I guess it's time

[Claymore65]

Casuals have too much to do, raiders don't.

That comes down to player demand. Let's say, for example, 10% of players raid Alexander Savage. The other 90% of the playerbase spend their time doing...casual things. Should the majority of Dev time and effort go to something that pleases 10% of players, or content that 90% of players enjoy?

To be fair, the issue isn't anywhere near that cut and dry, but that is part of the issue. There is no content that everyone will enjoy, since everyone likes different things. There is also a hard limit on the content they can produce in a reasonable amount of time. And to be fair, the FFXIV Devs make very large content updates if you compare them to pretty much any other MMO team on the market. Even WoW, despite (I assume) having a significantly larger team, barely produces this much content, especially on a 3 month basis.

That said, I can totally understand burnout. It's a very challenging issue for anyone to solve. There are certainly improvements to be made. Things like Deep Dungeon show they are moving in the right direction, while still trying to maintain the things people expect (new dungeons, raids, and story). And soon, we have an avenue to explore that (a new expansion). One other factor to consider is that the game isn't that old yet. WoW and FFXI have been out for significantly longer periods of time, and thus have much more content.

[RiceisNice]

That comes down to player demand. Let's say, for example, 10% of players raid Alexander Savage. The other 90% of the playerbase spend their time doing...casual things. Should the majority of Dev time and effort go to something that pleases 10% of players, or content that 90% of players enjoy?

There's definitely a lack of things for anyone that isn't able/want to invest time to do savage, but at the same time have been a longstanding player that non-raid content is incredibly stale. Playing since 2.2 here, the non-raid content has been incredibly stale for me because it's always been the same once you get to the base foundation, mobs have no special interaction, dungeons are straight forward (or in hullbreaker's case, outright bland and uninteresting), and the side content only has novelty and reward to fall onto because it falls back to that same base foundation for combat (I can't say that aquapolis is something I'm doing after the first week)

I'm going to step in right here before this turns into another useless argument... please don't start this them against us idea. I don't want this thread to be an argument that breeds no new ideas. I stated as much in my OP.

Don't make it seem that way. It's definitely an ongoing issue for long-time players who aren't hardcore raiders (savage), and for the lack of a better word, casual, midcore/longtime "raiders" and hardcore/savage raiders are the type of players that are in this game, and I'd say that the former two make up a good amount of the playerbase. The game just isn't doing a very good job at retaining the midcore players with the same, stale content, while at hte same time the new players still have things to do, if only because they haven't done them before for months prior.