Cutscene skipping "peer pressure" What is it? Why does it exist? Why care?

[KisaiTenshi]

This is industry-wide, though. Not just with FFXIV. I remember reading an interview with a Blizzard developer saying that a very small percentage of their playerbase raided, and a very small percentage of their playerbase did competitive PvP. The majority of their players played casually, which they defined as mainly solo questing and regular dungeons, while dabbling a little bit in raiding and PvP. That's today's MMOs in a nutshell.

The days of hardcore raiding are gone. And if you want hardcore PvP, you're playing a MOBA or an FPS.

I don't think they (hardcore PvP's) ever existed. PvP is all Team Fortress/Overwatch clones now. Probably more satisfying than MMORPG PvP which is almost entirely griefing if there is not some form of perpetual war going on.

Hardcore raiding may still survive, but only if the players that are interested in it can behave, otherwise there is no point in the developers producing more content for them, which means those 5% or so that play that content need to stop scaring off players who otherwise would play it. One needs to ask what the threshold is before the developer just doesn't bother with it, and it becomes easy-mode for everyone.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Hardcore raiding may still survive, but only if the players that are interested in it can behave, otherwise there is no point in the developers producing more content for them, which means those 5% or so that play that content need to stop scaring off players who otherwise would play it. One needs to ask what the threshold is before the developer just doesn't bother with it, and it becomes easy-mode for everyone.

You're making the mistake of comparing 5% to 95%, when theme park MMOs, by design, appeal to multiple different types of players. Crafting and gathering, for instance, make up a decidedly small portion of the playerbase if compared to everything else yet no one talks about that content being endanger. Think of everything as an individual slice of pie. The pieces themselves vary in sizes but they all make up the whole.

Harder content will always remain because it drives progression. Take out Savage and suddenly all consumables and crafted gear have no value, thus crafters and gathers suffer. You then have to factor its the same "hardcore" players who make all the guides, rotation videos and etc. Many people rely on those even for dungeons or 24 man raids. Furthermore, hard content is necessary to give the illusion of an end goal. Even if you have no intention of touching Savage, the idea of getting gear which allows you to complete it should you choose, keeps people actively upgrading their character. Devoid of that incentive, gear becomes all but meaningless since Dungeon ilvls aren't remotely close to the current ilvl when released. And this doesn't account for the developers simply not being able to produce enough casual content to keep people occupied. Savage and Normal mode raids vary only slightly in their design, thus they aren't going to suddenly have a ton of resources to develop something else if Savage went away.

The fact Ultimate exists shows how valuable raiders are, if only from a profit perspective. FFXIV had its highest viewership on Twitch in its entirely life cycle just from people watching Ultimate Coil even if they had no intention of ever looking at the fight themselves.