I guess I could do a better job at clarifying when I say fun cannot be used to determine the communal value of an item / content and its transition between Skill-Based Difficulty and Time-Based Difficuly. So, let’s take raiding as a category by itself. In a general conversation setting, we can say, “Raiding is fun.”, and most people will not push back on that too much. Occasionally, someone may say something along the lines of, “I don’t like it. It’s too much effort to not get loot after 10 boss kills.” However, we all understand that many people find raiding fun generally speaking.
Now transitioning from a general conversation setting to a more detailed design setting, these days we have 4 variations of raid difficulty. Why? Because people have different reasons they find the same content fun. Some people just like the idea of being in a large group clearing content as fun. They derive fun from the social, site-seeing aspect of being of the endgame content. They are not there for the challenge (for some this may be as challenging as they can go regarding skill set).
On the opposite end, we have those guilds and groups that wipe 100 – 200+ times on mythic bosses. Why? Because their fun comes directly from the challenge. My bet would be, if you placed many of them in an LFR setting, they would absolutely hate it, because they would be so bored. Now, individually, there are many who do both versions of the raid for various reasons, but again, we are speaking in general terms for these groups.
So far we have only discussed 2 of the 4 difficulties available for raiding. We don’t need to talk about Normal and Heroic, because the same thought pattern is true for them. The takeaway is that the reason we have a this many difficulties is that fun is very important – to the point where almost every aspect of WoW has a variety of difficulties (including Time-Based Difficulty). It is important for the individual to use what they find fun to decide what they would like to participate in and the intensity they wish to participate. If we went back to having 1 difficulty, then whose value of fun would we use to represent the community?
This same scaling format is applied to content that is less centered around skill (Skill-Based Difficulty), and more focused on continued, repeated content (Time-Based Difficulty). So, even within the category of Time-Based Difficulty, there is going to be a range of difficulties that corresponds to a range of player preferences. We made a entire tier of content for maybe 1% - 2% of the community (Mythic raiding in this case) for Skill-Based Difficulty, but we still have still have Heroic, Normal, and LFR variants for those who find that intensity unfun. Similarly, there are players who enjoy pursuing items / content (like mounts) that are extremely rare. We have 5 that seem to be the holy grail(s) of rare mounts, but there are still 800+ mounts to choose from to pursue if a player does not wish to partake in the more difficulty content.
So, going back to your consideration of fun, yes, it is absolutely important to consider what you find fun in determining which content you would like to participate in. However, we cannot take what a handful – or even a majority – of what players consider fun, and broadly paint everything the same color. Therefore, in the formula for communal value only Skill-Based Difficulty and Time-Based Difficulty (and their elemental components) can be considered, and fun is the decision maker for what content and its intensity the individual player participates in.
Personally, I think you understand this. However, in reading other comments, there still seems to be a bit of confusion as to why we cannot apply a one-size-fits-all mentally of fun to such a large playerbase, where what is fun and the intensity of fun changes from one person to another. So, I am just hoping that providing a different example makes it a bit clearer.
Also, what is fun will not only change from person to person, but from one type of activity to another. If I enjoy a soda, then that doesn’t mean I had fun drinking a soda. If I had fun competing in a race, then that doesn’t mean I enjoyed every footstep of the marathon. Furthermore, one cannot say that I hate sodas, because it wasn’t fun to drink it, nor can they say marathons are not enjoyable, because each step wasn’t a surge of fun. The same is true with various forms of content within WoW. While running the same dungeon, raid, or MoP World Boss doesn’t have the same intensity as pushing a new M+ high, it is still fun and enjoyable to many. Fun and enjoyment can come in many different forms and intensities. However, they are personal and not suitable for adjusting the communal value of an item / content.
Let’s see if we can rephrase this a few other ways to gain perspective. For PvE, what if we said, we should remove Mythic raiding tier or reduce its difficulty to the general community’s skill level? What about reducing the KSM mount to the average successful M+ completions over the season? For PvP, what if we said that the difficulty of the gladiator mount is reduced to Vicious Saddle level? The mounts and rewards like this are the crown jewel for people who like the type of content they participate in. The only difference is that you will never acquire a gladiator or KSM mount by accident, because that requires skill. At least with Sha, if you trip and fall on him on your way to Mogu’shan Vaults, then you have a small chance of getting that mount, because this is Time-Based Difficulty. Same thing with the Love Rocket. However, if you are making 50 characters or spending 2,000 hours to farm these mounts, then you know exactly what you are signing up for.
So, why is it that there is a heavily resistance against reducing the ease of Skill-Based Difficulty content, but some are willing to allow a pass for Time-Based Difficulty content? Let’s just answer the first half the question first. In short, if you make something easier, then you devalue not only the item / content itself, but also the individual and communal time and effort to acquire that item. And there may be some people who don’t care about other people’s time and effort, and they want that item now without the skill.
However, we protect these items from that mentality by having set minimal skill requirements for certain rewards while they are current. If someone wanted Heroic Castle Nathria gear the day it came out, then they needed quite a bit of skill. If they want that same set now, then they may be able to go in there with the same amount of people with ilvl 260 gear and a little less skill. However, they had to wait (the Macro-level subcategory of Time-Based Difficulty content), so the communal value is still preserved.
The same thing is happening to content whose difficulty is Time-Based. If the drop rate is reduced, then the value of it is also reduced because its difficulty is related to its rarity which is directly related to the amount of time it takes to earn that reward. I believe a lot of players are unaware that many others within community find this type of content fun and enjoyable. And they may be unknowingly gutting content for players who may not be able to focus on solely Skill-Based Difficulty content. Additionally, there is an assumption by some that skill is the only scale of value, and therefore, anything that doesn’t require skill should take no time. However, this is simply not true, and we protect against this mentality by preserving the communal value of the item.
Also, I am onboard for the mask transmog!
I think this a very good question. For example, when we are discussing preserving the communal value of an item, typically the transition is from Skill-Based Difficulty to Time-Based Difficulty. However, I don’t see a reason why that couldn’t be reversed for some content. What would be a few suggestions in how to do this? I know you mention potentially have a more difficulty variation of the Valentine dungeon. Would there be anything else? I will think about it on my end a bit, but this could be a fun avenue to explore.