I haven't had a wipe in Orbonne in months, despite it coming up several times.
Meanwhile, I've had multiple wipes in World of Darkness, including a group that vote abandoned on the first boss.
Anecdotes are fun.
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And yet they still destroyed the entire world and started over because they acknowledged that the game couldn't survive on enthusiasts alone. I'm not saying there's no place for enthusiasts, nor am I saying that they should completely ignore them. That's why they continue to put out Savage and Extreme content, and I think it's great. I just don't think that it's a good idea to go back and fill the rest of the game with Savage-level mechanics because a handful of Extreme raiders decided that the MSQ, Normal raids, and Normal dungeons are just too boring for them. Throwing them a bone is fine. That's what Savage and Extreme content is. The common suggestion of introducing more button bloat and the OP's suggestion of putting Normal raids on steroids, however, is not just "throwing them a bone." It's screwing up everyone else's experience just to make a handful of players happier.
Oh believe me the enthusiasts thought the game sucked too. They merely put up with it because Square promised changes were being made. So they had nothing to do with the decision to release a bad game.
And this right here is the logical failure point of everyone arguing against making the game challenging. They tend to take it to extremes and radicalize and distort the intentions of the OP every time this gets brought up. Noone is arguing this should be the case. In fact, I think you enjoy making up imaginary people making this argument so you can make it sound valid. No one is asking this, so you are answering to people who don't exist.
I've seen people cite steam of all places for player count, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of FFXIV players avoid using steam for this game specifically due to the way it works over there.
That is you. Can every player do it? No.
A lot of players can't manage to figure out how to avoid mechanics to the point I spend a significant amount of time during hunt trains rezzing the same players over and over (even when there's only 20-30 present so someone can't use the "I couldn't see anything because too many players are here" excuse). It's always not a lag issue - I can tell whether they're lagging based on how long they stay faded in my party frames after accepting a rez.
Not everyone comes equipped the same skill level, and years of experience do make a difference. You might have entered into Endwalker with 8 years of experience under your belt but others were entering with only 8 days.
Some of us also have physical disabilities (such as Parkinson's disease in my case) that prevent us from being able to master harder content. I do not know what specifically these proponents for "more challenging content" are calling for, but if it were to result in the level of difficulty being raised across the board, I might not be able to play this game anymore.
Looking at ffcollect, the desire for difficult/high end content isn't really that high. Even "easy" high end content like Alexander (Savage) right now only have 52% completion and lesser the closer it is to current expansion.
https://ffxivcollect.com/achievements/types/1
I think most ff14 players play for the story. 85% completed endwalker vs 11% completion of current raid tier
https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...=shadowbringer
https://ffxivcollect.com/titles?q%5B...t%5D=endwalker
Doubt there will be any real impact on game population health if MSQ/Normal level content difficulty is ramped up or not but the stats show that most ff14 players aren't that about playing a game because its difficult or easy but treating it as another rpg in the ff series.
For now I guess anyone can manipulate the difficulty setting and find like minded people via pf to enjoy the game this way tho