The big difference between Japan and US players is quite simply, lately, the generation seems to feel entitled to a lot of things. If they feel that something doesn't fit into their way of thinking it should be changed. Hence why you see a lot more complaining on the forums. We (The U.S) have a difficult concept that while something may be harder for us, that doesn't mean it should be changed for everyone else as well. Suck it up, learn, improve, and down it.

However with that being said. The problem with the raid is as follows.

1) New mechanics that everyone believes they should have down pat in one pull attempt.

2) Getting all 24 players in the raid to get on the same page at the same time is nothing short of a miracle and you will have many players that feel that they don't want to wait for those that learn slower and will vote abandon quickly.

3) This one is i feel an SE problem. The game mainly caters to casual players. I have zero issue with this. However, you usually have two modes Hard and Savage(Extreme). If you want to make these types of raids, then make an extreme version that has the harder mechanics that requires everyone to be working together. In a casual raid, having 1-2 players mess things up should not be a wipe for an entire group. You should be able to recover from it, and in some cases you can in this raid, but there are a few mechanics that if just a couple people mess up, it might spell doom for the entire group.

I'm all for the separation of casual and hardcore players. When i played WoW, i played as a die hard raider, people walking around in LFR (looking for raid, basically a complete watered down version) gear i felt deserved that gear if they are not going to put in time. When i switched to Final Fantasy, i decided i wanted to be casual and not have to raid 2-4 nights a week. I again would have zero issue if SE designed two version of the raid, and the items that came from casual mode were no where near as good as the savage. I think that will be how SE can win raiders to this game.

In all, i feel that SE tried to develop a harder raid because it was called for, and in terms of designing challenging content they did really well! I applaud this new raid in terms of difficulty compared to lets say Void Ark. In that SE you have my full support. But in the end, don't forget about your casual players as well. While they may want a challenge, they may not want the same level of challenge seasoned raiders are accustomed to.

I know i made this post specifically about the new raid, while the OP was a general post, however i felt it was the best way to express how i felt about terms of difficulty.