Firstly, SE makes XIV to cater to the widest player-base it can reach. This often means most content will be geared to the lowest skill level.

Secondly, being 'casual' does not mean being 'bad'. I am a 'casual'. I work a 9-5 job with a 1 hour commute each way. That gives me roughly about 4 hours I have to spend between Monday through Friday and some of that gets eaten up in real life things. However, I have all the jobs at 60, I have 2 Animas at 260 and 4 more I'm working up, and I can routinely clear Weeping City and Alex Normal (I don't have time to do Savage Raiding, so let's not even go there) and I'm a pretty damned good player.

Lastly, you will ALWAYS have people who don't want to improve, who don't want to 'git gud' and play up to the level of diligence that you need for true end-game raiding or the like. Dead-heading and face-rolling dungeons isn't something new to XIV, nor will it stop with it. I do think XIV fosters it, I think the Duty-Finder itself is a massive mechanism for it since so many people don't care because 'I'll never see these people again' or 'Even if I do poorly I'll still get into and through content'. In games where you don't have systems like this, the server community serves as a filter, and bad players never make it to end-game.

All this being said, I don't think 'casual friendly' is a good term to use. I think that XIV makes it far too easy for bad players to make it through to end-game, yes, but that doesn't mean 'casuals' are bad in general. The game has no accountability for lack-luster performance because the community has no real tools to deal with toxic or negligent players. They will always have DF to turn to and it will always be a crutch that allows people to get by with minimal effort.