Quote Originally Posted by RiyahArp View Post
I think they could do this if they allowed more of a non-combat progression through the game. Just let crafting and gathering open up the zones instead of needing combat classes to do it, and add a craft/gather progression storyline in addition to the individual quests. If you want to open up pve endgame, you need to go through the combat progression with a combat class too. You don't get the actual combat story, but you do get one tailored to being non combat support.

This would also be good as it would be much better for people with significant disabilities to still play in the game. There's actually a lot of non-combat content in this game that they can do, but the combat gates it off, and t'd be nice if you could just let certain people focus on that aspect.
FFXIV 1.0 tried this and it was generally agreed to be pretty terrible, since it inevitably influenced the encounter design in a bad way. Can't have the story rely on this big epic fight or this covert infiltration or anything cool because you have to account for Joe McCulinarian bringing his frying pan along, so instead it was a split path of "introduce combat NPCs that do the fighting for you" or "you beat this beastman in a Parley card game? I guess you convinced them to stop fighting now."

Which is unfortunate because out of context solving a beastman skirmish through card games is kinda hilarious.