Openly admitting to ignoring the players

[ty_taurus]

Yes. Althought, the way these things are argued here, I wouldn't blame the opposing side for believeing we hold them responsible for our criticisms.

I feel my side, or the side that demands more complexity often tends to both belitle and dismiss players who are happy with the current design, we come across as condescending when adressing the issues and that is ultimately hurting our side of the argument.

I, personally am fine with ease of access. I'm fine with a low skill floor. Even if I hate what it has brought.

I see it as such a wasted opportunity too. I was hoping the prunning of skills would be grounds for new developpements. A new base to build upon as the devs said back in ShB launch. Apparently that is not to be the case. I just don't want healers to become stale as they are.

Something that I think is important to keep in mind is that casual players and hardcore players aren't two opposing forces. A game that's fun for hardcore players can also be fun for casual players, and if your game is fun for casual players but not fun for hardcore players, changing that won't necessarily take away from the casual experience. What that means in my mind is that there's very little reason to not try and have something that appeals to both, and if you already have a game that's fun for casual players, it becomes a lot easier to make your game also appeal to hardcore players because the foundation already exists.

It's important to mention that you can potentially break something for a casual audience, but I would argue that it's fairly easy to identity what will and will not appeal to a casual player base in game design that you're familiar with. For example, what would happen if we added Miasma back into the Scholar's action list--a 24 second DoT spell. How do you think casual and hardcore players would respond?

Personally, I'd strongly wager that hardcore players would be largely happy with that specific decision (though let's be clear that that's not the only thing hardcore players want for SCH. This is just an example using one action). I'd also wager that Casual players would range from either appreciating it or not really caring either way. In other words, there's nothing to lose in that regard. Now in practice, we would want to pay attention to how that fits into hotbar bloat and how that damage fits into SCH's performance.

On the flip side, returning pre-Stormblood Cleric Stance would not be a good example of something to return. Some hardcore players may appreciate it, but it would have an adverse effect on casual players because one of the key factors of old Cleric Stance was punishing you for using it wrong. This is what more casual players don't like--when the game kicks you for making a mistake, especially when that mistake already has natural consequences.

In order words, I believe adding depth and complexity in a way that is approachable and casual friendly is actually quite easy to do. You focus on how to reward players for doing something right rather than punishing them for doing something wrong.