Unknown Soldier
Member
The problem with dumbing down the combat way too much is that there won't be any challenge for many players. They'll hit the cap, be bored, and quit. It's certainly true that you need the hardcore players and the casual ones and I'm glad Yoshida acknowledges this, but the reality is that the hardcore players are the ones who stick around and keep paying for the game after they hit the cap. Especially for a subscription model, which is the hardest model for an MMO to sustain which Yoshida also correctly acknowledges.
That being said, the problem with combat which is very difficult, which relies on exact timing which means you die if your Internet even hiccups for a second, and demands dying repeatedly for a week or more to clear the boss once will be too much of a challenge for many players. All but the most hardcore will try the instance, decide nope, and quit. This is especially problematic if you gate a soul-crushing gear grind behind said content, creating a game where the most hardcore have insanely overpowered gear and can easily kill everyone else in PvP due to sheer bigger numbers on their items.Tera's Argon Queen instance is a pretty good example of this, and it basically killed the entire endgame of that MMO.
Balancing an MMO is the hardest thing in the world because millions of players spend their days trying hard to break it in every imaginable way. I just hope Yoshida knows what he is doing, because right now combat lacks depth in even basic ways that other MMOs, including FFXI, have a great deal more of. The fact that he is unwilling to even introduce some of the more advanced elements in nearly decade-and-a-half old FFXI should be troubling to say the least.
