So a hypothetical someone? Except that wasn’t the argument being made by Medaax. He wasn’t talking about hypothetical, he’s been arguing there are a lot of people in the 7-9 key range that literally don’t belong/deserve to be there.
That depends, if they are a solo player then they aren’t doing organized content by choice. That means that means they will do world quests, Emissaries, Invasions, warfront turnover/boss, maybe pug the weekly mythic dungeon quest when it comes up since it’s trivial content and easy to get into at the time (maybe not though). When they hit around 400ish ilvl give or take they’re going to be at an ilvl wall for the tier. Getting there would take them 4+ months. The increased ilvl from Emissaries post Crucible release would help with that. And then they would hit an ilvl wall and stop doing content. There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s all they want. That’s literally where most of my alts are at, including this one as I have no desire to do M+ or raid on them. 8.2 is just around the corner and then they’ll have Benthic gear and all the other content to progress through over the tier.
If they want more progress beyond that and they don’t want to do organized content then they have a problem because there literally isn’t any. If they choose to do organized content to progress then why wouldn’t they be doing organized content before then? You’re making a leap here that doesn’t exist because it fits your argument while glossing over the details. And even if they do decide then to go into M+ to try to progress I don’t see the problem. Maybe that means they’ll start in M+ earlier next season.
Yes I realize not everyone has the same playstyle. No I don’t see where you’re coming from. If the player is okay with going into M+ to progress, awesome, everyone has to learn sometime. I’ve taken people to M+ at 10+ who explicitly told me, “hey, haven’t done this before, if I’m doing something wrong let me know” and had no problems at all.
The thing you’re glossing over is that the gradient of difficulty exists for months. People don’t magically end up 400 ilvl. It takes ~4 months of doing time gated content to get to that point. If they cared about progression why did they magically start doing M+ only when they hit 400? Why were they not doing it before when lower M+ levels would have rewarded them gear upgrades? Because it’s a hypothetical garbage argument being put forth to complain about heroic loot rewards being time gated. That’s why.