There's a fine line between making your game more 'fun' and alienating a core section of your userbase,
yes but i think its a bigger problem when developers keep catering to their limited userbase by keeping outdated, cumbersome systems in place when they could be switching these up and gaining a much wider audience.
his example with icewind dale was spot-on; i made it 2/3 of the way through planescape torment before i had to give up because i was forced into a dungeon that i just couldn't finish. the old d&d-based combat was nonsensical to me and my half-assing it could only get me so far. the idea that i could even create a character/party that would not be able to finish the game was total bullshit and kept me away from most old-school western rpgs.
most recent games have fortunately moved away from this, but as he points out most melding of rpg systems with other genres is half-assed. putting tiny incremental points in my stats in fallout or mass effect 1 is tedious and doesnt translate into a good feeling of progress. moving to systems where players have fuller direct control is great but putting more stat-related stuff into the background and replacing them with better options (minigames instead of percentage chance/fail, new skills/rewards instead of numeric boosts to stats, more clearly telegraphed outcomes to risk/reward situations) go a long way towards making games more fluid and less tedious.
