the normal content is too easy

[LittleImp]

How much money does SE make from Twitch? Zero. At best, it's cheap advertising, and at this point, they've achieved market saturation with all the hype they generated last year. They'll be just fine for a while with literally zero Twitch views. When the next content drop happens and the hype around New World and Lost Ark dies down, they'll establish a Twitch presence once more.

Millions of dollars. The games active population doubled during the month Asmongold and other major streamers began streaming it, despite being in the midst of a major content drought.

The current population is now lower than during that Pre-EW content drought, indicating EW has a lower player retention rate than previous expansions.

It's more like we're all in a walking club, and a bunch of elitists on these forums are complaining that it's not a running club. After all, this thread started with the OP demanding that the normal raids be made harder to suit their preference for Savage and Extreme content. I don't consider players who prefer Savage and Extreme content to be elitists. However, I definitely consider the players who are demanding that Normal difficulty be increased to be elitists. If you want to be in the running group, be in the running group. Just don't demand that the rest of us who are happily walking already start running just to make you happy.

The games normal-mode difficulty has not been consistent over its lifecycle, so these types of analogy's aren't great.

Coil raids were considered base difficulty at one time. Trials like Ravana, Sephirot and Titan had perma-death mechanics in normal mode. Eden Normal raids are often significantly more difficult than Alexander raids or Pandaemonium raids. Return to Ivalice is VASTLY more difficult than Void Ark, Nier or post-ARR CT. Yoshida indicated recently that the new 24 man series is more in line with Ivalice difficulty, which would mean the difficulty has increased from last expansion.

You lump yourself in with the people who are 'happily walking in the walking club', but you yourself were supporting the idea that certain trials should be made easier in another thread. It's a much more mixed issue, where the game could really go either way and you have people with different preferences tugging at both ends.