I don't see why having more options is necessarily a bad thing. Difficulty settings (which affect gameplay to various extents) have become a genre staple just to name one. If the budget allows it and the core experience isn't rubbish, it shouldn't do any harm. I emphasize the core experience needs to be fleshed out since offering players ten different ways to polish a turd isn't much of an improvement over coming up with just one. Admittedly, if there's a high likelihood that the game will suffer because of divided attention on the devs' part they are better off working on just one feature. Anyways, until someone conducts a poll that is up to scientific standards with respect to gamers' preferred combat mode I'd be wary of ranking particular audiences by order of magnitude.
