I guess what I am having an issue with is the fact that the two people closest to me in RL, and who now play this game with me twice a week, are casual players who only ever played things like EverQuest and will soon have to face hard modes like titan, ifrit, etc, despite the game passing itself off as a somewhat casual one during the trial period.

If a game developer like Square Enix is going to take a game like this and pass it off as being playable by casual gamers, then Square Enix should also make available much easier, "Story Mode" versions of those primals so that those casual players with lesser ability, can still complete them for the MSQ.

All SE has to do, is make them available, then limit Exp/Gil/Item rewards for them, as well as not counting toward any achievement. I wouldn't mind running something like that with them after doing my own at intended difficulty, because I'd like to see them get thru it at least. Plus, repeated run thru's could help prep them for the next harder level of difficulty.

In my opinion, once you get to end of ARR, its almost as if SE was saying "Sorry buddy, everything is hard mode now, but we're fine with having taken your money you spent on this game, expansions and subscription fees when we made you think this was actually intended for casual players...chump lol". At least that is what it feels like to me. I can handle the hard modes, right now they certainly cannot.

I'm not suggesting eliminating hard or extreme modes, simply offer the additional option for "story mode".