Quote Originally Posted by ErikMynhier View Post
And yet casual players vastly outnumber hardcore players in numbers, subs, and cash shop purchases. Why again would a business bow to hardcore players? Surely it would be corporate suicide to ignore the wishes of its majority customer base to make a vocal minority happy.

Edit: I'm not downing the OP's position. I'm just pointing out some reality in business.
This is a frequent misconception. First and foremost, casual players do not necessarily want brain dead content anymore than hardcore players do. A well designed dungeon can be challenging yet still only take 15-20 minutes or less. Nonetheless, you're forgetting the midcore playerbase-- to which XIV actually has a substantial amount. Case in point, over 200,000 players participated in The Creator Savage. Plenty of yet to clear it, but the fact many are even attempting shows just how large that playerbase is. If we then consider Lucky Bancho's unofficial census on active players bring approximated at just shy of 500,000. The midcore and hardcore combined for almost half. None of this even accounts for players who quit-- sub numbers have consistently declined over the past year -- or the casual crowd who do want harder content, but aren't interested in a Savage equivalent. All said, it's not quite the minority.