There is a reason to use EX-guides on Girls Frontline, some nice rewards (resources, furniture, skins, etc) are sometimes locked behind the EX missions so people follow a guide because they want the reward but don't want to bother with the challenge and I can sympathize with that.

However, there is a thing called "ranked map" which haunts the community every few months. Ranked map is THE big e-peen measuring contest where commanders compete to see who can juggle more dolls back and forth in a line until one of them forget to move one of the dolls to a safe spot and she is instantly deleted.

Let me put it this way... I feel lots of players are not prepared for the EX ranked challenge, but do it anyway when they could get higher scores and more fun doing it on normal but there is a huge prejudice about doing it that way.

p.s. You can get the rewards doing it on normal by the way.