Quote:I was unaware that this was the moronic position to take.
I remember back before BB was introduced, the standard way that most EXP parties ran was a few runs of normal, then hard, then elite (or alternately, normal, then hard farm, then elite). This was one of the quicker ways to milk a quest for what it was worth, and was what people would do since there was no real incentive to run elite first. It makes sense that if turbine removed BB, then things would likely revert to how they used to be, as there would again be no real incentive to run elite first.
Personally I love the effect BB has had on my own leveling, but think it's been disastrous for new players and for grouping. What it does is it heavily encourages all players--regardless of how experienced they are--to run quests on elite. As a result, you get a lot of fucktards and downright idiots joining quests on elite when their builds really aren't meant for it, or when they have absolutely no clue about the quest.
My old-school mentality has trained me to believe, and rightly so in my opinion, that "elite" means you should be a competent player who knows what s/he's doing. I don't like how if I put up a LFM these days for elite, I'll get a party full of incompetent idiots. These are people who should be running on lower difficulties, but who have been programmed to run everything on elite because of BB. What BB has done is to incentivize me to just solo the entire game, except for those few quests which absolutely require extra bodies. And that's not a good position for any "MMO" to be, where it puts people in a position that encourages them to solo content, rather than encouraging them to group up.
lol
Pretty much all of this.
Back in the day when I started, I actually read the quest description for "Normal, Hard and Elite" and ran things on Normal, because I didn't know the game and had no clue what I was doing. I then ran Hard if I gained a level or needed more XP.
I didn't run Elite unless I had to, and I actively avoided it otherwise. My entire Guild was full of people just like me then too. The LFMs were full of us newbs bumbling through quests with our Ember Longswords.
Now we're all surly completionist vets with a dozen toons each on multiple TRs so our perspective has changed.
I almost never see an LFM for anything other than Elite unless it's Epic or Legendary.
So yeah, while I also love BB for soloing XP, I have to agree there should be a better system in place to incentivize the other difficulties.
Or at least make it less punitive for new/ unprepared/ crappy players to run not-Elite.
Of course, that sort of change would kind of be "Closing the barn door once the horses have run" like they did with the No Death Bonus, but anything that slows the bleeding at this point would be a welcome change.