The underlying discontent is valid. We've been nearly a year and a half since the last raid. There was plenty of time to test mechanics. When your player base finds a way in your existing framework without external software to hack or cause a glitch to succeed in your programming, then have the humility to be impressed and congratulate them. This constant slapping on the wrist by nerfing anytime some creative solution that does not require spending several hundred dollars to implement comes around is the opposite of customer appreciation.
The priority this is given is truly maddening. How many posts have you seen about the character cadence and the promises of adhering to it? Anyone able to farm Zombie or Spirit yet? And how is it that all new characters that are added to shops are winding up in fleet or guild store? When is the last time anything was added to the GW store? Oh yeah.... it was the launch of ships!
The issue here is not whether or not sthan is broken. It's the issue with the speed at which you see them remove paths for people who will not spend money or will only spend limited amounts.
The content is made increasingly harder to give the top guilds a reason for playing, but guess what... A minimum of 4 of the top guilds still cleared heroic sith raid on their first attempt.... without this mechanic. How you ask? With a bunch of 7 star Sion and Visas Marr at G12 at a cost of roughly $800-$1000 per play who geared who purchased and geared up both.
The difficulty constantly scales up, but never slows down those at the top. It will only prevent those with lower gaming budgets from ever catching even halfway up.
So that is the anger. This isn't about preserving a raid. It's about preserving a reason for exclusive spending. There was no rage about this in any guild with people who have spent $100k or more on this game. And it's not because they care about the integrity of the raid. It's because they don't need mechanics like this.
CG will drag their feet continuously on updates that benefit their f2p and guppy/dolphin player bases. But if there is something that will even slightly motivate you to continue your current level of nonspending by throwing you a bone..... yeah that fix is in fast.
