naive in this day and age. That tolerance can be encouraged by the devs being less reactionary to complaints from both camps and instead try to strike a balance the first time by design. Or just make a stand and say they are setting the difficulty bar high and that's where it stays. Now if that is just asking for entitlement, then *shrug*. This isn't an age of compromise or enlightenment.

Darn. Long post again.

OP -
Players input is often detrimental to the health of a game.
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For most games I'd say yes.
Being this game has outlasted most games .. Then clearly this game is the exception to the rule, of which the OP is citing.

That is your opinion no matter how wrong it is. Its yours .. cherish that brutha.

I am very curious where you got this line from --> often against the wishes of some developers <--
Or is this you simply putting bad info out there ? (Bet thats the case) Provide anything to support that claim please.

No need to get too technical here. "Against the wishes of the devs" can be summed up by anything the dev team obviously put much time and effort into that later had to be nerfed to oblivion after much outcry from what is typically the top echelons of the player base. These are the players who sometimes go as far as to say they know whats best for EQ beyond what the devs think is best for EQ. Those guys.

OMM and GMM come to mind. There are probably plenty of other examples but those two are probably the most noteworthy as those areas went from bustling to ghost town literally overnight with only the firestorm of neckbearding on the boards and that fateful patch in between making the difference. Those kinds of examples are what is being alluded to and the dev team having to do some fancy footwork on the PR front afterward. Maybe those zones/scripts whatever should have never gone live, but they were examples of the Devs wanting to do something "special" but they got busted by the fun police.

I believe it is trivial because it is already solved. Essence of the dragon and bonus chests proved it possible and the code already exists.

Most of the varied amount of difficulty is an issue because of event tuning and dev time. This can almost be eliminated.

Lets say if you selected Stratos on easy, there would be a zone wide AE we will just call Aura of Easy Stratos. When all damage received is reduced by 20%, all damage dealt is increased by 20%, healing boosted by 20%, then the raid force should be able to be 20% smaller. The event mechanics and tuning are unchanged. Easy mode is tuned simply by adjusting the zonewide aura from 20% down to 18% or up to 22%. Each part is adjusted by adjusting only the aura, not the event itself. The event mechanics are unchanged.

Bonus chests are already in the game. Simply take everything of true value and put it in the bonus chest. Rank 3 spells, raid ornaments, progression flags and some of the actual loot is in the bonus chest. In easy mode, no bonus chest, so you get 1 visible, 1 non-visable and a % chance of a weapon/shield. Want more stuff? Play the harder event. Oh, and no ACH on easy.

The easy mode has a reward, but it is very small. Low attendance? At least current content can be played. Developing a strategy? Beat easy mode to develop a plan before moving the the far less forgiving real event. No guild that is capable of beating the normal mode will select easy "because they want something for nothing" because the slightly lower effort wont justify the significantly lower rewards.

Dev time is minimal because the easy mode only requires the tuning of like 4 pieces of an aura. The event itself is unchanged. It's no harder than changing the rune effect of the ENC aura.

Everyone pays the same price for the expansion. Making the expansion more accessible is a good thing. The issue is balancing dev time and effort/vs rewards, and I think that this is an easy solution.

Player input is never detrimental. The devs can agree with that input or ignore it. The detrimental part comes when/if the devs make a wrong decision. But it is 100% their decision and not ours, and thus 100% their responsibility if they make the wrong choice. To blame someone for making a suggestion is wrong.

Exactly as Svann said!

Pretty sure it had to be after velious because I remember raiding there and the group that did the most damage got the xp. No raid group just a collection of regular groups.

Svann, you are treading on controversial ground. There are many other aspects of the marketplace and society in general where the culpability of influence by customers, celebrities, so called subject matter experts and so on is still being gauged. If these outcomes impact the actual creative vision or core concept of a product or service, than there is some blame to be shared.

If it is quality control complaints, safety etc than sure. No blame should be levied. Granted in a product such as a game or whatever that deals in the non-tangible where creative vision ends and quality control starts is debatable. In general whistle-blowers in relation to either play a risky game going public. The same goes if someone posts some gripe here on the boards that leads to some unpopular nerf or change. That person who posted the complaint gets to be the personification of it and the target for all the vitriol. Decisions and consequences.

It might be "wrong" to place blame on that misguided individual but that person could have sent a PM to a dev instead of starting a PR S***-show. That also should go for instances when a certain sub set of players feels that content difficulty falls under the realm of "quality control". Your PM buttons broken or is it just the desire to pick a fight in public?

Ultimately content difficulty/class balance etc should fall under the creative vision that is taken under ownership of the dev team exclusively but that is probably subjective. If the producers of this game or any other keep in mind that they are running a business and the hope is to appeal to as many customers as possible they also have to own the fact that they will not please everyone all of the time. If players such a Wulfgar gain traction that EQ (or any other game) should be exclusive, than those players have to accept a price point tier like any other "exclusive" product or service. If you want to keep the riff-raff out, then you have to pay more to get into the exclusive club. So if you want all challenge all the time, pony up the cash because most casuals are not going to up their game significantly just to abide by a creative vision that has been compromised by some minority subset of players. They will just take their money elsewhere.