This game needs to be harder

[Jojoya]

As I was saying in another thread all of this is true and totally clashes with SE's vision and marketing for the game. The game is being "modernized" as such but the marketing of it is a "wait and see" kind of thing that only appeals to the echo chamber and not potential wider audiences. As a result what do we get? SE is not attracting a wider audience and the game feels gutted. So we are suffering for nothing.

Did you stop to consider that FFXIV is not trying to appeal to potential wider audiences?

Wider audiences are generally not a good things for games because interests within the player base can start diverging even more. The more interests diverge, the more content that needs to be created to satisfy them all. The more content that needs to be created, the thinner the development team gets spread over increasing tasks and the more likely quality is going to take a big hit as content is rushed to release regardless of bugs and inconsistencies.

If you want to appeal to a wider audience as a company, you make a new product to appeal to those who aren't interested in your current products. You don't change your current products and alienate your already loyal customers.

This is where YoshiP is already taking a risk. Can they keep FFXIV close enough to what it has been while making small changes to attract franchise fans who don't want to play a MMO without causing existing players to feel alienated? Many players have been unhappy with changes to dungeons for the sake of NPC AIs so the game can be played mostly solo. How many players stopped at dungeons and didn't get into trials/raids? Will the adjusted dungeon designs bore them so they lose interest in the game? Can they get away with maybe likewise changing Normal trials for MSQ to be NPC AI compatible without further upsetting parts of the existing player base?

Trying to push things even farther for an even wider audience likely would not end well, especially if SE does not give FFXIV a bigger budget for more staff and facilities. Even if they did, it would take a couple of expansions before players would see any positive effects from those changes - but they could easily see negative effects during the interim.

A lot of posters (and probably lurking readers) here hate when WoW gets brought up but it is an extremely good example to learn from. It showed what can happen when a new game is released with more modern ideas about game play and also what can happen when you continue to make changes beyond what attracted those players to the game in the first place.

This game is no longer new. It's got a solid player base. Additional changes run that risk of driving satisfied players without attracting enough new ones to replace them.