Why is Yoshi P turning his back on the playerbase that loves this game the most?

[Talraen]

Of course it's not only the hardcore players who have issues, but making the game more hardcore is not the solution to their issues.

The reason these hardcore games are so well loved is because the people who didn't love them stopped playing them entirely. For example, I loved 1.0. And I don't mean 1.23, I mean the original release, particularly it's completely unapproachable and ridiculous crafting system. That was totally my jam. Does the fact that a few hundred people (if I'm being generous) thought this was the greatest system ever mean that it was a good system? Of course not, because the vast majority of people hated it. It's easy to cater to a small group who will love your game, but if the vast majority stop playing as a result, you've still failed.

FFXIV, flawed as it is, is more popular than FFXI ever was. What possible basis do you have to conclude that making a popular game more like a less popular game will improve its popularity?

[Reynhart]

FFXIV, flawed as it is, is more popular than FFXI ever was. What possible basis do you have to conclude that making a popular game more like a less popular game will improve its popularity?

We don't. However, we're pretty sure that keeping the same formula over and over and over again will make it boring for everyone sooner or later.
And that "We're keeping the same formula because we don't want people feeling encouraged to put more hours into the game" is a crappy excuse for an MMO producer.