Henrik talks too much.
People need to understand that he is a consumate hype man. He will sit there and talk all day about everything that “will be” in MO. Not because he is straight out lying, but because he truly believes that his game will one day have it all. He is basically just talking about everything he wants wants in the game.
Unfortunately between wishing and making it happen, there is a huge obstacle called reality. Henrik doesnt take that into account when he talks. In his mind, the game will have it all, tomorrow.
He is horrible at taming peoples expectations. He thrives at the opposite. And then everyone is pissed when he cant deliver, or delivers half finished stuff.
I've been around a lot of sandboxes and selling dreams is the whole point. The problem is, he is distracting from core problems. There are areas that would make everyone happy if they were improved. For instance, it would not take a long time to make combat considerably better. That would make everyone happier. Why haven't they done that? All they would do is change numbers. Change damages, change swing speed, change how parry/counter works. They could swap a bunch of numbers and put out a patch tomorrow with wildly different combat to try. Then get feedback.
I mean, TC was dog shit for months. It will probably be pretty bad even after UE5. They did major changes to UE thru public tests and hopefully it won't be a total disaster at launch. Yet, we're years in and they haven't had a combat test server up to actually make combat good.
Again, it bears repeating, it's never gonna be perfect or make everyone happy, but the way MO combat works is understood by all of us. Everything they could change would be within that 'frame.'
That would be the single most simple and most profitable change IN THE GAME. It could cover up so many of the flaws. Obviously, making it so people could pvp more (like if you get tagged by someone in a guild, their whole guild should be open pvp to you) / removing extra guards would be good, too, but fixing ground combat is the elephant in the room because as long as that is working somewhat, people will wanna play.
Don't out think yourself. Don't think about 1v3 or ping or anything just make combat good. Once combat is good, if you have small adjustments to make that might help lessen the effect of those things, then add them, if you don't, just let it be. The irony is the game seems more zergy and more pingy than it was. AND IT'S BAD.