Draylo, I'm getting an incredibly strong feeling of Deja vu.
The sad truth is that a some of the players who enjoyed the "time-consuming" and "difficult fights" of the past quit when the first Abyssea hit, and many more followed as more Abyssea zones were added. This much is apparent from the lack of end-game Linkshells that now exist, and those that do exist have shrunk simply because there's nothing you can't do with 2-3 people; and it's far more efficient to take on todays content with less people.
At this point, I don't feel it's even worth Square catering for players that enjoy the hardcore (read: time consuming and minimalistic drop rate) content; for the majority of those players have quit - and more quit each day.
As I stated in other threads of this nature - it shouldn't be about "this or that", it should have been about maintaining casual content AND hardcore content.
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