Elitism is not only affecting the community, it is starting to affect the devs

[CazzT]

As a result, the FF14 community has become an echo chamber for hardcore viewpoints.

That's not the impression I've gotten.

Take the MSQ experience for example. Hardcore, dedicated players insist that the story is so good that everyone should watch all the cutscenes. Do people realize how long that takes? It would take a casual player playing 5~8 hours a week 3 months to half a year just to complete the MSQ if they watched all the cutscenes.

So there's two things being claimed here.
1 - Anyone saying someone should watch all the cutscenes is automatically a "hardcore player". That is false on so many levels. I can only speak for how I deal with this personally, but your claim is outright wrong.
I absolutely encourage people to watch the cutscenes and read the story of the MSQ as it plays out. But if someone just really does not like the story, or is just really not a story person, that's fine, too. I just ask that they don't criticize the story if they aren't going to read it.
2 - That it would take a "casual" several months to complete the MSQ. I have two answers to this. One, SO WHAT?! Two, if that's a big of a deal to someone, they will either play more, rush through parts of the MSQ, or do something else that speeds it up. This is not a race. You don't win a prize for finishing the MSQ in a shorter time.

Skipping the cutscenes can cut that down by nearly a third. For many years, the MSQ bloat was not addressed in any way because of the forums, Reddit, and media events, which are overrepresented by hardcore players, tell the devs that there are no issues. Thankfully, the devs must have finally looked at data showing how many casual players probably can't get through ARR without quitting and decided to take a first step towards addressing the MSQ bloat.

You're attributing the lack of MSQ changes to people who had no impact on that. Sounds like you're just mad at this strawman you've created and named "Hardcore".

Another example is making Ultimate raids at all in the first place. Less than 1% of the community can enjoy this content. Yet they are constantly making new Ultimate raids while cutting more and more casual content. Do people notice the trend here? During ARR, there was only one level of hardcore raid - Coil, and there was also only one level of hardcore trial - Extreme. Then halfway through ARR they added Savage. In Heavensward they continued Savage and added PotD for hardcore 4-man content. In Stormblood they added Ultimate. Now they are adding Unreal. How many tiers of hardcore content do we have now? How many tiers of casual content do we have, on the other hand? And do you notice that casual content is the only content that gets cut, while they have only added hardcore content?

It all boils down to the hardcore mentality and elitism that gets broadcasted everywhere from every corner of the FF14 community.

Translation: "Everyone who doesn't play as casually as I do is elitist hardcore!!" That's not how it works.

[Rufalus]

OP was actually well written and looks like some time put into it. I wouldn't have thought it was trolling until people mentioned there's a theme of controversial topics in their history. Anyways addressing the topic seriously, I've never done an Ultimate fight and don't ever plan on doing something so punishing and group coordination focused, but there's really only 2 of those fights per expansion so it's not a big resource hog. It seems to have a positive impact beyond just those participating because a lot of us watch the raiders stream the hardcore stuff, so I count the ultimate series as a success.

That said, yes I think the distribution of resources is off and they've taken too long to address certain casual stuff and new player experience. Best example is castrum and prae upsetting people for years and in some cases reducing them to tears and making them quit the game because that's the first impression of full party lv50+ content they get. Rush rush, confusion, pathetically weak bosses, etc. Ideally I would have wanted them to redo a lot of the ARR instanced content and add new rewards to them to justify it taking time away from making new content. Older players would have a reason to go back to that stuff and farm them for the new items so it's not just empty patches to anyone. Binding Coil series could be part of the ARR remastering and finally put that into the raid roulette so new players can actually DF into it and see the story without hassle.

[linayar]

I should note here that hardcore doesn't just mean people who do savage or extreme.

I'm glad that you noted that, because it should be obvious that you're describing a wide range of people who have different interests.

There are people who spend a lot of time playing, but don't care about story and skip cutscenes.
There are people who do Savage/Ultimate who only log in one day each week to raid.

If you're going to lump all of them in as "hardcore," you might be left with an actual minority who spend merely 5 hours a week and don't care about story, raid, crafting/gathering, or anything else that might take a long time to do and don't care to engage the community either.

[AduroT]

OP was actually well written and looks like some time put into it. I wouldn't have thought it was trolling until people mentioned there's a theme of controversial topics in their history.

He’s been known to copy/paste from other forums.

[SinisterJoints]

It all boils down to

You having no idea what you are talking about...

[SenorPatty]

I like how the source of all the troubles plaguing "casual content" are raiding content and/or raiders. Like some boogeyman that gets propped up whenever the crops spoils because it didn't rain enough.

[NanaWiloh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rCP4CRRO7E&t=20s

[NanaWiloh]

You having no idea what you are talking about...

Lol He is a troll he cares nothing about the topic as long as its gets attention.

[Shougun]

OP was actually well written and looks like some time put into it.

Best lies have a truth in them. Best bait has some actual content.

If things are truly and wholly outlandish then there isn't enough air for the fire to feed on lol. Even if people wanted to respond outlandish concepts would be difficult to work with. Keep it simple, emotionally worded, and mutate something someone cared about- real magic XD.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I hate how much these troll threads are such obvious bait, that it still generates discussion even by those that know it's fake.

Like, it's a trap we see, but are just enticed to fall Into.