Quote Originally Posted by Ronduwil View Post
I agree that they're pointless, but you're seeing this as a race or competition to breed champion gamers. SE is running a different race: make as much cash as possible. How do they do that? By attracting the most players. How do they do that? By providing content with mass appeal. By their measure, they're not "racing to the bottom." They're actually gaining ground quite rapidly by making a game that appeals to everyone, not just hardcore players.
What content with mass appeal? They hardly even appealed to the mid-core community, let alone the hardcore players. Them turning the game into a visual novel with baby's first MMO gameplay isn't going to keep people around for long.

Rapidly gaining ground? We're already back to pre-WoW failure/Twitch streamer induced player numbers. Vast majority of the streamers and the players they've brought have already moved on from FFXIV because of the lack of interesting, fun content.