Quote Originally Posted by sauc View Post
Are you saying that people who play the game simply because it has the final fantasy name would quit in droves if it was optional? Seems like a rather petty reason. Even if it did I doubt it would make the number of people who quit greater than the number of people the game would keep thanks to the msq. I don't think it's a secret to anyone that the msq and the extremely slow combat at the start are huge player retention killers. Those 2 things are among the most repeated criticism of the game.

But as I said already: potion skip. That alone likely tilts the pros over cons to square. Well that and they are likely unable to change it even if they wanted to.
No, what I am saying is that if the game lost focus on the story, and if the playerbase only increased significantly because of a large influx of players who don't care about the story, the character and nature of the game would change such that, yes, a large portion of the existing fanbase would likely leave