Of course it's not only the hardcore players who have issues, but making the game more hardcore is not the solution to their issues.

The reason these hardcore games are so well loved is because the people who didn't love them stopped playing them entirely. For example, I loved 1.0. And I don't mean 1.23, I mean the original release, particularly it's completely unapproachable and ridiculous crafting system. That was totally my jam. Does the fact that a few hundred people (if I'm being generous) thought this was the greatest system ever mean that it was a good system? Of course not, because the vast majority of people hated it. It's easy to cater to a small group who will love your game, but if the vast majority stop playing as a result, you've still failed.

FFXIV, flawed as it is, is more popular than FFXI ever was. What possible basis do you have to conclude that making a popular game more like a less popular game will improve its popularity?