Quote Originally Posted by Hyperia View Post
I doubt this will happen because SE is in business of making money and punishing players at every turn will get them to quit... which is very bad for business. Just look at what happened to Wildstar, they tried that... didn't end well for them. Like it or not, this is supposed to be a very accessible theme park MMO, SE's own words.
You need a middle ground though. Wildstar definitely made the mistake of marketing too much to hardcore players. On the otherhand, WoW (among other issues) has made the mistake of making their game more and more accessible and have been on a steep decline in subscribers ever since WoD. Their classes simply stopped being fun to play, their casual content had less mechanics that mattered, loot rained from the sky and players got bored within a few weeks.

The middle ground ideally is accessible to all players, but has a high skill ceiling and lots of depth, with content on a smooth, consistent increase in difficulty the more you level and higher you go. Easy to learn, hard to master. This way there are always goals for players of every ability. There's always a next step just dangling almost in reach.
FF14 is actually quite good on some of this, but in other ways strays from the path. The gap in difficulty between some content is massive. Sometimes the depth and skill ceiling is removed. Not everything has to be beaten by everyone.