From what I see of the changes they're making the game operate in a way where social players won't be left miles behind if a friend of theirs is a more hardcore gamer and spends hours and hours a day on it.

No matter how much time the hardcore gamer spends on FFXIV, he still can't do more leves than the social gamer, therefore, his friend won't log on one day to find he's 20-30 levels behind, ultimately this will benefit them both as they can share leves of similar rank and do dungeons and other group activities of the same rank.

This is just an example though.