Going to the same route as WoW. The game is TOO easy

[Shurrikhan]

Genuine question: who benefits from making the casual-focused content more difficult? I'm like 99% sure that Square primarily intends this as a game to be enjoyed by all final fantasy fans, with plenty of challenging content for those who want to go beyond. Why turn MSQ and normal dungeons into that? Once again, who benefits?

Depending on the difficulty curve, casual, mid-core, or even just the Chaddiest among us. There's no one answer.

If the difficulty curve has reasonable steps that pull only small and easily surprises at a time, each well and intuitively indicated, with little space given to forget previously learned mechanics and little to memorize at any one point in time... casual players probably benefit the most.
Add on some intensive stuff that takes a step past mere accumulative learning and puts your awareness to the test... well, now midcore players will probably get the largest kick out of it.
Crank everything up to the memorization standards of Savage... actually, I'm not sure anyone especially 'benefits' at that point, as it'd just be "more of the same", but probably of lesser quality, for Savage runners.
Create new systems of progression (for classic example, Mythic+) whereby anyone can progress from any level, to their maximum given their gear and... everyone benefits. There's no exclusive minimum difficulty, and there's virtually no ceiling on the difficulty either.

[Reinha]

Genuine question: who benefits from making the casual-focused content more difficult? I'm like 99% sure that Square primarily intends this as a game to be enjoyed by all final fantasy fans, with plenty of challenging content for those who want to go beyond. Why turn MSQ and normal dungeons into that? Once again, who benefits?

Everyone who got past Shinryu would benefit from the dungeons after it being at least equally hard because a downwards difficulty curve induces boredom and devolves player skill. Who benefits from leveling dungeons being harder than "expert" dungeons? I'm expecting some wipes in the new dungeons and the last trial because most people have been cruising on autopilot and forgotten the previous challenge in the MSQ from two years ago.