However, we made a mistake. A BIG mistake.

Somewhere during the discussions it was strongly recommended that we
streamline our characters.

People wanted something simpler, more direct, more accessible.

We told them. GÇ£If you do this, you will lose all of our subscribers. It is that significant.GÇ¥

The response was that we would gain more due to the marketing push and relaunch.

So, we pushed forward.

...The problem with not wanting to punish players for making the wrong decisions is that, without the possibility to make wrong decisions, there's also no way to make right ones since there's no longer an inherent distinction between those two.

If no decision i'm allowed to make can possibly end up being wrong and punishing me, if only by not being as much of an improvement as one of the alternative choices, the inverse is true aswell in that no decision i'm allowed to make can reward me, of only by improving a bit more than the next guy.

What we're left with is an ultimately pointless chain of essentially inconsequential decisions that might aswell not exist at all because they are already designed in such a way as to never negatively impact my performance relative to the immediate alternatives. As such they will only serve as a speed limiter for arbitrarily increasing numbers/added abilities over the course of one's progression and quickly perceived as such by the player, who has no need and therefore no incentive to to actively engage with the system and attempt to make a meaningful, informed decision to begin with...

Also, can I say that it was really disquieting to have the "Monetization Director" up on stage talking about how potentially game-breaking changes to the core mechanics of the game were being done to make them more "sexy"?

As a newcomer I was not sure what to pick. It was, you know, fairly difficult for me. So I did like what many people did, I picked [muffled] randomly, you know, depending on the name what I think would be cool, and I made mistakes.