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In the long run, "gimmie all the good stuff for minimal effort on my part!" rarely improves Player retention rates.
The less effort it takes to accomplish something, the less value it has to start with and the less value it will retain over time.

There's a reason why "boosting" garners less respect than actually doing the work (and P2W garners even less).

You must not play redside very often. Just FYI, beating Dr Q is an entire mission villains have to do, and he can scale up from an EB to an AV with a full team! Obviously, this being a massively multiplayer game, every person who joins a team and contributes should get full rewards for their contributions. Otherwise, there's no incentive to team up at all, and we native redside players would really like to team up more.

As far as player retention rates go, after that problem I encountered with patron unlocks, I actually went from playing weekly to not playing for several months, as did most of my friends. Which is why I stopped looking at this thread for a while. So even if you think missions shouldn't reward your teammates for helping you and consider team rewards to be a matter of "boosting," you're advocating for something that has at least once convinced less people to play on Rebirth. But maybe that's intentional.

Realistically, people play on their own terms, or they don't play at all. If a person only has fun at level 50 but can't realistically expect to reach level 50 within a reasonable amount of time, they won't sigh and suck it up. They just won't play at all. They'll find a different game to play that they find that's more accommodating for them. For a massively multiplayer game, that's unfortunate, because a diversity of playstyles and players makes for a healthy population for long term sustainability.

But, again, that has essentially nothing to do with my OP, because as explained, we do have to work for patron unlocks. I think every redsider gets badges from mayhem missions from enabling AVs and rushing the vault, and that's a great system that makes people love doing mayhem missions. Well, besides the fact that mayhem missions are riotous fun in their own right.

I would disagree on the grounds that the Patron Unlock is the entire Patron Story Arc, not just merely the last mission in that arc.
Not sure what the "under the hood" coding is, but I can easily imagine it being one where each of the missions in the arc needs to be completed as a prerequisite to achieving the Patron unlock reward.

Over a decade ago back on the Virtue Server, I remember running all 4 Patron Arcs on a single character in order to unlock each Patron Pool "just in case" I ever wanted to respec into an alternate build using powers from a different Patron.

An MMO is a team game. Teams should get rewards for playing together. All the rewards. This just entrenches redside's existing population problem.

And having to run all four patron arcs sucked. It wasn't fun, it made the game worse and miserable. This is also a bad status quo that should be changed to make things more accessible and welcoming to everyone. Being against it is being against accessibility.

It's imminently possible because it's a feature enabled on other servers.

I want to help my other redsiders. Let me help my other redsiders by letting them get patron unlocks when they're on a team with me.

Today I did Black Scorpion's arc and got up to the final mission, Defeat Dr Quatrexin, which grants the Stinger badge, which then unlocks all patron pools. I went into Looking For Group and invited anyone who wanted a patron pool unlock to come join me for the mission. We do it, and lo and behold, they don't get credit, which means I've wasted their time, and I look like an idiot.

If anyone does the final patron pool unlock mission, regardless of whose mission it is, they deserve to get the badge and the unlock. Please reward forming teams and helping people. I'm a redside native; I want to help other members of my endangered species have fun, and when I can help people get the badge early, I save them the trouble of having to respec when they can't take the power they want at 35.

It's basic sense.