I'd argue that, as summarized by the OP, Yoshida is missing the point.

No-one wants to be mediocre. The hard core raider don't want just slightly better boring stats. The hard core crafters don't want a few neat things to make and ways to make gil with nothing to spend it on. Casuals don't want to struggle to get through stuff with no real reward.

There's definitely room to reward each of their play styles well while separating their effort put in. RUNESCAPE has done this. There's some really, really, really nice and cool things to earn in Runescape by devoting most of your time in one of several directions. The most dedicated can take all those directions, those less so can still head in one and feel accomplished. This mire of baseline success is hurting the game more than helping it.