That's fair but what has happened in the past is that changes made to accommodate one audience "bleed over" into adversely impacting the experience for the other. We've already seen this in several areas with this series where changes made strictly for H2H play (for "skill gap") adversely impacted offline players.
- MLB 20: Removing the impact of HR/9 from hitting. A terrible decision that just lead to an unrealistic proliferation of offense in the game. This was done strictly for online players because they were using cards with souped-up ratings. This forever altered the game for offline players and detracted from an important aspect of player ratings - which diminishes the role playing experience.
- MLB 20: Creation of Perfect/Perfect swings. Another terrible decision because there is no such thing as a 1:1 correlation between swing quality and outcome. No matter how difficult you make it, there will always be people that have the reflexes to push the button at the right time (which is NOT skill - just biology). If you want a sports game to have player ratings, then you CANNOT ever have a situation where perfect user input yields a perfect outcome. Professional athletes deal with this every day; and just because this is a video game does not mean it is acceptable here. A true "skill gap" means a player being able to handle player ratings and situations where it may go against you - not hitting a little line on a meter.
- MLB 21: Changes made to the discipline engine. Removing player rating impact...again (this time on checked swings). I can appreciate why this was done and to be fair, I am more understanding of why they made this change than many in the offline community, but you don't just simply remove the impact of a rating on the one thing it is supposed to represent. That detracts from the entire identity of this game as an RPG.
I understand online guys were frustrated last year but there is a very reasonable fear from offline players about HOW SDS makes changes to accommodate the online community. Remember too, SDS is collecting data from online games....not offline. So everything done in terms of balancing is going to be trickled-down, to a degree, from outcomes derived from players that play a FAR different game.
I appreciate that this article was about the gameplay in online DD, but there is another side to this story that I felt needed to be told. And as you know, I logged 100s of hours into DD offline (in addition to over 1000 hours in franchise thus far), so this is not one of those childish "DD ruined franchise" rants like we see here. But the reality is that SDS has struggled in assessing the impact of gameplay changes made for online DD and how they impact the offline community and the fear from people like myself is that this trend will continue.
So while I will not deny the need for SDS to improve the online gameplay experience, they need to do so in a manner that will accommodate the needs of all community members. Wholesale tuning of the game or the introduction of mechanics not rooted in ratings/realism, like the items referenced above, is completely unacceptable unless measures are taken to ensure that they will have no deleterious impacts on other communities.