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I compared skipping the game to skipping quests. It’s not an added req, it’s a requirement for full access to rewards.
What’s wrong with exploring? Let him go at his own pace, there is a lot more to this game than endgame pvm. Let’s hope he sees that before getting convinced that all quests are garbage and pvm and money making are the only things that matter. It doesn’t take that long to get quest cape, an efficient casual can complete it in 3 months especially when you see hardcores being developed for the big grinds of high level pvm ready in that time.
I can say the same with how do merchers gatekeep endgame content?
The game that the reddit has been comparing to recently (FFXIV) forces you to do lore before you can participate in an expansion. WoW also does this. These games are the industry standard, more popular than RS and they force you to do low level content and LORE just to access the endgame content.
You are calling the game overly restrictive because we want to put an item that is something that only the endgame people will actually use in any effective way under a requirement beyond 20 quests. OSRS would be pissed if you could kill demonics without doing the quests. The lore in this game right now is so ruined by recommendations. You can fully explore senntisten, end the elder godwars without even hearing “empty lord” or freeing the mahjaraat that started putting all these events into place.
What single requirement is more than a 40 hour grind to get? You are being overly restrictive if you are telling YOUR FRIEND to have 2b+ in gear just to pvm with you. You can do a lot of content (literally all barring challenges like high enrage telos/glacor) with t85 weapons and t70 armour with the most basic perks available.
I believe what you said is true of FF14. It's not true of WOW.
The most recent WOW expansion required players to complete the entire expansion story before participating in endgame (effectively hardlocking the entire game behind a very long questline). This was constantly raged against by the community (along with a whole bunch of other stuff) and appears to have been an extremely unpopular move.
In previous expansions, it's rare that content is questlocked - participation in the endgame tended to be level locked, and quests were an efficient way to level, but typically gave no useful or meaningful rewards and so anti-lore players would strategise how to skip as much of the story as possible.
What this tells me is that you are trying to be like WoW. Thats probably the worst decision an MMO developer can make. The only way to thrive in the Market is to set yourself apart, You can survive by copying what has been proven to work, but you can not thrive unless you have an identity.
RuneScape HAS an Identity but over the past several years that identity has been constantly chewed away at. Ask yourself as a team, "What made RuneScape... well, RuneScape?"
If you can be honest with yourselves when answering that question you'll find out what you should be doing.
I don't know how that's your takeaway.