Just replaying Metro Exodus and it's just so clear how much of the game's soul is missing compared to previous games because it sought out "broad appeal" and made creative decisions based on that rather than trying to just make a good Metro game.
It begs the question - we've seen so many games sacrificed at the altar of "broad appeal" but has a game ever been made better by stepping out of their niche to try get a better audience?
I can say FFXIV was improved by trying to get ANY APPEAL WHATSOEVER. Have you seen the trainwreck that was 1.0?
"We're trying to not be FFXI"
Proceeds to make LITERALLY EVERYTHING except graphics quality worse than FFXI
-Experience points for your class were obtained AT RANDOM during attacks.
-Five regions, but each one of them was basically four land tiles copy-pasted repeatedly.
-System was SLOW AS SHIT. No, that wasn't congestion, that was the speed things run regardless!
-"Another failure of this degree will destroy the company"
Who thought this was a good idea? Just reading it gives me precancerous brain lesions.
In FFXI, it was used as a matter of "weapon skill" levels, which were an entirely different thing from experience points for classes, improving your "attack and accuracy" as you use said weapons. I was okay with that. Using it for the class entirely was bullshit, and whoever decided on that should have been fired from the company entirely.