Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
My concern is when an entire design philosophy (e.g. anything but pure instanced gameplay hub worlds) is outright rejected by a given set of the playerbase when it may have far less effect on them than they assume.
In the extract I quoted, you were talking about having desirable facilities be available/unavailable depending on things like content participation/PvP, or more plainly put, risk, as well as "forced community". This is something that is not compatible with the desire for convenient access to facilities and content as the matchmaking systems provide and trying to appease both groups is a futile effort - either the facilities are insignificant enough that people not interested can ignore them, in which case the people enjoying such a concept are disappointed or they are so significant that you push players into a concept they want nothing to do with, leading to them being disappointed.

Now you are talking about open world content in general. That is a different thing altogether, because, as you say yourself, interests do not necessarily clash, unlike in the previous example - a quite important and relevant difference, wouldn't you say? Thus, I get the feeling you misunderstood me - I say if two concepts are not compatible, such as forced community and optional community or resource competition and free access to resources, they are best served in different games, because any attempted compromise can only be unsatisfying for both sides and likely will end up appealing to neither.

Forgive me when I don't address the rest of your post, because it's working under a faulty assumption and merely serves to reassure the readers that there is compatibility - a case in which I, at least, show no opposition in the first place, provided the implementation is financially feasible. It's where desires necessarily need to clash that I feel people should, in fact, play a different game, if it's particularly important to them.