Ofc, you don't have to be a ass about it. However, when a person is soooooooooooooooooooooo nice and sweet and the other person says; I don't give a shit, I'll play however I want, mind your own shitty business etc, sits back and let people work hard. Cries when things doesn't go her/his way and start telling people they are shit. Happens too often. TBH this game have more of these players than those ''elitist'' people talk about. Everyone who knows me on my server or other servers I've played on knows this. I can tolarate if people aren't top but doing good, than those who sits back and just want a freebie. If people are like that, they shouldn't whine about it. They have to fix their own attitude first and maybe people stop calling them bad?
I think the other issue is SE doesn't give them a middle content to even try, because the gap on content on this game is simply too big. I can understand that, however I have plenty of friends who doesn't raid hardcore or even raid at all and they are really good players. Look, I have 2 fc members who joined 1 month ago and been playing the game for 3 months? They hit 60 like 1 month ish ago, nailed the DRG/MNK opener and substained somewhat a good dps on a dummy for 3min then you find those who sit back and cry they have to do some decent amount of clicking on their keyboard/pads and just expects everything for free. Like I said earlier, if people wanna be lazy and ungreatful they can find their own group who wanna do that sort of thing or simply get better and get accpeted in good groups.
It's like what you said, the community as a whole don't expect a lot, they expect so so much (being decent atleast). For me I want to play the best each time I try a new class or my main jobs, but if someone is doing decent, that's fine. I just find it super sad when a tank and a healer out dps people who are dps.