That is another problem SS has, they are one of the few games on the market that have not realized that groups need to be smaller, WoW did away with 25 and 40 man regular difficulties because gaming is no longer a hardcore hobbyist thing. You need to appeal to casual gamers as well as the basement D&D hardcore crowd. asking for huge groups only appeals to the hardcores who enjoy the logistics of setting up and managing raid teams on different schedules.

WoW asks for 10 man groups for raiding which is fine because they have such a large playerbase, SS, with it's playerbase should be asking for 4-5 man groups. But the issue there is we don't have any solid anti-MCing mechanics. So 4-5 man groups would destroy the Multi-Playper aspect of the game.

Variable difficulties could definitely help if *actual anti-MCing mechanics were implemented*, that way people could pursue content in normal groups of 4-7 (which is still kind of pushing the size limitations of such a small game), or used increased difficulty settings (think Infernal Tempest & Infernal Darkness for how this could be implemented) to get more, and better rewards.

I dont think making the content easy is a good solution to make it accessible to people who cant play during peak hours. Making content easy kills a game. Been proven in many MMOs

You can make it more challenging while requiring less people though, by using active play mechanics. Interupts, Dispels, AoEs (that can actually kill things) are a good example, but SS doesn't make use of any of these things. So in SS a measurement of how hard something is just comes down to how much shield does it have, and how much DPS do you have.

Elegant game design factors in those two things, of course. However that is really a back burner item. Sort of a "You must be this tall to ride" type thing. The actual challenge in a well designed game comes from the mechanics of the fight. Good examples would be the first boss in the MoP raids (I know everyone hated MoP, but it had phenomenal raid design).

The first boss was a fight agaisnt 3 out of 4 possible enemies with all different abilities, and a shared health pool. The catch was that you only got two tanks and having 2 bosses next to eachother would cause them to overload (which was a massive AoE that would wipe your raid), at the same time two dogs next to each other would synergize their abilities to make a more powerful version.

So you had to prioritize which boss you burned hardest based on that weeks random generation, you also had to adapt to changing combined abilities, while also having tanks juggle which dog and how many dogs they currently held aggro for, as well as coordinating when to trade them off, because 3 dogs on a tank would instant wipe the group. You also had numerous types of AoEs going off for this where one dog would lock you in place, and link you to another character so if that character didn't pay attention to the link it would deal damage to both of you based on how far apart you were, or alternatively someone could dispel you so you could move to them....

Basically the fight had so many factors that you needed 10 people who all had experience with, or had been taught the boss mechanics. If you had a good group, you ran like clockwork and made an incredibly complex fight look like a simple tank and spank, if you had people doing their own thing not paying attention, etc... then you would slowly fall apart throughout the duration of the fight, because their was no way to accidentally kill it, youi had to fulfill important roles and requirements to defeat the boss, and that is something that SS is sadly devoid of.

Just out of curiosity, how many people with no T22 skills are worried about this change, and how do people feel about t21 dailies?

T21 dailies take entirely too long, but I think Hober said he is already looking into redoing those.

But you're not opposed to them in principle? If people are opposed to t22 solo skill content but not t21 is there a reason?

No one is opposed to dailies or solo content, they are opposed to people buying the skills without doing either dailies or the zone.

How do people feel about shard tokens then?

Honestly. I don't think anyone has ever used them to get skills. They're just not economical enough to be an option. At market value a single skill using them costs what 30b? That's why they're really only used as gear tokens.

Alright, so how would people feel if the market value of shard tokens came down or t22 commods went up?

1. The market value will never fall that far because it requires a full run to get 5 shard tokens, players capable of doing oly aren't interested in 100m.

2. Try asking a question that isn't hypothetical and dumb. Once you show palpable consequence, people will care...

I don't see it as impossible that the market value of t22 commods goes up, if as you say people who are capable of doing that content aren't interested in 100m.

I'm only trying to understand your point of view, and see if there's an outcome people would find acceptable. If that's what makes a stupid question, I can deal with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've used plenty to get skills, i sit a DF with all mats for the materials mission, then run the hunting missions on SD. I've had over 200 in a few weeks.

The missions give shards, not tokens.